Advertisement
Published: October 19th 2007
Edit Blog Post
After a 48 hour stop over in Ipswich (home) we were back on the road, this time headed for Africa and the exotic city of Marrakesh. On our arrival we went straight to the hotel and found ourselves a guide to take us around the souks for an afternoon of shopping, and a look around the medina.
Our first impression of Marrakesh was how polluted and expensive it is, we were warned that it was likely to cost more than we expected but nothing prepared us for the UK prices combined with second world standards. But not to worry as we were there for the experience, and where else in the world can you find yourself holding a rose from a stranger whilst there´s a cobra at your feet.
We remained in Marrakesh for three nights then headed off to the bus station for an early morning bus to Quarzazate, we arrived at the bus station nice and early for our 6:30am check in to find the counter closed and no sign of our bus so we waited and waited.
There are many things to do in a Moroccan Bus Station before sunrise. They include watching stray cats
chase insects, listen to a man chant loudly for 10 seconds every 60 seconds and my personal favourite, watch the bus station Staff walk around gently waking the homeless with a kick to the ribs.
After a two hour wait the counter finally opened and we discovered that they had given us the wrong time on the plane when we arrived and hence had spent the past three days thinking it was two hours later than what it actually was. The worst part about it all was that we only found out after Trace upped the bus company for being two hours late, how embarrassing. Oh well, we did get to see the sun rise and we now can say that we have had the experience of hanging out with the homeless in one of the worlds dirtiest bus stations.
The bus trip took us across the top of the High Atlas, in the four hours we were on the bus only 30 minutes was on a straight road. By the time we stopped for a break, 2 out of the 3 Berries were in the non flushing toilets being sick, whilst the other was still enjoying the
scenery which has to be seen to be believed, the valley´s are lush whilst there are just rocks everywhere else.
On our arrival in Quarzazate we found a local guide and headed off for a three day camping expedition in the Sahara, there were only the Dangleberries and their guide Mustafa in his Land Cruiser. Our first stop was a road side restaurant in the middle of nowhere for us to enjoy a chicken and vegetable tagine, which was great, it was also really lucky as we had arrived during ramadan so none of the locals were aloud to eat or drink before 6:30pm and just about everything food wise was closed.
From here we headed on to our first campsite which was run by some family members of Mustafa´s, it consisted of a few Berber style tents and some camels and contained about 6 cousins who did all the cooking etc. Again we had a tagine for dinner, which was followed by lots of mint tea and some singing.
The next morning we headed off on our trusty four legged friends to meet Mustafa back at the main road, to continue our journey on to
M´Hamid where we were treated to a few hours in an oasis hotel to escape the midday heat- it was absolute bliss given that we had now gone more than 24 hours with no running water. For lunch we had, you guessed it chicken and vegetable tagine.
Continuing on we arrived at our camp late afternoon to find that it was positioned at the based of some 300 meter sand dunes, the sight was truely amazing and we were straight off to reach the summit to watch the sunset. Getting down was a lot quicker than getting up, especially for the newest member of our little group who made the most of the opportunity to do a bit of body surfing. By the time he was all the way down Peter could only be described as looking like a crumbed sausage, the mix of sand and sweat had really given him a nice even coating. Matt and Trace found this hilarious as they had already realised that once again the only water we had access to was the drinking water we had brought with us, and we didn´t know when we would be able to wash next.
Unlike
the night before there were other people staying at the camp so the guides all got together and made us a three course meal of soup, fruit and just for a change a nice tagine. It was still really hot when we went to bed so we pulled our beds outside and slept under the stars with the Scarab beetles.
The next day saw us racing through the Sahara and onto another small Berber village this time to learn rug making and to have cous cous for lunch, Trace was so excited about the cous cous that the boys are convinced she set a new record for the amount consumed in one sitting. From here it was back to Quarzazate for the night as we had an early bus back to Marrakesh, where we checked ourselves into a riad for a night of well earned luxury before our return to the UK the next day.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.215s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 14; qc: 50; dbt: 0.1551s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb