Blogs from Morocco, Africa - page 41

Entering the medina in Fes, it is possible to allow yourself to be transported back hundreds years to the days when this was one of the world's major market places. The spice stalls with multi-coloured spices heaped into mountains, displays of olives, fruit and a wide variety of vegetables, then the meat stalls where sheep are being butchered right there and chickens, tied by one foot, await their turn at the block. There is no doubt about where your food comes from here. Of course it isn't just food. Berber and Arab rugs, ceramics, leather goods, silk made from agave and the list goes on. In an area where metal workers operate you seem to be able to buy just about anything that can be hammered into a shape, with smiths working in front of you ... read more

Distance travelled from Cape Town: 5229 nautical miles I first must apologise to the stevedores of Gran Canaria who, I'm sure, do a sterling job all throughout the cruise calendar and are very conscientious in their work. In my last blog entry I mentioned that the ship was over an hour late in setting sail due to not being able to find a stevedore to untie us from our berth. I misheard the explanation. The stevedores were not 'bunking off' but they were busy in assisting with the bunkering of fuel which took longer than estimated!! There is still over one week of the journey left so we were surprised where we received an interim copy of our account as we left for breakfast the day after leaving Las Palmas. As I have mentioned previously, a ... read more

Our visit to Morocco, the only country that we have visited on the African continent so far, was an absolute stimulus to our cultural and gastronomic senses. When we toured part of that country a few years ago, we found that it was a country that forces any Western visitor to fully appreciate the great chasm that exists between the West and those countries that struggle to adopt modern imperatives, yet preserving the rich ancient culture that makes them so appealing to an outsider. If it can manage to successfully maneuver through the economic minefields especially, and stave off following the path led by many of its neighbors since the Arab Spring convulsion, then it will remain a most alluring and safe country to visit, despite the high levels of poverty. In this blog, I draw ... read more

Today's thought provoking thoughts include hard hitting questions about bidet usage whilst out doing the daily shopping. Also, genuine fake rolexes, are they really a thing? Read on.... Seeing as we didn't get to bed until after 1am, it was great to get up at 5.30am to go on a pre-booked trip to Morocco. I was worried that weather would stop the trip just as a small flurry of snow stops people going to work in the UK. But surprisingly, it wasn't raining when I got up. We got in a coach with a bunch of other tourists where I promptly fell asleep, missing all the hilarious commentary, not to worry though, Glyn repeated it all to me, nothing was missed out bar the translation in German. Obviously it was pouring when I woke, but I ... read more

Day one started ok, we missed the 7:30 ferry which put us an hour behind, and I also went to the cinema the night before (Captain America, Civil war - really good film) so only had 5 hours of sleep, this meant i was starting to get very tired near the end of the day. Due to French non toll roads being though little villages and slow roads, when we reached a campsite we had only done 350 miles, and to top it off the campsite was shut! Another we passed was also shut, but luckily the third one was open. It was a well kept site and we were the only people on it. It was a municipal site with a swimming pool and sports centre next door, which tonight was host to a party ... read more