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Published: July 22nd 2008
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So we dropped in on Marrakech on Monday, took refuge in a cheap hotel and prepared ourselves for the mayhem to follow... we weren't disappointed.
The mecury rose to 40+ as we spent tuesday sussing out an even cheaper hotel and our 3-day trip to the Sahara. Knackered and dehydrated we took a birds eye view of the Djemaa El Fnaa on the roof top of hotel CTM. We went high so as not to scare off the local story-tellers, water vendors and snake charmers by trapsing round the main square with our pasty white bodies. After sufficient prep we braved the streets below, a chicken tajine and lamb cous cous were ticked off the list first along with about 7 litres of water each - did we sweat? yes. Lisa made a new friend outside the orange-juice sellers...yes...thats right...a plump moroccan lady named Fatima approched me...grabbed my hand and squirted Henna all over it...now i had hopped to get a henna tatoo at some point in the trip, just not then and the more i tried to wrestle my hand away the crazier the design became... in the end a sharp left hand to the side of her face
was all that could separate us (kidding). Knackered from a long day we hit the hay early as we had a 7am start next morning.
We met our group that morning, ourselves, Spanish, French, Brazilian....and an Australian girl who overwhelmed by the heat and the drivers charm tossed her cookies out the window and down the side of the minivan...poor girl!!! After alot of driving and many photo stops we arrived at Ait Ben Haddou for a scheduled/negotiated 20min stop which turned into 1 hour. We learned as the trip progressed that 10mins stops usually meant half an hour plus, time for everyone on board to smoke half a pack of malboro lights.. anyhow, we met a young garcon called Hassan, he was a worldy eleven with about eleven langauges to match. He took us to the top of the Kasbah, pointed out the film locations of Gladiator and struck a few tight impressions of Russell Crowe - Kudos!
More Driving, more water, more malboro lights later we arrived at the Dades Gorge for dinner, bed and brekky - nice spot, tidy hotel.
So off to the Todra Gorge with a stop en route in Tinehir, and
a tour around the Palmeries and through the medina, where the group split....actually where Aaron got lost...
...I wasn't lost as such, merely taking in the intricacies of this 14 century village with the help of 3 young children who were trying to send me the wrong way, of course I was having none of it and quickly out smarted them and linked up with the group once more...
...hehehe...I still think he was lost and sweating it out thinking he would never again be found...and he was secretly glad when I retraced our steps and found him!!
The rest of the day was spent at the popular moroccan toursit hang-out Todra Gorge. The group ate and shared stories via broken English... actually half of the conversations on this trip were translating things into various european languages, it was interesting and my French is now like that of a 7 year old boy. And we got invites to Tangier and and Brazil so Happy Days!!
Then came the much awaited camel ride through the Sahara to our camp...a few flat tyes left us a little behind our schedule, we missed the boat (or ship of the
desert) on that one and ended up straddling our camels off through the desert in the darkness!!! It was exciting all the same and I guess there was always the full moon to compensate....I was less enthralled about the fact that my camel was peeing in the wrong direction...he kept hitting my left foot...hehehe...YUK!
An hour to base camp on a camel is more than enough for this John Wayne... I got off but felt like i was still onboard, my legs have been permanently bowed since. The Group feasted on Toureg Tajine and desert tunes into the we small hours then hit the sand. We all got up the next morning looking forward to everything except the 10hour journey back to Marrakech and the only way back to the minivan was via our trusty steeds from the previous evening. Part of me hoped my camel had bolted for the nearest Oasis during the night, alas he was there, vacant as ever, looking at me with those loving eyes and rock hard hump. Needless to say it was a long long day.
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