WEATHER: Hot and 38C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Leaving an oven and heading for the freezer (in comparison)
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Not going for the village walk this afternoon – I think my knee maybe infected
BUYS OF THE DAY: Lunch at 10AUD – roadside tangines were awesome
WORD OF THE DAY:
We decided to eat at another café this morning, you know share the love and we saw this bakery not far from the hotel, so we sat in and we had a pastry each and a freshly squeezed OJ for 2AUD each again! That included tip – again. I’m telling you I cannot believe how cheap Morocco is!
We finally meet our bus and driver, Abdul that will be with us for the next 8 days. The bus is awesome, the air-con works well, there is plenty of room and you can stand up in the bus without hitting your head. This bus is going to rock. After loading everything in, we said good-bye to Fez and start making our way into the Atlas Mountains and hopefully to some cooler temperatures, hopefully?
If we thought it was going to be a straight 5 hour drive – wrong. We squeezed in so much today, but at least we had the comfort of the bus to retreat to each time we stopped. Our first port of call was a photo stop at a beautiful lake called Dayat Awa. There were a lot of dragonfly’s around, all electric blue, mating and flying past; it was a pretty serene spot and part of the Ifrane National Park.
We then continued our way to a mountain village the French built in 1924 called Ifrane It looked exactly like what you would expect to see in Switzerland and the crazy thing is that this town gets snow, and I mean heavy snow each year at 1400m high, who would have thought it would snow in Morocco?
There is plenty of fresh fruit to be bought on the side of the road as we have been driving. Issam suggested we stop for some cherries. So we stopped at this little ‘cherry’ man and you buy them buy the weight on his old fashioned set of scales. I think the guys paid approx. 2.50AUD for a kilo of cherry to share amongst the bus. How CHEAP is that. I am not a cherry eater, but hell why not try them, and I have to say they were delicious! Apparently cherries are quite expensive back in Australia, bet you’ve never seen a kilo for 2.50AUD before!
Next on the itinerary was a monkey stop. They are the Barbary Apes, which are the same monkeys that I saw in Gibraltar on my Spanish tour, they actually came from Morocco. There were about 15 that I could see there, and there was a female ape with her new baby attached to her back. They didn’t seem as interested in us at the Gibraltar Apes; they seemed less enthused, and probably more diseased. There was a couple from another group that were going up to about 1m from one of the female monkeys and squatting down and stretching out their arm for a photo, even Issam said that was stupid, and yelled out to them accordingly, but they didn’t listen. They are lucky that the money didn’t bite them. Stupid Tourists.
Just off the cuff, Issam asked if we wanted to see inside a Bedouin family home, as they are dotted through the landscape as we drive. So the next one that we saw, Issam jumped out and asked the families permission for us to come in and have a look. He gave us the thumbs up, and we all headed over and into the tent. They are nomads, so they spend their summers in a certain spot and then they pack up everything, load it onto donkeys and then move somewhere where it’s warm in the winter. The tent was broken up into 2 sections; one was the cooking side of things and the other the living side. They invited us to sit down in a circle and to ask them a few questions which Issam translated for us. It was quite a roomy tent and 8 people lived there. The men were out with the sheep, so only the women and 2 children were there. It looked quite organized with their blankets all in plastic stacked against the wall, the kitchen all in order in boxes etc., there was a loom that separated the 2 quarters, where they were weaving a carpet for the coming winter and the tent cover is waterproof, should it rain at all. It is amazing how these people live. No internet, no TV, no fixed address – who would have though there are still people out there without at least one of these 3 things in this day and age. It is a simple life and peaceful, but hard at the same time.
LUNCH TIME. We stopped at a small town, but it does have a purpose of a truck stop facility. People can get fresh food; tangines etc. in a quick amount of time and then be on their way. We had ‘roadside’ tangines for lunch and I hoped and prayed that this food would agree with me, as we still had a few hours on the bus to go till our accommodation. There is a system here in ordering the lunch. 1. You need to go to the meat man to buy your meat. 2. You then have to go to the BBQ man for him to cook it. 3. You need to go to the tangine man to get your veggies. 4. You need to pay the chairs and table man to sit down and 5. If you’re thirsty, you need to pay the drinks man for you drink. 5 separate business all running along side by side! Thank-goodness for Issam and he just did all the running around for us and at the end of the meal, we gave him our cash and then we ran and paid them all individually. The meal itself was so tasty, I would nearly say the best so far, and I am happy to report that I had no problems afterwards so the score is now Morocco 1 – Bernie 1!!!!
Our last stop before getting to the family Auberge (inn/hotel) was a visit to the Kasbah Myriem, a co-operative for the local Berber women, where they produce carpets and embroidery, which is run by Franciscan Nuns. We got to see some of the women working with the embroidery, they were all doing table clothes, and for a 2x5m table cloth will take them approx. 2 months! We also got to see the woman weaving the carpets before getting a chance to shop in their small shop. I bought a few things with the knowledge that it would be going back into the community directly. The work was beautiful.
Issam told us we were staying with a local family tonight in their inn. So I guess we all expected to see a small 10 bedroom bed and breakfast type of set up. Where we are tonight is just out of the town of Midelet, which is in the middle of nowhere along this dirt road. So when we could only see one building as we bumped along the road, we guessed it had to be hours, and it was MASSIVE. The ‘inn’ is like an old Spanish Hacienda style setup to paint you a picture. There are small court yards throughout the whole building, beautiful glass stained windows, roses and vines all creeping around inside the building, it really has some character. It is a little run down, but that just adds to its charm. We all love the place and glad we got here at 3.30pm, so we could go out and explore the place. The best spot was the roof, to get a view over the higher Atlas Mountains, as we are still at 1400m and as lunch would have it, there was a storm brewing and coming our way, so not only did the temperature drop to something pleasant, we got some great photos with the black clouds in the background. Our bedroom here is also awesome. There is one door, and when you walk in there is a bedroom, to the left there is another bedroom with twin beds (Susan’s room) and to the right is my bedroom with a double bed! What a great room if you have a family or a bunch of friends.
My knee seems to be getting infected. The wound has now scabbed over, but it is being pretty red around the edges and is starting to feel painful (well more painful than before). I have some antiseptic cream that I put on after we got here, and I reapplied again last night before bed, so let’s see what happens over the next few days. Based on this I decided not to go for the village walk after the storm had hit and passed. My leg really is hurting.
This leads me to tomorrow. We are off to spend a night in the Sahara Desert, which I’m totally stoked about; if the weather isn’t too cold we are going to sleep under the stars rather than in the tent. BUT, we are travelling on CAMELS for 1 hour to get access to the camp. I didn’t even know we were doing this till I was reading my trip notes on the plane from Istanbul to Casablanca in the ‘included’ activities were a camel ride to the tents. Well, I won’t be doing that after my Indian camel debacle, there will be a van or car going there as well with our bags or supplies (India had this option), and so I wasn’t too worried about it. BUT (again) it is the ONLY way out there. We take our own overnight bags, the camels carry the supplies. There is an alternative, but it is now illegal and that is to use a quad bike, but I don’t want to go breaking any laws and Issam signed the petition that went to government to ban them, so it goes against all principle even if I wanted to give it a try. Oh there is another option, to walk, but it literally is in sand the whole way, hot sand as Issam points out and very very difficult. So I find myself in the position where I have to ride the DAMN camel. It is really stressing me out – but I can only give it a shot and see what happens. I bet I’ll be dreaming of camel tonight!
The evening finished with some local dancers and musicians coming in and performing for us. The songs are very catchy and seem to last forever, but with another group in the hotel, everyone got up to dance with them and it looked like a heap of fun. They also dressed most people in some local costumes and the groups looked really great. I passed feigning a sore leg, you know me, one to shy away from attention.
Night night – look out camels – here comes scare-dy cat Bernie……..
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