The following morning we had vegetable noodle soup for breakfast at a local restaurant before hopping into the car and driving to Tacheng National Park. Once we arrived at the park we hopped into the over sized golf buggy and made our way up the hill. Tacheng National Park is home to a reasonable sized population (approximately 360) of the Yunnan snub nosed monkey (sometimes called golden monkeys). The monkeys are endangered, as a result of habitat loss, with only about 1700 remaining in the wild. They live at altitudes above 3000m. After walking uphill for about 45 minutes we came across a group of about 16 monkeys who were probably wondering why so many humans were watching them eat the last of their breakfast, groom each other and play. Fortunately the monkeys were not brave ... read more

For the next part of our holiday we had prearranged a tour (including driver and guide) to take us around Yunnan. The main reason for doing this was that last time we were in China we found it quite difficult to get around by ourselves. We figured the tour would make it easier to get around and would also allow us to visit some national parks which aren't particularly accessible with public transport, particularly if you don't speak the language. Our guide, William, met us at our hotel in Dali the morning after we finished our food tour. We hopped into the car and set off in the direction of Shaxi which is a small town about 2 hours north of Dali. Along the way we stopped at Shibao Mountain. After purchasing tickets we hopped on ... read more

We landed in Paris at about 4pm which was about an hour later than expected as our departure from Marrakech was delayed while we waited for our plane to turn up. Immigration was nice and quick and our bags popped out onto the carousel just as we arrived at the baggage carousel. We caught the Orly bus from the airport to Denfert Rochereau metro station and then caught the metro to Strasburg Saint Denis. After about a 5 minute walk we arrived at our AirBNB in the 2nd arrondissement. After checking into our AirBNB we set out towards Rue Montorgueil which was about a 5 minute walk away. Rue Montorgueil is a walking street which is lined with restaurants, bakeries, patisseries, cheese shops, wine shops and so on. We had planned to walk around for a ... read more

The next stage of our trip in Morocco was a four day trip from Fes to Marrakech via the Atlas mountains and the Sahara desert. Day One - Fes to Merzouga via Ifrane, the Atlas mountains and Midelt We were picked up from our hotel in Fes at 9am; we walked out of the medina, hopped in the car and set off towards Ifrane. On the way out of Fes we drove past plantations of fruit trees and farms. The scenery changed as we got further from Fes and after after about an hour and a half we arrived in Ifrane which is in the Middle Atlas mountains. Ifrane is known as the 'Switzerland of Morocco' as it is a resort city known for its nearby ski resorts. Apparently 85% of the properties in the town ... read more

We awoke (Spanish) early after our final night in Spain. We packed the final few things into our bags and then made our way to the port via a sandwich shop. We were able to pick up our pre-booked tickets for the 9am ferry to Morocco without any issues so that left us with about an hour to wait until we could board the ferry. We arrived into the old port of Tangiers about an hour after we departed Tarifa. The journey was calm and, surprisingly, the ferry appeared to be mostly full of day trippers. We were planning to take a grand taxi from Tangiers to Chefchaouen, our first destination in Morocco, and had read that organising one could be quite a full on experience so had spent time researching prices, things to confirm and ... read more