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Back North To Fes, Then West To Casablanca
Our farewells with Mohammed and the other guys at Merzouga are heartfelt; we feel like we’re leaving friends behind while Mohammed says they will miss us and implores us to return some day. We say we may do, but of course inside we know it’s not going to happen, there’s still a whole world out there. The need to take the Duster back to Fes means retracing our steps through the Ziz valley, past and over the Middle Atlas mountains, but with an overnight call in a different town – not Errachidia this time, but the unassuming town of Midelt. This is basically a dormitory stop for food and sleep,…
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Merzouga: Three Days In The Desert Sun
Sometimes it’s when you look back at a particular time or place that you realise just how good it was. And then sometimes, now and again, when you get really lucky, it’s as the time itself is unfolding that you know something very special is happening, your senses are alive and you are absolutely living in the moment, knowing that this is a time you will never forget. Such was our three days in Merzouga…. As we eat brochettes by the roadside on our first night in the desert town we don’t really want to have to sleep, we’re willing it to be morning, so eager are we to experience…
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Desert Road Trip: From Fes To The Sahara
This is such an amazing, auspicious feeling, as we drive away from Fes and head off towards a little bit of the unknown, the hired Dacia Duster our companion for the next seven days, one of the most exciting parts of this entire Mediterranean journey opening up ahead of us. Also ahead of us are the Middle Atlas Mountains, looming in the haze like Earth-shackled storm clouds, goading us to take them on and make it to the desert beyond. We are soon into the scrub style of desert where grey rock meets red earth, where nomadic shepherds tend sheep and goats beside their temporary tented villages, where dust devils…
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The True Face Of Fes
It’s hot again now. Gone is the mountain air of Chefchaouen, gone is the Atlantic breeze of Tangier, replaced by daily afternoon highs of around 36C, but it’s a bone-pleasing, perfectly dry heat with none of the humidity of Asia. Local guys tell us we’re “lucky”, just recently Fes experienced a prolonged spell during which temperatures were another 10 degrees higher than this every day. Fes is not always blessed with good press. “It’s too big, a massive city”…”you will be pestered by guides and touts every second”…”it’s too touristy, it’s not real any more”…”for hassling it’s worse than Marrakech” were among the things we were told, or had read,…
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Meknes & Volubilis: Ancient Sights And Building Sites
According to the screen at the end of the carriage, we’ve just hit 313 kilometres per hour, a whacking 194mph, as we speed southwards through the changing terrain. Morocco’s new high speed railway, the first of its kind on the African continent, is comfortable, efficient and very impressive, and we arrive at our change point at Kenitra in the blink of an eye. From Kenitra to Meknes it’s much older rolling stock, the compartment-and-corridor combo reminding me of British Rail circa 1970. We have high hopes for Meknes, high hopes which are all but dashed before we’ve even settled in. Virtually everything we were intending to visit is closed for…
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Tangier: A City With A Mission
The famous faces stare down at us from the walls. Film stars, movie directors, statesmen and politicians, from Winston Churchill to John Hurt, from Jean-Claude van Damme to Yves Saint Laurent, Aristotle Onassis to Tom Hiddleston. Apparently there’s been some important previous guests in our hotel. This is all by accident, we had no idea we were checking in to a hotel steeped in both history and majestic colonial style, we just thought we’d got a bargain at a decent place. And by the way, it is a serious bargain, the tariff sheet on the door of our room puts the usual price at almost FOUR TIMES the rate we’ve…
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Back Across The North: Chefchaouen-Tetouan-Tangier
When your driver introduces himself by saying “you can relax, I am good driver”, it’s a fair chance you’re going to be in for a buttock-clenching white-knuckle ride for the next chunk of your life, which is just how it is for our journey from Chefchaouen to Tetouan. With no rental car and no public transport between the two towns we have no option but to negotiate a fee with a “grand taxi” driver. Michaela can’t even bear to look forwards at times, this guy has what you might call an interesting overtaking technique, one which involves passing within half an inch of the vehicle he’s rounding, at great speed.…
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Moroccan Roll Lifestyle
Mehdi’s brother’s friend with the rental car office is waiting for us, car clean if a little battle scarred, he even has paperwork and insurance documents ready – often when we’ve done this kind of “local” hire before, the only paperwork which changes hands is cash. “Gendarmerie” he explains, with a wave of his hand. Our destination for our only day on the road in the Rif Mountains is the tiny village of Akchour, gateway to a renowned spectacular waterfall hike. Actually, it’s not just the hike that’s spectacular, the drive from Chefchaouen to Akchour is pretty amazing too. The huge, sweeping mountain terrain is so scenic, so dramatic. Regularly…
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Chefchaouen, The Blue Pearl Of Morocco
It’s funny how habits change when alcohol is taken out of the equation. With no bars to explore or beers to imbibe, our evenings come to an earlier end, and, as a consequence of bedtime creeping forward, morning comes round more quickly too. I wake around 5:15 on our second morning in Chefchaouen, darkness still edging its battle with dawn. A distant call to prayer drifts up from the town below, within minutes joined by many others, muezzins at different tones, discordant yet haunting, mournful yet evocative, echoing off walls and off the mountains themselves, growing in number until it’s impossible to work out whether I am listening to five…
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Into Africa: Sometimes Things Don’t Go To Plan
Very often there is something special about a port town, a feeling of frontier, of moving on, of adventure. Despite the fact that a large percentage of those passing through spend at most a single night in the town, there is a certain excitement about such places and we’ve regularly found them to be lively, vibrant towns with an air unique to their situation. And then there’s Algeciras. Gateway in and out of Europe it might be, but make no mistake, Algeciras is as scruffy and ugly as it gets. No wonder everyone passes through quickly; I am reminded of Bill Bryson’s comments about Dover. A quick ride on Seville’s…
