Utopian Quest

After spending a pleasant day in Marrakech, we took the train to the Casablanca Airport where we waited for 5 hours for our flight (blah).  I spent the day in Lisbon, using the Travellers House as a home and packing up for the final journey home.  I spent the night in the Lisbon Airport (blah blah).  The next day I tried to board the flight and they said I had no ticket, which was somehow true.  Five hours and $200 later (blah blah blah), I managed to use the Portuguese and German I know to talk a nice lady into correcting the problem by overriding the system.  In Munich I ran to make the flight to Chicago which luckily had one seat left for me (whew).  In Chicago, this was not the case.  I had 12 hours until the next flight to Cedar Rapids, and I slept in the terminal making the total time I had spent in Airports somewhere around 4 days (BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH >>>>).  Back in Iowa the 20 degree temp highly contrasted the 80 degree I had grown used to. (MEGA BLAH).  It was nice to see family.

Back in Marrakech, our indecision finally guided us toward Imlil, a small village in the mountains that the guidebook said you need all-wheel-drive to reach. We decided to test the little fiat. In Imlil after dark, we were persuasively attacked by everyone with a place to stay. We found the newly built Ryad Imlil that was like a medieval castle.

The coolest place I have ever stayed at included huge breakfasts and dinners, they also rented us crampons and ice axes! The trail to the Toubkal Refuge was amazing, like I imagine an approach in the Himalaya to be.

Children walk to the one room School-shack(Left). Supply boy on Donkey(Middle) Pilgrimage Shrine (right)

On the way up we met a Swedish couple, one having been the member of the first Swedish team to complete the seven summits, even sailing from Sweden to Papua for an 8th summit of Carstensz Pyramid, only to be denied entrance. We ate dinner with them at the Toubkal Refuge and you can imagine the interesting conversations that ensued. At 4am we rose and saddled up to the summit attempt. At 6 am Rick met his summit. It was cold and windy, and we were climbing in duct-taped street-shoes. I continued to fight the wind to the summit ridge and up toward the summit. At 8:00 , within a 30 meters of the summit sign, I saw the weather coming in like a jet of death.

Not wanting to stand around the lightning rod, I took a quick shot of the sunny-side(above) and jetted down. The wind knocked me over repeatedly on the way down, you can tell how cold I was in this shot(below left) and a few minutes later the massif was socked in, these Russians and Spaniards were hopeful yet of gaining the summit (below right). I wished them luck, and continued down. Rick and I packed up quick and continued our decent to Imlil. It rained and snowed all night and the next morning it was questionable as to if we would be able to get back to Marrakech. Flash floods had covered the roads in many spots and once again, a taxi had crashed head on into a tourist on a narrow mountain road (scam?).

In Oarzazate, Rick wanted a fancy bathroom (pansy) so we stayed at some lavish swankhouse.   We walked to town the next day through a wide river bed that was running at a trickle (see middle photo).  That day we went to the studios where many famous desert movies were shot: Gladiator, Sahara, HBO’s Rome and a grip of Italian movies about Jesus.  Rick spent the sunny afternoon on the phone with his bank while I sat eating crêpes and ice cream, hitting on some Peacecorps volunteers.  That evening we were pumped for the town square (on which every other night there was tribal performance and crowds of people).  Turns out that New Years in Morocco is a family festival.  At 9:00pm the entire town was free of walking souls (except for us).  We walked around trying to find a bar, which pretty much don’t exist in Morocco because of Muslim majority.  Dumbfounded, we walked home and went to a cafe next door where a 70 year old white hippie was singing to a desert rock band, pretty much sounded like bad karaoke.  The waiter left (I think to search the town) and returned later with a dusty bottle of wine.  At midnight, everyone in the place came over and congratulated us, as if we were celebrities.  I really like the Harira soup (top right), and the Bsara for breakfast.  I felt the drive to Oarzazate was the best though, through old palmeries and dried up old villages (see below).

Safely out of Erfoud, we found solace with several day retreat in the Todre Gorge (below left, note the size of the people). The hiking was amazing, and I am sure the climbing is too, I watched many parties take on long, hard routes. The first night we stayed in a dive, with olive branches coming in our window. There was no electricity and the shower/bathroom flooded the entire building when Rick took a shower. That night Rick zonked out, and I went down to see what the scene we left earlier had turned into. It was a Spanish, German, Polish, Italian, and Berber drum/song/joke circle. I was the American representative. We all took turns having our nationality being the but of some joke and made up songs about Cous Cous and Tajine to drum songs. The second night we decided to leave the swamp behind and moved into a hotel inside the center of the Gorge, built under a huge overhang. Dinner was 4 course in a royal Berber tent. An entire relaxing vacation could be spent at this gorge. Just down the road is the Dades Gorge, which was wider, deeper and spanned a driving distance of 45 minutes. Here is a photo of the last winding section before the pass (bottom right). Most people are hiking up this.

Eager to see more, we followed advice for cheap rental cars to ‘AVIZ’ an avis knock-0ff. They rented us a beat-up old Fiat Sienna with a contract all in French. Driving in Marrakech tops the ‘rainiest day’ on the Autobahn for most stressful driving experiences so we were glad to get into the mountains. We stopped at a mountain village for a lunch of…guess what: TAJINE. Back on the road, ‘two grand taxis’ flew by us up blind mountain curves. Five minutes later one had collided, head on with a French tourist. A diesel tanker pulled up and couldn’t get through. Meanwhile the taxi sat leaking gas right to where the tanker sat running (nervous). Finally we moved the taxi and made it through. As we grew closer to Erfoud, the highway and villages became more muddy, and the hassle was laid on thick.  One scam was a van roadblock with a guy standing in the road. It was becoming quite imposing so we decided we’d do a day hike in the dunes on our own. Even there we couldn’t escape it, several people appeared out of nowhere, trying to sell us tours and fossils. Here you can see the vast fun we had.

The train from Casa Voyagems to Marrakech was already full when we got on. We had to hug our packs and the wall of the hall of the train. Every stop, herds of people were denied aboard. A dusty roughness greeted us in Marrakech. A nice contrast though were the orange trees that line all the major streets. It is quite different spending Christmas in a place where you wake up to the call to prayer rather than a tannenbaum, none the less a bright 80F day made us joyously eager to see how Marrakech could take our money. It didn’t take long at Djemaa El Fna (the historic square) for a snake charmer to see this was true… He took our $15 for a lousy photo, not even of the sweet cobra dancing to da musicman. Naive hardly describes our first journey into the enormous labyrinth that are the souqs (markets, above left) of Marrakech. It is quite smart to take a first passage without a camera, wallet, or anything of value, all of which we had our strong clutches on. The horse carriage ride back to Djemaa El Fna was the highlight of Christmas. The hassle free journey through innavigable alleys brought us direct to a dinner above the roaring square. It had a great view of the sunset behind the minaret(above right).

Our flight to Casablanca was like riding the chicken bus only in the air…the airport is nicer than Lisboa though. A train took us an hour to the city where we checked into our 4 star chicken coup. We tried to find a place to eat and it was the holliday of “The Killing of the Lamb” so everything was closed. Some guy named Mufasa agreed to take us to dinner if we bought him a coffee. He took us to an expensive place which we were sure he got a cut. Afterward we told him we were going to the Medina and he agreed to take us. On the way to the souq we went by the public hammam (bathhouse) where a guy in the boiler-room was sawing a sheeps head with a rusty old saw. In the souq, we were the main event (I stood out everywhere in Morocco because I am white (rich).

After we survived the 500 pickpocket attempts in the souq, Mufasa took us back to the hotel where he asked us for 200dh for wine and couscous (he wanted to have us over for dinner).  Luckily I got out of the “tour guide” scam with only 30dh bill and being called a liar.

The next day we were a little more street wise, though we knew that we wanted to be somewhere other than Casablanca.  We went to the Hassan II mosque, the largest outside of Mecca, got a mint tea and jumped on the train to Marrakech.

In the final days of Portugal, Sintra made for a nice dqy trip from Lisboa.  Only an hour away by train to the romantic village of palaces, castles, and little handicraft shops.  Another gut wrenching bus ride (everyone was green) takes you to Cabo da Roca (bottom left), the western most point in continental Europe.  The following day, Rick and I spent enjoying Lisboa which looks awesome for Christmas.

The past two days were in Evora. Why anyone would want to ride their bike for 3 hours, in the rain, up washboard dirt roads just to see a pile of rocks is strange. These rocks were set in a circle 7000 years ago at the begining of the Neolithic period. There are three monolith sites in Evora and they all lie in the middle of cork groves. On the way there, a shepherd sang to his flock, appearantly herding sheep dates back to the time of the monoliths and continues today. The locals say the site was used for music and dancing rituals of a cult, which to me sounds more fun than attending the church of let’s hang dead bodies up and let them decay. The Chapela dos Ossos is made of the bones of over 5000 people, dug up from evora.  You can see (photo right) there are the decaying bodies of a woman and a child hanging on the wall.

Tim and I found our hotel, one of the worst I have ever stayed in, I was glad the travel agent paid the 100 euros for the room. Tim and I had a blast exploring the netherreaches of Lisbon at night. In the GarÇa we nearly were eaten by gangs, we hired their dogs to fight for us though and made it out alive. The travellers house a block from the river offered a bed, luggage storage, a peculiar Dutch mate and a South Korean lady to tromp around with. Jaak, Miu, and I took the city wheels to the torre del Belem (Belem tower) with excellent views of the Golden Gate Bridge

…Now I am over the bridge, through Faro and in da Algarve, the souhern coast of Portugal. This is the DEAD week, and not the grateful. There is nothing going on. It is peaceful though, and I am enjoying meeting people of every nationality. I came to surf, though there is a storm killing the waves. Instead I visited a grotto (on the left) and to Cabo do Sao Vicente (on the right). Cabo do Sao Vicente is also known as the end of the earth, partly because it used to be the end when the world was flat, and partly because it is the last land all sailors see before deadpointing into the Atlantic.