Day 32? - Ouzoud, Fes, Chaouen, HASHISH and nearly missing Cairo!

Yes, it has been quite some time.

Well we enjoyed our "long" stay in Essaouira and headed through Marrakesh once again to get to the Cascades de Ouzoud. It took us two buses, a grand taxi and a long downhill hike to get to the "camping" place.

In OUzoud we slept in a Berber tent, had a beautiful lunch overlooking the falls and a cliff with at least 3 troops of Barbary Apes, which are actually monkeys, climbing it... then we spent an entire afternoon jumping over waterfalls and into natural pools... I felt like I was 10 years old again. We worked hard to get the right pictures while we were each jumping; having to repeat the efforts many many times... then we both jumped together from a really big waterfall... looked like 25 feet from the top, then maybe like 15 from the bottom.

We later headed to Fes, which was also a complicated journey, two grand taxis, the second in which Rue and I were separated for the one and a half hour trip from Azilal to Beni Mellal. For clarification, a grand Taxi is a taxi that is taken between towns, whereas Petit taxis are smaller and taken within towns. Grand taxis are usually very old white mercedes that cram in 6 passengers plus the driver and charge per place. We took the second one because there were no buses for quite awhile and we wanted to arrive in Fes at a reasonable hour. We had to wait for the bus for 4 hours anyway in Beni Mellal and ended up getting to Fes and finding a place to stay around midnight.

But the journey was very pleasant as we shared it with a couple from Beijing, both journalists for Reuters. The 6 hour bus journey was interrupted half way thru because the sun had set and well... it was time to eat for all Ramadan observers. The bus also had huge windows and the landscape, sunset and stars were all gorgeous.

Fes is greener than the other places we had visited up until then... even the falls. Fes is known for being the "most medieval city in the Arab world" and it is quite chaotic. We arrived at the wrogn bus station and had to take a petit taxi to the medina where of course we were of course assaulted by many young teenage "guides"... we were actually surrounded by the Blue Gate of the medina (Bab Boujeloud) until a Moroccan guy asked Rue if he was AMerican and he said "me too!" and said he had a room for rent in his mothers house right outside the gate... he lives in NYC and is in Maroc for Ramadan... again we had the penthouse for very cheap with a roof terrace that overlooked both the old and new medina... at sunset the sky was full with thousands and thousands of birds either flocking home or gathering food for the babies... and the sounds... oh boy... we could see like 30 mosque minarets from our rooftop and one was particuliarly close... at sunset, which for those of you who dont know, signifies the end of the day's fast, AND at all the prayer times there speaker bullhorn things start kicking on, one after the other and the chants begin, it is hauntingly beautiful... if that is possible. Sometimes there was even a cannon's boom! that was SWEET!

We stayed until this past Monday. But we were anxious to move on from the crowded city. Originally we thought we would go first to Tangier and then last to Chefchaouen which we heard was gonna be our kinda place! But when we got to the bus station we decided to come to CHaouen first. and here we are 4 nights later.

It is quite lovely here. nestled into the Rif mountains and pretty isolated. The building are all either white or blue washed and the medina is small and of course slanted. Some of you may know, but I promise I did not, that the region of the RIf mountains is the world's top producer of kif which is later made into hashish... quality zero zero... as we are constantly reminded of by almost every other Chaouen on the street that is trying to sell us some. It is quite interesting.

We are staying at the Pension Siouk and have made many friends, first an Argentine couple and now a whole posse of Australians, all traveling separately, + 2 Brits, we make quite a roucous in the evening hours playing cards! We are very relaxed and plan on staying on a few more days.

I wont rave too too much about Chaouen because I dont want to ruin the peacefulness of the town by spreading the word to too many people BUT it is very relaxed and many foriegners have relocated to the hillside medina. Tours can be arranged of the cannibis farms, where you have to purchase a kilo of kif as admission and watch it be pounded into hashish... or whatever it is they do to it... I have not taken the tour... you are then left with about 15 grams of hashish to keep or "donate".

Hashish is technically illegal in Maroc but it is smoked everywhere. Of course at the moment, during Ramadan, Moroccans must abstain during daylight hours but if you are on the street about a half hour after sunset, after the initial eating is over, you will smell the burning hashish everywhere. Here in CHefchaouen, on the rooftop cafes that surround the square you can smoke a joint while drinking your mint tea.

Well enough about that. Yesterday I discovered that what I thought was a confrimed reservation to Cairo on the 1st was actually canceled. Yeah, it sucks but its not like I have a lot of worries right now. You see the confirmation email I recieved from Iberia (Spanish airline) was actually in French and since I had provided my credit card number already I thought we were good to go... not so much... should practice my french reading more often I suppose. A couple days ago I got a Balance reminder from AMEX and it was ZERO... normally this is what I and, I presume, most of you, prefer to see on your credit card bill BUT when I was walking away from the cyber cafe that day, I processed that I had not yet paid the Cairo tickets off that I thought we purchased the first week of September... so yesterday I used the french confirmation email code to look for our reservation on Iberia and of course it was not found... what else was not found was a telephone number to call some kind of customer service, the only number I could find was local offices here in Maroc... which of course were all closed at 5pm during Ramadan...

so... Audi to the rescue... my sister gets the big ASSIST on getting us squared away and back on track to Cairo, now on the third instead of the 1st of October... and only about 40 bucks more...

so anyway it turns out that although you provide your credit card on Iberia's web site, they send you an email and then you have to get back to them within 48 hours to actually purchase the tickets... um why cant we just get it over with in one swift motion? I dunno.

Peace out kiddies... next time I will probably be in Cairo. Oh yeah and I figured out that I can store my pics on my IPOD! THanks to Jason, american in Beijing. Duh. now I have to take the time to sort through them and post them somewhere without downloading software and quickly... any suggestions?

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