Morocco

Morocco
Well it’s been a while since I’ve written but I will try to keep some more updates going on what’s happening over here.

I have just arrived back from 11 days in Morocco with Anne-Cecile which was amazing. We travelled around the country in a hired car crossing mostly through the centre of the country. The differences between Europe and Africa become really apparent and it was a very new experience for me.

Morocco trip route.

We arrived in Marrakech and soon discovered why there are no real published maps (one book recommended Russian military survey maps) and no GPS logs for this country. It was chaos and soon we were lost in scooting around back alleys. After some time we eventually made it to a road with a name and ended up in the city. Every 5 minutes someone would drive up next to us on a scooter and ask if we needed a hotel, or parking or anything else. And this we discovered is one of the characters of Morocco; everything seems commercial, to the extent that when someone is nice sometimes you find your self thinking "what do they want me to buy?” However, this is all part of the game. In the end we knew how to play and instead of reacting badly to this swamping of salesmen we just used it to our advantage.

The holiday basically went as follows:
* Day 1: Marrakech (ARRRRGGGGG SO MANY PEOPLE)
* Day 2: Hotel outside Casablanca (Avacado milkshakes)
* Day 3: Fez (soo many people trying to take our money)
* Day 4: Moyen Atlas mountains (eating fish tagine on our own charcoal brazier)
* Day 5: 4WD in our tiny car through villages to get to Rich
* Day 6: Merzouga in the desert, sleeping in a Berber tent in-town
* Day 7: Camel trek into the desert and sleeping under the stars
* Day 8: Draa Valley staying in a guest house (Riat) named after a festival in Anne-Ceciles home town
* Day 9 : Second night in the Riat, Cooked lunch with the women of the house teaching them French food while they showed me couscous.
* Day 10: Haut Atlas mountains, camping on a high plateau
* Day 11: Return to Marrakech, fly to Brussels, drive to Holland (home at 2am)

Fez we managed to stay in the house of a family living there who rented out their rooms while the family lived and slept in a small side-room off the lounge. It was great to see the actual houses and lives of Moroccans and play football with the kids in the street even if the daughter of the land-lady (who was studying English to be a tour guide and loved having people in her house to "correct misconceptions about Moroccans) tried to screw us out of money at every turn. Oh yeah, and one of the more amusing experiences was a shop-keeper getting angry and trying to take us to the police for not buying a mirror for 120E off him. Finally when we finished in Fez we staggered to the car and happily drove out of the cities.

From Fez we drove to Azrou purchased camping supplies, went into the mountains, out to the desert and then slowly back to Marrakech. In Azrou we also went carpet shopping (yep we had too) where the shop keeper started showing us what real Moroccan shopping should be. We sat, drank tea, talked and eventually walked out with 4 blankets and carpets (ARRRGGG), directions to a nice spot to camp in the mountains and the phone number of his "cousin" in Merzouga who ran camel rides.

Overall a fantastic experience, the country is like nothing I have ever seen, asking directions doesn’t work because of coarse most people don’t speak English and the country people don’t speak much French, and thus also cant read a map with English French text on it. The people are fantastic even if sometimes the focus on selling and money can make you want to hide in a hole. The food was simply fantastic, from fresh food to cooked tagines, it was great.

Photos are here and here