Golden Tulip Farahsafi

... to Ahmed demanding that he'd share his food with him. He was not satisfied with only two skewers so Ahmed (who I think was a drinking buddy of him) ended up giving him all the food, visibly concerned to be physically attacked. I returned to my hotel. There is a whole lot of drama happening under my hotel window as I am writing this, around 10:30 PM. A young guy is fighting with two others in the dark alley below my window. The two he ...

... of clarity when you realise where you are and how great it is. The next day we woke up and had some brekkie at a restaurant on the beach. The waves seemed to be all over the shop and when we found out it was about 30 Australian to hire a board we though "Forget it". About 6km down the beach we saw a point break that had alot of potential and we considered stealing a couple of donkeys to get there but in the end we made ...

... managed to get in a couple trips to the ocean and got a particularly thorough tour of the old palace ruins. It's amazing how much more you get to see when your guide is a 10-year-old. Though I've been back to visit several times over the past couple years, sometimes I still have my head stuck in the past and forget that the little kids who used to ...

When I was a PCV Safi was the nearest city to me so I went about once a week to get mail, use the phone, etc. We stopped through to visit a good friend but for the most part it's a rough little industrial port town with far too many corrupt cops and angry young men--we decided it's the "Baltimore of Morocco". We had a lovely evening though. I introduced Katie to the neighborhood public bath, one of my favorite things in Morocco ...

... paying for there bags so we tried to be awkward and walk around the bus and put our bags in that side, but then an english guy came over and said this is the way they usually do it so we just went along with it, were pretty sure we got charged some tourist tax though! The bus journey there was three hours long and claire and chris sat behind me and i was sat on my own on the seat until just before we were about to leave and a guy came and sat next to me ...

... economic and cultural differences are vast and of course what makes coming here so fascinating. Morning here usually starts with a call to prayer from the nearest Mosque. Yesterday our campground was within hearing range of 3 or 4 of them so it was quite a blur of prayers as they competed together for the faithful. Not knowing Arabic, I don't know if anything other than salvation is being offered, and it's not as though a lot of people start ...

... traffic in these towns greets you with dozens of kids milling about and rushing off to one of the 3 schools in the area, and countless donkey carts off to work and transport goods. The road out of Imintanoute was equally neat- the Atlas mountains closing away behind us, replaced with red rocky rolling desert hills ahead. The road was sunny, flat, long and amazing!!! Clay, red, rocky villages. The scenery was so different during different parts of the day it kept our interest; every ...

Sunday, time to go home. Of course, we couldn't do things the easy way!!! A big thanks goes out to Thompson Fly for our 7 or so hour delay on our flight!!! boy was I glad to get home that night, at one stage it looked like we were stuck in Morocco!! enough said!!!

The port city of Essaouira was our last stop on the tour. We've had quite a bit of free time in Marrakech as well as here for shopping and relaxing. I've been glad as its provided me with the opportunity to catch up on my travelogue! Our only stop on the way to Essaouira was to see goat in trees. (!) Goats climb the thorny argun trees and stand precariously on the limbs to eat the fruit. Once the goats digest the fleshly covering of ...

... lunch as my stomach was a bit upset. We watched Gaby, a film dubbed into French, in the TV lounge of our hotel, The Majestic. Monday May 26 A day of rest. Apart from going out to eat more fish, we spent most of the time in the hotel. We tried to see the Portuguese fort (Qasr al-Bahr), but visitors are no longer allowed inside as parts of the wall have fallen into the sea. Raymond's Travel Page