Tuesday 14 April 2015

All Over Now



Having spent the last 4 hours completing our record from Tangier to here, we find our efforts wasted.The ship's wi-fi - yes, we're outbound from Santander - dropped offline while we were updating everything. Since it's an on-line system, what we thought we'd been saving as we went along wasn't. Saved, that is. So we've just discovered that the whole lot has gone over the side. Sleeping with the fishes. To say we're p*ssed off is an understatement, but actually, the trip's over now. We've done what we came for.
Having spent some time collecting the images for the "lost" episode, we thought we'd include them here and, one day, write up the Spanish/UK portion of our return. There's not much to say about it so far, though, so barring drama during our south-north transit of GB the rest is going to be more boring to read than some of what's gone before.
Tangier Med port entry...
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A short crossing to Algeciras and an overnight near Seville:
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As we were passing within 50 miles of the border, we thought we'd have lunch in Portugal. Sue had visions of crisp linen and polished cutlery. Mike had thoughts of a mug of tea and a sandwich, eaten under a shady tree next to a babbling brook. In reality, the only thing worth recording at our deserted petrol station, next to a muddy creek was this:
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The border was marked by a pockmarked eU sign and nothing else, not even a flag. A non-event. Later, we went in search of a spot to wild camp:
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We didn't realise how much of Spain isn't flat. We got there in the end, though:
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Bismillah!
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Thanks for coming along with us. We've enjoyed the trip.
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Saturday 11 April 2015

Picking up the pieces




....that we didn't get while southbound. That's to say, Volubilis. We've decided that Fes or Marrakech will have to wait until another time.We've already decided that we must come back to this amazing country - so we'll "do" some the culture stuff and get an injection of history and leave the standard tourist ticks for later.
We had hoped to find a campsite different to the one we'd used on the inbound trip, but the site at BelleVue near Moulay Idriss was the most convenient. And the only one, as it turned out. We spent a fruitless 90 minutes and 20 miles trying to "discover" an alternative, with no luck. Certainly, the locals were surprised to see us in an area that clearly doesn't have a lot of outsiders cruising through. Lots of gesticulating towards the "right way". The young chap at the site remembered us, miming projectile vomiting, which was his state when we last saw him. We're glad he survived.
A well-earned rest and an early start to the best Roman-era ruins in Morocco.
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We've read a lot about the place prior to getting here, and it certainly lives up to it's reputation. It's a Roman town frozen in time, a little like Pompei, but with a lot of the finer pieces of architecture missing, unfortunately. Some of the stone was looted some 200 years ago so it's difficult to imagine what the site may have looked like before this vandalism, but what remains is certainly impressive. The mosaic floors are, apparently, some of the best that survive from that era.
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We arrived, parked in the obviously situated carpark, and were immediately accosted by the "parking attendant" who demanded 10 Dh. As we already knew that the charge for getting into the ruins was the same, per head, we weren't inclined to agree to this charge. Mike then got involved in one of those conversations that only blokes can have, about length, size and relative measurement. There was debate regarding the relative size of a Landrover and a tour bus, the space required for either and the fact that the car park was empty apart from us so space was not at a premium. The parking attendant - who had probably just found his dayglo waistcoat in a bin that morning and decided to chance his arm - was persuaded to accept 5 Dh with a promise that no-one would block us in.
Our tour around the site was guided by the entry in the Rough Guide, which was perfectly adequate. We were accosted on entry, as expected, by an "official" guide who, having elicited that we were from Scotland, trotted out this repertoire of Scottish-related banter. This consisted of one-liners: "Bagpipes. Very good. Kenny Dalgleish. Very good. You want a guide or not?". Being a little short of time to debate the merits of his fee, we declined. I regret this now, as we might have got more from our tour if we'd had some informed instruction, but the chore of having to argue over what it was worth put us off. Perhaps, next time, we'd take a different view.
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Nevertheless, the site is a fascinating insight to Roman provincial life. We stepped carefully through the guidebook and the ruins and compared what we could see with what we'd seen in Rome, Hadrian's Wall and Pompei and came away feeling that we'd been a little more "in touch" with the inhabitants of 2000 years ago than at either of the other places.
North bound again, we decide we'd like to see something more of the Atlantic coast. Asilah is the chosen destination, with a wild camp somewhere close. We take a speculative drive to the east, off the main route, to see what we can find that'll serve as a wild camp for the night. We have a couple of abortive explorations, with dead ends or situations where we know the locals, who are on every corner, will know where we are. This may not necessarily be a problem, but we don't want to advertise our presence or make it known that we've gone down a dead-end track and haven't come back. Eventually we find this:
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We finally hide ourselves - or so we think - in a dense thicket of Palmetto Palms and cork Oak. Within 10 minutes we are surrounded buy a herd of sheep, the minder hiding in a bush not twenty feet away, watching us. After half an hour of this surveillance, Mike approaches the guy - a youngster of late teenage - and gives him a chocolate biscuit. This is accepted with no acknowledgement. He remains in his bush, watching us.
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An hour later and more sheep arrive together with the father (we assume) of the teenaged spy. We start a conversation; or rather, Mike does. The new arrival has no French. Mike has a little Arabic, but it's nothing like the language our new acquaintance is speaking. Berber? No, but some odd dialect we can't catch. The conversation labours along for over 2 hours using a mixture of sign language and what we can get from using our Egyptian Arabic phrasebook. It isn't wildly informative, but a bond - of sorts - is forming.
We exchange mobile phone numbers, written in Arabic with the help of the phrase book. A lesson in religious observance is delivered with the help of mime and much throwing of sand and pointing at the sky. We think we've been invited to stay at "his place" due to the incoming wet weather, which we decline (with some regret) as we're set up for the night and it'll take a fair while - 90 minutes by normal timings- to pack up and move on. Eventually they give up on our ignorance of the language and take their leave, with a parting gift of the last of our shortbread biscuits. Sue is glad to see them depart; not that we haven't enjoyed their company, far from it, but she's been dying for a pee for ages....
Time to eat:
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Morning! It's Thursday (9th April)
We've decided to head for Asilah, and make gentle progress up the coast on the by-roads as this'll give us more to see than on the smart new motorway. This has it's "moments" though. The notorious Moroccan approach to traffic regulation is more obvious now that there's more of it around. Roundabouts are a joke, with no concept, apparently, of going the same way round as everyone else. In fact "everyone else" is doing something random as well, so why not just cut straight across the middle,if you can ? With your donkey cart or wheelbarrow full of oranges? We are trying to penetrate this chaos when an imposing figure dressed in black, with a black baseball cap and hi-vis waistcoat, appears out of nowhere, waving arms, blowing a very loud whistle - and pointing at us with one hand while signalling us to pull over with the other. He looks like a UK copper (in their modern "SWAT" garb) and appears to mean business. He's as big as a house and looks agressive. A very quick assessment by Dapne's crew...have we just run a red light? Crushed a goat under the back wheels? With no clear sign of why we've been singled out for official attention we begin to move to the side of the road. Then the penny - or rather the Dirham - drops...He's a bloody "parking attendant" touting for trade. Obviously our heads-on-stalks, eyeballs everywhere appearance, trying to avoid being rammed or killing anyone - has been mistaken for a desperate search for a place to stop and enjoy the chaos. Mike waves him away and we drive on, exchanging another eye-rolling glance.
Just outside Asilah there's what appears to be a car boot sale taking place. There's lots of activity so we decide to stop and investigate. It turns out that we've happened on a local souk - market - that is forming on a sideroad. By UK standards, it's an open-air jumble sale.
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The fruit and veg is much like the normal markets in town, but everything else is basically junk stalls. Odd shoes, secondhand clothes, obsolete electrical goods, kitchen paraphernalia. The smells are probably the most memorable aspect. One unfamiliar odour follows on another, from roasting meat of indeterminate origin to crushed herbs, roasted nuts, something vagely electrical (and hot) and fresh bread, popcorn (?) and a whiff of somethig "exotic" and narcotic. Mike tries to take some photos but the locals aren't receptive, so he's reduced to covert shots with the MUVI, which aren't great but better than nothing.
We get into town with the intention of parking and having a walk around. We're attracted to a large parking area on the outskirts by the now-customary gesticulating and frantic whistle-blowing. The parking man wants to know whether we want to stay overnight? No. How long then? An hour or two, for a walk around. That'll be 15Dh. The conversation about length/size/duration then begins again. We get him down to 10Dh, 5 is tricky. He changes tack and will settle for a Euro for an hour. Either his arithmetic is suspect or the value of the Euro has dropped even further since we left home.... Mike gets fed up with it and reverses out of the debate, chased up the street by what is probably abuse.
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Taken out of the context of constantly fighting the feeling of being ripped off, 10Dh is about 70p, so not a huge amount by UK standards. In Morocco, this'll buy 5 loaves or double that if you're in a country store. How does that compare with back home? The same amount of bread will cost you £8. Would you pay that for an hour's parking? Maybe in Knightsbridge, and even that'd be a bit hard to accept. So we don't. We cruise the streets instead of walking and decide that our inability to browse the shops is their loss. A pity, for all of us, probably.
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Asilah. Tick. Move on. Hey, this is getting too common. We're in danger of adopting a tourist mindset here - " been there, seen that" mentality instead of stopping and savouring the moments...Inevitable, I guess, in that we're now in a clock-watching, how-far-to-the-ferry mode. We could easily spend another day in Morocco before heading for Spain, but we've built in time for en-route delays to avoid the embarrassment of being late home for work. Perhaps we've been a little too pessimistic? Unfortunately it's a little late to be worrying about this as we're now out of range of some of the places left on our "must see list". Oh well, a lesson learnt for next time.
We head for Cap Spartel and a campsite that's just a few miles from the ferry at Tangier Med. It has a good write-up in our camping guide but is apparently expensive by Moroccan standards. We find the site and agree that the charges are rather high. Double what we've become used to paying, in fact, and the place had clearly been resting on its laurels for quite some time.
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As the most convenient listed site for the ferry, it may feel it doesn't need to try very hard. Standards of everything are low, and they struggle to achieve this. Avoid! Unless you have avery soft spot for feral cats and dogs. They'll sort out your rubbish for you overnight.
So, our last night in Morocco. We are alone on the site apart from a couple of French snowbirds who are heading home, having spent the winter on a beach somewhere. Quiet. Strangely sad. We seem to have missed a Grand Finale somewhere. Perhaps it was back in O'zate at Dmitri's...the celebratory beer after MH7's dramas. Or maybe it's because we haven't finished yet. There's a lot more to see and do here, so this isn't an "End" but an "interlude".
The rest of this will be Going Home.

Thursday 9 April 2015

Gorgeous Gorge and the Perfect Storm




So, another day. Heading north east for Boumalne Dades, the intention is to visit the Todra Gorge and then use an offroad route to connect us with the N13 and from there slowly start our homeward journey north to Tangiers and the ferry on Monday 13th.
The start of the day's journey took us through a small town called Kelaa Magouna which sounds like one of the songs from the Lion King. I digress. Mike would say "so what's unusual?"... This rather mundane place is the centre of the rose water industry. Roses were brought in originally from Persia by the Phoenicians and were used for hedging the fields. The shops sell rose petals, rose water, rose scented soap - you got it. This hive of activity also includes the making of les poignards. Daggers to you and me, and you've guessed it, there's a commune here that makes them too. We decided that a blade might be a good souvenir and having decided on what we wanted to pay for one, we went to see what was on offer.
Our attention was caught by a young man who was sitting cross legged outside his shop. He was forming metal decorations for scabards out of pieces of tin, on a last that was rammed into a log which may have been used by several people before him for the same purpose. He was delighted to show us how he could decorate them and we were invited to enter his shop where we spent an interesting 15 minutes or so looking around. His price for a dagger was too steep, but we did buy a couple of items made of camel bone and which were tinted with henna.
Having passed through the valley of Dades and stopped to take photos of the palmeries at Tinerhir:
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we turned up the road to the Todra Gorge. The Lonely Planet says " At its' deepest narrowest point only 15 kms from Tinerhir, this trench through the High Atlas presents an arresting spectacle - its' gigantic rock walls changing colour to magical effect as the day unfolds". There were a few stalls around the small parking and viewpoint areas at the outset who were hoping to take advantage of the fact that people were stopping. Once past these, we were able to see the gorge in all its' glory. It is breathtakingly beautiful and despite knowing that there were cars ahead and behind us it felt as if we were the only ones there. The presence of the "usual tourist stalls" didn't detract from the experience one bit. The monumental spectacle of the natural features completely dwarfs the bling and glitter and made the tat-sellers completely irrelevant to the scene.
We manoeuvred ourselves carefully amongst the wandering spectators as they all seemed completely oblivious to the fact that they were walking on a motor road. Up until recently, the road was piste. It was obvious that even with some tarmac there is still a battle against the elements. Several rock falls had blocked the road and we had to wait patiently while a dumper truck manoeuvred its' load at the side of some repairs. I usually write notes as we drive along so that we can always conjure up a snapshot memory of places and events. Todra got just one word - WOW.
Farther up the gorge a huge rock had fallen and demolished part of a hotel ("auberge" in Maroc-speak) after the heavy rain at the end of last year. Apparently all the auberges in the gorge are now closed as a precaution. Good idea. You wouldn't want to wake up to that kind of a hangover.
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We continued north to pick up MH11 from Scott's book. This route I called the triple A route as it starts at a place called Ait Hani and wiggles north east through Assoul (Mike called it Ar*ehole) and Amellago. It is a useful link road, all "sealed" which means its' all tarmac-ed - cos I had to ask - and it would connect us easily and quickly with the village of Rich on the N13 south of Midelt.
So, we are on the Triple A. Let's look at the notes I made. Mike put the washing machine on. I kid you not. We have all the mod cons in Daphne. We have a shower. We have a fridge, a cooker and an electrical recharging system. We have (intermittent) wifi courtesy of Moroc Telecom and we have a washing machine. It is a container for a mortar bomb with a lid. Add water, soap and dirty clothes, seal and reattach to roof rack. It is black so absorbing the heat of the sun and with all the shimmying (poshword = agitating) that we do along the way, it is supposed to clean the clothes.
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I just packed enough to last me. George at Asda supplied my nicks £4 for 6 and they get binned every day.
I am brought back to earth by the vehicle in front of us. One of the worst jobs in the world must be driving a two tiered slow goat truck with a following wind. A short time before we'd overtaken a small car on a narrow uphill hairpin section. He was dawdling and Mike was getting concerned that we'd get too hot, engine-wise, if we stayed behind him in low gear. As we passed him, he swerved out (towards us and a vertical drop) to avoid a hole in the road. He obviously hadn't seen us due to the dust he was kicking up so to suddenly be aware of a big yellow Landrover adjacent to his left ear might've been a bit of a shock! He stopped very suddenly, anyway, and he was still stopped when we looked back after the next hairpin. Poor chap. We suspected an explosive evacuation of the colon.
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Pay attention...we are now nearing a place called Imiter but no one has told us that it has a gorge.
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Not quite as good as Todra but its' close...it is so far up this lonely road ( Mike will probably add something here connected with ar*eholes), that I don't think many tourists venture here. This is where the River Rheris begins and the ground is fertile and lush.
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There are stone lined allotments and almond trees which border the river, all hemmed in by the ochre gorge walls. While the road is a good one, it sometimes disappears under water at the oueds. Mike's got his MUVI action camera running but we can't upload to this blog so the more dramatic stuff will have to be added here later. Enough to say that everything got pretty wet outside which, if you own a Landrover as old as ours, you'll know that also means everything inside gets wet too.
We are nearing Rich and the N13 but the weather is starting to get a little iffy. The landscape is flat as a pancake with no obvious places to pull over and wild camp and there are no known campsites nearby. It is getting to that sort of time when we want to stop nay should stop. Mike needs his beer and I've got to set up camp, sort the washing, plan and cook the meal and make the bedroom up...as well as thinking about breakfast for the following day...what we need to supplement a lunch and work out how I can get him to do the washing up...
The weather is getting iffy-er and I think I'll let Mike do the next bit...
....because I've got nothing else to do, clearly! This is being written some days after the events which I now relate.
Just as we began sorting ourselves out for the evening's chores, the sky began to darken considerably and the wind picked up. We'd been watching the approach of a line of clouds beyond the mountains for some of the late afternoon, and as we forged northwards looking for a camping spot it was getting obvious that things weren't going to improve, weather-wise. Vehicles coming the other way had headlights on. We decided to stop ASAP and turned off the road just north of the "gap" at Ait Labbes, heading for some open ground to the west.
The ground proved too hard to get the pegs in for more than 3 or 4 inches; below that it seemed to be concrete, so we did what we could. Retreating inside we watched as a shepherdess moved her flock closer to us and we half expected her to come and ask for shelter as the wind increased to gale force and, minutes later, hail began to fall. Well, not exactly "fall". That implies downwards motion. This hail was going sideways. With stones the size of peanuts. The racket on the roof and windows was really something but outside and exposed must've been really painful.
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Shortly after, the noise of flapping canvas changed enough for us to realise something wasn't right, outside. I went out to investigate (the scene reminiscent of Oates in the Antarctic) and finished up like Leonardo's Man, making like a starfish with each foot on a tie-down and each hand above my head, holding everything down against a roaring storm. I remained in this classic pose for about 15 minutes before 'Er Indoors twigged that I'd been gone rather longer than it takes for a pee. I'd have taken some pics, but I had my hands full of tent.
With the pegs almost all ripped out, all we could do was pile up rocks and hope it didn't get worse. We ate in a rocking, pitching rowboat simulator as the wind just got worse. I could see plastic bags whipping across the landscape which made it easy - and concerning - to see what speed the wind was really hitting. I said nothing out loud.
After all, no point in getting worried about the inevitable, eh? The thunder and lightning just added to the drama.
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By 2200 it'd all blown through. Sigh of relief. Tent is a bit torn at one corner but otherwise we've survived OK. Could've been very different.
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Still, with enough Bombay Sapphire onboard, one can survive anything....
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Wednesday 8 April 2015

Down and Out




Sunday, 5th. The first job is to get down off this mountain. According to the book, we've broken the back of this route.Shouldn't say things like that. Be more accurate to say "we aren't out of the woods yet".
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We hadn't gone more than a kilometre or so before we found the track disappearing into a gully, ten feet deep and twenty wide....It's difficult to put into words just how your heart sinks when you're confronted with something like this, knowing that, somehow, you've got to find a way to beat it. We search upstream for a bit and find a place to cross the gully - now more a deep ditch - but the far side is a bit of a soggy landing, to put it mildly, and the Up side of the ditch is very steep, but not as steep as the Down side, and it's only about ten feet across. Something under Daphne is going to get a thumping here. We both get to the other side on foot and inspect the ground, Mike then returns to fire up Daphne for a cautious stalk of the options. We don't have a pickaxe but even that probably wouldn't make much impression on the concrete-like agglomerate of the ground, so we'll just have to be extra careful not to get hung up.
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Once across, he's underestimated the depth of the swamp and Daphne slows, slows, labours and stalls. Bugger! Not a Good Thing. Before she has time to sink, Mike is reversing to the edge of the ditch and takes another run at the bog, then lots of gas and out and racing forwards onto firmer ground. Luckily I'm out of the line of fire of the rear wheels. The mud flies thirty feet astern.That's one more obstacle overcome. This can get a bit fraying on the nerves!
The track does indeed get "better now", but this is, of course, in comparison to what it's been like up to now. We continue, very aware that the "better" track is of a standard that had everyone - tour guide included- on our Alps trip stopping to take photos of 6 feet or so of Big Rock Crossing. We thought it was a big deal at the time, too....
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Still crawling slowly along, we come across a shepherd squatting at the side of the track, making breakfast on a fire made of camel droppings. His kit seems to consist of little more than an ancient blackened teapot, an equally black cookpot and a bucket. His water bottle was empty, so we gave him a couple of litres of ours, although he was probably quite happy without us happening along.
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At last, tarmac. Never thought I'd be happy to see it, but even though the last 24 hours have been a fantastic experience, I'll enjoy it more now if I can have a very long exhale!
With 30kms to go to Anzal, we passed a diminutive elderly woman bent double with the weight of a huge bundle of grass, presumably for her animals. The size of it was far bigger than her. She was almost running with the weight of it, though, because of the fact that she was going downhill at the mercy of gravity. She didn't stop or falter or look our way as we passed by.
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We stop for bread at Anzal and look for a shady spot for lunch. As we go along we pass a dilapidated roadside building, but not, as we'd become used to, built of mud. This one had been plucked straight from the 1950's US Route 66 - a sun-bleached, fly-blown back-of-beyond gas station and Joe's Diner, reminiscent of a Road movie. It'd been built for a remake of some slightly dodgy psycho-movie then abandoned to the ravages of time. The plan is to head for some culture now- the town of Ait Benhaddou, and onwards to Ouarzazate for a shower and a beer.
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Ait B, according to the Rough Guide, is one of the "most spectacular sights of the Atlas". It's a remote hillside ksar which is one of the best preserved in the country. Its buildings are towered and crenellated, the sheer walls standing out a terracotta red against the blue of the sky. The river that flows past the base of the walls provides a natural barrier to the way in, which is as effective now as it was in the 11th Century.
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Once across the river - and we did use the stones - we tried to get in via what we assumed was the "usual way", judging by the well worn path and steps. Entry was denied unless we coughed up dirhams. We suspected that this might be another unofficial "try-on" so bantered the young chap to find something more useful to do other than rob tourists, but he was adamant that the charge was for "renovation of the buildings". Yeah. We retreated and found a pathway around the walls to another entrance - the more usual tourist one at the end of the bridge. Entree Libre. Funny old thing.
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Once inside the walls, Sue's impression was of the set of Monty Python's "Life of Brian". It certainly had a feel of another, more ancient time, about it. The streets are only wide enough for 3 people to pass, or one donkey and a squeeze.
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Doors are small and interiors dark and impenetrable, which is why most of the merchandise is outside on the street, I guess. And very colourful it is too. There are fabrics of every description and lots of shiny metal, all there to catch the eyes of the visitors.
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What isn't clear, though, is how the laws of Economics work here. Every shop sells the same stuff as the one next door. Maybe they all get together at closing time and divi up the takings? Certainly, our experience in other towns has been that if your chosen emporium is deficient in the item of your desire, the boss will despatch a runner to get what you want from another shop. Probably owned by a relative.
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On the way out we stopped off at a carpet shop, claiming to be an outlet for a co-operative. Please forgive my cynicism here, but you've probably got the drift from our previous posts that we're beginning to feel that most of the people in Morocco are out to get their hands on what we've got, be it money or otherwise. Clearly, this is a difference in cultural "normal" and perhaps the fact that we've never heard a "please" or "thank you" is colouring our judgement a bit. It does have it's interesting aspects, though. We'd been in the town for 5 yards before Mike had a guy wanting to relieve him of his boots in exchange for the ones he was wearing. The chap in the carpet shop was willing to barter anything we had, with a cash adjustment, for his wares. He seemed a genuine, honest guy so it's a great pity that we've met so many of his countrymen who have left us with a very different impression and that's the one that'll last, I'm afraid.
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We planned to nightstop in Ouarzazate with a secondary aim of replenishing stocks of alcohol at the supermarket. We heard about this place from a group of Belgian offroaders that we met in the site at Moulay Idriss. "It's opposite Dmitri's, the best restaurant in town". In fact, Dmitri's has the reputation in the 4x4 Trekking world that Harry's Bar had to well-heeled ex-pats in Singapore. We had our beer on the terrace and felt that, somehow, we'd earned it! Refreshed in every way, we made to leave but as we were about to drive off we were intercepted by Michael and Anja, our Mobile Bankers from Zagora. We swapped tales of our experiences and they gave us a recommendation for a campsite just outside town.
The site, once we'd found it down a dusty back street, was compact and pleasantly shaded but was suffering a little from what smelt like a rubbish pit just beyond the walls. For the first time ever, we got back into Daphne's dusty seats and drove straight out again, heading north, to whatever we could find up the road. We settled on "Camping Continental International Amadril", obviously an upmarket place with all mod cons. The GPS co-ordinates took us to the right place. The proprietors had, since the guidebook was written, renamed the site "Gites Rural de Amadril". This was possibly as a result of the Moroccan equivalent of the Trade Descriptions Act being applied. Facilities were basic but, given our last 48 hours of excitement, we really couldn't have cared less as long as the water was hot (it was) and the air didn't reek of something dead. Sue shared her luxurious shower with an equally grateful beetle the size of a wheelnut.
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With the prospects of a quiet night, we make our plans for tomorrow. Along the Dades valley and through the Todra gorge - a must-see item that was on our list made so many months ago. Another week of new experience lies ahead.
Mike slept well, Sue stayed awake listening to the tent flapping in an increasing wind and the usual serenade de chiens, so there was no sympathy when M had to exit at 3 am to take the awning down before it did it on its own. I told him he should do it before coming to bed. Tee Hee.