Paul & Luiza´s World Tour

We take a nice 3 hour bus from Marrakech to Essaouira and check in at the Residence Hotel Louzani, a fully furnished flat with ocean views, satellite TV, Wi-Fi, very bright, modern and cool.  It is such a nice flat you just wish you had a constant supply of electricity so you could fully enjoy it.  This is definitely the windiest place we’ve ever seen.  It’s like the fan is on, full swing and it is much cooler than you would expect.  It’s deservedly famous for radical and water sports, with wind and kite surfing being the main activities on the beach.  The town is also a former Portuguese colony with some incredible forts and towers to show for it.  The beach is far from fantastic but that’s not why we are here.  The medina is lovely, very chilled, within the walls of an amazing fortress with great colouful craft shops, cafes and restaurants.  We spend a lot of time walking around the old town (medina) and soaking up the hippie vibe over an overpriced glass of mint tea.  After 5 days in Essaouira, it is time to move.

After a 2 & ½ bus ride back to Marrakech and another 5 hour bus from Marrakech to Ouarzazate, we check in at the basic but nice Marmar Hotel.  We are very near the desert and this small town is very chilled, cheap and tourist friendly.  It is also the starting point for people to do the camel trek desert overnight trip.  We decided that instead we will hire a car and drive from here to Fez doing the desert and Kasbah sightseeing for ourselves as many people do.  This is partly due to us seeing the remains of a bus which we found out later had crashed down the mountains and killed 44 people!! So no more bus for us if we can help it!!  There is not an awful lot to see here in Ouarzazate but it is the beginning of our road trip.  We hire the “most expensive” car of this entire trip and we are back on the road again.

Now we take a minute to talk about our Moroccan experience so far.  For some strange reason we are having a difficult time enjoying this country.  From the beginning, we had allocated 3 months for Morocco then decided to spend one month in Turkey and Cyprus and leave two months for Morocco. Suddenly we find ourselves struggling to spend even two weeks here.  We’ve been to Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and the Sinai, so, we know it is not culture shock.  We’ve done very poor countries like Myanmar and the Philippines, so, not poverty either. We can’t quite explain it yet but let’s try:  it is expensive for what you get and it is not “exotic” or pleasant.  It’s difficult to navigate and when you get to the places to see, the rewards are very few.  The sightseeing so far has been extremely disappointing. It is monochromatic (salmon) and a bit repetitive, most places have a sort of abandoned feel about them and a lot of them are literally falling apart.  And don’t get me started on the food which varies between boring and inedible.  So many meals were left untouched, Paul is calling it “the Moroccan Diet”.  People are not friendly and don’t smile, not even when doing business with you which is usually good enough motivation in any country. The beautiful people are definitely in hiding somewhere. More than once we got a feeling of certain resentment towards English speaking people. We’ve even been told, from a guy who was selling us glass perfume bottles that, and I quote “if you think it is expensive you should go to Israel”.  But he sold them to us at our price anyway.  Maybe people think we are American or something.  Do I look American? Some people working with tourism also make fun of French people saying that “they come here for the nostalgia”, good to know we are not alone with all the resentment.  Anyway, we’ll keep on trying and do the driving around tomorrow morning but at this stage, it looks like we’ll be spending the rest of our time (outside of the EU) back in Croatia and Montenegro.

We leave early in the morning and things start to get better from inside our little glass bubble (our black Peugeot).   We start with the Kasbah – Ait-Ben Haddou before we hit the road to Fes.   This place is really nice and heaps of famous films (Gladiator, the Mummy etc) have been made here.  It’s an amazing structure, extremely well maintained and totally worth the visit.  OK, things might be starting to look up.   We decide to push it the first day toward Azrou (610 kms) so we get up closer to Volubulis and our final destination, Fes.  After visiting the Kasbah we drive through desert, plains, mountains, rivers and other lovely and diverse landscape till we hit Azrou, a really nice hill town, very cool and with lots of European charm and architecture.  We check in at the Panorama Hotel, go for a walk, grab a bite and rest till next morning.  Get up early and go to see the gorgeous monkeys in the beautiful Cedar Forest nearby and move forward towards Volubulis, a great archeological site and arguably “the best Roman ruins in North Africa”. It is actually quite amazing and not a lot of tourists around the place. After taking some snaps, we drive on to Fes, where we return the car to Avis and check in at the Splendid Hotel in the new town. The driving experience was really great and we highly recommend driving yourself around Morocco if you are already here.

We go out to eat and start planning our escape from Morocco.  We decide to go back to Spain for the few days left on our visa and then head back to Croatia and Montenegro to chill for 5 weeks while waiting until it is time to get our new EU visa in October.

Meanwhile we explore the fantastic Medina (old town) in Fes, with its amazing lanes, tanneries, craft and carpet shops and fantastic examples of Islamic architecture. Definitely worth a visit if you are in this area.  Perhaps if we’d started here we might have enjoyed our time here a bit more, who knows??  Finally, we go to the train station and get our tickets to Tangier, 1st class yeah, from where we can catch a ferry to Spain. The only thing we can say to our friends who loved and recommended Morocco so much is, the quality of the hash in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s must have been pretty good.