Marrakesh
Trip Start
Nov 12, 2007
1
16
Trip End
Mar 01, 2008
Marrakesh, Morocco
Thursday, February 7, 2008
A days driving to get to Nouadibou, the town on the Mauritanian side of the Border.
There is sweet f.a there! And it smells really badly of fish.
Next day headed to the border nice and early, negotiated the mine field and herds of camals with out any difficulties and then waited three hours for the morrocans to let us into the country!! Not impressed, this is the most official border post we crossed so far, and by far and away the least efficient!! So official they even had a sniffer dog! Well that's what they told us! They first tell you to put away any food so the dog doesn't eat it, so we duly hid the biscuits in the center box. Then they whistle for the dog, and out waddles a fat black labradour! He just about managed to jump onto the passenger seats, dribbled all over the chairs wagged his tail and jumped out again!! Some sniffer dog! He didn't even find the biscuits!!
Got through by midday, just right for the mindnumbing drive to Dahkla, although it was nice to see the sea!
Arrived in Dahkla at about 5 and set up camp onthe cliffs.
Next morning another drive through barren scrubland arriving in Laayoune just as it was getting dark!
Hugely releived to pull into a nice campground called Les Bedouins, as the previous evening our switch for the headlights had burnt out in a sandstorm, so steve had made a running repair which somehow managed to hold together against all odds!
Also were hugely pleased to find the restaurant here sold cold beers!! Not seen thoughs in 3 weeks!!
So settled down to a tea of camel steaks with dates washed down with pleanty of beer! Perfect!
The next day another long boring drive until we turned off the main road and headed to the coast and Sidi ifni.
Here the scenery changed dramatically, suddenly there were hills! And green stuff! Oh my god it's really grass!! I can't remember the last time we saw that!!
Another night camping by a beach and the next morning we headed into Agadir to meet up with Pina and Alberto again.
Agadir is hidious! We actually both got really badly culture shocked! After months in Africa suddenly we were teleported to lanzarote and slapped in the face by loads of blue rinsed ladies in flowery blouses ! This was not what we had expected in morroco.
We actually refuse to beleive there can be anyone over the age of 65 left in france or Italy! They're all invading Morroco in there big white plastic castles(motorhomes)!!
After a couple of days here we escaped Agadir and moved just slightly further north up the coast to the area around Taghazout.
Steve has bought a board and we spent about 4 days camping on the cliffs with a group of people much closer to our own age! Sadly for steve the surf hasn't been up to much so we've mainly been topping up the tan with the odd surf.
2 days ago we managed to drag our selves away from the beach and headed inland to Marrakesh.
The Landy has had to revisited the doctor as we have a bad oil leak on the gearbox. Steve managed to stem the bleeding to get us here but sadly it needed to go in for surgery again!
We've booked ourselves in to a hotel in the centre of the city and went out to enjoy city life last night.
It just goes mental here in the evenings, the main square fills up with loads of foodstalls selling kebabs and snails and all sorts of strange concoctions. After dinner you can go and see all the street performers.
It almost feels medieval at night with all the horse and carts, the smoke from the stalls against the oil lamps and the music from the snake charmers! Really is quite magical!
We've done about as much exploring in the souq as our pockets will allow us!
Gonna head back out to the garage in a mo to see how the walrus is coming on, would quite like to get on the road again tomorrow, only 4 weeks left now!!
Will write again when were in portugal, expect that will be our last instalment!
Keep in touch.
And we'll see you all soon!!
bec and steve xx
