Dar Dayana Essaouira

... shops to try to find some culturally appropriate clothes for Mauritania and some local art. I ended up buying a new purse and shirt. I do believe by the end of this trip I will have quite the eclectic wardrobe. Craig says I’m starting to look like a proper hippie already. I just need to find someone to give me dreads….

... man after his bath with the locals. Apparently you go into a big room and they put local soap all over him and scub he said that a layer of skin came off and then they put big buckets of hot water all over him to make him clean. As I could not go Mohammad brought me back some local clay that you mix with water and put on your hair to make it really clean and nice so will have a girly night when we get home and we can try it out.

Marrakech, Marrakech-Tensift-Al Haouz, Morocco traceybelle

... into a vibrant local "garage sale" (if there's a "Goodwill" in Morocco, by golly I'll FIND it!) where a cluster of scarf-clad matrons (at first clearly skeptical of a lone tourist with a camera barging into their cloistered midst) soon amicably melted (as I made it clear I wouldn't dream of snapping photos in such a private domain.) Indeed, eventually I negotiated for a somewhat tattered (but nonetheless ...

... both glad when it came to an end.

We wander back into town and decide that we are going to go and get a crepe. I have a banana and chocolate one. Alex realised earlier that she had lost her phone somewhere on the beach when we went horse riding, we all thought that she’d never see it again. By complete luck, my phone had been left on since we first arrived in Morocco and it started ringing – someone had found Alex’s phone – looked at the last ...

... A popular old Russian song by Alla Pugachova, the light suddenly went down low for a couple of seconds and the show was over... It looked like synthesizer of a band member was burnt by electricity failure=( It was so pity...

So, as far as we ended our drinks, we went back through the night city, which looked wonderful at night... Then again we spent some time by the pool with some wine=)

... also to be an included dinner as part of our trip. So we all had dinner at a very nice Riad that is owned by a French woman. One of Simo's friends watches the house while she is away and we were given permission to use it. It was an awesome dinner. We not only got to meet Simo's mom (she doesn't speak a lot of English, but we were able to understand that her name is Fatima), but also some of his friends. I think he was secretly ...

... lovely room in Moroccan style. I felt like I'd never want to leave again. My first stop was Il Mare. A restaurant right behind the city walls but high enough to look over them. Ten days before Christmas, I was sitting outside on the roof terrace, enjoying a good lunch with a view of the ocean. It was blue skies all over and just pleasant. Was it really 3 days since I was walking through the snow...

... the bus I would be riding in, which was a big, beautiful, clean, modern, airconditioned bus. I was told that it was a first class ticket, that the bus would be at the station at 8am for departure, and that it would stop shortly thereafter for a breakfast stop, and then it would take only 6 hours to reach rabat, as this bus would only make 3 stops along the way. This was an express bus. Sounds great, right? Well, the next morning I waited for my bus, and ...

... so we spent a lot of time following 'helpful' kids who showed us where to go - and gave away all our chewing gum in the process! We got talked into a 'tour' en-route of the tannery - a bad move, as it was quite disgusting - the place reeked of offal, pigeon poo (which they use to soften the leather) and I don't know what else but it almost made you retch...our 'guide'(aka some guy off the street who could speak a couple of words of english) raced us around the pools ...

... along with your backpacks, imagine what you'd think when you felt it kicking the floor under your feet. Why is it that people understand that you must learn to play guitar, yet believe that anyone can play drums with their hands? Laynni's haggling skills have improved by leaps and bounds over the past couple days and she's even developed her own signature move: a horizontal slash! of her hand combined with an I-mean-business frown and an ...