So, we went to Morocco.
This is my favourite photo of the whole time there, when we went to southern Morocco and the sand dunes at Merzouga, a little outpost of the Sahara, and right on the Algerian border. It was an impulsive decision, and one I'm so glad we made, though getting there was somewhat stressful. The country had suffered a huge slew of flash flooding and terrible destruction of houses, roads and most tragically lives - so far I think 32 people died in the floods. Along the way we heard from other tourists who had been trapped (one couple for 20 days in the desert) by the floods, others who narrowly escaped disasters - a bridge fell down after one couple drove over it, killing the occupants of the next car behind them.
It was all very grim, and in fact when we heard about the floods we suggested that we might just cancel the whole trip and stay in Marrakech, since clearly that would be the sensible, intelligent thing to do rather than go galliva. But unfortunately (fortunately?) our driver appeared not to speak any English, French, or Spanish apart from, 'IT'S FINE. NO PROBLEM.' And obviously we didn't speak any Arabic apart from 'thank you.' So basically we sped along on this journey whihc we were quite concerned might, if not kill us, then maybe trap us in some part of the country for the next three weeks, just saying, 'thank you, thank you' every time our driver drove through a massively flooded road that was essentially a fast-flowing river, while he said, 'is normal. No problem. No problem.'
BUT IT'S FINE. Because there was not a problem. And we got there. And it was unbelievably good.
Please forgive me for taking as many clichéd photos as I possibly could cram into my greedy little aperture of the desert, because how often do you get to trek in the Sahara with camels?
Camels, by the way. Unbelievably uncomfortable. Also, stirrups. Best thing ever. Why ride an animal without stirrups? Massive error. The Mongolians had it down.
I love this photo because it looks like an oil painting. Tim took this with his phone (just on normal settings) after sunset in the desert, and it came out like this. I like to think that my harem pants only add to the romantic atmosphere, even though Tim made retching noises when I bought them. I even bought only the most conservative ones, with a crotch that was basically at the normal place rather than dangling two inches off the floor, and of a normal colour rather than crazy tie die. Frankly, they look a bit like scrubs. Maybe I can start wearing them to theatre. They are outrageously comfortable...
Tim tried them on. He did at least agree they were tremendously comfortable.
So in the desert we stayed overnight at a Berber camp. It was all very touristy and as fake as you can possiby imagine, but also absolutely fantastic and amazing and wonderful. There were two guides at the camp who could speak English, French, Portguese, Spanish, and Italian (and possibly more languages than nthat, though that was the sum of our little band), and they exercised them all. Except English. One of them decided to address me solely in French, the other one in Spanish. This was terribly, terribly confusing.
I took over 1000 photos but I thought I'd share this one with you. Before I got a camera that could take multiple shots, I never knew how funny people looked just as they were about to jump. Don't they look funny?
No need to thank me.
We stayed up for sunset and got up for sunrise and in between slid down the sand dunes on an extremely rickety snowboard and ate a lot of tagine. This will become a running theme.
Tagine!
This was my favourite one, with seven vegetables, cooked over a charcoaly fire, all smokey and delicious.
We ate a lot of tagine.
This is one of the towns in Southern Morocco, in an oasis. Turns out, oases are fricking massive. And they feed whole towns. How foolish was I, imagining a little oasis in the desert with a couple of palm trees. Nope. They host hundreds and thousands of palms, and the health of an oasis and its wealth is measured by how many palms there are. And the palms provide shelter for growing all sorts of other things - pomegrantes and olives, apricots, potatoes and carrots in the earth beneath, and so on.
I like the way the buildings, all made from the same ochre earth, just blend into the background along the luxuriant palms. Apparently one way to take a besieged kasbah (i.e. another name for a walled house or fortified palace) was just to divert the waters of the oasis so it washed away the kasbah foundations after a while, being made out of mud. Cunning.
We did a whistle-stop tour of the south, which was pretty splendid. Our driver, Ibrahim, explained to us that he liked the south and the mountains in a series of extremely informative mimes. Marrakech, he explained with his hands and a particularly sad face, was too full of people 'blah blah blah blah'ing all the time.
I would like to say this is a very accurate assessment of Marrakech, and if you do find yourself in Morocco, head straight for the mountains and the desert right away. You won't miss anything in Marrakech, which is really a very disappointing and boring place, full of people who I'm sure are very pleasant and lovely but compelled to be a bit awful because they live in Marrakech, where everything is a bit awful.
Go to Tagazhout instead.
We stayed with a surf company, called Surf Maroc, there, and surfed as much as we could for two days, which isn't very much it turns out. We were both destroyed after a scant 2 hours in the water in the first day, and about 4 hours the second - with a sizeable lunch to pep us up, of course. Paddling is hard work. But the water was warm, the waves were good, and our driver in Tagazhout wasn't really sure how to drive a car - he coudn't switch gear, it seemed, which made life quite difficult for himself since he appeared to got lumped with the manual - and so the time passed quite pleasantly.
If you are ever thinking of going surfing in morocco, then Surf Maroc is definitely highly recommended. Great food, lovely location, and one of these demons to keep you occupied:
This is one of the most fiendish balance games I've yet encountered. That little penguin game you play on the Wii has nothing on it. It looks so easy, yet it's so fiendish. Lots of fun. I'm not really sure if it helps your surfing (or indeed anything), but who cares?
In short, Morocco was lots of things we hadn't looked for, and not others we had, and a strange mixture of the unsatisfactory and the divinely inspiring, which is really all you can ask of a mid-November holiday.
But don't bother with Marrakech.
***
I realise I never told you about acrobatic rock and roll, by the way. It was splendid. Tim loved it. And I think we're going to join the team (!)
xxx Connie
