Hotel Bab el Ain Chefchaouen

... his food, and pulls out his 'travel buddy' to take a picture with. It's a little bear that he keeps in its box on its bed. I knew he was a bit strange. Anyway, he pays for my lunch which was nice and we go our separate ways. I hail a cab and go to the bus station. Since I took out money from the ATM, my smallest bill was 100dirham (about 5€). The taxi ride was only 6dirham. When I went to hand the taxi driver my 100, he got really mad and drove off without me paying. I ...

We are back in the third world again. What that exactly means, we're still not sure. Are second world and developing countries the same thing? How does a country move from one world to another over time? Are countries stuck with their category for a set period or until the indicators change? And are there nations that are not developing? And what are they called? And who is it that makes all these determinations anyway? These were questions for us to ponder ...

... the opposite. If it keeps continuing like this I think my grand weight loss plans might be out the window! As we weren't due to leave Chefchaouen until the following afternoon we spent the rest of the day just chilling around the camp site. Indulged in a hot shower, washed some clothes, jumped on the internet to sus out the Foreign Office advice for Mauritania, updated this here blog, which once again appears to be taking up more ...

... so Gabrielle parked inside a nearby internet cafe with the bags while Dan went scouting for our intended hostel.  Dan soon returned, very soggy, to retrieve Gabrielle and the bags and we were soon safely ensconced in a little white walled room in the airy Pension Cordoba.  Dropping our bags we pulled ourselves together and headed out to find food. According to our guidebook, Chefchaouen is a beautiful blue washed town (which it is) with a laid ...

... up all night eating and praying for Ramadan. We were starting to get into the Ramadan vibe too because it is difficult to sneak food during the day and it is noisy to sleep at night because everyone is up. Chefchaouen is everything you dream a Morrocan town to be. Enchanting and beautiful. The architecture is wonderful with houses and buildings rendered and painted in crispy shades of blues and white making it a photogenic place. The blue rinse ...

... but between traffic and the roads you really can't go very fast. Half way to Chefchaouen the car starts heating up (uh,oh). We've got the temperature almost on the red so we have to take the air conditioning off and I must say it's pretty hot outside. We get to Chefchaouen and go directly to the hotel (one of the friends that's with us has already stayed there). The hotel is OK, clean. Chefchaouen is a very beautiful town. When ...

... but as part of a religious ceremony, the Moroccans would paint about 2 or 3 times a year. It looked scattered in some places because the women were often the ones who painted and they could not reach as high, so the places where the paint was higher was because the men finally started painting, too. He also took us to a rug/blanket store, where we had a much shorter (and I thought much better) rug/blanket show and then we got to see ...

... Comme le vendeur de tapis qui m'a invité à boire un thé chez lui d'ailleurs. Ensuite, j'ai pris le bus pour chefchaouen, la capitale du rif et du kif marocain. Le rif, c'est la chaine de montagne au nord du pays, le kif, c'est la fleur de hashish à partir de laquelle on fait du ****.. Pas 3h que je suis la et au moins 5 propositions et l'hotel regorge de rastaquere! Promis maman, je resterais en dehors de tout sa!! Bizz à tous!

... mens flirtations and harrassments; simply by flashing my wedding ring. I paid 7 bucks for it in MA, and it has already been well worth triple its value. More on that later... The currency here is called Dirham. 10 Dirham= 1 Euro. My hotel is costing me 65 Dirham, which is approx. 6 Euro a night: pretty damn cheap. I have my own room, but share a bathroom. The toilet in the bathroom is 2 planks that you stand on and hover over a hole in the ground. Toilet ...

... we love you! Initially the route to Chefchaouen was thought to be just a dull transit to escape the Spanish motorway option, but within a few kilometres our assumptions are blown out of the water. The roads are amazing, with perfect tarmac, camber and scenery. Kids waving whenever you pass by and scenery that is like a rolling collection of great landscape paintings. The diversity of our 400km in the saddle is mind boggling. Some parts remind me of the Australian ...