Well we succesfully made the crossing south and are now settling into a new city and a new country. Contrary to out expectations Burkina seems to be somewhat richer than Mali. Can't really find out if this is true or not but the paved roads, reliable electricity and the fact that Ouaga (Burkinabe capital) makes Bamako (Malian capital) look like an oversized shanty town. We've enjoyed our time here so far, we spent about a week in the most northen city where we met 30 Peace Corps volunteers. It was great to speak some English and even better to spash out on a burger and chips after having eaten nothing but rice and sauce for 3 weeks. In Ouaga we have been hassled by a thousand phonecard sellers, listened to the constant building work going on ... read more

We safely arrived into Bamako international airport (a 2 storey little building) at the convenient time of 2:30am on Sunday. Luckily for us we met a French guy during the eight hour wait at Casa airport. He was going to visit his girlfriend who has been living in Bamako for some time. By some crazy chain of events we ended up at her house that night and now are renting a room in the next door apartment sharing with three French medical student who work at a local hospital. We live in a local area called Lafiabogou down a unpaved, uneven dirt track. It would only take three minutes to walk down the street from where we catch the sotrama (green van with bench seats - holes where the windows should be) into town, however with ... read more

We spend a relaxing five days in Essaouria recovering from the mountain experience of woe. Essaouria was a really fab place, busy but relaxed with a combination of artists and rastas who made the whole town have a very chilled out feel. Spent our time sitting and watching and learning to walk again. In our time there we managede to swim in the seam eat freshly caught sardines, flood our bedroom, have a home cooked meal and meet someone who's grandma new Jimi Hendrix (he had a house there). We also made incomprehensible music with some very drunk Moroccans and had our first sip of wine in more than three weeks. We purchased orange trousers and Alice got straight back into the shopping mode - flinging hangers around and having sevaral assistants on the go at ... read more

We took the train from Rabat to Marrakech and were sat with four art college piglets from the UK which made the journey long and tiresome, we remedied this by sleeping with our heads against the grubby glass for the 4 1/2 hour journey. I pretended to know where the hotel was and dragged Alice with a heavy bag several kilometres through the streets of Marrakech, eventually we found a lovely, little room above a tranquil, orange tree shaded courtyard. The man was really friendly and had a laugh like the deformed monster from The Goonies. The main square in Marrakech (Djemma el Fna) is massive and each night comes alive with storytellers, henna ladies, dancers, musicians and beggars. This is all illuminated by the lanterns of a hundred food and orange juice stalls. We have ... read more

Greeting to all from Fez. So since you last heard from us we have left the little town of Chefchaouen and ventured to the big city of Fez. They are two quite different kettles of fish as the populations indicate (Chaouen 45,000 Fez 1.3 million). We arrived by bus which took about 6 hours and took us from the heights of the Rif Mountains down to the rolling farmland that seperates the Rif from the Atlas Mountains. It's a weird contrast travelling by road in Morocco, so much so that we decided to put together a little list: Things that make road travel in Morocco like that of continental Europe: 1) They drive on the right 2) The signs are in km/hour 3) They have windy roads with cliff-like drops on the sides 4) Air-conditioned buses ... read more