After crossing the Middle Atlas, we end our cycling in Marrakesh. It has been a long week of riding, crossing some high passes and travelling through a landscape of stones and cedars, punctuated by nights in small towns that are not tourist attractions, nor set up to accommodate western tourists at all. Although there are cafes, they are a very masculine domain, with good coffee but weird ambience. There is usually not much a vegetarian can eat, and because promenading along the main street takes about five minutes and we are stared at or followed the whole time, we usually end up retreating to our hotel room for a picnic of fresh bread and avocado. I discover that I can survive on a week of cold showers, and when I finally think I have found a hot one, learn that the hot tap has in fact been connected to the electricity mains and attempt to electrocute myself in a bathroom that could pass for a cell. This aside, it was wonderful being in a normal Moroccan town seeing normal lives without the tourist overlay, and the mountains, with the snowy peaks of the high atlas in the distance are beautiful.
As a city, then, Marrakesh is a revelation. Cafes. Shops. Lights and colour. Hundreds of tourists, who allow us to blend in with the crowd. It is easy to navigate, with plenty to see. We head off on a tourist bus to ride camels through Saharan Desert dunes in Merzouga. It feels like cheating, being driven in air conditioned comfort from restaurant to berber camp, kasbah to carpet shop.
On our final night, Marrakesh turns on a party. Somehow, Raja Casablanca has made it to the World Club Cup Final, playing Bayern Munich. The Jemaa El Fna square in the centre of the medina, which is usually packed with orange juice sellers, fig and date stalls, cobra charmers and acrobats is transformed instead into a place of football worship, with the game televised on a giant screen at one end of the square and a huge crowd of green and white flag bearing Moroccans, with the odd leiderhosen wearing German in the mix. People assume we are German, greating us with 'Wilkommen' and taunting us 'Two Zero'. If I actually was German I'm sure I'd feel schadenfreude in the fact that the score was 'Two Zero', but not their way. But it would have been nice to see Casablanca win.
Instead of joining the humming masses, we went to the Grand Hotel Tazi to watch the game. What was once a grand hotel now looks a little worn at the edges, but the lobby is still decked out with beautiful stone carved walls and tilework. We sit amongst an odd crowd, surrounded by their empty beer bottles and plates of olives and popcorn. There are very stoned westerners, staring moonily at the screen, and Moroccans in leather jackets and baseball caps. A Che lookalike who sits on the edge of his seat, looking like this is a game of life or death. A man in a white down jacket with teeth like candles in a birthday cake, who mutters angrily and occasionally pulls up his sleeve to examine the stump where his hand should be. Then he turns to us with a smile, telling us that Australia is wonderful and he likes that Matt's scarf looks like a Raja scarf. A moment later two beautiful blonde girls waft past, and he tears himself away from the game and drifts hypnotised in their wake.
....
One day and a three hour flight later, and we are in a pub near Gatwick Airport. Matt returns from the bar cheerful because he has just avoided a fight. Apparently it ran along the following dialogue.
Man: Are you sniffing me?
Matt: No! I'm just looking at the beer!
Pause, with two minutes elapsing while beer is poured.
Man: So you weren't sniffing me then?
Matt: No.
Man: O.k. Sing with me. Na na na na na, Baby give it up, give it up.
Matt shakes his hand and backs away. A little while later, we overhear him conversing on the phone as we leave.
Man: If he wants to be a big man, tell him to come out here. Go on. Tell him. Tell him to come out here now, big man.
A police car pulls up. We keep walking.
