Blogs from Morocco, Africa - page 188

Ok, so it sounds like we have an addiction to crepes, but we have only had so many because we had to buy our own syrup for the first lot. We sat and ate the crepes whilst waiting for other people to turn up for the collective. We only had to wait about forty minutes for the taxi to fill up and we were on our way. Strangely enough we didn't receive the whole you can buy out the whole taxi spiel which we normally do. When you are the first ones to arrive for a collective they will tell you the price of the whole car, almost expecting you to pay it. What is worse is when there are four or five of you waiting and they all look at you as if to say ... read more

We woke up this morning not entirely certain of how we were getting to Oualidia. Once we had packed up our bags, we sought out the CTM bus station in the hope that there would be a bus. We were lucky that there was one leaving at twelve thirty and that we could leave our bags there whilst we went for a walk around. I saw that there was a bookshop nearby that had a "small selection" of English language books. The selection was pitiful. There were all the usual classics and then four crime fiction books all by the same author. I did find one book that was slightly larger than the others but they were all English prices which is pretty steep. We haven't eaten much recently so we decided to look for breakfast ... read more

Thank god for Imodium. Today we decided to "do" Rabat so that tomorrow we can move on. We got up pretty early due in part to the day spent in bed and in part to the massive hole in the roof which lets in a lot of light. Our first port of call was to walk to the Kasbah of which I had good expectations but was actually pretty disappointed. It was pretty grotty in comparison to most others and pretty insignificant. On the other side of the Kasbah there was a view point where you could look across at either the city or the harbor and bay. The beach below us was intermingled with a building site, but this hadn't stopped locals using it as a football pitch. We walked towards Le Tour Hassan and ... read more

We managed a pretty decent morning start, but our efforts were thwarted by the lethargy of the hotel staff. We ordered a breakfast and sat around for ages waiting for them to eventually arrive with a basket of toasted baguette, butter and apricot jam. The best thing about breakfast was the OJ followed by mint tea. (Don’t think about the sugar content) We had a quick stop to say goodbye to Anthony as we almost certainly won't bump into him again; he is heading north for a ferry back to Spain. We wanted one last walk around the medina before we left, so we wandered around the blue streets that were a lot quieter than yesterday. We managed to find a few of the places that Lonely Planet had pictured and replicated them. We didn't have ... read more

After returning from a fresh 3-month renewal of our Moroccan visas in the Spanish enclave of Melilla, we wanted to spend as little time as possible in Marrakech and get back on the road. Outside of its famous medina, Marrakech is a large Europeanized city of vicious traffic and wicked dust storms, and on the whole held few attractions for us. We had already arranged a flight for Kate to her family gathering in North Carolina and had written off the attempt to retrieve our package of supplies sent from the States by UPS but now apparently marooned in the Customs shed at the Casablanca airport. We had a vague itinerary planned for the next phase of our trip in the regions south of Marrakech: to explore the Draa Valley as far south as the Sahara ... read more