from John:
Bonsoir, or should I say Buenas Tardes, as I write from Granada, freshly bathed and laundered, fed and watered. We arrived here on Monday afternoon after a "fast boat" across the Straits of Gibraltar and a comfortable bus ride from Algeçiras. Not wishing to break from all things Moroccan, we thought we´d check out their legacy here in Spain. However, we draw a line at Tagine.
From Marrakesh we had headed west to Essaouira on the coast - a small fishing port with old Portuguese fort walls and now a quiet touristy little town. Orson Welle´s Othello opens with a scene shot on the ramparts here, and a small square has been named in his honour. We were pursued into the old town from the bus station by two touts - one an older woman who had a room in her nice house, and the other a young fella in a bright red hoodie who had a room in his nice house. We blanked them completely, but they took it in turns to accompany us on the long walk until they finally turned on each other. We left them having a screaming match in the souk. Having so bravely fought them off, we then got hooked by a smooth talking boogaloo who took us to his cheap hotel, which turned out to be a room in someone else´s nice house. There is an art to touting, and you´ve either got it or you haven´t.
After a restful few days walking the windy beach and windy plazas and windy streets we went north to El-Jadida, another old Portuguese port which now serves as a snazzy resort to Casablancans. When I say snazzy, I mean by Moroccan standards. The old walled town still has great ramparts and a wonderful vaulted cistern for water storage, which also features in Welles´ Othello. The rest of it looked like a slum, full of children playing. In the evening we promenaded with everyone else, ate and shopped in the large souk. In the meat section we came across two cow´s heads perched at the foot of a counter, their tongues lolling out of the corner of their mouths. Above them hung their feet. We watched someone buy a chicken: she picked it out as it scratched around the floor of the shop. The man weighed it, took it to the back to kill it and dip it in scalding water to remove the feathers. Although we´ve had the odd ropey chicken (in one restaurant we could´ve tied them together and dropped them out of the window to make our escape), most of the time they´ve been remarkably good - now we know how fresh they are.
Casablanca was described to us by an enthusiastic Moroccan as something akin to New York. There is lots of traffic, true, and neither of us have visited New York, so he gets the benefit of our often applied doubt. We didn´t stay. It is famous for having one tourist attraction - the enormous and splendid Hassan II Mosque. It is the 3rd largest in the world, built by 25,000 craftsmen working 24 hours non-stop in 6 years, with a capacity of 40,000. Or was it the 6th largest built by 24 craftsmen working 3 hours in 40,000 years with ........? To be honest I didn´t really listen to the tour guide, since I spent most of the time wandering around face upwards admiring the tilework, stucco, marble and woodcarving. It is quite remarkable from the outside alone - sat on a slum clearance site at the sea´s edge, away from the sludge of the city. Moroccans had to contribute to the construction of this stunning building/ despot´s folly (depending on your point of view), and I am quite sure our guide didn´t actually say how much it cost to build. Having seen some of the poorer south, it did appear rather extravagant - reminded me of the great gold-encrusted cathedrals of South America.
The same day we moved on to Rabat - calmer and cleaner. The coastal plains here are covered in green fields - kinder on the eye and a relief after the dry south. The fields roll down to the beach and many are still farmed by hand, ploughed by cows or mules. It made us think of what Highland crofts might have looked like (on a sunny day). It´s our second time in the capital and we explored some of the familiar streets. Although it´s been two years, the same people are serving in the same restaurants or stalls, as in Marrakesh. We feel like time-travellers. We swap our guide book for two penguin classics. Who needs a guidebook second time around?
Onwards to Meknes, the country´s third Imperial City - built by a sultan who had to murder 83 half-brothers to safeguard his right to rule. He ransacked Marrakesh and Fes and the nearby Roman remains of Volubilis to build his new capital in the 17th century. Nice man, by all accounts. We popped in and said hello at his mausoleum. We also visited a huge granary - an arched warehouse basically, most of it now ruined - built to store the grain to feed his 12,000 horses. This apparently was used in The Last Temptation of Christ. And then onto Volubilis, out in the lovely green hills. Not much left of it, and UNESCO have labelled it a World Heritage Site, which doesn´t stop the ticket seller trying to short-change the excitable and inattentive tourist. It´s main feature is the large number of mosaic floors that have survived and remain in-situ. They filmed some of Carry On Cleopatra here. It was a lovely day out, by all accounts.
We had taken an en-suite room in a hotel that could not deliver hot water - it took us 36 hours to be told that hot water was only available after 9.30pm. We knew it had to exist because the foyer, lift shaft, corridors and rooms were constantly filled with the smell of woodsmoke. On occasion it billowed past our bedroom window. Sure enough at 9.30 prompt, the water was boiling.
From Meknes we took the comfortable train to sad Tanger and revisited a funky hotel near to the docks. We had the same room and I had the same sensation that I´d felt last time when we went to buy our ferry tickets - a combination of relief and faint regret. For despite all the wonderful sights, the film sets, the street scenes and kind people, there is the knowledge that all the other travelling hassles will not exist in Spain.........................
P.S. okay, I was kidding about Carry On Cleo
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Moroccan conversations - a Blue Peter post
from John:
Bonjour,
Gayle tells me my posts should be more pithy, which reminds me that the oranges here are just fabulous - sold with their stalks on, and dusty looking, but inside juicy and sweet and all for the bargain price of 25 pence a kilo. Anyway, here´s one I prepared earlier............
We've had an interesting few weeks here, but struggled daily with the good ol' Moroccan ways of over-charging or short-changing. There is no sign of crime here against tourists in the form of mugging, bag-snatching or pickpocketing, which is quite remarkable considering the huge differences in wealth within society and between the tourists and locals. There are many people begging: children, mothers with babies, old ladies and tramps - a country that should prepare us for the poverty of India, but quite shocking so close to home. As a visitor, we are frequently subjected to minor hustles, especially at the bus stations, but even in posh cafes. We have resorted to always checking the price of everything everywhere before purchase to avoid being scammed. However, for each time we have been over-charged or short-changed there are 5 or 6 instances where we have been indulged for our lousy french and treated kindly. We can't drop our guard though, which means that we treat anyone who approaches us as someone who is out to make money from us. As someone wrote - it's as if we are covered in dollar signs and have the word 'swag' emblazoned on our bags.
There have been a couple of times when we've been able to chat to locals without hassle. The first time was with the hotel owner and super bad cook, Hussein, from the Todra Gorge. After our evening meal, which was an effort in itself, we talked at length in French, leaving us quite exhausted. We asked lots of questions and he was eager to talk - the French satellite TV programmes made Channel Five look good. Hussein is Berber, as are about 70 per cent of the population, although many see it as a stigma - the Arabs have always looked down on Berbers as hillbillies, and their culture has been gradually eroded. Berber names were banned many years ago, and only arabic and french is used in schools. However, the current king is half-Berber, so things may change. Gayle asked Hussein about marriage across the two racial groups, what would he think if his daughter wanted to marry a Frenchman, and about women's rights. He loved these questions - said he had an arranged marriage, but these days things were different, people married for love, or occasionally money. He knew a young man who had married an old French woman, but returned to the area after a couple of years. He drifted on to the new consumerism that had his family in its grip - too many mobile phones, a TV, "la femme chez nous" (Her Indoors) no longer wanted to look after the cow and tend the fields, but wanted to buy jewellery and makeup and a washing machine. (Where were the cows? We hadn't seen a single on. Kept at the house apparently, so they wouldn't eat everything in the fields). Gayle also asked about the migrant workers working in Europe - did they prefer Europe or here? Hussein explained that he loved his simple life here, no pressures, a comfortable life in the country, not like the long hours in awful jobs that his neighbours had left to do.
However, on a bus journey to El-Jadida we met a Moroccan who was working in Spain, and had been for some years. He got chatting to Gayle at a stop in Spanish (he spoke little French), and when we got off at the same place (once again dumped at a roundabout) he suggested we share a taxi to the bus station. At first we were a little wary, but he seemed genuine. So we piled into a Peugeot 106 with our rucksacks perched on the roofrack, and the taxi screamed off..............and stopped about 150 metres down the road, rather embarrassingly. Said paid the fare and insisted we have a tea with him at the station café. But they had no tea, so I had a coffee and Gayle and he had lemon verbena, which is fairly common round here. We chatted in our rusty Spanish - Said was home for a month visiting family. Gayle got stuck in straight away and asked him how much he earned in Spain. "Mucho mas que aqui!" Much more than here! He worked in construction and said that the average daily income in Morocco was 5 euros. Did he like Spain? It was much better than here, here there was nothing for him but family. He pointed at the grotty street, the broken pavement, the porters with their wheelbarrows, the dirty buses belching exhaust - the usual city landscape - and told us it was better in Spain. But how were the Spanish with Moroccans? Ah, well, there was quite a bit of racism, from all but a few. He'd heard from a friend that Switzerland was a nice place to live, so that was his aim. He insisted on paying for the drinks and we bade him farewell and suerte.
Back in Marrakesh we had also been treated with unbidden hospitality by a stranger - a young woman whom we sat next to at a fish and chip stall in the main square one evening. Gayle got chatting to her (where does she get it from?) - she came from Rabat, where her baby was being looked after by her mum, whilst she worked in a good job at a posh hotel in Marrakesh. (We later looked it up in the guidebook - it was the author's choice!) Her husband worked in Ourzazate during high season. We munched our way through our food and then she offered to pay so that we didn't get overcharged. But when we left, she refused to take our money! We carried on talking and she took us to a posh cafe and we bought her a coffee in poor return. Ikram was wearing a headscarf so Gayle asked her what she thought of the women who didn't. She didn't care, and had only begun to wear hers after marriage, before that she didn't bother. One advantage was you didn't have to bother with your hair. She had grown up with French neighbours in Rabat, and her middle sister was completely westernised. She only went home on her "weekend" - she couldn't find such a good job in Rabat. (Most of the tourist money was being spent in Marrakesh we thought.)
We finished our drinks and I paid. The waiter not only tried to pass me a euro in my change, but also short-changed me. We had mentioned this to Ikram, so it was quite funny it actually happened. She said it happened to her too, but then she was a very kind woman. To our embarrassment she asked us how long our holiday was for - when would be home? That took a bit of explaining. She offered us accomodation if we ever visited again, and after swapping e-mail addresses we parted.
Afterwards we ambled around feeling very glad to have talked with her - this really makes the travelling more rewarding - and perhaps we felt a little more self-concious about ourselves and having the opportunity and wealth to do this. Perhaps we really are carrying that swag after all........
a tout a l´heure
Bonjour,
Gayle tells me my posts should be more pithy, which reminds me that the oranges here are just fabulous - sold with their stalks on, and dusty looking, but inside juicy and sweet and all for the bargain price of 25 pence a kilo. Anyway, here´s one I prepared earlier............
We've had an interesting few weeks here, but struggled daily with the good ol' Moroccan ways of over-charging or short-changing. There is no sign of crime here against tourists in the form of mugging, bag-snatching or pickpocketing, which is quite remarkable considering the huge differences in wealth within society and between the tourists and locals. There are many people begging: children, mothers with babies, old ladies and tramps - a country that should prepare us for the poverty of India, but quite shocking so close to home. As a visitor, we are frequently subjected to minor hustles, especially at the bus stations, but even in posh cafes. We have resorted to always checking the price of everything everywhere before purchase to avoid being scammed. However, for each time we have been over-charged or short-changed there are 5 or 6 instances where we have been indulged for our lousy french and treated kindly. We can't drop our guard though, which means that we treat anyone who approaches us as someone who is out to make money from us. As someone wrote - it's as if we are covered in dollar signs and have the word 'swag' emblazoned on our bags.
There have been a couple of times when we've been able to chat to locals without hassle. The first time was with the hotel owner and super bad cook, Hussein, from the Todra Gorge. After our evening meal, which was an effort in itself, we talked at length in French, leaving us quite exhausted. We asked lots of questions and he was eager to talk - the French satellite TV programmes made Channel Five look good. Hussein is Berber, as are about 70 per cent of the population, although many see it as a stigma - the Arabs have always looked down on Berbers as hillbillies, and their culture has been gradually eroded. Berber names were banned many years ago, and only arabic and french is used in schools. However, the current king is half-Berber, so things may change. Gayle asked Hussein about marriage across the two racial groups, what would he think if his daughter wanted to marry a Frenchman, and about women's rights. He loved these questions - said he had an arranged marriage, but these days things were different, people married for love, or occasionally money. He knew a young man who had married an old French woman, but returned to the area after a couple of years. He drifted on to the new consumerism that had his family in its grip - too many mobile phones, a TV, "la femme chez nous" (Her Indoors) no longer wanted to look after the cow and tend the fields, but wanted to buy jewellery and makeup and a washing machine. (Where were the cows? We hadn't seen a single on. Kept at the house apparently, so they wouldn't eat everything in the fields). Gayle also asked about the migrant workers working in Europe - did they prefer Europe or here? Hussein explained that he loved his simple life here, no pressures, a comfortable life in the country, not like the long hours in awful jobs that his neighbours had left to do.
However, on a bus journey to El-Jadida we met a Moroccan who was working in Spain, and had been for some years. He got chatting to Gayle at a stop in Spanish (he spoke little French), and when we got off at the same place (once again dumped at a roundabout) he suggested we share a taxi to the bus station. At first we were a little wary, but he seemed genuine. So we piled into a Peugeot 106 with our rucksacks perched on the roofrack, and the taxi screamed off..............and stopped about 150 metres down the road, rather embarrassingly. Said paid the fare and insisted we have a tea with him at the station café. But they had no tea, so I had a coffee and Gayle and he had lemon verbena, which is fairly common round here. We chatted in our rusty Spanish - Said was home for a month visiting family. Gayle got stuck in straight away and asked him how much he earned in Spain. "Mucho mas que aqui!" Much more than here! He worked in construction and said that the average daily income in Morocco was 5 euros. Did he like Spain? It was much better than here, here there was nothing for him but family. He pointed at the grotty street, the broken pavement, the porters with their wheelbarrows, the dirty buses belching exhaust - the usual city landscape - and told us it was better in Spain. But how were the Spanish with Moroccans? Ah, well, there was quite a bit of racism, from all but a few. He'd heard from a friend that Switzerland was a nice place to live, so that was his aim. He insisted on paying for the drinks and we bade him farewell and suerte.
Back in Marrakesh we had also been treated with unbidden hospitality by a stranger - a young woman whom we sat next to at a fish and chip stall in the main square one evening. Gayle got chatting to her (where does she get it from?) - she came from Rabat, where her baby was being looked after by her mum, whilst she worked in a good job at a posh hotel in Marrakesh. (We later looked it up in the guidebook - it was the author's choice!) Her husband worked in Ourzazate during high season. We munched our way through our food and then she offered to pay so that we didn't get overcharged. But when we left, she refused to take our money! We carried on talking and she took us to a posh cafe and we bought her a coffee in poor return. Ikram was wearing a headscarf so Gayle asked her what she thought of the women who didn't. She didn't care, and had only begun to wear hers after marriage, before that she didn't bother. One advantage was you didn't have to bother with your hair. She had grown up with French neighbours in Rabat, and her middle sister was completely westernised. She only went home on her "weekend" - she couldn't find such a good job in Rabat. (Most of the tourist money was being spent in Marrakesh we thought.)
We finished our drinks and I paid. The waiter not only tried to pass me a euro in my change, but also short-changed me. We had mentioned this to Ikram, so it was quite funny it actually happened. She said it happened to her too, but then she was a very kind woman. To our embarrassment she asked us how long our holiday was for - when would be home? That took a bit of explaining. She offered us accomodation if we ever visited again, and after swapping e-mail addresses we parted.
Afterwards we ambled around feeling very glad to have talked with her - this really makes the travelling more rewarding - and perhaps we felt a little more self-concious about ourselves and having the opportunity and wealth to do this. Perhaps we really are carrying that swag after all........
a tout a l´heure
Friday, February 2, 2007
in which we cross the High Atlas and return to Marrakech
from John:
Bonjour!
We had asked about buses from Taroudannt to Ourzazate the night before and were told 10am in the bus park at the city gates. Could we buy a ticket? Get it on the bus, came the reply. We duly arrived 15 minutes early and waited at the appointed spot. Various blokes wondered past, looked us up and down and asked "Ourzazate? Ten o'clock." Ten o'clock came. And went. We spotted two more gringos also loitering in the vicinity and looking equally abandoned. Groups of Moroccans sat waiting in the shade. No sign of any buses actually going anywhere. And then a creaky old bus pulled in sudddenly, belching blue fumes and dust, and some of the men hanging around burst into life, waving and shouting at us:"Ourzazate!Ourzazate!Ourzazate!" People struggled to get off the bus and beyond an eager clutch of porters with wheelbarrows, whilst we zoned in on the Bus Man, all the while tugged and pulled by these men screaming in our ears "Ourzazate!Ourzazate!Ourzazate!" We purchased our tickets from the Bus Man, as the touts who had attached themselves to us clamoured for their cut. Our rucksacks were slung onto the roof while Gayle shoved aboard to find two seats at the back. The Bus Boy responsible for baggage demanded money for the rucksacks. I pulled a face and gave him half the asking price and climbed aboard. A few more boarded, searched for seats, got off, got on again. Bus Man and Bus Boy walked down the bus, checked every seat was occupied, shouted to the driver and we roared off in a bigger cloud of fumes and dust. Bon voyage!
The road ran parallel with the distant mountains of the High Atlas through a dry flat valley, everything looking brown and dusty. The driver put on a tape of someone half-singing a recitation from the Koran. It suited the landscape.
Ourzazate is a fairly sprawling new town that has boomed with some government investment and money from the film studios that operate here. Numerous Hollywood films have been filmed here, from Lawrence of Arabia to Gladiator. Not much for the visitor to see, but a good place to break our journey. We carried on the next day to Tinehir, further east. It was cloudy and chilly and Tinehir had a shabby look about it. North of here lies a green fertile valley and the Todra gorge, formed by one of the rivers coming down from the mountains. We spent a quiet day pottering about the town, and finally headed up the green valley the following day. There were villages alongside both sides of a thick green band of palm trees and fields - a visual relief amongst the endless brown. We stopped at an empty hotel and then set off up the valley on foot through the palmery before lunch. It was sunny but not too hot, which was a good thing because our little walk turned into something of an epic.
The palmery was divided up into small plots of land, separated by irrigation channels. There were date palms on the edges and clover being grown in the fields. Higher up the valley it opened up a little and there were almond trees too. It reminded us of some of the valleys we had walked in Nepal - a very peaceful place. We passed through a couple of villages, threading a way through their labyrinthine streets until we came to the gorge, where the valley walls almost touched. They were maybe two hundred metres high and not much sun seemed to get in. Unfortunately it is spoiled by two hotels where coach tourist disembark for lunch. Stalls were set up selling all the usual Moroccan tourist goods. I think I preferred the palmery. We'd had an egg butty and then followed a brief description from our guide book for a two hour walk, climbing out of the main valley, looping back round over two high passes and returning to one of the villages we had passed. The description was a bit vague and once we'd reached the top, with great views across the rocky ridges all around, we dithered about the route down, but found a path that seemed well-trodden and stuck to that. We passed a couple of nomad tents, nestled high up in the crannies. These people were goat herds and had temporary shelters in quite high and very dry places. We finally reached a dividing point in the path and could see the descent down to the village. However, the other path was going in the direction of where we thought we would return to the main valley by our hotel, so we took that instead. The path had been marked with stones and there was evidence of mules i.e. mule shit, so we felt fairly confident. We descended a small valley for a while on a path above the dry riverbed, where we spotted some other gringos descending. Our path crossed the valley and climbed around a bend, finally reaching a pass appearing to go in the wrong direction. The path onwards seemed indistinct. We hummed and hawed. Down below us in the dry riverbed we could see the others, so we decided to drop down and follow them. We caught up with them trying to descend down a dry waterfall. There were two fellas and two women, and the women refused to climb down. I didn't even want to look! We talked, they looked tired and we were all conscious that the sun was dropping and we were running out of time. We suggested that we should climb back up to our path and have a look over the pass. The men were doubtful, but they hadn't even been on the path, so they weren't as confident as us. From the pass we looked down a steep drop to a wide flat dry riverbed. We did a quick reconnaisance, spotted the path continuing alongside the dry river and heading in the right direction so we took it. Eventually, after a long walk out, we emerged onto the road of the main valley right beside our hotel. It was six o'clock. The others had another three miles to walk to their village, but at least they were no longer lost.
Unfortunately out tagine that night did not do justice to the appetite we had built up. The chicken was one of those yellow rubbery comedy affairs. The hotel owner was a nice talkative man but in the morning we decided not to have breakfast and he looked as relieved as we felt at the decision. I guess cooking wasn't his thing.
We returned to Ourzazate where the grey clouds finally turned to rain. It rained for a whole day and night, and it left a layer of snow on the mountains to our north. After a day of pottering we then took the bus back to Marrakesh, on a road that wound its way up to a high pass through the snow covered valleys that looked beautiful in the morning sunshine. We then descended a busy and rather hairy stretch until the valley opened out onto a huge green basin. The bus finally reached the plain, and we trundled back into the big congested city. It felt lively and busy after all the small towns we had visited, but the familiar sights and sounds were also welcome. We returned to our little hotel on Cheap Hotel Alley, ready to recuperate.
Au revoir
Bonjour!
We had asked about buses from Taroudannt to Ourzazate the night before and were told 10am in the bus park at the city gates. Could we buy a ticket? Get it on the bus, came the reply. We duly arrived 15 minutes early and waited at the appointed spot. Various blokes wondered past, looked us up and down and asked "Ourzazate? Ten o'clock." Ten o'clock came. And went. We spotted two more gringos also loitering in the vicinity and looking equally abandoned. Groups of Moroccans sat waiting in the shade. No sign of any buses actually going anywhere. And then a creaky old bus pulled in sudddenly, belching blue fumes and dust, and some of the men hanging around burst into life, waving and shouting at us:"Ourzazate!Ourzazate!Ourzazate!" People struggled to get off the bus and beyond an eager clutch of porters with wheelbarrows, whilst we zoned in on the Bus Man, all the while tugged and pulled by these men screaming in our ears "Ourzazate!Ourzazate!Ourzazate!" We purchased our tickets from the Bus Man, as the touts who had attached themselves to us clamoured for their cut. Our rucksacks were slung onto the roof while Gayle shoved aboard to find two seats at the back. The Bus Boy responsible for baggage demanded money for the rucksacks. I pulled a face and gave him half the asking price and climbed aboard. A few more boarded, searched for seats, got off, got on again. Bus Man and Bus Boy walked down the bus, checked every seat was occupied, shouted to the driver and we roared off in a bigger cloud of fumes and dust. Bon voyage!
The road ran parallel with the distant mountains of the High Atlas through a dry flat valley, everything looking brown and dusty. The driver put on a tape of someone half-singing a recitation from the Koran. It suited the landscape.
Ourzazate is a fairly sprawling new town that has boomed with some government investment and money from the film studios that operate here. Numerous Hollywood films have been filmed here, from Lawrence of Arabia to Gladiator. Not much for the visitor to see, but a good place to break our journey. We carried on the next day to Tinehir, further east. It was cloudy and chilly and Tinehir had a shabby look about it. North of here lies a green fertile valley and the Todra gorge, formed by one of the rivers coming down from the mountains. We spent a quiet day pottering about the town, and finally headed up the green valley the following day. There were villages alongside both sides of a thick green band of palm trees and fields - a visual relief amongst the endless brown. We stopped at an empty hotel and then set off up the valley on foot through the palmery before lunch. It was sunny but not too hot, which was a good thing because our little walk turned into something of an epic.
The palmery was divided up into small plots of land, separated by irrigation channels. There were date palms on the edges and clover being grown in the fields. Higher up the valley it opened up a little and there were almond trees too. It reminded us of some of the valleys we had walked in Nepal - a very peaceful place. We passed through a couple of villages, threading a way through their labyrinthine streets until we came to the gorge, where the valley walls almost touched. They were maybe two hundred metres high and not much sun seemed to get in. Unfortunately it is spoiled by two hotels where coach tourist disembark for lunch. Stalls were set up selling all the usual Moroccan tourist goods. I think I preferred the palmery. We'd had an egg butty and then followed a brief description from our guide book for a two hour walk, climbing out of the main valley, looping back round over two high passes and returning to one of the villages we had passed. The description was a bit vague and once we'd reached the top, with great views across the rocky ridges all around, we dithered about the route down, but found a path that seemed well-trodden and stuck to that. We passed a couple of nomad tents, nestled high up in the crannies. These people were goat herds and had temporary shelters in quite high and very dry places. We finally reached a dividing point in the path and could see the descent down to the village. However, the other path was going in the direction of where we thought we would return to the main valley by our hotel, so we took that instead. The path had been marked with stones and there was evidence of mules i.e. mule shit, so we felt fairly confident. We descended a small valley for a while on a path above the dry riverbed, where we spotted some other gringos descending. Our path crossed the valley and climbed around a bend, finally reaching a pass appearing to go in the wrong direction. The path onwards seemed indistinct. We hummed and hawed. Down below us in the dry riverbed we could see the others, so we decided to drop down and follow them. We caught up with them trying to descend down a dry waterfall. There were two fellas and two women, and the women refused to climb down. I didn't even want to look! We talked, they looked tired and we were all conscious that the sun was dropping and we were running out of time. We suggested that we should climb back up to our path and have a look over the pass. The men were doubtful, but they hadn't even been on the path, so they weren't as confident as us. From the pass we looked down a steep drop to a wide flat dry riverbed. We did a quick reconnaisance, spotted the path continuing alongside the dry river and heading in the right direction so we took it. Eventually, after a long walk out, we emerged onto the road of the main valley right beside our hotel. It was six o'clock. The others had another three miles to walk to their village, but at least they were no longer lost.
Unfortunately out tagine that night did not do justice to the appetite we had built up. The chicken was one of those yellow rubbery comedy affairs. The hotel owner was a nice talkative man but in the morning we decided not to have breakfast and he looked as relieved as we felt at the decision. I guess cooking wasn't his thing.
We returned to Ourzazate where the grey clouds finally turned to rain. It rained for a whole day and night, and it left a layer of snow on the mountains to our north. After a day of pottering we then took the bus back to Marrakesh, on a road that wound its way up to a high pass through the snow covered valleys that looked beautiful in the morning sunshine. We then descended a busy and rather hairy stretch until the valley opened out onto a huge green basin. The bus finally reached the plain, and we trundled back into the big congested city. It felt lively and busy after all the small towns we had visited, but the familiar sights and sounds were also welcome. We returned to our little hotel on Cheap Hotel Alley, ready to recuperate.
Au revoir
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Wild West Morocco
from John:
Bonjour! ça va?
Well, we finally managed to pull ourselves away from Marrakesh and took a Posh Bus to Tiznit (It is Tiznit, isn't it?), just south of Agadir. As usual, our journey lasted longer than we had been told and we arrived late and weary and turfed off the posh bus on the edge of town (we weren't posh enough). It was midnight and the streets were empty except for waifs and strays and a couple of anxious backpackers wondering if their hotel would be open. We reached it after a brisk march - but the hotel was dark and the the door shut. What to do? Gayle shrugged and gave the plate glass front door a heavy pounding - enough to wake the neighbourhood. Through the glass, at the top of some stairs, a man suddenly appeared and indicated to us to turn the door handle. The door had been unlocked and Gayle had given it the Policeman's Knock. We legged it up the stairs into a small hall surrounded by bedrooms and conducted the rigmarole of registering in sotto voce with Abdul, the nightwatchman. Poor fella was visibly shaken by our Sweeney-like entrance. Feeling like Dennis Waterman to Gayle's John Thaw, I dearly wanted to feel Abdul's collar and whisper into his shell-like: "You're nicked my son!"
Tiznit's the kind of place that gets four lines in the guidebook - nothing touristy, a small provincial capital, low-key no hassle, no-one interested in us really, which is a good counter- balance to Marrakesh. Noticeably fewer women out on the streets. We foraged for food: a yoghurt in a tiny 3-table shop - the yoghurt homemade natural slightly sweetened and served in a large glass with a teaspoon; pain au chocolat from a bakery - sometimes known as 'pain, où chocolat?'; café au lait for me and a thé à la menthe sans thé et sans sucre s'il vous plait for Gayle in a café. Breakfast like this usually lasts up untill lunchtime.
The medina (old town) was quiet and unhurried and we wandered aimlessly down the streets to the Grand Mosque and the Source Bleu which was the original spring for the town. The spring has dried up, and the concrete tank was a little more like a Source Bleah. Something drifted over towards us as we peered into the murky pool, but we could not make out whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral.
There's a sleepy little coastal village called Mirleft not far from here, so we decided to check out the Moroccan beach scene. Popular with camper vans and surfers, we had read. It is. Mirleft is a one-street town that looks like something from a spaghetti western - the street lined with an arched arcade down both sides, dust blowing back and forth from the smart hotel on one side and the scruffy cafés on the other. We stayed in the smart hotel and ate outside one of the scruffy cafés after promenading up and down the street three or four times. We had fish and chip butties and a mint tea for me and a mint tea without the tea and without the sugar for Gayle. Old men, young men, small boys and mangy dogs walked up and down. It wasn't the most exciting evening we'd had. Until there came a scrape of chairs and the yelp of a dog from behind us. All of a sudden everyone was on their feet and the whole street converged around our scruffy café. I noticed a drunken bearded man in a djellaba looking around, squinting, staggering slightly. Then Gayle pointed out a chubby well-dressed guy on the veranda of our café trying to look menacing and relaxed, slouching against a pillar but staring at something. Or was it someone? The drunk reappeared on the steps of our hotel opposite the café. He was trying to tuck his djellaba into his jeans, stare across the street and stand up all at the same time, and he was struggling. Although a crowd had gathered, there wasn't a sound. Gayle hissed in my ear " It's a showdown!!"
Who would draw first? The smooth man tried mean, then he tried a sarcastic smile, and then went back to mean. The drunk just fumbled with his djellaba as if he was looking for his door key. And that was all. Without a signal, everyone went back to what they were doing before, and the two principles disappeared. And that's all there is to tell about Mirleft.
Our next stop was Tafroute (rhymes with sprout), which is a little place in the anti Atlas famed for the crazy granite rock formations around the town. We stayed a while and took meandering hikes up the surrounding valleys and over ridges. The landscape is unsurprisingly dry and barren here, but some of the valleys have springs and palmeraies, so all you can see is brown and then an oasis of date palms. Villages are scattered far and wide and we wandered through them - some still with original mud and stone houses, but most replaced with concrete breeze block houses of varying stages of completion. Remarkably for such a desolate rural area, there were plenty of mansions dotted around - the result of money earned overseas or in the bigger Moroccan cities.
On our first day out we passed a bearded man walking into town and looking like he'd been walking for sometime. We met him the next day at our hotel - an American whose name Gayle couldn't remember, so we called him the Talented Mr. Ripley. A talkative man with a roguish curly moustache, he told us he had walked all the way from Agadir, with two other travellers with him on different stages. Where did he sleep? Well, high above the valleys, up on the rocks, away from the dogs. Where did he find water? Well, he asked at every village - you know that Muslims can never refuse anyone water, and he also collected water from wells. But how did he get water from the wells, we asked. ( We had seen them - all bottomless or bone dry - some 150 metres deep we'd been told.) Well, he happened to have a very long piece of nylon cord, of course. And so it went on - and he told us that he walked in many places like this - the Pacific Crest Trail Mexico to Canada. Oh, and he shouldn' t really be here as he should've married a girl he met in Guatemala, but "that's another story". How did he support himself? Well, he wrote a little, here and there, and painted a little. What did he write? Oh, children's poems, that kind of thing.........We talked a while and he seemed to be looking for partners for the next stage of his trek into the rocky desert. Gave me the spooks a bit - everything he told us could have been true, but at the same time I had a funny feeling that if we went with him we'd never be seen again, and he'd be practising my signature off my credit card in no time. Hence the name: the Talented Mr.Ripley.
We also met a very friendly Brazilian Japanese woman who had travelled to many places that we are heading. Within one hour of meeting us she had told us of the most wonderful place in China to visit, explained how to get a Pakistan visa for 1 pence, confided that she hadn't had a bowel movement since she'd arrived in Morocco a week previous, and invited us to stay at her place near Tokyo even though, and she pointed to her cell-like room, it was no bigger than this. Marvellous.
On another day's walk we also met two British couples who were campervanning (I'm not sure if this is a legitimate verb) around Morocco. They offered us a lift back to Tiznit for onward travel, which we accepted. They were a real hoot - persuaded to visit Morocco by others in Portugal who had promised them good driving roads and lots of other English campervanners. And what had they found? The roads were dreadful, the Moroccans awful drivers and French in every campsite! Did they speak French?? Why should they? English is the universal language. We took them to a campsite in Tiznit brimming with French campervans that looked semi-permanent - some had gardens. Awful, frightening and amazing. Crammed tight into what was nothing but a walled carpark. No, they weren't going to stay - they would head to Mirleft. We said nothing but farewell.............
In Taroudannt, our next stop, we did make a startling discovery. As we wandered the streets of the medina we came across a cheap hotel run by Zinedine Zidane no less. When we arrived he was just beginning to get the barbecue going at the front door and was preparing some shish kebabs of liver and heart. The hotel was a little like him - rather charming, but past it's best, but how could we not stay?? Unfortunately the smoke from the barbecue went right through the hotel - by the morning we smelt like a couple of kippers. Now, this might all sound a little far-fetched to you all back there in Blighty, so Gayle was going to take a snap of us together as proof. Unfortunately, I made a polite enquiry about his family and he didn't seem to take it too well. These football stars are so sensitive...........
And so onwards to Ouzarzate and the Todra Gorge, but that will have to keep........
Au revoir
Bonjour! ça va?
Well, we finally managed to pull ourselves away from Marrakesh and took a Posh Bus to Tiznit (It is Tiznit, isn't it?), just south of Agadir. As usual, our journey lasted longer than we had been told and we arrived late and weary and turfed off the posh bus on the edge of town (we weren't posh enough). It was midnight and the streets were empty except for waifs and strays and a couple of anxious backpackers wondering if their hotel would be open. We reached it after a brisk march - but the hotel was dark and the the door shut. What to do? Gayle shrugged and gave the plate glass front door a heavy pounding - enough to wake the neighbourhood. Through the glass, at the top of some stairs, a man suddenly appeared and indicated to us to turn the door handle. The door had been unlocked and Gayle had given it the Policeman's Knock. We legged it up the stairs into a small hall surrounded by bedrooms and conducted the rigmarole of registering in sotto voce with Abdul, the nightwatchman. Poor fella was visibly shaken by our Sweeney-like entrance. Feeling like Dennis Waterman to Gayle's John Thaw, I dearly wanted to feel Abdul's collar and whisper into his shell-like: "You're nicked my son!"
Tiznit's the kind of place that gets four lines in the guidebook - nothing touristy, a small provincial capital, low-key no hassle, no-one interested in us really, which is a good counter- balance to Marrakesh. Noticeably fewer women out on the streets. We foraged for food: a yoghurt in a tiny 3-table shop - the yoghurt homemade natural slightly sweetened and served in a large glass with a teaspoon; pain au chocolat from a bakery - sometimes known as 'pain, où chocolat?'; café au lait for me and a thé à la menthe sans thé et sans sucre s'il vous plait for Gayle in a café. Breakfast like this usually lasts up untill lunchtime.
The medina (old town) was quiet and unhurried and we wandered aimlessly down the streets to the Grand Mosque and the Source Bleu which was the original spring for the town. The spring has dried up, and the concrete tank was a little more like a Source Bleah. Something drifted over towards us as we peered into the murky pool, but we could not make out whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral.
There's a sleepy little coastal village called Mirleft not far from here, so we decided to check out the Moroccan beach scene. Popular with camper vans and surfers, we had read. It is. Mirleft is a one-street town that looks like something from a spaghetti western - the street lined with an arched arcade down both sides, dust blowing back and forth from the smart hotel on one side and the scruffy cafés on the other. We stayed in the smart hotel and ate outside one of the scruffy cafés after promenading up and down the street three or four times. We had fish and chip butties and a mint tea for me and a mint tea without the tea and without the sugar for Gayle. Old men, young men, small boys and mangy dogs walked up and down. It wasn't the most exciting evening we'd had. Until there came a scrape of chairs and the yelp of a dog from behind us. All of a sudden everyone was on their feet and the whole street converged around our scruffy café. I noticed a drunken bearded man in a djellaba looking around, squinting, staggering slightly. Then Gayle pointed out a chubby well-dressed guy on the veranda of our café trying to look menacing and relaxed, slouching against a pillar but staring at something. Or was it someone? The drunk reappeared on the steps of our hotel opposite the café. He was trying to tuck his djellaba into his jeans, stare across the street and stand up all at the same time, and he was struggling. Although a crowd had gathered, there wasn't a sound. Gayle hissed in my ear " It's a showdown!!"
Who would draw first? The smooth man tried mean, then he tried a sarcastic smile, and then went back to mean. The drunk just fumbled with his djellaba as if he was looking for his door key. And that was all. Without a signal, everyone went back to what they were doing before, and the two principles disappeared. And that's all there is to tell about Mirleft.
Our next stop was Tafroute (rhymes with sprout), which is a little place in the anti Atlas famed for the crazy granite rock formations around the town. We stayed a while and took meandering hikes up the surrounding valleys and over ridges. The landscape is unsurprisingly dry and barren here, but some of the valleys have springs and palmeraies, so all you can see is brown and then an oasis of date palms. Villages are scattered far and wide and we wandered through them - some still with original mud and stone houses, but most replaced with concrete breeze block houses of varying stages of completion. Remarkably for such a desolate rural area, there were plenty of mansions dotted around - the result of money earned overseas or in the bigger Moroccan cities.
On our first day out we passed a bearded man walking into town and looking like he'd been walking for sometime. We met him the next day at our hotel - an American whose name Gayle couldn't remember, so we called him the Talented Mr. Ripley. A talkative man with a roguish curly moustache, he told us he had walked all the way from Agadir, with two other travellers with him on different stages. Where did he sleep? Well, high above the valleys, up on the rocks, away from the dogs. Where did he find water? Well, he asked at every village - you know that Muslims can never refuse anyone water, and he also collected water from wells. But how did he get water from the wells, we asked. ( We had seen them - all bottomless or bone dry - some 150 metres deep we'd been told.) Well, he happened to have a very long piece of nylon cord, of course. And so it went on - and he told us that he walked in many places like this - the Pacific Crest Trail Mexico to Canada. Oh, and he shouldn' t really be here as he should've married a girl he met in Guatemala, but "that's another story". How did he support himself? Well, he wrote a little, here and there, and painted a little. What did he write? Oh, children's poems, that kind of thing.........We talked a while and he seemed to be looking for partners for the next stage of his trek into the rocky desert. Gave me the spooks a bit - everything he told us could have been true, but at the same time I had a funny feeling that if we went with him we'd never be seen again, and he'd be practising my signature off my credit card in no time. Hence the name: the Talented Mr.Ripley.
We also met a very friendly Brazilian Japanese woman who had travelled to many places that we are heading. Within one hour of meeting us she had told us of the most wonderful place in China to visit, explained how to get a Pakistan visa for 1 pence, confided that she hadn't had a bowel movement since she'd arrived in Morocco a week previous, and invited us to stay at her place near Tokyo even though, and she pointed to her cell-like room, it was no bigger than this. Marvellous.
On another day's walk we also met two British couples who were campervanning (I'm not sure if this is a legitimate verb) around Morocco. They offered us a lift back to Tiznit for onward travel, which we accepted. They were a real hoot - persuaded to visit Morocco by others in Portugal who had promised them good driving roads and lots of other English campervanners. And what had they found? The roads were dreadful, the Moroccans awful drivers and French in every campsite! Did they speak French?? Why should they? English is the universal language. We took them to a campsite in Tiznit brimming with French campervans that looked semi-permanent - some had gardens. Awful, frightening and amazing. Crammed tight into what was nothing but a walled carpark. No, they weren't going to stay - they would head to Mirleft. We said nothing but farewell.............
In Taroudannt, our next stop, we did make a startling discovery. As we wandered the streets of the medina we came across a cheap hotel run by Zinedine Zidane no less. When we arrived he was just beginning to get the barbecue going at the front door and was preparing some shish kebabs of liver and heart. The hotel was a little like him - rather charming, but past it's best, but how could we not stay?? Unfortunately the smoke from the barbecue went right through the hotel - by the morning we smelt like a couple of kippers. Now, this might all sound a little far-fetched to you all back there in Blighty, so Gayle was going to take a snap of us together as proof. Unfortunately, I made a polite enquiry about his family and he didn't seem to take it too well. These football stars are so sensitive...........
And so onwards to Ouzarzate and the Todra Gorge, but that will have to keep........
Au revoir
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Concrete or Sprouts?
from John:
Salud!
Well here we are in Marrakech, getting used to the smells and sounds of foreign lands, French keyboards, and super-hard beds. Our first days have been spent doing a little sight-seeing and planning our route for the first few weeks and generally lounging around. The weather is good - mild and cold at night but comfortable to walk around and it looks like it hasn't rained here since Noah dropped anchor.
We have found ourselves a room in a cheap hotel on "Cheap Hotel Alley". These places are nearly all the same - rooms around a tiled patio on three floors, with a roof terrace of cast iron garden chairs and tables and a cushioned bank of seats along one wall. It is to here that we retire as soon as the hustle and bustle of the streets and souks gets too much - which is around 2.30pm. There's the usual mix of residents including stoned bearded men chunnering in French. From up here we can easily see the Koutoubia - the tallest minaret in the city and in which there is the loudest sound system of all the minarets. At the call to prayer the muezzin always makes a hesitant cough and a "un,deux.....un,deux" before launching into full call, out-blasting the other calls around the city. From up here we can also hear the snake charmer's pipe from the Djemma el-Fna, the big plaza which becomes a hive of activity at night time, with food stalls and plenty of people who gather for the entertainment: storytellers, witchdoctors, fortune tellers, jugglers, bands with transvestite dancers in full burqa doing a very modest belly-dance. It's winter - everyone promenades in thick coats and fills up on a hot spicy toddy or the ubiquitous mint tea. Trays of glasses queue up stuffed with fresh mint and crowned with an enormous block of sugar waiting for the tea to boil. We have passed on the sheep's head foodstall and settled for sausages and greasy pancakes. We watch somebody trying to putt a golfball on a tiny green - the kind an executive has in his office, or the saps who pay to lassoo coke bottles with a rubber ring tied to fishing rod - all the fun of the fair. Then there's a short walk to our favourite yoghurt parlour for a glass of sweetened natural yoghurt and maybe a vanilla slice............
The souks are the place to shop - but we have not spent long here. There are countless stalls selling the same things - lanterns, spices, leather sandals, jewellery, and shawls. Fortunately, Gayle already has a full rucksack.........
Pillow talk: "What's your's like?" "A sack of sprouts. How about yours?" "Concrete" "Do you want to swap?"
We are heading south on Monday towards the coast to Tiznit, Tafroute and Tarrandant (sound like a bunch of solicitors), before bumbling along beneath the High Atlas and returning to Marrakesh and then ambling northwards. We've scheduled our crossing from Tangiers to Spain for the 20th Feb, and then from Barcelona to Genoa on around the -6th March .
A bientot
Salud!
Well here we are in Marrakech, getting used to the smells and sounds of foreign lands, French keyboards, and super-hard beds. Our first days have been spent doing a little sight-seeing and planning our route for the first few weeks and generally lounging around. The weather is good - mild and cold at night but comfortable to walk around and it looks like it hasn't rained here since Noah dropped anchor.
We have found ourselves a room in a cheap hotel on "Cheap Hotel Alley". These places are nearly all the same - rooms around a tiled patio on three floors, with a roof terrace of cast iron garden chairs and tables and a cushioned bank of seats along one wall. It is to here that we retire as soon as the hustle and bustle of the streets and souks gets too much - which is around 2.30pm. There's the usual mix of residents including stoned bearded men chunnering in French. From up here we can easily see the Koutoubia - the tallest minaret in the city and in which there is the loudest sound system of all the minarets. At the call to prayer the muezzin always makes a hesitant cough and a "un,deux.....un,deux" before launching into full call, out-blasting the other calls around the city. From up here we can also hear the snake charmer's pipe from the Djemma el-Fna, the big plaza which becomes a hive of activity at night time, with food stalls and plenty of people who gather for the entertainment: storytellers, witchdoctors, fortune tellers, jugglers, bands with transvestite dancers in full burqa doing a very modest belly-dance. It's winter - everyone promenades in thick coats and fills up on a hot spicy toddy or the ubiquitous mint tea. Trays of glasses queue up stuffed with fresh mint and crowned with an enormous block of sugar waiting for the tea to boil. We have passed on the sheep's head foodstall and settled for sausages and greasy pancakes. We watch somebody trying to putt a golfball on a tiny green - the kind an executive has in his office, or the saps who pay to lassoo coke bottles with a rubber ring tied to fishing rod - all the fun of the fair. Then there's a short walk to our favourite yoghurt parlour for a glass of sweetened natural yoghurt and maybe a vanilla slice............
The souks are the place to shop - but we have not spent long here. There are countless stalls selling the same things - lanterns, spices, leather sandals, jewellery, and shawls. Fortunately, Gayle already has a full rucksack.........
Pillow talk: "What's your's like?" "A sack of sprouts. How about yours?" "Concrete" "Do you want to swap?"
We are heading south on Monday towards the coast to Tiznit, Tafroute and Tarrandant (sound like a bunch of solicitors), before bumbling along beneath the High Atlas and returning to Marrakesh and then ambling northwards. We've scheduled our crossing from Tangiers to Spain for the 20th Feb, and then from Barcelona to Genoa on around the -6th March .
A bientot
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