....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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
