Week 38 - Morocco trip

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13/10/2012

Hanging out for the flight today, where we had to be there at around 11 for it. Unfortunately (and incredibly inconveniently), I woke up with really sore teeth, so off we were to the family dentist to see what was up. Ended up getting some last minute work done just before leaving to Morocco. We arrived in Morocco, to a bit of a difference in temperature, and a wave of people speaking Arab everywhere. Luckily the two main languages of Morocco are French and Arab, and so I could do all of the translating and talking when we wanted to find or buy something. We found a taxi quick smart, and this was my first experience of Moroccan commerce. There’s never a set price to anything. You are given a price by the colour of your skin, by the amount of French or Arab you speak, or how much they feel like trying to get from you. Of course, I leant fast that you never take the proposed price, bargaining is always acceptable. Arriving in Fes, we started walking around to try find a hotel. This was one thing dad hadn’t really planned in advance, and so after wandering around for a while, we found our accommodation and had dinner on the rooftop of the Riad. As tomorrow we were going on a tour of the ‘Madena’, we made our way after we finished the first meal of ‘Tangine’ that we’d eat (definitely not the last though). Tangine is basically a round plate that they heat via gas (fire before gas..) and inside they put meat and vegetables, and it gets all steamy up in ‘der. Not something you want to overeat though, but definitely enjoyable just the same. Getting back to our amazing, king-like retreat of a hotel room, we were given ultra-sweet Moroccan mint tea, which sat swimmingly in our weak, western stomachs as we slept.

14/10/2012

Today we got up around 7:30, and with my back as straight as I've ever felt it (Moroccan beds are something else....), we headed down the beautifully tiled stairs to have breakfast in the meeting room of the Riad. Amazing Moroccan naan bread, eggs roasted with lambs fat (actually really nice), and their trademark sweet mint tea was what we fillies up on as we parted our hotel to spend the day with a tour guide we found online to take us round the must-see places around Fez.

We were heading down the street and we saw this really smiley guy kinda half-see us, and realise that we, with our pale-ass skin were his clients for the day. I really wish I'd have recorded at least a clip of the way he spoke, as it was literally one of the most entertaining things I'd heard in a long time. After meeting him and the driver, we headed off down a dusty highway to our first stop, which were ancient roman ruins in a site called 'Volubilis'.. We got out of the van, and went for a 1.5 hour walking tour of these ruins, which included seeing amazing roman ancient mosaics, gateways and tributes built for kings who helped the city to great heights, aqueducts and all sorts of things.

We hung around a while, paid the guy a few dirhams for his patience with my dad’s every-five-second-stop and take a photo routine, and got back in the Van with Hassan and Abraham on our way to ‘Moulay Idras’. This was a beautiful valley city that was founded on a natural spring, and had incredible industries in bread, gate and mechanics. Hassan showed us around the back streets and how the traditional bread is made. They have these places with masses and masses of streets that without a guide, would take 20 seconds to get lost in. It was really eye-opening what kind of things people here do for jobs. Anything from having bamboo on the side of the street (who'd buy it ?), to selling tissues at intersections, to even selling rocks on the highways. Which, by the way, Dad finally crumbled from the pressure and brought three genuine precious gem rocks.

Next stop was Meknes, and here we were stopping to have a look around this quite known city. Our first stop was a 'Medina', or a covered market. This had everything from amazing Moroccan-made rungs, to the robes the females wore called 'Kaftans'. Eventually we found our way to the city centre, and got directed by our guide to a pretty-safe looking pizza shop that our soft western stomachs could handle, and not so much the little (but delicious smelling) street-side shops. It amounted to around 18 euros for three pizzas and drinks. If I didn't speak French I'm sure they would have screwed us a few more dirhams.

So full and happy, we made our way to a small memorial gallery of pieces owned by a prince who lived here. There were all kinds of carpets, swords, guns, jewellery, and things that used to belong to this very wealthy man before he moved elsewhere and built another temple. We found an incredibly resonant room, where one voice would magnificently seem to multiply ( due to the marble walls and the dome roof shape), into 10 voices. I got mum and dad singing a chord, a three part harmony, and it sounded freakin' tight. From here we were walking around and found a snake charmer who put a snake around my neck and started playing the random flute thing they use to charm them into standing up. Think it more annoyed them into trying to find the source of this screeching sound and attack it...

After this we went on a tour of all the spice shops and raw meat markets. This was just down from the main square, and there were cow stomachs, udders, and hooves you could buy if you were so inclined. But the flies were insane. There were glad-wrap on all the sweet things to keep the bugs out, but in the process of wrapping them, there were some trapped under. Bees and flies caught on the inside would just feast all night and lay eggs on unsuspecting pastries until the next morning when they'd be uncovered and probably bought and eaten. You can never really be too careful, and if that means sacrificing a few Moroccan sweets for having good health during the rest of the trip here, so be it.

By now it was getting quite late in the afternoon, so we headed back, after a shortstop at the kings stables, which housed over 10,000 of the kings horses. It was an incredible monument, and for being able to muster up the little energy we had left at this point in the journey, it was well worth going to go see and take a few extra photos of. The trip rolled up, and after paying and getting dropped off by our guide and driver, we headed aimlessly downtown in search of decent food and seating. A street hassles that I initially tried to shoo away, ended up taking us to a pretty decent restaurant. Apart from the no-alcohol serving policy, and one-eyed scrawny cats prowling around the tables, the food was great, and really cheap. Three drinks and a whole chicken, chips, and rice came to 18 Euros for three. Compared to last night, this was a massive improvement in terms of value for money and being a proper tourist.

15/10/2012

Our second day in fez was with guide ‘Alibaba’, who took us through Adulusain and Berber sides of the Medina. Dad wasn’t feeling the best today, and no wonder as he really eats anything that’s offered. We visited old mosques, schools, carpet sellers, weavers, leather tanners, copper and brass craftsman, bakeries, spice and date sellers that afternoon, and really got a feel for what it’s like living in the Madena. Business competition is really strong here, and there’s NEVER just one shop that has a certain type of thing. They’ll be another a few meters down the path that’ll have the exact same thing. Keeping that in mind, you have to remember that you can bend them around your little finger in terms of price, because you’re the one with the money and the ability to just walk off. A little while after noon, Dad was not in tip-top shape at all, so Alibaba took us back to Riad so dad could take a rest, mum and I carried on looking around the place for the rest of the afternoon with Alibaba. We ate at local restaurant over the road and had Berber pizza on very unleavened dough, washed down with water, as because of the prevailing religion here (Islam) there’s no beer or wine in most restaurants. Coming back to the Riad at night, you’re just so knackered after a day of hearing Arab being spoken all over the place, of being screwed by people trying to sell you things, of the swarming mass of people in city medenas, and of the inability to know how safe the food you’re eating really is. We were knackered.

Hiring our 4x4 became a nightmare as taxi driver couldn't find ‘Budget Rent-a-car’ or anything else for that matter. We rode in the most buggered old dismal Mercedes that is still running today. The door handles and window winders were all broken and he had to use vice grips from the outside to break us free of the vintage wreck. No seriously. This thing was a wreck. It seems they don’t have such an emphasis on WOF’s here. My guess it it’s another cost people just can’t afford, so they avoid it altogether. We arrived at Budget, and they had no knowledge of our reservation for a Parado, so they apologised and sent us to Europcars across the street. They had a RAV 4 and a ford cougar but the excess was 4000 NZD for any damage to the vehicles, no matter who caused the accident. This didn’t go down well, as a counterpart company in NZ would cost a lot less per-day for the same vehicle, and the excess was double the price here. Bloody dear at 300 NZD a day. Due to the driving we had seen in Morocco, Dad decided to be Jewish and go for a more frugal vehicle due to the lower cost of the excess payments, should we get hit by a crazy Moroccan. The cheapest was a Fiat Panda 1400cc, with a modest $1000 excess for damage. If you know this car, you’ll be wondering how Dad and I fit in the car, let along Mum, and a tonne of food and baggage.

While Mum and Dad were making all the economic decisions about the fate of our soon-to-be mode of transport, I had gotten something stuck in my eye on the dusty Fez streets, and was sitting outside the rental car place, trying to flush it out with some water. Then three young Muslim girls came up to me and asked me what the problem was. We soon got to talking about where I was from. Seizing the opportunity, I couldn’t help but ask what they thought about the society they lived in, explain that the only view I get is a semi-filtered western representation of it. Not expecting much of a response, I was blown away. They immediately lay down any walls, and spoke from the heart of what they really felt, and what kind of pressures they were exposed to and such. This was one of the only times people here were genuinely interested in me, without having money on their mind or expecting some kind of benefit from the meeting. We talked for an hour or so while Mum and Dad were making decisions. As night began to fall, they explained that they had to go. Out ? I asked, but no to work was the reply. Meetings with men socially at night were not exactly allowed. Thanking them for the eye-opening chat, we exchanged Facebook contacts, and it remains with me to this day one of the most interesting moments of the trip.

Arriving outside our motel, they announced that the ONE thing DAD requested (the GPS) wasn’t compatible with the car, due to a lack of a cigarette lighter. The one place you can buy fags off every second guy in the street, and their car’s don’t have cigarette lighters. Incredible. Despite being not enormously happy with the turnout, we rented the car, and paid the shady dudes. We were certain it was not a company car – there were no stickers of any kind saying ‘Europcar’ anywhere to be seen, and the insurance booklets looked generic and private. So we were driving in a privately owned car, in Morocco, that was way too small, without a GPS. This is how real adventures begin.

16/10/2012

Dad was a little twitchy the next morning, and it wasn’t because of the liquid-sugar Moroccan mint tea. As the thought of negotiating rush hour traffic in a Panda with casual street signage to help was daunting, and indeed the first manoeuvre we pulled in the Panda was a stalled three-point turn across a road. To be fair to Dad, it did have an extremely high gear box, which made first gear like 3^rd. Our first stop along the way was ‘Rachid’, a Swiss styled village which would be an awesome place to go to when on an African ski holiday, but otherwise a dusty town. One thing I’m gonna mention now is the incredible amount of men that just sit outside ALL DAY drinking this tea. I’m not saying just a break, I mean we’d see men just sitting by themselves in a field in the middle of freakin’ nowhere, just looking into the distance, and not doing really anything in particular. It was the same in the towns. These men (never woman) would be perched outside all day, and would glare at you as you drove past, as if to say, “What, you have anything better to do ?”. Really crazy to see the effects of such a lack of jobs on the community mentality. The women worked in the house all the time. The men chatted, or sat.

The signage along the way was literally non-existent, so we tended to get lost quite often. Sometimes even when we only had two roads to choose from. However, our Michelin map was of a scale that gave us the whole of morocco, so asking people for directions was our only source of navigation really. At times we’d get it right, but often we’d go near hundreds of kilometres off course.

‘Azrou’ was a town at the start of a large plateau, that on the barren terrain was grazed by goats and sheep. They all had permanent rock walled yards to protect their flocks from predators and grazed about 1000 acres each, winter would be nasty up here so there would be plans to move to better grazing during the winter. I felt so bad for the shepherds here. All they did all day was stand in the boiling sun, and stare at sheep. As the sheep are so used to this treatment, they’re relatively tame and easy to manage. So he hardly had a big workload at all. But there he stood, the whole day. Just him and the sheep. I’m positive I’ll never be as bored as that guy probably was.

Winding higher into the Cedars National Park, we came across a few cowboys on horses at the start of the park who seemed to be stopping cars to guide the passengers to the monkeys. Seeing this, we idled past the gaggle of confusion and drove up the shingle track. There we found a monkey was licking its bum on the side of the road 100 m from the gauchos. So dad leapt out and pinged a few photos of the busy ape. Suddenly the gang of Berbers kicked their mounts into a gallop towards us. Taking photos without paying is not liked by the Berbers. So Dad jumped into the slowest getaway car ever built, engages first and off we went, being trailed by a gang of Berbers on horseback. It was a close one, but the panda slowly pulled away when the galloping horses came within a breathing on our back window. So we avoided a hold up asking for money for the photos of the primate and meandered up through the cedars to a junction which had a row of brand new kiosks in a half circle. All selling rocks. One entrepreneur decided to start carving monkeys from some of his softer rocks but his results were would be better sinkers than adornments for your mantel piece.

Turning left towards Mildelt was a gut feeling rather than of fact due to budget cutting in the road signage dept, but as we turned we noticed a couple of tourists parked under some trees snapping photos of a tribe of monkeys. We stopped here, and there were monkeys EVERYWHERE. Little twins playing in the treetops, an old grandpa lying front-down on a warm rock, a mother combing the critters out of her babies fur. This was a pretty sweet place, and as normal, there was some Moroccan trying to sell us some random shit.

So Mildelt was our next town and decided lunch would be our mission. Pulling over to ask a ‘jubala’ clad man where the supermarket was, he decided he would be our guide. We said, “Thank you but just tell us where it is please”

“No I must guide you, it is hard to find”

We asked again and got an excuse about it being buried in the medina. So we left and decided to find it ourselves. We found it 200 m up the main road. This was Morocco though. Putting it nicely, I’d say it was a desperately competitive and commercially driven place. The people seemed not really to care much about us at all, unless there was money to be had from these white, inexperienced foreigners.

Dads stomach was really playing up, so he waited in the car while Mum and I went shopping. Within seconds a man with bracelets was at one of Dads windows and a rock seller at the other. They really are very persistent and stood beside the car goading him to wind the windows down to take a look for the 15 minutes. Awkward. The Moroccans should start diplomas for positivity, optimism and cold selling. They are always after the sale and will never give up it seems. They take rejection VERY well, it doesn’t phase them at all. When we came backed armed with rolls cheese and tuna the salesmen swamped mum in prized items to be purchased at ‘very special prices’. Dad started the car and pulled away nearly running over the feet of our unsuccessful salesmen.

We left Midelt and a vast plane opened up in front of us with short buttes of old mountains popping up here and there and the odd sign pointing us to far off oasis. The long bullet straight road headed towards a range of pale blue mountains, and as we closed in on them a cleft opened up to the Aziz gorge. Busy shuffles of farmers were loading a very old truck (not to dissimilar to the first Bedford truck produced in the 50s) with shingle. As I focused them into the picture with the first views of the gorge and river winding through it, they all stopped shovelling and we yelled back greetings in our own language with smiles and waving. The reddish gorge became wider and deeper and could be the smaller cousin of the Grand Canyon, in terms of the similarity of the presentation. On a high ridge overlooking the gorge, we stopped for a few photos and chilled out a bit, enjoying the lack of sellers or children running up to the car.

Exiting the Gorge, the river turned into a northerly valley with date palms spreading down through the ribbon shaped oasis. There were houses clinging to the rocky sides and every ounce of productive land was used for date production. At a rest stop, we found a Scout who was querying visitors if they required safaris into the ‘Erg Chebbi’ sand dunes, and he asked us if we’d be interested in doing a desert ride and camp sometime soon. Of course such opportunities, however spontaneous they sound are the basis of any good adventure. So that was a refreshingly genuine interaction with a local. Dad rang his brother on the way to Erfroud, who was straight up about the trip the cost and offering showers at his hotel before we set off into the desert. Nice to hear the veritie every now and then.

Entering Merzouga town, which was the service town for the dunes, we came across monster racing trucks, 4x4 racing bikes, 2 wheeled racing bikes, racing 4x4 light trucks, and all sorts of other petrol-heads. We’d accidentally driven into a staging post for the Paris ‘Daker’ rally. Not quite, but the Morocco Desert rally. Like the ‘Daker’ however, money seemed to be no object at all and you got the sense that the only people able to do this kind of even are very, VERY wealthy foreigners. We felt a bit under powered and under sized to be weaving through the convoy in our Panda, but hey.

We followed very casual signs to the Merzouga Hotel and as the track got worst and pot holes got bigger we turned into a bud brick Palace with a swimming pool and up lights, diners on long tables and cold beer, I checked the sign again and yip we were here.

Muhammad greeted us warmly and explained that he had a driver coming to take us to the camels and we should shower while we waited, which we did after 600 km’s of driving.
Husain arrived in a Hilux which was rather flash and still smelling new, and greeted us with a smile that still had more teeth than gaps. He must be under 30, we realised. He then drove for 30 minutes to within 20 km’s of the Algerian border, where we’d be mounting our camels. He said that in the morning we would see the first hill from where the sun would rise over and it would be Algerian.

As we got to the initial Riad at 7:30 at night (late), all the other who were on the same trek had already left. This meant a private camel ride, and that we’d have to do it in the dark. Being initially disheartened by the fact that I wouldn’t be able to see any of the golden dunes, or the horizons covered in glistening sand, arriving there was a treat. In reality, what arriving late meant is that we got a breath taking moonlit camel trek across the dunes. I’ve never seen a sky like I did that night…
Explaining it in words won’t do it anywhere near due justice, so I won’t even attempt to.

After demounting, we were then led into a communal tent for dinner. We met the other 10 other guests that arrived during the afternoon and sat down on cushions atop of traditional Berber carpets. The entree was a variety of olives, rice and peppers with a ‘Tangine’ with chicken and couscous, all good except for the sweet tea instead of beer. Our tent had 3 mattress, with a blanket each so we built pillows out of left over clothes we were wearing. I headed back out to the dunes while mum and Dad slept, and listened to the Berber music being played by our guides, around a desert fire. Going for a walk, I found a massive dune that overlooked the city. Climbing a sand dune is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do this year. It really was gruelling work. You took three steps, and slid down two. But reaching the top was worth every step, and the view was stellar. I must have sat there for hours…

17/10/2012

I woke at 6 in a bit of a panic thinking we’d missed the sunrise because it was so light through the tent. We got up quickly and raced toward the huge dune behind our camp, zigzagging up the sand dunes. I dragged a snowboard up to use down the step sandy slopes, and as we arrived at a saddle in the dune we sat back as the dawn slowly opened into a rapid sunrise which threw incredible shadows over the orange dunes. After an hour or so, Mum and I decided to head back for breakfast , and Dad decided to stay a little longer to climb a little higher to get photos over the back of the dune towards Merzouga.

Dad followed a corrugated ridge that belonged to a tourist brochure, and clicked away until he finally reached the 250 metre peak and rattled off a few more photos. By this time the first camel train was bobbing off with its 7 tourists on board, heading off for the 2 hour ride back to the Hotel Merzouga. Dad must have seen this, and he rushed down for a quick breakfast with us. Then we were back on the camels for our ride out. It was still quiet and the view out was great, being that this time we were riding during the early morning. The ute ride back was over low dues and onto rocky ridges, and we explored abandoned villages and the deserts without sand. Small black rocks about finger-nail size cover most of the Sahara according to our guide and sand dunes not all that common. So the photos we’d got of beautiful golden, soft sand dunes weren’t really a great representation of the majority of the Sahara desert.

After another essential morning shower, we loaded up the car, thanked our hosts, and started our next leg of the journey to the ‘Todra Gorge’. Today we were apparently travelling a ‘B-grade road’, meaning it wasn’t in tip-top working order, (or at least that’s what we thought it meant) and more remote. We followed a ridge of mountains on our southern side that had been twisted during their formation into swirling patterns on a giant scale. Villages were random and either servicing date plantations or border fenced farms for cropping. Sometimes not a thing was there to be serviced, just a village servicing itself.

We arrived unexpectedly at a large paddock covered in mounds, with winches above each well sporting a bucket swinging on a rope. There were guides licking their lips with anticipation of the next car full of tourists, so launching a counter-attack of intelligence, we stopped a little way past them and inspected the oddity of hundreds of wells all next to each other. It seemed like a mad man started digging for water and instead of trying again 500 m away just started the next well right beside the last one. It was really bizarre, and I’ve never seen anything like that really in my life.

‘Todra’ appeared as a hill top town surrounded by verdant valleys of palms and fields, and we inched through the town hunting for signs of the Gorge. After a while of searching, we decided to ask a kid on a donkey, who pointed up the hill towards the barren hills behind the town. We gave him some coins of unknown value, and departed. The gorge entrance was peppered with Riads (hotels) and narrowed up considerably the further we drove in. Photos were difficult as the perspective of height was hard to achieve when you are an ant sized human at the bottom of enormous cliffs running into a small river.

We meandered up the gorge for about another half an hour and into the high atlas plains, with scattered villages somehow getting a living off the valleys which were covered in very old border dyke irrigation. We found a road that would link us up with another gorge called ‘Dades’, so we started up a ridge and were waved down by a couple of farmers who said we couldn't do this road in a Panda. After some discussion, we found that they wanted to guide us through. What a surprise. So we left the impromptu guides and carried on. However, due to the gap in the road on our map about twenty km in, is where a river was situated. Dad decided that the gravel road looked excellent, despite Mum and me saying that the Panda at its current state was having a hard enough tim on A-grade roads. Why risk getting stuck or something and losing a day, when we know the way around ? So out came Dad’s catch phrase, “We'll be right guys”, and we continued to amble across a plateau covered with graded flag stones extracted from the ground. Some as big as a mini and all stacked together like books on a shelf. The road got progressively worse and after 10 km, we were in need of the old Pajero as wash outs in the track would be swallowing our Panda soon. Dad, not being used to the restrictions of a middle-aged woman’s shopping cart car, turned around and sulked his way back to the main road.

On up the valley we went for a larger loop to get back to Dades, and after another hour we got to a T intersection. Thinking that we could now drop back down through the gorge and find a hotel, Louise thought it prudent to ask a local just to make sure this was our turnoff. He said no, go back 20 km and make a turn in the village. We didn't expect that advice so asked another local further down the street and he pretty much said the same thing. I asked them with a mix of hand signals and noises, because they were the first people I’d come across that spoke neither French or English. We were baffled as our Michelin map had a large intersection for the turn off to ‘Dades’, so we turned around and as the sun was starting to fade, the was a little bit of concern in the Panda what would come to be of our current situation. Notably, there weren’t any petrol stations to speak of this far up the gorge at all.

The village had not one ounce of a sign to Dades, but we asked a local who pointed to a dirt road squeezing between two mud brick houses. One was called the ‘Dades Hotel’, and there were no other references looming around to direct a weary traveller on the way down the Dades to speak of. The road we finally found was bad and as we wove amongst little houses and a mud brick mosque, we entered the valley leading to the gorge. After a few kms the Panda started to moan as the terrain was much rougher than map references quoted. They were all rutted and bumpy, and all we needed was mud and a much better car, and it would be the perfect 4x4 adventure track. Driving at around 20 kms due to Dads concern for the 1000 dollar excess along with the heavy load it was carrying, we weren’t making much progress at all when we saw something moving towards us. It was a man on an adventure motorcycle, and I jumped out of the Panda to stop him, being utterly pissed off from the lack of direction, lack of information, and lack of general information supplied by locals if you weren’t willing to grease their palms every god danm time. He told us there was no way were were getting up the steep track in a loaded Granny car, and told us the helpful information that it was in fact classified an off-road track. Well, that was a sweet and sour moment right there. Yes he saved us from possibly getting stuck overnight, and into one hell of a problem that we had no way of knowing how to get out of, but this also meant we had to re-trace almost 2 and a half hours of driving along an unpaved road, through villages with little children that’d be running at the car from all angles trying to get money. Ugh, travelling is tiring. After a hell of a lot of John Mayer and Norah Jones, we were decently calm again, when we finally ended up back at the Todras gorge guest house at 7pm. We booked the first room they showed us, and after dinner (Tangine again), a bad bottle of rosé, and a much deserved shower (with no door or curtain to the bathroom..) we all fell asleep on top of our hotel beds.

18/10/2012

After breakfast today, I was kinda rushing I guess, and I broke the door handle straight in two. What to do ? There was no way we were going to pay the overinflated price they were sure to demand of us (seeing that we were basically obliged to pay…), and we had a full day ahead, leaving no time to argue over the price of a new door handle. Rummaging through Dad’s bag, we found some black duct tape, wound it round a few times, and stuck it flat. JUST holding the door handle in place, we got out of there quick (but slow enough not to be suspect), and got on the road. Gotta admit, I was half expecting a ute full of Moroccans withAK-47s to come after us, but turning off I felt a big sigh of relief. Sorry whoever owns it, but I’m sure the 150 Durums (30 NZD) we paid for the three coffee’s will have a little left over for a new handle.

We arrived at Dades in an hour, and entered a gorge like the Todra, except this one was different with odd shaped rocks like hundreds of giant knuckles pushing out of the red soil. Amongst hotels awaiting the tourists, a team of 20 odd KTM 450s came through while we were admiring a formation, and the sound they made made me think that maybe the locals aren't as impressed as the kids waving to the bikers from the side of the road are. That’s tourism for you though. The bikes are owned by German or English companies, like a lot of the tourist companies, so the profits will end up off shore sadly. But providing work for the locals is great at the same time I guess.

The road to ‘Ouarzazate’ was stunning with the High Atlas Mountains to the south, and the Lower Atlas mountains to our North. Villages would pop up periodically, and we made a stop to get lunch supplies in one of them. Basically as soon as we’d cut the engine, an old guy tried to guide us to a famous camel market. The town looked to be about the size of Eketahuna though, so we thought we could find a camel market ourselves. We enjoyed a wander and asked another local about the famous camel market. He promptly replied that there was no camel market here, we’d have to go back to Erfoud for camel market. Closest thing they had here was for just sheep and goat’s. So abandoning our hopes of buying a camel, we walked into the food corner of the market place and found fresh sardines being deep fried and squashed into a pita bread with a sprinkling of red hot peppers and onions. Dad brought two of the little critters straight out of the vat of oil ( god knows how old it was) and sucked them down. Mum and I didn’t eat from the market. If your starting to see how dad ended up with such bowel problems, you’re right on track. I do sometimes wonder if it’s all part of it though, and how good those sardines (however dirty and dangerous they were) actually turned out to be.

Mum and I ambled about for bread and fillings while Dad went looking at Jabalas in a men’s shop. He tried one on but it was a bit tight over the shoulders, yet they offered to make him a custom one. Not having the time, we politely declined and looked into a woman's clothing store next door. There was row of manikins modelling the latest fashions which apparently seemed to resemble exactly what was on offer when Mum and Dad travelled the Middle East 25 years ago. The models were about 50 years old with eyes that had faded to white holes and the plastic had finally become brittle and toes and fingers were separating from the body. They looked like a leper colony from the day of the dead.

We filled up the tank with petrol, which was purchased for about half the price of NZ fuel, and we got travelling again towards Marrakech, to the hill Palace of ‘Ait Ben Haddou’. Again, we ended up getting lost and climbing towards the mountains where goat and sheep herders camped out. The lack of a GPS was really killing us. However we found a viewing platform of a village clinging to a hill and got a really nice photo. Carrying on towards our target, about 10 km’s up the valley we came across two spectacular castles side by side. We decided to tap into local knowledge, so I asked a local how far it was to Ait Ben Haddou. He pointed back down the valley. We couldn’t believe it. We’d got lost again, on a one way road. With closer investigations, we found indeed a Palace that scrambled up the hill to a fortress on top of the peak. We’d missed it the first time we’d driven past. Incredible. The Palace had a wall surrounding a maze of stone houses, some of which are still inhabited today. As we meandered up a myriad of stone steps, we passed salesmen here and there coaxing tourists into their shops to purchase paintings, copper plates and jewellery. At the top we had a grand 360 degree view (the reasoning of the positioning of the Palace), and we spent a lot of time up there. A unique thing about this place is that it was the shooting site of Indiana Jones, Gladiator, Spartacus, and countless other dusty Hollywood films. I stood in the battle area of Gladiator, which is reality was an empty dusty field. Still cool having been there though.

Having had climbed all the way up and down the castle, we were shattered from a whole day of driving and walking, so naturally the local hotel was looking rather good right about now. We got inside and queried the price, which turned out (with dinner and breakfast) to be a sweet deal. Guess what we had for dinner ! It was chicken tangine again, for the third night in a row. Luckily there were two Japanese girls there that night, so we had people to converse to over dinner. They’d hired a guide and driver who were taking them around Morocco for 10 days, and they were a refreshing change to the atypical Japanese tourist we found.

19/10/2012

The road to Marrakech was our mission today, and we started gaining elevation as soon as we turned onto the road. The terrain pushed the road and scattered villages to the valley floor and set an imposing tone over the landscape. We stopped at a tiny mosque and a very old grave yard for a walk, and then carried on up the road when we came across a police block with a radar. We pulled over, and a thousand conversations about how to deal with Moroccan law enforcement flew through my mind. We wound down the window, and were told we were caught at 70 kms/h in a 60 kms/h zone. He said the fine was 300 dirhams (about 50 NZD), so Dad asked me to get his wallet which was bulging in 100 dirham notes. I casually grabbed out two one hundred dirham notes, and handing them across I saying in French that’s all we had except for a Visa card. Dad piped in and said if he wanted to visa the fine electronically that's OK with us. He said 200 dirhams is OK without issuing a ticket, 100% of which would be going in his back pocket. It works better for the both of us, and so as he pocketed the cash, we carried on and apparently I got player of the day for that stunt.

So we pulled into Marrakech, and the crazy traffic began. Dad quite reasonably was quite anxious to pull over and call the guy who we rented the car off, because driving in this traffic too long was a sure-fire way for us to loose our deposit very quickly.

Parking in a gas station, we rang our guy and I explained in French that we weren’t moving the car, to avoid damaging it in any way. We asked the attendant to direct us to our hotel, and to watch the car for about half an hour (which of course took a few Durum’s for him to comply). Unpacking fast, Dad and I rushed back to find the guy who picked the car, no problems, no hiccups, all went well. Now being able to relax a bit, we all took showers, unpacked into our 1 star hotel room, and went for a walk about Marrakech to find a bite to eat. We found a nice diner which had beer, which is an absolute godsend here, and had a really nice dinner.

20/10/2012

Waking up today, I knew we had a huge day ahead of us, but the fact that we were finally getting out into the nature, away from all the noise and busyness to climb a snow-covered mountain gave me all the energy I could ever need. After a quick breakfast of homemade pancake things, handmade by a cheerful African lady, our guide, cook, and driver all picked us up outside the hotel and we all had a laugh ok the way there about how much of a dump the hotel was.

The road there was nice and way, and the whole way there was Mt Toubkal planted off in the distance, for us to digest. We had ample time to get to know everyone in the car quite well, and in gaps between our guide's fairly great English, we'd patch it up with French, and I'd translate what mum and dad wanted to say. They were all very talkative, lucky knowing that we had two full days of tramping ahead of us.

Finally arriving there, we got out of the jeep at unloaded all the gear onto two donkeys that were taking everything up the mountain behind us. The 4 tents, all cooking facilities, all the food, and all our packs. I really didn’t know how much work these animals could take until I’d been in Morocco. Starting the walk, we walked through many tourists shops at the first 3 km’s or so, and all the usual carpets, rocks, shoes and drinks were there. However, once we got out of the town, we broke into the most gorgeous, natural, lively landscape I’ve seen in a long time. This was a complete other side of Morocco I had no idea existed until now. The green vegetation weaved high into the mountains, broken with a seam of rock, and tied into snow-laid slopes.

We had to keep quite a decent pace during the walk, as normally you were supposed to take three days to walk up Toubkal. The first was to reach the camp (what we were doing today), the second to walk from the camp to the summit, and back to the camp, and the third to descende from the camp back to the carpark. However because of time restraints and things, we had to shorten it to a very intensive two days. Without too much time to waste, we plodded up through incredibly scenic valleys, and every now and then we’d pass another little shack, mainly selling drinks. I loved the way they cooled the drinks though. They didn’t have a freezer or a fridge, not even a chilly bin. They fashioned sprinklers from plastic pipes, and used the naturally near-freezing alpine water that flows down the mountain to cool their drinks. Zero energy use, and worked fantastically.

Stopping for lunch, we were cooked an amazing spaghetti meal by the cook. It was awesome how quickly and efficiently he was able to just get the meal ready. And as we continued on, our entourage behind us packed everything back onto the donkeys, and we kept going. Reaching a cabin at around 5:30, we were quite tired, and retreated inside. There, there was a burning fire, hot coffee, and other tourists that were climbing the mountain as well. However, this was not where we were meant to be. No, camping just outside the glowing cabin, in sub-zero temperatures with our Moroccan guide was where we were for the night.

Sitting in a tent, with a pot of Moroccan tea bubbling away and bring feeling back into my toes we chatted about all kinds of things. Family, work, all the things people usually find themselves talking about while not trying to dig too deep into what people believe or who they are. Which is good. We ate real Moroccan couscous, with another tangine, and drank tea and ate stale biscuits all night, until we finally decided to hit the sack. Dragging myself back to my tent, the rocky floor, the stuffed-sleeping bag-case pillow and the biting temperatures all meant nothing, and I was asleep in seconds.

21/10/2012

Up at 5:30am, getting the boiled eggs and bread down, we were on our feet and away. We left behind the cook and donkey-leaders, as they’d probably already done the climb many times before, and just took our guide (or better he took us..). Leading the way, we took care on the icy slopes, and advances at a constant, safe pace. The added fact I was climbing in sneakers didn’t really help the cause, but I kept up with the pact ,and after a few chilly hours, we arrived around 9:30am at the summit of the 4,167 meter Mountain, the highest peak in Northern Africa. The view was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my life. Pictures even lack the true depth, and having an amazingly clear day, we could really see an incredible distance. This was the highest mountain I’d ever climbed. Sitting up the top, we all took a while to soak in the view, before we came together to eat some energy-food, drink a little water, and take a few picture souvenirs of the moment.

On our way back down to the camp, we met the same people we’d met during our brief stay at the cabin yesterday. They’d missed their early starts, and so they wouldn’t have the time to get to the top and back down on the same day (our plan). I think they ended up staying an extra night there… Getting back to the camp, our boys were all ready to go, and onwards we went, re-tracing our steps from yesterday and making pretty good time of the taxing decent (on your calves) going down. A quick stop again for lunch was well-deserved, and by the time we got back to the truck at the bottom of the valley, we were just starting to lose a little light. I found myself falling asleep on the way home, and so as we arrived, I fell on my bed and slept. So as I awoke to a can of red bull, and some (Arabic labelled) KFC, I felt like royalty. Mum and Dad, while I’d been asleep, had found the station (for when we leave tomorrow), found out when and what platform we were on, collected our washing, got dinner, more water for tomorrow, and found out local posting rates. All after walking the same distance I just did, on much older legs. Somehow I really don’t know how they do it.

22/10/2012

4:30am. Just looking at the time after I’ve written it bring back horrible memories of a drowsy zombie-state I was in for the majority of the morning after waking up at this hour in order to take an early train to Casablanca. This was in order to catch my 9:30 flight from Casablanca back to Belgium. Not remembering much from today, it was basically farwells at the airport, sleep on the Ryanair flights, and a very slow journey back home on the train. I have never slept as well as I did that night though..

Massive thanks to Dad, who along with helping to write much of this blog, has virtually every photo credit of those posted here. You're a legend dad !

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