To Marrakech

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Our alarm goes off at 4am. I've often wondered what 4am on a Sunday morning would feel like and now I know; it feels like I should be asleep. We expect the streets to be deserted, but they're full of youngsters in full party mode. I s'pose if you have a long siesta every afternoon maybe you don't need to sleep at night? I'd long suspected that taxi drivers were the same the world over and ours is no exception. He drives at breakneck speed and only slows down when he's approaching a speed camera. I remember Louis and Melanie pointing these out to us whenever we passed one, and Louis told us that everyone here knows exactly where they all are. This would seem to at least partly defeat the purpose of having them, but who am I to argue. I told Louis that Australian police use speed guns to catch lead foot drivers, and you're never quite sure where they're going to set them up. He asked me to please not make any suggestions that they do that here.

We have a five hour wait in Lyon for our connection to Marrakech and we wonder whether we should spend at least some of it buying alcohol. I remember Kostas, our guide in Santorini, telling us that he and his wife went to Morocco a few years ago, and they were so worried about getting food poisoning that for a long time they hardly ate. Eventually they got so hungry that they couldn't hold off any longer, but when they got halfway through their first local dish they found a cockroach. He said that by that stage they were so ravenous that they just kept on eating. He told us that vodka's supposed to be very good at killing the bugs that give you food poisoning. I remember someone at work telling me that he recently went to a conference in Marrakech and nearly everyone got sick. I suspect it might be better if we stopped worrying about this and just accepted the virtually inevitable. I wonder what Moroccan hospitals are like.

We agreed before we left home that I would try to learn a bit of French and Issy some Italian. Issy tells me that she wants a medium sized soy hot chocolate. I quickly realise that we're now in France, so I'm expected to do the ordering. Languages are not my strong suit, and I hadn't expected to be called into action quite so soon. I approach the counter with much fear and trepidation. I have no idea what the French words are for either "soy" or "medium", and I'm not overly confident about the word for "hot" either. Issy seems satisfied with my offering, although I think that perhaps the man behind the counter understood a bit more English than he was letting on. I'm now worried about how I'm going to go with my very few words of French when we come back in a few weeks. Issy will be relying on me, and I think she’s been working far harder on her Italian than I've been on my French.

We pass a group of soldiers carrying machine guns. Security is intense and the list of instructions on what to do to get through the screening is very long. The last item is "Report Damage". I wonder how this damage is usually inflicted. I'm not sure we're going to be all that happy if someone decides to take a hammer to one of our cameras.

It looks very black and stormy as we come into Marrakech. The approach is bumpy and everyone applauds loudly when we land safely. It‘s ridiculously hot. The driver of the van who's here to take us to our Riad (guesthouse) tells us that heavy rain's expected in the next few hours. It seems a bit ironic that we've scarcely seen a cloud since we left home, yet here we are out in the desert and the heavens are soon expected to open.

There's no shortage of camels wandering the roadside. I hope Emma's not reading this. As we left home she was finishing an assignment on how camels spread MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), and she warned us not to go anywhere near any of them. It seems that there are many ways to get sick in Morocco.

The van drops us at the edge of the ancient Medina. The streets are way too narrow for cars, so we're told we'll need to walk the rest of the way. We're led through a maze of narrow windowless alleyways. We stop outside a large a large door, our driver rings a bell, and we're led into a world of elegance. The Riad is two old houses next to each other, each with an open courtyard in the middle, and guest rooms around the outside. It has two small swimming pools, one in one of the courtyards, and the other on a roof terrace.

We're given a comprehensive introduction and tour by one of the staff, a young lady named Dalila. She starts by telling us that the staff have sold our luggage. We must look a bit concerned, so she quickly assures us that she's only joking. She goes on to tell us that the Riad's owners are Italian, and that she's half Italian and half Moroccan. She says that the decor is Moroccan with an Italian influence.

On the basis of what we've seen so far, if we try to venture out into the Medina by ourselves there is nothing more certain than that we will very quickly get lost. There's no discernible pattern to the maze of narrow alleys, and everything's painted the same reddish colour, so it all looks the same. All the alleys are curved so you lose your sense of direction very quickly, and the walls are all too high to be able to tell which way you’re headed from the position of the sun. I ask Dalila if the Riad has put any measures in place to avoid losing all its guests. There do seem to be other people here, but maybe they've just arrived like us and haven't had a chance to misplace themselves yet. Dalila says that they'll give us two maps. I wonder why we need two. Perhaps no one really knows where the alleyways are, so they produce two different maps in the hope that at least one of them will be right. What if we chose the wrong map? She tells us that they also give all their guests mobile phones so that they can call for help. I hope the phone reception's good. I can feel a sleepless night coming on. The Medina was intimidating enough when we had people from the Riad showing us where to go; I think our stress levels will go off the scale if we ever summon up enough courage to venture out on our own.

It‘s Ramadan, so we need wait to have dinner until the chef's had a chance to eat after the sun goes down. We were supposed to dine on the roof terrace, but it's been raining and more threatens, so we're instead served a four course Moroccan feast in a room off one of the courtyards. The food and setting are both superb.

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Comments

[louise]

Sounds like you should have stayed in Malta.

[tony]

Very interesting place. One I must one day visit unless you tell me else wise. On the sporting topic. Tigers by 25. Your definitely not missing much back here.

[maree young]

Enjoying your travel blog. The heat sounded oppressive !