Morocco - delay in Toronto

 I knew the flight back from Morocco would be difficult, with a planned 26 hour travel time with layovers in Paris and Toronto. I had heard about the storm in Vancouver, and at first I hoped there would be a window in which our flight from Toronto to Vancouver could go. However, after several delays, the flight was cancelled - not because of weather, but because of lack of crew. Apparently nobody at Westjet had the foresight to get crew out of Vancouver before the first storm. By this time we had already been up for over 24 hours, and we had to stand in a long line to find out what to do and get a hotel voucher for the night.

They told us to wait for an email with a re-booking, and we had to come back to the airport every day to get another hotel voucher. We showed up the next day, and there was one 3 to 4 hour line, for everybody - whether they were checking in normally, trying to get a re-booking, or getting another hotel voucher. Just one long, long, line. Every day.

Fortunately, people in the line talk to each other, and we got some reliable information from them. The Westjet staff were incredibly nice and patient. But they were just telling us what they were told to, and a lot of that information was not correct.

According to other people, the email never comes. They advised us to insist on a booking when we got to the counter, and we did, for 6 days later. We got one more hotel voucher and decided to pay for the rest of the hotel nights ourselves. We were told we'd be reimbursed but I don't really trust it.

Main take-away:  the air travel infrastructure in Canada - airports and airlines - is a complete mess. From now on when I travel internationally, it will be with a non-Canadian airline, and I will make sure there are no layovers in Canada.

So, we had an unplanned week in Toronto. On the bright side, Celene has family in Toronto so we spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day at her cousins or her uncles place. She got to see some relatives she hadn't seen in a long time. Also visited with some friends there.

The hotel was downtown, so there was the chance to walk around and explore downtown Toronto. We went to the Winter Village in the Distillery District.

Finally, after a nail-biting wait at the airport with more delays, our flight finally to Vancouver finally took off.

Got to Vancouver to find 2 of the 3 bags of checked luggage were lost.

Morocco - back to Marrakech

 The bus ride back to Marrakech took the afternoon. We checked into the hotel and rested a bit, and as a group we walked into the old town at night.

We had dinner at the top floor of a restaurant overlooking the Jamal el Fnaa square.

The next day everyone in group went their separate ways. 

Celene and I walked to the other side of the old town, to another kind of touristy area which has the royal palace, and the Saadine tombs. The mosque with the tombs dates back to the 12th century. There was an garden and buildings with incredibly ornate geometrical patterns.

The next day - our last in Morocco - we went back to the artisan co-op and bought souvenirs. We packed to get ready for the early morning flight the following day.

At night we went to a Jewish Moroccan restaurant near the hotel. Interesting because it was the first day of Hanukkah. People came in selling menorahs, the candle holders, and wish us happy Hanukkah.

Morocco - coast and Essaouira

Another long day of driving. When we first left Taraoudant it had been raining. People said it was much-needed rain after four years of drought. It soon cleared up and became sunny.

We reached the coast, and a city called Agadir. This was very modern-looking city, and we soon had our first views of the ocean. We stopped for lunch at a beach that was full of tourists from Europe that come for the surfing. It really felt like a coastal resort town.

We continued to Essaouria. We stopped outside the edge of the old town, and unloaded the bags.  This was as far as we travelled by the van, and we said goodbye to the driver.

We stayed for two nights in a 'riad' in the old town. A riad is a Moroccan style building, which has a open courtyard and the rooms on the different floor around it.

After checking in, we all went out for dinner at a place that had live traditional entertainment.

The next day we started with a guided walking tour of Essaouira. It is a fishing town, and there is a port filled with blue fishing boats, around a 16th century Portuguese tower.

From the port there is a view of the old town.

We walked through the markets of the old town. The narrow alleys are crooked on purpose, to block the wind. We passed a Jewish museum, and learned there is quite a Jewish history here. We passed a local fish market. There are restaurants there, and the custom is to buy raw fish at the market, and take it to the restaurant and pay to have it cooked.

We stopped at a circular fortress with cannons. 

There are small islands just off Essaouria, that were occupied by the Pheonicians in 600 BC.

We also visited some artisan shops. At one of them a wood craftsman gave us a demonstration of how he does the wood inlay. 

We finished the tour at a silver craft shop.

This was the day of a World Cup game of Morocco vs. Croatio for third place. There was big screen in the plaza. This time, however, Morocco didn't play so well and lost, so there wasn't that much excitement. 

We had dinner at a restaurant with a great view over the fortress, at sunset.

Afterwards we walked around the markets, which become very busy at night.

The next day we had the morning to look around, before catching a bus back to Marrakech. I walked on my own for a while, and went inside the Jewish museum. There was very interesting, old black and white footage of Essaouira from early 1900s - a lot of the buildings and traditional activities of people looked the same as today.

At lunch time, several of us met in a  part of the old town to look for a place to eat. In Morocco, it seems, things do not open very early. We found a restaurant down an alley that just sold octopus, and the owner was just setting. Seeing a large group for lunch, he opened right away, sent his wife to buy bread, and started cooking. It was the best octopus I'd ever had. And we made back to the hotel in time walk to the bus station.

Morocco - Sahara, Taraoudant

We woke up at 6am for the 4 hour drive in the 4x4's out of the Sahara to the town where we met the van.

It was dark when we started and the drivers somehow managed to navigate the featureless dark landscape. We stopped for a break to watch the sunrise.

We were also entertained for a while by a little desert mouse.

The way out of the Sahara passed over a very flat, prehistoric lake bed, where the drivers pulled out all the stops and started racing. Pretty fun.

We also stopped at a place that was covered with fossils: seashells, parts of plants, etc. You'd think with all the tourists over the years it would be picked over, but there were fossils on the ground all over. 

The town at the edge of the Sahara, Oulad Dress, had a bustling market. We walked around, had a coffee, and loaded back into the van.

On the highway we had to stop for a sandstorm.

We continued driving toward the city of Taraoudant. On the way we saw the famous goats in the trees -  the goats climb up the branches to eat the Aragorn nuts.

After the long day we arrived at Oulad Berhil, just outside Taraoudant. The hotel was actually a former palace of a regional governor, with a beautiful garden, and a large ornately decorated dining hall.

The next morning we started on the long drive to Essaouira. We stopped at Taraoudant for a coffee, which has the remains of a old fortress wall.

Morocco -Tamegroute, M'Hamid, and Sahara camp

 First thing in the morning, we went to a shop in Zagora to buy scarves for wearing in the Sahara.

On the way to the Sahara, in the morning we stopped in a Tamegroute, where we visited an Islamic school and library. 

The library had over 4000 books from before the 15th century, the oldest one being a Koran from the 11th century. All the books were written by hand in calligraphy. There were books on literature, and books on sciences translated from Greek. Where the word Allah appeared, it was written in gold lettering.

Afterwards we walked through narrow passageways between buildings made of plaster, which is warm in winter and cool in summer. Tamegroute is known for it's green pottery. The clay comes from the local river, and the glaze is made from mint flower, magnesium, and copper. We visited a workshop were the pottery is made and sold. 

We left Tamegroute and drove through a flat dry landscape, and then over another mountain pass, until we got to the village of M'Hamid, on the edge of the Sahara. There we had lunch with a Berber family.

At M'Hamid we left the van and loaded everything to three 4x4 jeeps for the drive to the Sahara camp. It was a couple of hours ride through desolate looking, flat rocky landscape with drifts of blowing sand and sparse scrub vegetation.

Then we reached the area of the huge sand dunes, called Erg Chigaga, where the camp was. We settled into the camp and then scampered up the dunes for a bit. Really a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Then we all got on camels to ride over the dunes for a couple of hours. During a break we climbed some of the bigger dunes, and watched the sunset.

An advantage of the Sahara at night is that not only are you away from city lights, but there is no moisture in the air, so the view of the stars in incredible.

Morocco - Ait Benhaddou and Zagora

 After a very cold night through which nobody slept very well, we got up early for the walk down to the road to Imlil where the van was waiting. We picked up our luggage, had coffee, and started on a fairly long travel day. Then there was a 6 hour drive up very winding roads, with occasional stops for construction. There was one stop for coffee, and after passing the summit of the Tichka Pass we stopped for lunch. From the van, and during stops, there were fantastic views of the pass and the High Atlas mountains.

We arrived at Ait Benhaddou late in the day, the remains of an old fortress, or ksar, and a World Heritage site. There were a lot of tourists there, I think mainly because this has been the location for the filming of many movies.

We checked into the hotel, and walked to the top of the ksar, where there is the remains of a storage building on the top of a rock outcrop, surrounded by mud-constructed buildings in which a few families live. I got a great picture in the sunset.

The families sell tourist items or artworks. There was an interesting shop where the artist painted using saffron, indigo, and tea, and then heated the paper over a burner to turn the tea dark with a very dramatic effect.  

The surrounding landscape is sparse and very eerie looking.

The next day was the drive to Zagora, the date growing area.

In the morning we stopped at the Atlas Movie Studios, where several people took the tour while the rest of us waited at the pool.

Next was a stop in the city of Ouarzazate, where we visited a spice and herbal medicine shop. We also stopped at a grocery store to pick up food for a picnic lunch later.

It was another of winding roads and amazing views of the rocky landscape. In the distance you could see long patches of green, following a river, where the dates are grown.

In Zagora, we went on a tour of a date plantation, where there were also small plots of land for growing vegetables, irrigated with water pumped from a well.

We had dinner at the hotel, which had a beautiful garden. Although we didn't have much time there, Zagora seemed like a very beautiful, clean city. At night when you look up at the side of the mountain, there is large writing in lights, spelling 'God, King, and Country' in Arabic. I saw this elsewhere in Morocco as well, and to me it shows the pride and devotion of the people.

Morocco - Imlil valley

 The next morning we piled into the van and drove on highway and then up narrow winding roads to the town of Imlil. There we stored most of the luggage in an inn, had a Moroccan coffee called nousnous, and packed small overnight bags which were loaded on donkeys.  We hiked for just over an hour up a steep hiking trail, through little villages of the Imlil valley.

We hiked until we reached a larger, Berber village called Aroumd, where we were to spend the night at an inn run by a Berber family. Our tour leader was Berber and she was enthusiastic about teaching us about her life and culture. 

We had a lunch of mint tea, salad, chicken skewer, rice, and  a Berber egg dish. After lunch we went outside and saw a woman cooking bread in a stone oven, and we all had a piece. 

Then, some of us did a hike up a steep trail into Toubkal Park, passing lots of sheep  and once in a while a donkey coming down.  Vegetation was sparse grass and Spanish Juniper. Great views of the valley, a creek below with green around it  and a couple of waterfalls. After a couple of hours we reached shrine called Shamrush, which had little coffee houses that are used by mountaineers on their way to climbing Mt. Toubkal, which is over 4000 m high. While we were there, we met a group of Moroccan mountaineers on there way down.

It was interesting to think we were in Morocco, compared to my preconceptions of it, when the scenery around us could have been from the Himalayas.

On the way back, we had views of a flat, dry river bed which had green patches for grazing animals, and a soccer field.

Back at the inn we had tea and then dinner of tangine - meat and vegetables cooked on a ceramic plate with a conical cover which is typical in Morocco. 

There was no heat in the inn, and the temperature in the mountains dropped below zero, so we slept with several blankets and sleeping bags. 

Morocco - Marrakech

For the first international trip in over 4 years, in December Celene and I went to Morocco for two weeks, joining the South Morocco tour by a travel company called Intrepid. The tour itself is 10 days, and we arrived 2 days early and stayed for 2 days after the tour to have time in Marrakech. 

After a 17 hour flight from Vancouver via a layer at Paris airport, we arrived in Marrakech in the late afternoon, and had arranged to be picked up by a driver to take us to the hotel. My first impression of Marrakech was how clean it was. And all the buildings were that plain sandy colour that reminded you that you were not far away from the desert. Our hotel was in the Gueliz area which is newer and quite modern looking. I found a supermarket to buy juice and water, which was just like a Whole Foods in Canada with its variety and quality of goods. Got back to the hotel and crashed.

The next day we had a big breakfast at the hotel with bread, omelet, pastries, tomato and olives. The day was partly cloudy and about 20 degrees C, which was great for walking. We headed toward the old town, called Medina, in the center of the city. Marrakech is not that big and easy to get around by walking. 

On the way we passed a nice park which was an arboretum dedicated to trees of the Mediterranean like orange and olive trees. We were quite jet-lagged so we took our time and hung out in the park for a while.  

We also passed an artisan co-op which sold all kinds of crafts - leatherwork, dishes, clothing, antiques, etc. Since we had just arrived, we simply made a note to visit after the tour.

Near the center of town is the major landmark of the Koutoubia, a major mosque dating from the 1100's.

Not far from here is the huge open square called Jamal el Fnaa, which is full of vendors, snake charmers, monkeys, etc, and is the main gathering place for the town.

We went up to a restaurant terrace to have mint tea and take pictures. In the picture you'll notice a large screen set up, to show the World Cup games. More on that later.

Next to the square starts the huge market area - a labyrinth in which we spent most of the day getting lost. There were all kinds of souvenirs, clothing, jewelry, and household items including intricately carved metal lanterns. One of the more interesting parts was the spice market, where you could get everything from peppermint crystals to soaps to blocks of indigo. 

We had dinner in a little local place just off the main square - lamb couscous and skewers - and then walked back to the hotel. Later I went out to find an ATM, since we already realized that Morocco was more expensive than we expected.

The next day at breakfast we met another group that was just finishing their Intrepid tour. They mentioned that the information from Intrepid was out of date in terms of prices.

This is the day we are to meet our group in the evening. 

We started the day going to the Majorelle Garden which is in a nice, upscale area with expensive cafes, within walking distance of our hotel. The garden features a wide variety of plants, and an interesting architecture colored in indigo which makes an interesting contrast with the sand-colored buildings elsewhere. I was built in the early 1900's and then renovated by the fashion designer Yves St. Laurent. 

From there we went back to the market, and had a lunch in a little stall that sold calamari sandwiches that were very good. Everywhere, everyone - locals and tourists - were wearing red Morocco hats, Morocco T-shirts, and waving flags. This was the day of the World Cup game of Morocco vs. Portugal. If Morocco wins, they'd be the first middle-eastern and first African country to enter the semi-finals. We made are way to the main square, and I bought a hat from a vendor. (Normally I'm terrible at haggling, but since this was just for the one day, I definitely didn't was to pay a lot. I got the price down from 150 Dirham to 50!)

The main square was packed, and we were there when Morocco scored the goal against Portugal. The crown went wild with celebration. 

While walking back to the hotel, every cafe was crowded with people watching the game. By the time we got the hotel to meet our group, Morocco had won the game, and the streets were one big party. Very cool way to start the trip.

We met the group and our tour leader, and went for dinner at the hotel. It was interesting that the tour leader, named Chama, was female which is fairly unusual here. The group was large, 14 people. Surprisingly, it was mostly Canadians. Otherwise there were 4 Americans, two Australian brothers, a guy from the UK, and a woman from Switzerland.