Blogs from Morocco, Africa - page 13

We arrived yesterday in Chefchaouen to the rain and cold. Having dropped off our bags, we headed in to the beautiful Medina to lose ourselves and eat of course. I am still looking for the beautiful biscuits we ate in Casablanca .... all shortbread and sesame seeds but with oh so much more butter! Chefchaouen is famous for its beautiful blue-washed buildings and streets in the old town. The steep cobbled laneways are slippery to say the least, but it has dried up quickly today thank goodness. In the main square of Place Outa el Hammam is the red walled Kasbah which was a 15th century fortress and dungeon. The views from the top of the tower of the immediate town are stunning, as they are from the Spanish mosque, which is about a 15 minute ... read more

18th January 2020 We werent going to eat last night given the amount of lunch we'd had, but I started getting peckish at around 8...I did have half a taco after all. Shane isnt going to have anything. He's still full from lunch. The Riad does cook meals but you need to give advance notice. The cook can make some cous cous up if thats ok. I'm well happy with that and so apparently is Shane, who isnt going to have anything tonight because he's still chockers from lunch! Honestly, both of these meals were monstrous and included salads and 2 tagines of cous cous and beautiful vegetables and lamb. We've had a fabulous day today exploring the city and its outer areas. The beautiful park here behind the city, Perdicaris Park, was owned by a ... read more

Leaving the remarkable ruins of Volubilis behind us, thoughts about what we had just seen in the historic Roman city still rambled around in our brains but it was time to move on. Driving in an easterly direction, our destination was the city of Fes, once the capital of Morocco and an important trade crossroads. So far the landscape had been rather bland and sparsely populated with only a few unremarkable buildings and houses making an appearance. The most interesting sights for me were several huge stork nests perched atop spindly electricity/phone poles near small buildings.They were a nice surprise. Only 20 miles from Fes, the geographical monotony was broken when we unexpectedly saw a lake peeking out of the nearby valley with the Middle Atlas Mountains as a backdrop. Near the far end, the sky-blue ... read more

Il Marocco delle folle (relative) di turisti finisce a Marrakesh; più a Sud comincia piano piano il deserto, ma non quello da favola composto da oasi circondate dalle dune, bensi' una landa arida e desolata interrotta solamente dalla catena montuosa dell'Anti Atlante e da una fertile valle che sbocca sulla costa nei pressi di Agadir. Andando oltre si potrebbe attraversare il nulla fino ad arrivare all'altra sponda del Sahara, propriamente chiamata "Sahel"; per fortuna la strada corre parallela alla costa e cosi' passano le ore seduto a bordo di un comodo autobus tenendomi costantemente l'oceano sulla destra e la sabbia sulla sinistra: impossibile sbagliare direzione! Scopro allora che attraversando ipoteticamente tutto il deserto da Est ad Ovest non si giungerebbe ad una spiaggia con la possibilità di immergere tranquillamente i piedi nelle acque dell'Atlantico ma ci ... read more

Rifugio di sbandati, paradiso degli emarginati, porto franco dominato da contrabbandieri, trafficanti di armi e moderni pirati; luogo dove l' eccentricità era un privilegio, ritrovo di tossicomani, diseredati, omosessuali, artisti e fuggiaschi, di tutta quella gente che rifiutava il rigore morale che pervadeva la cultura occidentale in quel periodo, oasi dove era possibile dare libero sfogo all' inconscio e ai propri impulsi proibiti senza timore di ritorsioni da parte delle autorità; insomma, un sogno ai confini del mondo. Tutto questo è stata Tangeri intorno alla metà del 19° secolo quando il suo status di "Zona Internazionale" attirava individui di ogni tipo e da ogni dove. Tra tutti, quello che ha maggiormente associato il suo nome a questa città è stato lo scrittore americano Paul Bowles, colui che ha tracciato la strada per tutta una folta schiera ... read more