Still in Marrakesh. At this rate I’ll never leave!

Some old guys having a chat over coffee Marrakesh


The most famous land mark in Marrakesh the tower of the Koutoubia mosque

I'm feeling quite frustrated at the moment as I've been waiting for the software to upload my videos for some time now. Iv'e got my mum to post it but it seems to be delayed. ARRR!! I'm impatient to leave now I can hear the desert calling me.

So here are some sketches of Marrakesh there's also some more photos and things to come when I get round to it.

Marrakesh and the High Atlas

A man on the roof of his house in the High Atlas

I’ve been in and around Marrakesh for some time now. When I first got here I was ill after an arduous journey which I’ll talk about in a moment. After my illness I spent time trying to organise the posting of my much needed software so as to be able to show my filming. Unfortunately for me it was the Muslim holiday of Eid so the post office wasn’t open for three days. Since then I’ve been waiting patiently for my package.


A dried food stall in Place Jemaa-El-Fna Marrakesh.

Marrakesh is a vibrant colourful city. It’s modern with lots of construction and luxury flats for wealthy Moroccans. It has fashion boutiques, fancy restaurants and all the consumer trappings of a modern city. Plus lots of tourists but the life in the Ville neuvele (new town) doesn’t interest me much. I’m more attracted to the ancient rhythms of the medina.


Food stalls Place Jemaa-El-Fna with the tower of the Koutoubia mosque in the background Marrakesh’s most famous landmark

The main attraction for tourists and the centre around which Marrakesh revolves is the Place Jemaa El Fna . Jemaa El Fna is a large irregular shaped square that is startling in its size and openness being surrounded by the dark claustrophobic streets of the old town. However it’s not these qualities that make it special it’s the chaotic life of the place. For instance there are snake charmers and men with monkeys. There are traditional musicians and all manner of oddities. It’s not until night though that it really comes into its own. As the sun sets many food stalls are set up which great big flames and wafts of smoke that catch the dying sunlight and spread evocative charcoal smells. As if this wasn’t atmospheric enough this is when the tribal sounds of drumming starts, creating a palpable electric buzz of excitement and a real festival atmosphere every single night!


Men stirring steaming pots of snail soup Place Jemaa-El-Fna

Over the last few days I’ve been hanging out with a Belgium punk rocker and a Canadian tree planter. I’ve met some peace corps workers, three American girls who have just spent two years in The Gambia, in rural villages. Two years! They were also planting trees and had lots to say about the strangeness of living with large families with two or more wives per husband in rural Africa and of a prime minister who claims to have cured cancer. This is just to mention a few of the interesting people I’ve met in Marrakesh.


Washing hanging up in the village the High Atlas

While waiting for my software to arrive I went to a place called Imlil for four days. Imlil is high up in the Atlas Mountains at just below two thousand meters and not far from North Africa’s highest peak Toubkal at 4167 meters.

Id spied the distinct peaks of the Atlas when I first arrived. They are clearly visible from Marrakesh as a high solid wall of shimmering white against a blue sky. So when I finally arrived in the frosty cold of Imlil amid towering snow clad peaks I was very happy, especially after the noise and dirt of Marrakesh.

Imlil is a small collection of shops at the bottom of a deep valley that splits four ways at Imlil. The surrounding slopes are where the inhabitants live in beautiful mud brick houses that hang preciously from rocky slopes.

The valleys rang with the sounds of roosters and goats, the call to prayer (a soulful wailing that proclaims the greatness of God and summons the faithful to worship 5 times a day) and the sound a whooping and laughter. The whooping and laughter were due to a local custom where after sacrificing a sheep for Eid as done all over the Muslim world the inhabitants of the high atlas would then ware the sheepskin with the sheep’s horns fitted to a mask. Thus kitted out, the man in the costume then runs around the steep rocky paths of the villages chasing everyone with a stick. This appears to make everyone feverish with excitement and goes on, at least where I was, for around 6 days. Six days of madness.


Mosque and mountains Armoud High Atlas

My host in Imlil was the crafty Ibrahim who like many Moroccans was a keen business man. I shared a comfortable but freezing cold mud brick guest house with three runners from Leicester who had come to Imlil to train in the high altitude.
During the day I walked up into the snow line and down into pretty valleys while at night I played cards with the Leicester lads while eating huge steaming mounds of couscous and tajine. Ibrahim would come in to talk to us softly in a mixture a French and English with a wry smile on his face and sly chuckle.

A house Imlil - the villiage I stayed in, in the High Atlas

Im now back in Marrekesh waiting for my software. I feel thourghly refreshed after the calm of the mountains and am enjoiying the relative warmth of Marrekesh. 17 to 18 degrees in the day and a little above freezing at night.

Ive met a thuorghly nice Morrocan guy who has introduced me to his family and fed me generously. Plus there are always new faces at the hostel Im staying at.
So things are ok at the moment but Im itching to get my software and push on south to Muaritania.

The view from my window across Imlil the High Atlas


The view from the top of a moutain I strugeled to climb in the thin air and snow

Some strange rock formations the High Atlas

Oh nearly forgot to talk about my arduous journey to Marrakesh. After feeling rough in Rabat I foolishly thought I was well enough to travel. But it being Eid the trains were packed and I mean really packed so that people were squashed up against windows and put on intimate terms: I witnessed many colourful arguments which arose in the cramped tense atmosphere but always seemed to end in laughter. All in all it was certainly an experience but one I couldn’t really appreciate as my flue like suffering became painful diarrhoea which made the journey very long indeed. This kept me from eating and detained me with bowel problems for the next day. I feel healthy now and am very much looking forward to what will happen next as I have no idea, which for me is the joy of travelling, the unknown. So till next time ...

Sickness in the capital

Busker with twirling hat piece within the ancient walls of Rabat’s Kasbah

This door also in the Kasbah has many tools adorning it reflecting the ever present making of crafts

Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I got some virus while in Rabat and was out of action for a few days. I think I’ve been going at it a bit too hard and have mentally and physically worn myself out. After recovering from my illness, a horrible flue like thing followed by stomach problems, I felt quite low and sick of trying to film and write and the like. It’s taken a few days of taking it slow to pick myself up and find the mental energy to carry on.


Rabat is a nice place a bit quieter after the madness that is Fez. It’s orderly and clean although has some very dirty bars which I managed to get on film and will put up as soon as I’ve got the software to do it. Which has been another problem, but hopefully I’m going to get my mum to post the original CD to me.


On the plus side I got my Mauritanian visa without fuss. I bet most people don’t even know where the country is, it being such an obscure place. It’s the next country down from Morocco and fills me with excitement and foreboding. To get across the country will mean crossing some very remote and vast expanses of desert the Sahara no less, and then on to mysterious Mali and the fabled city of Timbuktu. I can’t wait.

Beautifull coulerfull crafts in the artisan quarter Rabat

In the next exciting enstalment of one man travel plan: The Exciting Vibrant city of Marakesh

The Imperial city and the Trogladites

Life on the streets of Fez

Beautiful tile work, Fez

An interesting study of pain and humiliation

The Troglodites (cave dwellers) busy sewing and watching telly

My cave dwelling host and nice guy Hassan

Hassan Is a guy I met on couch surfing a free hospitality site that alouws poeple to meet up, or stay as a guest in theire home. Alternativley you can host poeple and show them your home town. Hassan hosted me and shared a little of his life.

He lives in a village called Bihilal which is 30 odd kilometers south of Fez. Hassan his brother, two sisters and mother share a four room house. One room I think is the mothers which I never saw. Then there’s the kitchen the living room which doubled as a bedroom for me Hassan and his siblings and is in the picture above. There was another bare room off of the main living space which puzzling to me was unused everyone bunking up in the same room.
The house itself was built several hundred years ago I will check when, when the moors were driven out of Andalusia Spain. It is carved out of the rock and extended to include a two tier outside roof terrace.

If you’re reading this Hassan thanks again for your kindness and patience in helping me with computer related problems.I will write more about this when I get a chance. Promise.

Coulered plates and hustle and bustle, Fez

Morocco

The tanneries, Fez


A child and man, Fez

Chefchoun

I’ve been in Morocco for five days now. It’s a completely different world to its close neighbour Spain, a more chaotic and mysterious world. Full of colourful markets and street stalls. Every street is alive with all walks of life. Where bakers are baking, carpenters carving, where people are making things and battering in ways unchanged for centuries. It is truly amazing and exhausting just taking in the many visual treats and fascinating glimpses that wait around every corner.

From Ceuta I headed inland into the Rif mountains home of the indigenous Berber people. Stopping in the city of Tetouan with its amazing ancient medina (market), I then headed on to Chefchoun a beautiful old town high in the Rif Mountains. Where I met an interesting Italian aid worker who was working nearby and her visiting mother, and a local Kif (an Arabic word coming from the word for pleasure that is used to describe marijuana a mainstay of the local economy) grower amongst others.

I’m now in the imperial city of Fez one of the most intact ancient cities of the Muslim world, where I’ve already met lots of interesting people. I’ll talk about this when I next get a chance.

Chefchauon from the Kasba

Europe to Africa

On the road somewhere in Spain

Oranges and dragons - the Casa de los Dragones, Cueta

I need to find out more about religious clothing in Spanish culture as I find this kinda scary

The cathedral Ceuta

Well Ive made it to Africa!

From Nantes I got a train to what I thought was a town on route to the Alantic coast and northern Spain. From here I planned to hitch hike to Africa. Well the town in question, Lamote, has several brothers and sisters around the place. Despite showing the girl at the ticket office a map Id drawn with my route and making it clear where I wanted to go she picked, at random, one of the Lomotes from the computer screen. The wrong one.

Opus Dais church in the Spanish Pyrenees. I don’t know much about Opus Dais bit I will find out more

Lucky for me I went to a Lamote on the way to the Pyrenees where I got a lift from Rico who was picking his son up from his mother who lives on an island of the coast north of Bordeaux. He was driving with his son to his home in the Pyrenees near the Spanish border. Perfect! But it got so much better.

My mate the Rasta beanie chilling out at Rico’s in the Pyrenees

He quickly offered me to stay at his place with his playful son of three, his girlfriend, a big gentle dog and a little kitten. They were really nice and told me about their lives working on the ski slopes in winter.

I was sad to leave but I’d still a long way to go to get to Africa. Fortunately I quickly got a lift over the high snowy pass into Spain and then had another quick wait before getting the best hitch of my life so far.

I got picked up by a French guy who was on a month long holiday from his job as a fireman in Brittany. And he was travelling to Morocco!! Yes all the way across Spain. After ten minutes waiting I’d got me a lift to Africa! Amazing I felt on top of the world. Surely it can’t stay this good for much longer?

A beautiful man-made lake in the Spanish Pyrenees

The Story So Far

St Nicolas Nantes


Chateau Des Ducs De Bretagne


Cathedrale Saint Pierre

Well I'm in Nantes now and things are going OK but could be better.

My first mission objective was to contact and interview some asylum seekers in or around Calais. To this end I failed miserably I gave myself know where near enough time and didn’t research or prepare adequately. So I have learnt some important lessons in what is proving to be a steep learning curve.

I did manage to interview a lady who works for Secours Catholique, a charity that helps with asylum seekers and other causes. I also interviewed a barman from Calais who spoke good English and was happy to talk about the problem.

Other than this I traipsed around pointlessly with a bad cold that I still have and generally felt out of my depth. Unfortunately I can’t seem to get the footage of my camcorder. So I am of to Nantes city centre, where I am currently, to take some photographs to put on the blog.
More later.