We are now well into our third week in here in the marina and have turned relaxation into an art form, or maybe we are just being lazy:) Somehow knowing we are going to be here for so long has taken most of the urgency out of doing anything on our jobs list. While it's true we have spent long times in other places, it has never been knowingly done in advance before, we have always just lingered on. I suppose we will have to snap out of it or we will have a mad last couple of weeks here when we realise we still have loads to do and have idled away our time!
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| The Kasbah on the river |
Right right now the weather is gorgeous, bright and sunny and warm during the day, which makes it perfect for exploring by foot and certainly keeps the flies down in the foody parts of the Medina. Although around 5 pm when the sun starts to dip down the temperature drops very quickly. We are still enjoying exploring Morocco and yesterday we went to the Kasbah des Ouyadas on the Rabat side of the river, which is a medieval fort built by the Spaniards and is right on the southern promontory of the river with spectacular views out to sea and up and down the coast. We saw the river mouth where we had come in on Sunflower and watched the waves rolling in and crashing against the seawall. (the marina entrance has again been closed for 3 days due to high seas, although the marina itself is mirror calm)
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| A kasbah "blue" street |
As well as the spectacular view, the Kasbah is home to 3000 locals with only one street navigable to vehicles, the rest is all tiny, twisting turning lanes and alley ways. The buildings are painted white from the roof down to about 5 feet above ground level when they are painted a stunning shade of bright blue.(blue is supposed to deter mosquitoes!)Doors are huge timber affairs with ornate knockers or intricately painted designs and flower boxes abound with bright geraniums and bougainvillea climbing everywhere. It was stunningly beautiful.
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| That's a front door! |
We took the easy option of getting to Rabat (rather than walking the couple of miles over the noisy smelly bridge) which was by riding in the marina's Zodiac inflatable, the same one they pilot the boats in with. There are 2 docks on the Rabat side (all new floating docks) where the local fishing fleet tie up. You can also take one of the rowing 'taxis' which constantly ply from one side of the river to the other. The boats are very sturdy wooden craft and are rowed by the 'driver' standing up. They seat about 6 passengers and the cost is about 30 cents. The only problem on our side of the river is you have to walk thorough a building site to get to the dock. This renders your feet and shoes either very dusty or very muddy depending on whether it has rained or not. The plus side with using the marina boat is they will also collect you when you want to come home, although we did have to carry our hand held VHF radio with us all day so we could get hold of them in the evening.
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| The marina dinghy takes us across the river to Rabat |
After our visit to the Kasbah we strolled back through the bustling Medina and bought a pair of slippers each (for the chilly evenings) they are made from lovely soft goatskin. The ladies slippers come in every colour of the rainbow and are decorated with sequins, embroidery or embossed patterns. Very hard to choose, but at $6 a pair I expect I will be buying several pairs! Alan got a very nice pair of manly coloured tan ones (not a sequin in site!) Many of the locals wear these slippers out on the street, the local men favour the ones with the upturned pointy toes and bright yellow is a popular colour. I suppose they have to be cheap as they would wear out in a couple of weeks on the rough roads.
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| A Kasbah shoe shop |
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Then it was time for lunch so we returned to the restaurant we had been to last time and had another yummy lunch of tagine and lamb. Then we went in search of hardware stores! One was a walk away from the lunch stop, the other required a petit taxi as it was several miles away in the new town. From there we taxied to a big mall, complete with a MacDonalds! (No, that wasn't the reason we went there) It was very modern with a food hall and huge French hypermarket. Although by this time we were both fairly exhausted and it was dark, so it was a quick grocery shop and another taxi back to the dock where we called for the marina boat who dropped us and our shopping right back at Sunflower!
Driving in Morocco, or indeed being a passenger in a taxi, requires nerves of steel as there seems to be little regard for either road rules, pedestrians or lane markings! Crossing the street should be an extreme sport as the traffic gives way to nobody, even on a pedestrian crossing! Still we are getting the hang of it and it's a good adrenaline rush trying to get from one side of the road to the other in one piece!
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| A busy "street" in the Medina |
So that's our 'news' such as it is. We have booked a flight to London on Jan 6th and will stay until the end of the month. Not an ideal time to be in London, but that is when our immigration expires so we have to leave the country anyway. We are flying Ryanair who fly in and out of Fez which is about a 3 hour train trip from here. When we return our flight lands at about 7.30 pm, just too late to get a train back, so we are going to stay a couple of nights and have a look around there. We were last there 30 years ago and remember the tiny narrow streets, too small for a car but full of donkeys and their carts. As the old city is about 1000 years old, I doubt it has changed very much. We will try and stay in a Riad (a restored traditional house) in the Medina and I would like to do a 1 day cooking course. They take you to the souk in the morning to buy your fresh ingredients, then you cook a traditional 3 course meal and then you eat it! Sounds like good fun to me! I'm trying to convince Alan to come with me, but he's muttering about preferring to pull out his toenails with a pair of pliers?!
