Hotel Zaki Meknes

... 1h30 avant de to;ber sur le camping, petite reco;pense dans notre malheur, on est tombe sur des grillades kefta vraiment excellentes... on fait le lit et on s'endort en 2s. DIMANCHE 10 MAI 2009 Reveilles avec le soleil, on se fait un cafe, pas de jus d'orange cette fois ci, petit tour par les douches minables du camping, on fait la rencontre de ...

... theirs. We then got off where I met the father of the family, Naim. He didn't hesitate at all to greet me incredibly friendly, even though he had no idea who I was. The family then insisted they help me find a hotel room, which they did. Then Naim gave me his number and told me to call him today so he can show me around the city. It's these unexpected surprises that make me love traveling.

... first palm tree" type of guidance). With no GPS, no numbered highways (why number them on the map if that's the case?), and having to triangulate the true direction each and every time we got turned around, we finally got our luxury Flintstone mobile pointed generally south and toward the Middle Atlas Mountains making our way to the next stop - Meknes.

... The city was originally mainly populated by Muslims from from what is now Tunisia around the 800s, and in the late 1100s was one of the largest cities in the world, and a scientific and religious center where both Muslims and Christians from Europe came to study. After the Christian reconquest of Spain and the expulsion of the Moors and Jews (in 1492) many of them came to Fes and settled - the Arabs in the Andalucian quarter (Andalucians are known for beauty of their women and ...

... The bus stop was at a market place and it was fascinating! A tagine food shop, fruit stalls and snack shops. The place where we set up camp was a food shop - it had half a carcass hanging up in it -- if the cook had to cook something he would just get his knife and carve away a slab of meat and cook it (and smoke us out at the same time!)...it was really entertaining. Our bus arrived at 10am but apparently had ...

... talked and lived. We saw what happens with the leftovers from restaurant diners -- when our discards become the primary source of sustenance for others. For lunch we returned to a terrace restaurant snuggled into an inside corner of Place el-Hamid ...

'jour. Je me suis planté dans le bouquin "Histoire du Maroc depuis l'Indépendance", en co-lecture avec leur nouveau "Code de la famille" (code de transition entre la Loi Divine (ça commence vraiment par LOUANGE A DIEU SEUL! en majuscules) et les recommendations de l'ONU pour assurer la stabilité des investissements - à savoir, grosso merdo : les femmes et les enfants sont pris en charge par l'Etat sur fond de "progrès du droit humain", dans les faits ...

... with wheat fields and olive groves, and consisting of crowded low rise buildings that seem from the distant hillside overlooks to all blend into one mass, Fez-El-Bali (the old city/medina) is spectacular. To me the old walled city (the medina) was quite reminiscent of Jerusalem, except on a much grander scale, and what it lacks in sights of great religious significance it makes up for in atmosphere and authenticity. Also like Jerusalem, Fez ...

... today'. Perhaps the biggest surprise I got in Meknes was a wholesale shift in food style and another step up in enjoyability. I say 'surprise' as my first dining choice was a poor one: I'm pretty sure that the meat contents of my BBQ'd sausage were predominantly horse. With enough chilli sauce you can eat anything though, and as I'd paid my $3 for it, I wasn't going to give up on it no matter how much it smelt like fresh horse manure. Which was a lot ...

... the landscape became increasingly barren and dry. We even went a little bit off-road at one point which was quite exciting! We finally arrived at Zagora, on the edge of the desert where our camel trek commenced from just as the sun was about to set, at around 5.30pm. We were assigned camels and climbed aboard - they are slightly scary things as you end up being pretty far off the ground...then our driver deserted us with a quick 'A dèmain!' and by the time we realised we wouldn ...