Blogs from Asilah, Tangier-Tétouan, Morocco, Africa - page 2

In the month of May, our experiences fell generally into: (1) our house and furnishings, (2) trying to obtain our legal residence card, (3) dealing with ants, (4) some training which resulted in visiting three cities, (5) warmth shown to us by people in Ksar, (6) dar chebab activity and (7) a little illness. Here are some short videos to entertain you. :) Wedding Parade Outside of our Window - Typical Conversation in a Key Shop - Our Furniture Being Made - Our House Key Being Made - So, we realized that we had a serious ant problem when they started opening the frig to help themselves! LOL! Fortunately, they are just the very annoying little black ants and not the bitey kind that really make life miserable. Regardless of the type, they love meat and ... read more

3/30/2013 TITLE: Ksar El Kebir begins In less than 24 hours in Ksar, we have a new host home, we have walked around town, met many people, set a meeting with an association and come to terms with our new environment. It was exciting to wake up and think about what might happen on the first full day, but not exciting to think about our toilet or shower situation. “It is what is” is a mantra we seem to start many days with. However, this morning, we ignored those aforementioned unfortunate issues and went down for breakfast at 9:30 a.m., the time we were told breakfast was regularly served. It was the typical and yummy bread, laughing cow cheese, olive oil, olives and hard-boiled eggs breakfast. Ann was so happy to see the coffee and hot ... read more

When you spend a lot of time with people, even the altruistic people deciding to be volunteers for the Peace Corps, you realize that people are just people. There are the go-getters, the geeks, the talkers, and shy people. There are cliques and loners. There are people so passionate about various causes that you can ruffle their feathers without even meaning to – but each means well in his or her own fashion. There is a never ending stream of opinions, but obvious respect for most. That being said as simply an observation, we have made some really good friends here, the kind you hang on to forever. But, as is the Peace Corps way, we have now said our farewells to them as we all disperse to our various locations. The apron strings have been ... read more

Given we had ridden so many amazing routes during our tenure in Morocco we could hardly be disappointed that today’s ride wasn’t one of them. We had elected to head for Larache, which sounded a pleasant enough Atlantic coast resort and allegedly had a top end boutique hotel, the Hotel Riad which would offer a welcome change from the sub-backpacker standard of our smelly Meknes Riad. Studying the map we felt it would be far more interesting to cut through the countryside rather than sit on a dull motorway via Rabat but we needn’t have bothered. If Morocco is some kind of world centre for sh*t driving then the epicentre of sh*tness had to be Tangier. As you drew closer to Tangier so it seemed the worse the standards of driving became. We had ridden through ... read more

Turns out Casablanca was pretty much a bore- not even Rick's could save it. Alas, it's now obvious to me that the REAL Casablanca was a set solely the property of Pinewood Studios tm. So, I've come up the coast to the cool and Cooler seaside town of Asilah. Soph, I think you'd like it here- there's art everywhere, paintings on the streetside walls and everything. For some reason Morroco does seem to hold the vestiges of a Hippy's paradise.... read more