Intrepid Travels

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We are now in Essaouira, on the Moroccan Atlantic coast. Smoking shisha and trying to get the hotel’s free Wi-Fi to work. To recap over the last few days:

I last left this blog with the Hammam experience. The next day we headed off to our next port of call - Ait Benehaddou dubbed as ‘Mollywood’ Morocco’s answer to Hollywood as blockbusters such as Gladiator, Prince of Persia not to mention countless others. Firstly we stopped at a local co-operative for handicapped people, mainly young people teaching them handicraft and basic schooling skills. It is a very worthy cause supported by Intrepid. We bought a few things there. Then we headed to the movie studios - the actual studio was hilarious SOOO tacky in so many ways. Firstly the façade was decorated with EGYPTIAN pharaoh’s - hello! And there was a Ferrari inside supposedly from some movie - it was Ferrari stone - no real at al. After that, we drove into the village - our hotel for the night was in front of an impressive 400 year old Kasbah. Now the hotel owner, his name is Hussein, better known as Mr Action Hussein because he has been used as extras in so many movies. After tea we went for a walk in the Kasbah which was gorgeous and saw a guy do some extraordinary painting as he would paint using natural colour then would make the painting darker by waving the painting over a naked flame.

Anyway the HILRARIOTY of the evening was Mr Action when we went to have a cooking course in making couscous (which is much more complex and yummier than our 2 min instant cous cous). Mr Action was totally hamming it up saying you can take 1 million photos of me etc. His sister came to do the actual cooking lesson and she was bored out of her brain, stifling a yawn trying to cover it up and it wasn’t half obvious. After half an hour of jumping in his sister’s cooking lesson, Mr Action asked for photos and no one took his photo. When Bill did and showed Mr Action his photo, Mr Action took the camera and started snapping photos himself! None the less we had a very giggly night around the dinner table!

The next day Mr action gave us his autograph with business card (rolling eyes) and we set off to our next destination the village of Imlil. We stored out big luggage at a café and took our small packs on the 45 min uphill climb to our Mountain Gite. Our accommodation for the evening was perched in the High Atlas overlooking Morocco’s highest mountain. In the morning we hiked for 3 hours and the early start proved to be the best because when we came down all the European tourists started to hike up. Our shared accommodation for the evening (boys and girls separate of course) was fun. The hike up the mountains was a bit challenging with all the loose rocks; however it was much worse coming down. As we were high in the mountains and being early morning it was quite cool. At the top we stopped for tea in front of a makeshift mausoleum of a local man. After we came down the mountain we had a scrumptious lunch before making our way back down from the Gite to the village below to collect our bags and head for our next destination, seaside town of Essaouira.

A bientôt 😊
 

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