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Published: August 21st 2008
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Hello..?? is there a taxi in the house?
Obviously not, or not enough anyhow. The quick CTM bus trip from Fes left us at a building site in downtown Chaouen. The local chaffeurs hadn't been briefed on the location of the new Gare Routiere and it took us the best part of an hour to hail one to get us up to the Hotel Tabouta. A bad start got better though as we discovered why this small Rif valley town has become a bit of a haven for backpackers in recent years. I would liken it too Pai in Thailand for anyone who has been. The slow pace, low hassle vibe was just what we needed after 3 big cities on the trot.
Hotel Batouta wasn't a bad start. It was cosy and had a nice terrace, it also had those walls which finish about 2 feet from the ceiling. That night we got a little more of the community living experience than we bargained for, (with sound effects... hehehe) enough said.
I'll let Lisa take it from here....
After a day or two in Chefchaoen we began to get a little bored, one thing we noted
was that in this town there appeared to be only one Co-op crafts store, which must have been handing out serious commission, as half the towns population at some point or another attempted to lead us to that same store. We got to know Abdul, the guy who that first day tried in vain to sell us all manner of carpets and rugs, he’d given up on selling us anything after the first few times, just laughed and settled just for a chat every time we were led back!
We really wanted to do some kind of trek to explore the Rif mountains while in Chefchaoen, just on our own, no guide. So armed with, what seemed like a fairly straight forward one day trekking route, in our Rough Guide, we seized the day, got up early and set off confidently in the direction of the Spanish Mosque, picking up some food and water supplies along the way. It was a great feeling to get out of town and up into the hills, as much of our trip had been spent in busy towns. We stopped for a break at the Mosque to admire the views over Chefchaoen, carried on along the path in the direction of the point in the river where local women do their washing. After that point we couldn’t decide between us which way to go next, Aaron thought was it up mountains to the left, where there wasn’t really much of a path, while my bets were on trekking through another part of town and up the hills to the right. I must have been convincing as Aaron agreed to go my way, which resulted in us being stuck in the middle of some kind of electricity site where they where installing electricity poles…Oops. They wouldn’t let us continue any further along, but fair enough they did point us in the direction…it was up…I mean straight up a crazy looking steep slope of loose scree that really challenged our fitness levels to the limits. We struggled for ages, one step forward, two steps back, half times on our hands and knees, I was sure we’d gone the totally wrong direction and it was all my fault, lucky enough I got to hold that thought as suddenly we noticed above us in the distance what looked like the path that we should have been on. After another break and a few happy snaps we raced up to meet it sure enough it was easy going after that. After a while we came across the hash farms and a little stone house, we had just noticed a place opposite to stop for some shade when a little boy came over urging us to go to his house. His name was Mohammed, his mum invited us in for tea and soon we were downing the mint tea and chatting in broken French with the whole family, dad included, who Aaron though looked a bit like the man from that movie ‘Deliverence‘, as he had that ‘three teeth and lazy eye look‘ going on!! All in all a great experience and we left the kids some mini snickers we’d picked up before the trek to show our gratitude.
So apart from a few relaxing days spent in the little coastal town of Asilah….a great place to end our trip, of which the highlight was Aaron’s excitement at finally getting to read an English paper, albeit a few days old, grinning from ear to ear he finally caught up his sport….it was a great moment…I just had to take a picture!
That’s Morocco…catch you in Egypt……….
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