SITTING IN THE SUN

I'm watching Elmudin repair the damage to the van caused by reversing into a wall at Conil when the GF failed to spot it and the hole punched in the fairing by a sharp branch in Croatia when the GF failed to spot that as well. He's filled the holes, put fibreglass around and is now sanding down ready to spray. He's been through my toolbox and bought some unwanted items and the cost will now be €220 which is reckoned to be half what it would cost in the UK and wise heads are muttering that he knows what he's doing.....I hope.
He's been doing this on the campsite for 8 years and says he's always got work and came recommended..
We are off for lunch at the nearby auberge; Friday being couscous special day but no doubt I can find a sheep's eyeball or two.
I forgot to mention the Moroccan wine. Or rather avoided mentioning it which is what happened to the wine. To be fair it may have been corked, but it went down the drain and haven't found another supermarket to try again. There is talk of a wine shop in Essouria, our next stop, but don't hold your breath. The French may have left a huge cultural legacy but a  thirst for wine was not included.......that's Islam for you.
Everywhere we've walked would have been that much better if a large beer was waiting at the end and every view would have been enhanced by a glass of red.
Elmudin has just been off on his motorbike and returned with a mobile paint sprayer.
We're now hearing that Allah is good and the only one true god and we all nod with silly expressions on our faces, probably ensuring eternal damnation from yet another affronted deity. Hey ho.
We are talking of another trip to Agadir tomorrow, squeezed into a beat up taxi driven by a maniac, no seat belts and still ignored by the ever present police checkpoint.
The promenade is a different world....miles long and could be anywhere on the med,Madeira or the canaries. Completely westernised, full of restaurants ,cafes,nightclubs & hotels and a completely different crowd of tourists who probably never see the places we've been through and think Morocco is chic. They should go 5 miles up the road.

DOWN TO AGADIR

Left Marrakech on Sunday morning with plans A,B & C, as there are stories of overflowing camp sites and we could not be sure of finding space......but there is plenty of wild camping at Tarhazoute or what is known as guardian camping without facilities but a watchman.
Took the toll road which runs along the front of the snowcapped Atlas before crossing through various gorges and passes, nothing to worry about.  The only problem was the violent headwind which meant full throttle going down hill to avoid coming to a halt and registering 13mpg instead of 99,9 mpg as would be the normal downhill readout.
Scenery changed dramatically several times until we reached the sea at Agadir in blazing sunshine. Nice city, rebuilt after earthquake in 1960, so very modern but still signs of neglect, endemic in Morocco.
Decided not to try plan A and the municipal site actually in the city which was just as well as when I found it 2 days later it was packed and scrubby.
The site at plan B, 15km up the coast was full as we had been warned, but plan C at Imi Ouaddar a further 10 km on was fine. Camping Atlantica is a large site, 790 pitches with lots of chalets, and populated with 90% french for whom the language is not a problem of course. Outside the site is a an industrial estate of small businesses offering every motorhome service imaginable.  We have all had fitted tablecloths made for our inside and outside tables at 150 dirrhum (£11), I bought a handmade hooded coat of many colours for £12 and leather slippers for £6. Malc has had 2 stunning paintings done on the van at £55 each and I would if I thought we would keep the van for a long time. Still might anyway. 5kg of tangerines cost £1.50. Someone will make silver screens to order, and bespoke bike/scooter covers for a few £s. Someone offered to repair the hole in the rear panel but hasn't turned up yet, and Malc has had a new water pump fitted. We are 25km from agadir,  the bus goes hourly for 75p each but is unreliable being often full so we squeeze into Mercedes taxis, happy to take 6, at negotiable prices. We have been in twice and the round trip for 6_is around £20.
The campsite is french riviera standard, with a huge swimming pool and slides, restaurant and pizzeria, and there is a French restaurant close by where we are eating on friday. At the beach, 10 mins walk is a small fishing community, the boats all being rowed and taken in and out of the sea by tractor on a very wide flat beach with heavy surf...
this area being famous for the surf and the next village at Tarhazoute being surf dude hippy central. The next town of Auorir is not a tourist haunt and is quite disgusting and smelly although it does boast an ATM machine , a nice hotel where we all ate for £20 , and is banana central, a kilo costing 80p, cut from the stalk.

A DIFFERENT WORLD.....

21-25 Feb 2014

Words can't do justice to the experience of Marrakech at night. A riot of noise, colour and smell that overpower the senses and envelope you totally so that you become part of it.
The central part of the square becomes a huge BBQ  pit as dozens of restaurants are erected every night and compete to entice the throng to eat at their stall. Young men roam the alleys between with menus advertising their stall and offer increasingly better deals than the others to get your custom.
Everything imaginable is being cooked on charcoal fires from snails to whole sheep's heads, tagines of every desciption, skewers of beef,chicken and fish, soups and salads followed by pastries,sweets and cakes. The smoke from the fires hangs over everything and the crowds, not at all a tourist majority, are enormous.
We started on the rooftop terrace of the Cafe de France which faces over the square towards the mosque and watched the sunset which suffuses the town with an golden hue and then strolled through the food stalls.
The area surrounding the stalls is packed with entertainers, entirely ethnic musicians, with throbbing drums, wailing stringed violin-type instruments and the modern addition of banjos. The bands play for dancers who appeared to be men dressed as women and everybody gets very excited, especially the man who had a chicken on his head as he danced the hip shaking routine which was the norm.
Taking photos is fraught as money is demanded quite aggressively, so it's easier not to bother.....in fact money is solicited for anything at any time so a handful of coins is useful to avoid hassle..…..1dirrhum is about 7p and there are 100 cents to the dirrhum so coins are not worth a great deal
Sadly, the ladies did not wish to dine alfresco so we ate ( very indifferently ) at one of the cafes around the square...I suspect the hygiene was no better than on the stalls where at least you could see the food being grilled ( and I thought the displays looked wonderful). Again, all that is missing is a decent bottle of red to wash it down.
The following day we headed into town ....actually its a city with a pop. of 1m plus...and shunning a guide, got well and truly lost in the souk. So lost that we ended up pressed against a wall as a funeral passed by, the body wrapped in a blanket, feet sticking out, and held aloft on stretcher thing.
It took a good hour to extricate ourselves, leaving little time for a late lunch as the taxi was booked for 3pm. but we found a nice place near the mosque
We have met some lovely fellow travellers, including Clive and Karen who retired 4 years ago and are travelling full time in their 6 wheel Auto-Trail Chieftain. Had a great fund of tales to tell.
Near disaster befell when the rail holding the GF's excess jumpers collapsed in the shower, caught the handle and emptied 100 litres of water into the van as the drain plug blocked, when we were out one day. Luckily the pump didn't burn out after running dry for hours but we had a very sodden van and clothes. But everybody rallied round, strung lines, and despite rain overnight we dried out the following day.
Next.....through the Atlas and onto Agadir.

Sketches of Morocco

We have been here 7 days and travelled from Tangier to Marrakech via Casablanca , and the weather is finally wonderful although cold overnight, dropping to around 4°
There are literally thousands of motorhomes over here, and the travellers talk much of overflowing campsites, the quality of which is best described as basic.
Our first stop was Cap Spartel, just south of Tangier.......
we only have one working satnav  since neither Ken nor I wanted to buy Moroccan maps at £45 and Malc already had one from his last visit. So we are following Malc and his satnav  took us through the centre of Tangier at 5 pm on a Friday including circumnavigating the roundabout outside the main mosque just in time for prayers. Roundabouts here use priority à droit supposedly and traffic on the roundabout gives way to traffic entering.....in reality it's a free for all and nobody gives an inch.. Pedal to the metal and hand on horn. I thought the arc de triomphe was scary but this was a nightmare.....3 vans in convoy trying not to lose sight of each other.....
But we survived. First impressions however were of poverty. Shanty towns, donkey carts, people walking everywhere and looking for lifts, street sellers at traffic lights quite aggressive at times.
First campsite had nice entrance and cafe but scrubby pitches and iffy electrics but that has become the norm, although sites are relatively cheap..about £6 a night.
Rain overnight  and visited local grotto of Hercules on the beach about 100 yds from camp next morning before heading south to Moulay Bousselham where we stopped 2 nights at scenic site at lagoon with entrance to sea. Hawkers on site selling crabs,clams,fish,strawberries, vegetables.. Village above on headland very poor with our first souk  selling everything from live chickens, eels to carpets and secondhand shoes. Area famous for bird life on lagoon and plenty of offers from boatmen on camp shoreline to take us out to see flamingoes but we've seen them already. Very iffy electrics.
On Monday moved to Mohammedia, 40km north of Casablanca and very neglected and poor.
On Tuesday hired taxi for 900 MD  (£70) to take the 6 of us to Casablanca and show us the sights. Good value as we got a commentary as he drove us around the city, visited the 3 rd largest mosque in the world and the largest one open to non Muslims. Cost £9 each to visit with guide but very impressive. Our first mint tea on the Corniche which I have now adopted. Lunch in a cafe our taxi guy recommended was Moroccan and interesting despite lack of alcohol.
I talked the others out of finding Rick's Bar and we settled for the Medina and souk before tiring of the constant plague of street sellers like flies and returning to site. Casablanca is ok if you want to see the mosque otherwise don't bother.... Smart tram system though.
On Wednesday headed to Marrakech, Crosby Stills & Nash on the stereo. ............
All of a sudden the terrain changed, the land become hilly and red, snowcapped mountains appeared in the  distance and seemed,through a trick of the light, to be floating in the sky and we passed villages of red mud with women washing at the well. It felt as though we had arrived in a different country and this was really Morocco, not a throwback to French colonialism.
Camp site on edge of town is packed and slightly better kept, and supplies its own minibuses into town which we did on Thursday. Magical place and everything the guidebooks say.
Main square is alive with snake charmers, tattooists, acrobats, food and drink sellers and a maelstrom of people, carts,animals,taxis,horse carts,tuktuks. We settled for tea on the rooftop terrace of a cafe overlooking all this and could have stayed there all day. Had lunch at a cafe, then Ken negotiated a tour of the Medina by horse drawn carriage for the princely sum of 100 MD (£7.75) per couple.....you have to haggle for everything, just like in Life of Brian......which took well over an hour and excellent value with running commentary in French which I have to translate......French is definitely the language over Arabic and is understandable, not pidgin.
Camp taxi back via supermarket. Alcohol on sale but expensive. Bought some morrocan wine £ 3 a bottle.......watch this space.
Going into town tonight to see sunset & the square by night

The Road to Morocco

I have been wayward in not recording 6 weeks in Conil but it passed in a blur and ended with some very nasty weather that was just passing on its way to the UK. We managed to do lots and nothing at the same time. On the quiz front we had 1 win, 2 seconds ( one after a first place tie break which we naturally lost) and 2 thirds so a reasonable  result and the top 3 teams were the same each time.
The Lucky Charm ceremony was a great success and a very jolly afternoon saw copious bottles of rioja disappear, as was Paul's 70th birthday party which became very raucous and involved northerners trying to prove that they could sing more songs than the southerners.
We hired the new camp car twice with P&M and had 2 nice days out, first visiting the white towns in the mountains and then a day to Jerez to buy (proper) brandy at Terry's.
Ken & Jackie arrived on Feb 3 followed by Malc & Christine on the 5th in the rain and wind. We managed to show them around a bit but not as much as we would have liked....and I had 2 days in bed with a bad throat/chest  that affected most of the camp.
And then we left on the 13th., but not before reversing into a wall and putting another hole in the rear bodywork.
Horrible journey to Algeciras to first refill the LPG  tanks and then visit the port to get tickets for ferry. We had booked through an agency in Conil but only had a voucher so had to find the FRS desk and get actual tickets. Good job we did it on Wednesday rather than waiting till Friday morning as the port is chaos and full of touts shouting and yelling and trying to con money.
Stayed the night at aire near Lidls with 50 other vans and ate at local venta which was awful but we had a good time.
Arrived at terminus at 10.30 along with a Dutch tour of 20 vans and at least 30 others to find a 2 hour delay for no explained reason. Eventually boarded at 14.15, having had to reverse up the ramps amongst all the freight lorries in absolute mayhem......I thought Ancona was bad going to Greece.
Having got on the boat, we spent 45 mins of the hour queuing for customs control to get our passports inspected and a CIN number issued which is required for almost everything we do in Morocco.
Once we disembarked, we then had to obtain a Temporary Vehicle Import document which is exceedingly important as we won't get the van out of the country without it. This was an even bigger performance than the rest as hundreds of vehicles had to be processed and finally a visit to the one police counter for it all to be registered. And the vehicle form is in Arabic and French so difficult to completely understand. So this took an hour before we 3 were all cleared and then a line of bureau de change to get money as you cannot get can outside the country...250€ got 2700 M dirhums....that's a lot of 100Md notes.
Campsite at Cap Spartet outside Tangier was as grim as expected.....the Gf and I paid extra for a hot shower in a  nearby chalet and wished we hadn't bothered but at least it was hot.
Tbc