Morocco

---

Morocco was very interesting to fly over there were patches of tress and pristine green lawns, somehow I don't think that's normal for the desert.
I arrived at the airport, absolutely no problems getting through customs. The taxi took me straight to me hotel, which is great the staff are helpful, and it was very comfortable.

Marrakesh is an interesting mix of Africa, the Middle East and American. Most people are friendly, and I haven't had too many people try and guide me to shops or sell me stuff. There are a lot of Spanish and French speaking tourists not many English speaking ones. The locals speak Arabic, some French and less English, but I'm surviving. It's hot but not too hot, I was pretty warm but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting.

I was woken up at 5am by the muslim prayers from the mosque!

Traffic; the streets are a chaotic mess of donkeys, motorcycles bikes, taxis from the 70s and lost tourists. The keep right rule usually applies, expect when there is space somewhere else, a better rule is keep right out of the way of anything that moves. The motorcycles get as close to people walking as possible, on the first night I saw an accident just down from my hotel.

Ramadan is on at the moment, so people don't eat until the sunset. It's okay for tourists to eat as long as it is in a restaurant. I went though a lot of bottles of water and coke today, coke is about 30cents!

If you ever come to Morocco do NOT use shops to navigate there are rows upon rows of the same shop, unless you want to say 264 carpet shops down, 54 tanneries left and 88 shoe shops straight. I haven't seen a single carpet on the ground here, everything is tiled because of the dust, so just why is it that everyone wants to take me to his brothers carpet shop?

You need to be careful not to pick up over priced guides, they pray on western tourists.

I managed to find my way around the city pretty well, except for when I had my second guide. I managed to attract one without meaning to, he showed me a tannery where they produce leather, it was interesting and I did want to see it. Then I said take me to the main square, we walked for 30 mins, he wanted 500DHR (about 3 months wages for some people) He kept saying it's just there on the right, then when we got there just up there on the left, and it went on, we for miles in the wrong way. Finally I gave him 100 (about 10 x too much) then he left. He took me to a strange part of the Medina (market) I did enjoy seeing the things tourists wouldn't normally see. Eventually I found my way back to the main square. I managed to get back to my hotel, though a maze of streets and shops. I noticed twice that someone was following me, once they figured out I had seen them they left.

I kept having people walk past saying hashish, I just kept walking. I would have liked to say it's Hempseed not Hashesh, but I didn't.

The taxis leave a lot to be desired here. I got in a taxi to go back to my hotel today, the driver really didn't seem to know where he was going, half way back I knew more than he did about where to go. My hotel is on a one way street, when I told him where it was he went down the one way street, in reverse, well I do like roller coasters. I almost wanted to say again again!!!

I'm totally lost with the currency conversion, I'm constantly converting between New Zealand dollars, the Euro, the pound and Moroccan Dirham, I'm sure at some point I'll mess it up.
Tomorrow I'm off to the Saharah for one night we sleep in tents in the desert, before that we have a camel trek, and to see where parts of Gladiator and the Mummy were filmed.

---