Morocccoooo

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hullo faithful readers! well my golly its been quite a gap between these thrilling posts, but not to fear.. Lockie is alive and kickin and causing a veritable riot all over europe. well not really actually, 'stoic' is the word that more comes to mind, a sloth tirelessly discovering the new world. crikey.
haha ok so where did i leave you? i always forget. Madrid! i see.
Well lets see.. so upon leaving madrid, in the now more preferred mode of travel (sprinting the last 500 meters the bus/train/ferry terminal) we got to Barthelona (the lisping capital) and stared staying at a very cool hostel called gothic point, with little individual cells that u could climb up into and have little parties if you desired. It was great. We saw a whoooole lot of Gaudi art which, ignorantly, i did not really know about until i was there (although i joined the masses in the 'oooh gaudi has been a favourite of mine for years now..) because, well really i didnt have a stick to beat them with. We also took a train up to Salvador Dali's proper museum in Figueres, a very surreal/psychedelic/lockie place indeed.. pictures are on my Facebook thing. okay now where..
Ah, after a few more days there in which we ate cheap felafel rolls and not much else, smoked cheap ciggies and not much else, we got on a train down to Grenada. Now, Ive been alotta places so far but this town, man, this town.. haha, i dunno why ive taken such a shine, a mix of about a million musicians all sitting around strumming their tunes, hippies flogging their tyedye wristband dread lock whatever nonsense, FREE TAPAS! which means if you buy a beer u get all sorts of little sandwiches, meatballs, salads, pastas.. aaahhh unbelieveable. While there we also say a flamenco show, which completely staggered me for a few days and erin had to remind me that 'not aaalll guitarists need to play like that' to stop my little girl tears. its the town for me, very cool.
okay next we started our descent into morocco, thru a sorta beachy little town called Tarifa, where there really aint much to see except more hippies. Luckily for us we got atalkin to a guy from Melbourne (carlton, mate..) and a Canadian girl (Quebec, monsiur) which basically saved our lives.. Did you know that Moroccans all speak french? oh you did? smart ass. anyway, so a quick ferry across the strait landed us in Tanger, where we promptly and intelligently got into a mercedes with a man with a big mustache. Luckily for us he wasnt dodgy, and drove us the 3 and a half hours to Chefchauen for i think about 10 aussie dollars each. Chefchauen is one of those places that i loved too, purely for the relaxed vibe.. Moroccan folk are the most gentle, calm, helpful people ive encountered yet, even if they do try and rip you off at every turn. (a little boy does a cartwheel, demands a euro; a man points to the bank for you, demands a euro) but my cool, calm, collected demeanour meant they didnt give us much trouble (and i walked behind Domonique the french speakin girl, a small help too..)
Okay im rushing this but i need to catch up. So, from chef town we headed down into Fez, another brilliant vibe but a bit more dirty.. We basically just ate good food, watched the tannery workers scrape and dye leather (somethin outta indiana jones i swear..) aaaannndd walked to some lookout or something. Nice. Oh i also bought carpet
Ahhhh so now it gets fun.. we got on a train and headed down to Marrakech and met up with a couple more aussies we had met in Granada, where we promptly decided to book a camel ride into the desert. Now, reading pamphlets is usually my thing but this time i must have skipped it.. it wasnt a day trip like i thought.. so after 12 hours of driving over 2 days we got to the Sahara Desert.. very strange, a semi roaming pile of sand amongst thousands of Ks of nothing; it sorta looked like someone had dumped it there in the worlds biggest dump truck. Amazing though. So, we jumped on the camels and rode into the sunset, observing animal footprints here, ooohing at the shadows cast there, and all the time wearing my turban and generally playing up the part big time. We slept in the desert that night in a big tent, saw the sun rise (romantic? no. sleepy, angry, sand in my bits-y, yes.) and rode back to the main hotel sorta thing in the mornin. Another 12 hours of driving and we were back in Marakech for a night of chilling out and showering thoroughly. So after this we jumped on a train, scooted up the coast again the Tanger, over the ferry, on a bus, and Now we are back in spain in a place called Sevilla! woohoo! I went out last night, and while sitting on a chair with a longneck of 40 cent beer with my new mate Matt (from byron, maaann...) haha, i ran into an adelaide girl called ruby who im always getting pissed.. So, a little group of us sat down by the river and had a drink and a laugh and now im hungover.
Phew. Im exhausted, im gonna update this more often i think because this is too much to bear.. hope u all held in there and all this information makes sense. love ya all to bits, miss ya!!
Lockie

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