Day 53 - Movie time

This was our final day of our Sahara trip with it finishing in Marrakech. Our first stop was for coffee in the town of Kalaat M'Gouna, the centre of the rose growing region. Next to the cafe there was a rose distillery on display, and we learnt that the Damask Desert rose that grows wild here is such an important part of the area that even the taxis are rose coloured. 

Next was Ourzazate, a city that has made lots of money from the movie industry, especially westerns due to the landscape. There were a couple of movie museums with quite cheesy props, we decided that we didn't need to go in, we had seen quite enough from the outside, thanks. 

We visited the old kasbah of Ait Benhaddou, which looked like it was made from giant sandcastles and we were told that since it is made of earth, water and straw it often washes away. It was very touristy though, lots of buses there catering to people on desert trips like ours, and also day trippers from Marrakech.

After lunch it was the slow drive through the mountains to Marrakech, we dropped off the Canadians at their flash hotel, then the driver took us in to the medina where we were met by someone from our riad. We thanked our driver/guide and said our farewells, then it was into the medina - this one was even worse that Fes, with motorcyclists whizzing past and people everywhere, luckily we didn't need to go far. 

Our riad in Marrakech was much nicer than the one in Fez and had a lovely sitting area and pool in the middle, it was also a huge plus that the bed was soft and comfortable.

Day 52 - Gorgeous

This morning we were up early to see the sunrise over the dunes before meeting again in the dining tent for breakfast. It was a chance for another camel ride but we opted out, K's excuse was her former career, M's was that he had mastered camel riding the previous evening so there was no reason to do it again. We hopped back into our van with the Canadians for our trip out of the desert.

First stop along the way was to learn about the old well system that was used by the nomads, further stops included river oases and then into the mountains to visit some of the magnificent gorges in the mountains. 

Seeing nomads on the rocky hills with their sheep somehow surviving when there seems to be barely any life was mind boggling, as was learning that they are illiterate and just continue to lead the nomad life as shepherds, passed on by generations. We also learnt that our driver/guide's 35 year old wife had never been to school and was illiterate, but he was very keen that his young daughter receives an education. 

 We stayed the night at a hotel in Tamellalt near the Dades Gorges, and and met up again with an American couple we had met the previous day who were doing the same tour but had opted for the private option.

Day 51 - Deserted

We had to be up at 7am as we were being collected at 8 for a two night, three day Sahara desert trip, but it was touch and go for a while whether K was going to be able to make it as she had come down with some sort of stomach bug, and we also had to endure that noise all night. We managed to leave as scheduled and as we left we saw that the entire alleyway had been dug up during the night, no wonder it had been so noisy.

We had booked a group trip to the desert with the proviso that if no one else booked the same trip we would have to pay extra for a private tour. Our driver told us he had two more people to pick up from a hotel and we collected a Canadian couple from the Marriott. We hadn't gone that far when K called out "Stop, I have to get out"! The stomach bug was rearing its ugly head , and K made it of the car just in time. Our driver took pains to tell us he was willing to stop anytime, and K assured him she would do her best not to be sick in the van. There was one more emergency stop where K exited in the nick of time, then she settled with lying for the rest of the day along the back seat.

There were a few interesting stops along the way, first in the Moroccan ski town of Ifrane, with its European style chalets, then to visit some monkeys in the cedar forest. We drove through the Atlas mountains and lunched at Midelt, though K wasn't well enough to participate.

We then drove south to the edge of the desert to get our camel ride to our camp. K decided to give it a skip as it reminded her too much of her former career and took a 4WD to the camp. Camel riding didn't have much at all to do with M's career, so he had no excuse. 

The desert camp contained two rows of identical tents with a long red carpet in between and running off to each tent. At one end there was a camp fire and chairs and at the other a dining tent. The tents were lovely with huge king size beds, chandelier lights, usb chargers and ensuites.

After watching the sunset we met for dinner with other travellers, 10 of us in all, and then were entertained by some local music around the camp fire. A lovely night in a comfy bed and luxury tent.

Day 50 - Going potty

Today we had booked a tour through our riad to get out of the medina and see a bit more of Fes. We were taken to some vantage points over the city to see the old town from outside.

From the city view we went to a pottery studio ... K was delighted, M was completely underwhelmed. The interesting part where the craftsmen demonstrated their work was completely rushed as it was all about getting us into the massive showroom, which was a shame as it was really interesting to watch the mosaics being made (says K).

On returning to the medina we went exploring again, this time taking our time as we had a better idea of where we were going. It was interesting watching the women make roti, putting it on a large metal sphere that was heated with a gas torch. We also spent time in the material dyeing section watching the men with their hands blackened from managing and dyeing the items. We also watched a lady buying a live chicken as the man held it on the scales while putting old fashioned weights on the other, then heard the chicken make it's final squawk as it's friends watched on terrified.

We had found that the riad we had been staying was noisy as our room was on the alley side, but this night was much worse as banging and digging started outside our window at around 10pm and continued for most of the night. This combined with K coming down with gastro/food poisoning meant it was a night to remember for all the wrong reasons.

Day 49 - Would you like to buy a ....... ??

We headed out for a few hours to wander the medina, which is essentially a massive market where people also live. We were told to keep to the main alleys so as not to get lost. The lack of hassle or pushy selling was a surprise, as was how safe we felt. We had thought it would be more like Egypt and India where there is such huge pressure that you feel like everyone is trying to rip you off. Here there were just a few polite suggestions now and then and no pressure at all.

We passed large tourist groups clogging up the alleys, it must be so frustrating for the locals trying to manage their day. We had arranged through our riad for a guide to take us through the medina at 2pm and we were looking forward to learning some history and culture. However the tour was not quite what we had in mind, he started out pointing out the obvious: you have churches, we have mosques, this is a women's dress, these are grapes. He also only spoke to M, this was going to be a long two hours. Things started to pick up when he pointed out a camel's head on a stick (luckily it's eyes were closed) and a shark's head. It then went downhill again when he took us from one shop to another where we had to endure each shop owner's spiel and then the attempted hard sell ... no we didn't want to buy a lantern. 

By the time we sat through the "rug sell" (which was interesting in that they buy merino wool from Australia and New Zealand) it turned to comical, as the pile of rugs being brought out grew higher and higher ... we felt sorry for the poor workers who had to put them all back and then go through the same thing for the next set of prospective buyers. We showed no interest in the embroidery, cedar carvings, weaving, the hammam (bath/massage) or the lotions and potions. 

We were keen to see the tanneries that we had heard so much about. From up high we looked down on masses of round troughs lined with mosaics and filled with different coloured dyes. The smell was unpleasant so they gave us a handful of mint to hold up to our noses. The workers were in the troughs with the skins and no protection, doing what looked like back breaking work. Once we had seen the interesting stuff we had to endure another round of selling, visiting the rooms filled with leather jackets, shoes, bags, belts etc.

We were at the point of being disappointed that we weren't hearing anything about Moroccan history or culture, but we realised that Medina is really just a giant shopping centre, so what else would we expect in a tour?

Dy 48 - Do you want a lift?

After another great breakfast delivered to our room we took a final walk of the streets before heading to the bus station to catch the bus to Fez. We had plenty of time so decided to walk the 15 minutes to the bus station, to the the locals' amusement, a local plumber even slowed down and asked us if we needed a lift.

This time we had booked in advance so that we were on a "comfort" bus. We all went to put our luggage underneath only to be told we had to go back to the office and buy another ticket for each of our bags, we couldn't work out why this wasn't explained to us when we picked up our tickets. This bus was a huge improvement over the one we'd taken to get to Chefchaouen, and having air con made the 5 hour trip easy.

We had arranged to be collected from the bus station in Fez by our riad as finding the way in the medina is difficult, especially with luggage. The car dropped us off outside the medina walls and we were met by the man from our riad. He suggested to us that we hire a man with a small wheeled cart to take our luggage, we thought it was unnecessary as our bags have wheels and we are pretty practiced at managing our luggage. He told us it was very busy inside and he thought it was necessary so we went along with idea, with that our bags disappeared and we followed our man into the medina. 

Busy had nothing on this, it was a rushing, seething mass of people, donkeys, carts, and motor bikes.  We had trouble keeping up making our way to the riad, trying to get our cases through on our own would have been a nightmare. We arrived at the door to our riad and our cases were there waiting for us.

Walking into the riad was another world, all the noise and craziness stopped at the door. It was perfectly quiet, serene and ordered - one threshold and two different worlds. Our backpacks and pockets had felt ripe for the picking outside and we asked how careful did we need to be, and were told it really wasn't an issue. When we were ready for dinner our man from the riad showed us the way to a couple of eating options just outside the walls. Miraculously we found our way home again without getting lost.

Day 47 - Enough food to last all day

We didn't have a great sleep, even though most of the people and the children shrieking and shouting settled down after 11pm there were still a lot of people yelling on and off during the night, along with a rooster who obviously had trouble determining when daybreak was as it would crow at regular
intervals throughout the night just for practice.

During the morning there was a knock at our door and a lady had the most massive timber tray that she had prepared for breakfast for us. There was tea, coffee, orange juice, eggs, dates, roti bread, jam, butter, cheese and another basket of assorted bread, such an unexpected surprise. It was very heavy and how she managed to carry it up the steep, large steps to us on the second floor was impressive and we were pleased our bus trip tomorrow wasn't until lunch time so we could expect
the same.

We spent the day exploring the blue streets of Chefchaouen, and we eventually worked out that the alleyways where the ground was also painted blue were dead ends as they lead to people's homes, whereas the main alleys had the normal grey cobblestones. The shades of blue varied between doorways, windows and walls but they all worked together and at no time did it seem overpowering. 

Apart from the loud announcements that were made for prayer time we could also tell when it was prayer time from the surge of groups of men walking quickly to the mosque, and the same when prayer was over as they would flood the alleyways again and reopen their shops.

Some of the tourist's didn't get the memo about dress codes i.e. women having their shoulders and knees covered and not showing any cleavage. To think that K was concerned that her shorts stopped half way down her knee so maybe they were too short! In general though most people were doing the right thing. We only saw a couple of women in hijabs, most others wore a head scarf but many of the younger women didn't seem to follow the tradition at all.

Day 46 - Bus to the blue city

A bit of a hassle to get a taxi this morning but we finally found one with a meter that dropped us off at the bus station. Unfortunately all the "comfort" buses were booked (put that one down to lack of planning again) so we joined the locals on one of their buses. The bus didn't have windows that opened and there wasn't any air conditioning apart from a hole to the outside near K's window. As sweltering as we were the other poor women must have felt worse in their long dresses and scarves. The driver told us it would take an hour and a half to get to Chefchaouen, we didn't really believe him and sure enough we arrived 3 1/4 hours later.

Our Airbnb was in the Medina so we were dropped off at the gate. From there we walked in to find our blue raid in the blue city. Just like the photos all the places are different shades of blue and part of the experience is to get lost in all the twists and turns of the narrow blue alleyways. The hassle from locals wasn't nearly as bad as we expected, once we politely said no we were always left alone. We found an unusual shop that sold fossils and bought an ammonite. 

This walled city seems to be different from others we have visited in that it appears as if local people live and shop here, so it wasn't all souvenir shops and tourist restaurants (there are still quite a few). The noise in the medina from the locals was very constant and we were glad it settled down a bit after 11pm.

Day 45 - From the rock to the casbah

We had bought tickets online for the one hour bus trip to Tarifa which is where the ferry leaves for Tangier in Morocco. The bus left on time at 11.30am but by the time we walked from the bus station in Tarifa to the ferry port we discovered that we had just missed boarding the ferry that we could see  waiting but hadn't left yet, and the next ferry wasn't until 4pm. Another case of poor planning from us or maybe we can just blame it on the fact that the bus and ferry timetables were poorly synchronised.  The positive was that Morocco is an hour behind Spain so the one hour ferry that was to leave at 4pm would get us to Tangier at 4pm.

The ferry was a similar size and set up to the ones we had used last year between the Greek Islands. Moroccan passport control was processed on the ferry which was a very efficient use of time.

We were ready for the touts when we left the ferry and found a taxi to our riad. A riad is like a homestay where you have your own bedroom and ensuite. Our place had a number of floors with a lovely roof top and a great view over Tangier, it was also right by the Casbah, We walked around the Casbah to see the views of Tangier and its port, then wandered around the medina before getting our first taste of Moroccan tagine for dinner.

Day 44 - Powerless

From our hotel balcony we had a great view of the rock and we could see that a good portion of it was covered in a thick fog meaning we couldn't see the peak. Our plan was to take the cable car up there but we didn't rush out, instead we waited for the weather to improve.

We ended up spending the morning looking for a land line to make a reverse charge call to K's bank as they had mistakenly put a stop on her account. After trying the hotel, the post office, the tourism office and a cyber cafe we gave up looking for a phone we could use and just used our Spanish sim which luckily still had enough credit. 

At lunch time we walked over the border again and took a bus to the start of the cable car. We stopped for lunch only to be told all the power on Gibraltar was out, at which point we noticed that the cable car also wasn't working. K caught the bus back to the border and went back to the hotel to do some research on our next destination (Morocco) which we were heading to the next day, while M took a different bus and did a little more sightseeing, going to the end of the peninsula and into the historic town centre.