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Africa is big

Posted by daveb on April 28th, 2008

Africa

Allow me to humiliate myself by stating the obvious:

Africa is big.

I’ve just looked our month-long route in Morocco on a map of Africa (top left blue line on the map above, for those of us that are geographically-challenged). After that I’ve sketched our our planned route for the next leg of our trip; the sub-Saharan adventure. I’m overwhelmed and would like to make a second dumb observation:

The world is really big.

(Thanks for indulging me.)

Morocco: More hassle than it’s worth?

Posted by daveb on April 25th, 2008

Camel shadows in the desertWe’ve now arrived back in the UK after spending a month in Morocco. Before turning our minds to the planning of our ‘proper’ sub-Saharan Africa trip, I thought I’d take a moment to sum-up my views on Morocco, as we experienced it. Note these are my views only and–crucially–not those of Squiffy!

I’ll come right out with it: Morocco is weird.

In parts, it’s simply stunning. The High Atlas mountains, the desert at Merzouga, the walled medinas of Marrakesh and Fez, the kasbah at Ait Benhaddou. We’ve haggled with shopkeepers for lanterns, scaled mountain passes with Berbers and a mule, ridden a camel into the wilderness with nomads, surfed the coast with a crazy adrenaline junkie and yet a week or so after arriving back in Blighty, my overwhelming memory of the country is this:

Hassle.

Almost without exception, everywhere we went we got hassled. Sometimes it was light and friendly (Marrakesh). A lot of the time it was aggressive and unwanted. Sometimes it was scary and downright threatening. My advice to those wishing to journey through Morocco wanting to see the highlights but avoid the hassle? Book a tour with a specialist tour operator in the UK or hire your own car in places to avoid unfriendly towns that offer little more than hassle and touts as in Er Rachidia and Rissani.

So would I go back?

Yes and no. We spent a month in the country and feel that we really got to grips with it–certainly towards the end of our stay–and although there were a number of notable locations that we didn’t get to (coastal Essaouira and white-blue Chefchaouen, especially), it’s a big world with a lot to do and see and so I’d likely choose a new destination over returning to Morocco.

Claire wrote up a nice Morocco trip report, sharing here tips and opinion, on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree.

The Bucket List: What’s on yours?

Posted by daveb on April 24th, 2008

I fell ill in El-Jadida and in-between popping antibiotic pills down my throat, Claire and I watched The Bucket List, a film starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman who meet as two dying men who go on write a “Bucket List” (from the expression “to kick the bucket”) containing all the unfulfilled dreams they have for life and then set about crossing each one off the list. It’s a great film with good humour, some sadness and heart-warming moral and we really enjoyed watching it.

It got me thinking about life’s bigger picture. If I was on my deathbed, what would be on my bucket list? And why wait for a terminal illness — what’s stopping me from living out my dreams today?

What’s on your bucket list?

El-Jadida: I’m told it’s nice

Posted by daveb on April 22nd, 2008

We’re en-route from Oulidia to get our flights home from Casablanca and have stopped off in El-Jadida along the way. It’s another coastal town with quite a bit more going on than in the [currently] sleepy resort of Oulidia.

I’d really like to be able to tell you a bit more about the place, but unfortunately I’ve fallen a bit ill with heat exhaustion and a throat infection, so I can only comment on the four walls of the hotel room!

Squiffy tells me the beach is nice…

Oualidia: Quiet coastal resort to surf and relax

Posted by daveb on April 16th, 2008

After reuniting ourselves with our bags we settled into our room at Motel-Restaurant à l’Araignée Gourmande, which was a very welcome setting compared with most of the grotholes that we had checked ourselves into throughout the past month. The room was spacious, clean and even had a balcony for us to sit out on. Even the bathroom was OK (just OK mind, but even ‘just OK’ is a country-mile better than the average Moroccan bathroom fare). Full marks to the hotel for effort — nothing was too much trouble for the staff here who easily provided the best customer service that we experienced in all of the country.

Oualidia, a relatively quiet coastal resort at this time of year, is mainly visited by Moroccan holidaymakers from Casablanca and has a natural breakwater that creates a lagoon which calms the Atlantic waves to a level suitable for novice surfers like us. At the Tomatobeach Cafe, we found a local madman-come-surf-instructor named Aziz who took us out on the water on his boards. Aziz brought a lot of amusement to our stay in Oualidia; every time we saw him, he was sporting a different adrenaline toy. My favourite conversation with him went like this:

Aziz: Also I’ve got a paraglider with a motor.
DaveB: A paraglider with a motor?
Aziz: Yeah, like a parachute canopy. You need a motor to use it on the beach.
DaveB: A paraglider with a motor? Isn’t that dangerous?
Aziz: Nyyyyyyyoooooooo. Nyooo. Well. Maybe a little. I did do this on it…
(Holds up hand with one finger chopped a lot shorter than it should have been.)

Squiffy’s getting the hand of this surfing lark. I, on the other hand, need a bit more practice and a lot more energy to be able to stand-up for any length of time.

After the waves died down, we walked the beach talking to local fishermen as they brought in the day’s catch of Spidercrabs. If, like us, you don’t like (a) spiders and (b) crabs, then let me tell you, these things are frightening.

Wales is not a country

Posted by daveb on April 14th, 2008

Wales is not a country…Here in Morocco, I’m often asked what country I’m from. When I say ‘Wales’ all I get in return is a puzzled look. So I try in French, ‘Pays de Galles’. Ne comprend pas. Then in Spanish, ‘Galles’. Nada.

Last night, the shopkeeper couldn’t get it either. I remembered that I bought a little diary whilst in Spain and that it had a few pages of world maps in it. Gleefully, I produced the diary to prove my heritage to the shopkeeper.

And guess what? Only Reino Unido–the United Kingdom–was featured, having a capital of London. According to my Spanish diary, and the people of Morroco, Wales is not a country.

Using the same benchmark, Scotland is not a country either. And Scottish towns above Dundee are not considered important enough to even feature on my map.

Oualidia: Heart Sink

Posted by Squiffy on April 11th, 2008

You know how your heart sinks and panic sets in when you suddenly realise you’ve locked yourself out, or left your mobile phone on a pub table or similar? Thanks to an incompetent baggage handler, that’s how I was left feeling when our bus driver opened the luggage compartment and our backpacks were not there. Whilst we had gone south to the coast, our bags had decided they liked Casablanca too much to leave.

After taking a big sigh I approached the ticket office at our new destination, Oualidia, and explained that are bags were missing. “oh, this has never happened before” commented the member of staff, adding “they won’t be lost”. Really, I thought. He made a call to the Casablanca office and established that they were still there. My suggestion that they put them in a taxi and deliver them to us asap was met with bemused smiles and a firm no. Instead, they informed us that they would put the bags onto a bus leaving that night and headed for a town 70km. There they would take them off, store them overnight, and put them on a bus to our town at 6am the next morning.

Now, I may have been over-reacting, but if they couldn’t even get them on the bus at Casa, how were they going to manage this complicated transfer in the middle of the night?? I persuaded Dave that if we ever wanted to see our bags again, we would have to go to this town 70km away (called Safi) and meet the bus from Casa with our bags on it. Our hotel kindly helped us secure a taxi who was prepared to drive there in the evening (for 20 quid of course) and supplied a translator to come with us. We timed our journey to be at the bus station at 9pm when the bus was scheduled to arrive, having left at 5pm.

Of course, by 9:30pm no bus had arrived, but this was par for the course. By 10pm we were getting a little bored, but the office manager said the bus was on its way. Ten-thirty came, then eleven, still no sign of the bus. I was tired, restless and envisaging having to spend the remaining nine days in Morocco with the little that was in my daypack – not a happy bunny. At 11:30pm I got very excited as the CTM bus approached, the sign indicated that it had come from Casa. We rushed eagerly to the luggage compartment, desperately hoping that our bags were on board – en’shallah.

Remember that heart sink feeling – well this time I had it tenfold. Our bags were not there. I retreated from the bus and stood with my head in my hands, considering the next step. The office manager must have seen me because he came over and informed us, through the translator, that this was not the 5pm bus from Casa, it was the 7:30pm departure, and the 5pm bus with our bags on had broken down along the way. You couldn’t make this stuff up. He told us not to worry and that it was now fixed and should arrive in 15 minutes. Unbelievably, it did arrive soon after and sure enough, there were our runaway bags. We thanked our driver and translator for waiting so patiently for 3 hours, gave them each a big tip and finally got home after midnight. Another day, another escapade.

Hamman: Different for boys? Or just me?

Posted by daveb on April 9th, 2008

Squiffy’s write-up of her Hamman experience is fairly similar to my own, with the following marked differences:

  • I was not coached on whether to remove my underwear or not from under my pinafore.
  • I had a separate scrubber and a masseur. They were both wearing nothing more than the same style pinafore as me. That was a little weird for me.
  • I have no idea whether they chose the same underwear policy as me.
  • Both soon found out what underwear policy I chose.
  • The masseur put a bag over my head so that I couldn’t see.
  • He nearly broke a rib. And then my arm.
  • It was like being in a fight in which punching-back would have been frowned-upon.
  • I was relieved when it was over.
  • In a strange, sycophantic way I would have another one just to compare notes.

In summary, I’d describe a male Hamman as somewhere between a wash, scrub and a sound beating.

Hamman: A nearly-naked cultural experience

Posted by Squiffy on April 8th, 2008

Boy, I wish I had a better aptitude for learning languages. My GSCE in French may mean that I’m able to buy train tickets and order a coffee, but it certainly didn’t equip me with the vocab necessary to understand an attendant briefing me on the intricacies of hamman etiquette.

A ‘hamman’ in Morocco is similar in concept to spas in our country, but they’re generally not so fancy and are a more integral part of everyday life; a place where people go to wash and relax. After a few weeks of cold and dirty showers, the idea of a hot steam bath greatly appealed.

As typical in this culture, boys and girls are separated, so I waved goodbye to Dave and entered the hamman for my ‘Top Massage’ – a soaping followed by a scrub and a 30 min massage. I was led to a cubicle to change and given some flip-flops and a small sarong. I wasn’t sure whether this was supposed to cover my top or bottom half once naked, so went for the middle option, tucking it under my arms and just covering my bum. As I prepared to step out of the cubicle, I could hear the two members of staff mustering their best English to communicate something to me:

“Your slip?” one said. I handed her the receipt I’d been given downstairs. She looked puzzled and repeated herself. I looked equally puzzled back at her, causing her to motion to my nether regions. Suddenly recalling some French, I realised she was talking about my pants. “You must….”, but that’s as far as she got in English. “I must what…keep them on or take them off?” I asked, but she didn’t understand. In a final attempt to communicate her point, she gave up on verbal language, leaned over and felt through my sarong. Ah, no pants as, as they had feared. I was sent back to the cubicle to re-install my underwear before being led down to the hamman

Once inside, the lady, who had so gently led my by the arm, handed me over to a woman who was a bulldog/shot-putter/scary matron cross, and before I could say “bonjour” she had whipped off my sarong with one flick of the wrist and was dragging me into the steam room. There was to be no delicate treatment for me. After pouring buckets of water over my head, she rubbed me down with a traditional Moroccan soap, before leaving me to simmer for half an hour and then leading me to a marble table where I was instructed to lie down. Out came the scrubbing glove. Ouch. The words ‘gentle exfoliation’ did not enter her dictionary in any language. I was scoured from head to toe, including under my arm pits and behind my ears. I left behind at least two layers of skin on that table. If this doesn’t give you a rosy glow, nothing will.

Next, I was invited to wash my hair at a basin, before lying on another marble table for a massage. To be fair to her, the matron/shot-putter was quite gentle, though she did put me into some limb wrenching positions, including my arm up my back. Privacy doesn’t seem to be a major concern here. At one point she whipped away the curtain separating me from the Italian girl on the next table, so that she could gossip more easily with her fellow shot-put team mate.

I couldn’t stop giggling throughout the process but by the end of it all I was thoroughly clean and pretty relaxed. It was a great experience and one that I would like to repeat… Ensha’llaah (God willing). Unfortunately I’ve heard that not all of the masseuses were quite so forgiving… I’ll leave Dave to tell you about his experience!

Casablanca: Exotic breakfast

Posted by daveb on April 7th, 2008

Breakfast menu in CasablancaThis made us laugh. It’s a breakfast menu in a Casablanca cafe. Click on the picture to enlarge it. We have no idea what’s in the bowl of the Traditional breakfast (first item). But wait, what’s that in centre-stage of the “Exotic” breakfast (last item) — yes, it’s plain, old TOAST! *giggle*

It appears that the Moroccan and British perspectives of what is exotic is exactly opposite.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

(Subnote: At 15 dirhams to the pound, all breakfasts are good value here. That is, right up until the proprietor tries to hard-sell you a good quality, genuine fake Ralph Lauren t-shirt in his shop next door whilst you’ve still got a mouthful of toast and half a coffee left…)