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It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.” ― Ernest Hemingway
Our last day on the road today and I'm kinda glad, as is our Driver Mohammad who has put up with Leanne whinging "Are we there yet, Are we there yet?". Its not a long drive today but we are stopping at a few places along the way.
Our first stop is Atlas Studios. Apparently a movie studio whose sets have been used for countless movies from Cleopatra to Return of the Mummy to Gladiator. Leanne thinks its all fake, yep every thing is fake! Why would anyone go to the trouble of creating a fake movie studio (where all the sets are fake anyway!) Mick wonders??
We venture on to our next "fake tourist attraction" as Leanne has started calling them. Casbah Ait-Ben-Haddou is World Heritage listed. Of course Leanne thinks its fake again and all the people living there just come for the day to fool the tourists, then go home to their houses. We spot a stork nesting on the roof. Mick says "Gee it's a fake stork!" to which Leanne answers triumphantly "See, I told you it was fake!" and of course Mick cracks a laugh and says "I'm kidding baby!"
Winding through
mountain roads as high as 2100m, with deep drops on one side, Leanne can only wish she was in Marrakech! Oh god damn another fake tourist attraction... the women of the Argan Oil Co-operative! They start to work at shelling the nut, pounding the kernel and extracting the oil when we walk in, when we leave its back to reading "The Arabic Womens Day". We still by the Argan oil though.
It hits us like a ton of bricks, Marrakech - crazy, exciting and wondrous. We are escorted to our Riad by a guy who is 100 if he is a day, pulling a cart with our luggage. Little narrow alleys off the main square Jemaa el-Fnaa. This is the square where the bomb went off in 2011 in a cafe killing 12.
The general Moroccan people, who we have found to be extremely friendly, kind hearted and most of all tolerant people (and extremely good looking according to Leanne!) were appalled by this act and came together tracking down the lone bomber in under a week without the aid of any CCTV footage or eye witnesses. No mean feat considering it took the US longer than that
to catch the Boston bombers.
We are anxious to get out to the main square and carefully plan our route on the map. "No thanks" seems to be the sentence of the night as we are bombarded with eat here, buy this, henna tattoo, monkey picture, snake picture, hashish, massage, drink here etc. etc.
We spot a good vantage point and head up to the balcony of the restuarant for dinner, our first night in Marrakesh. Watched the sunset and the crazy medina below for a few hours, had a few bevvies before wandering home buggered as usual.
~
The next day we switch our accommodation (yet again!) and meet Youseff, our guide for a walking tour of Marrakech. This guy speaks excellent English and has a great sense of humour, cracking himself up on numerous occasions showing off his horse teeth smile. We see the sights, stop off for some street food (which was excellent: "Guaranty no diarrhea!") then headed home to rest up for a night out to one of the top restaurant/bars in town The Jad Mahal, as tipped to us by a Canadian couple we met traveling the other way around Morocco a
couple of days earlier.
Dressed in our increasingly crumpled best outfits we find ourselves the first to arrive in an absolutely beautiful Moroccan designed place. We have a few cocktails then order a steak which makes a great change from the usual tagines. We tip heavily and soon the bar manager comes over and offers great reserved seats on a dry bar in front of the band, the only catch being we must buy a bottle of Johnny Walker Black to drink at the table. Mick's eyes light up and we find find ourselves front and centre of the stage with a bucket of ice, a bottle of the afore mentioned beverage and Coke Light. The best seat in town!
The only problem is we are the only ones sitting in a group of about 15 empty tables and Leanne is worried we look like wankers. Mick however is grinning like the proverbial Cheshire Cat. To Leanne's relief the rest of the tables fill and the band appears.
You can tell immediately these guys are phenomenal muso's but unfortunately they start with an 80's set. The black lead singer is making the seats wet of the group of 15 tourist chicks setting right of stage and the mood of the room goes up a couple of notches.
They swap between 80's and rock and are joined by some African dudes playing some World Music kinda stuff. Belly Dancers work the crowd and the Johnny does it's work before the sax player puts down his instrument and lets his hair down, literally, and goes centre stage for a stirring rendition of Acca Dacca's Highway to Hell. Mick is in Utopia and Leanne has her own thing going with with the Black Moroccan guys also working the crowd with their funny hats! What a great night! Lord knows how we make it back to our Riad but we awake the next day to find ourselves back safe and sound in our own beds.
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