Arrived at about 10 am and got taxi to the Medina. Found a hotel with the help of a guy (who of corse wanted paying for his hard work). Leah flooded the place with a long shower which had poor very (almost non existant) drainage while I fell asleep on the bed and therefore didnt notice the inch of water on the ground until the staff banged on the door.
Had a little sleepy before we went for a walk in the medina and checked out the djemaa el fna. Leah got freaked out by the snakes (even the wooden ones) so we headed into the souks before tea and home for an early night. Up early for day tour out to cascades d ouzoud and got up a little earlier to have breakfast at the patisserie - yumbo. After a 3 hour bus and Lisa loudly announcing to our bus of old(er) English speaking travellers that she "didnt mind old people", we arrived. Checked out the falls and crossed the river on a little boat for 30dh because the bridge was blocked off as unsafe. We all had the sneaking suspicion that the boat guys had sabataged the brigde for thier own benefit! We had about 4 hours to spend out here so we decided to go for a walk to see if we could find the little berber village. Sort of got a bit lost trying to cross the river on the way back but luckily for us a stray local dog showed us the best tracks to take us back to the path. Made our way back along the river via the Bob Marley cafe where we had soft drinks including one called hawai tropical which tasted just like a good old frosty fruit.
Walked up to the top of the falls which was a pretty impressive sight and back to the town for lunch where my pink jumper (aka pinkie) was lost for good. Sad days. So what it has holes everywhere!?! Onto the bus at 3 and back to the hotel by 6. Dom was not feeling well so while he stayed within toilet range, the rest of us went out into the souks. Bought some suplies for our planned hammam and some popcorn for 50c. The first time I feel like we were paying the same price as teh locals! Leah and Lisa did some bargaining (which was helped by the fact that Morocco was playing England in the soccer on tv which I think he really wanted to get back to) and bought some xmas pressies and then a beanie for leah. As I was looking for a beanie one of the fake snake guys came up and scared the shit out of me. The knitting lady chased the boy away and saved my life so I was happy to buy a beanie from my hero! After a week of tajines and cous cous we thought the food may be giving us the funny tummies so we decided to get things back to normal by having a pizza. Great choice!
Omelettes for bfast and then onto the saadian tombs and the el badi palace (impressive and enormous) and a free local tour of the mellah. Its sad how jaded we have become that we automatically assume that everyone we meet is just trying to get money out of us.as this guy was actually really lovely and just wanted to sow us his neighbourhood. Had gelati for lunch (!!) before Leah and Lisa took off to the hammam. What an experience! We finally find this little hole in the wall hammam and the lady does not speak any English. Only French and Arabic. Using a bit of sign language she understands we want the works so in just bather botoms we head to the big steam room and are told to sit. Plenty of big mummas around then the bigest one of all comes over and is our scrubber. We have to massage this black olive scrub onto our bodies and then she flips and spins us around to scrape our skin off and i almost lost a boob or 2 in the process! Next is the massage and all up we were probably in there for a good hour and come out feeling like I had never been so clean but I had probably felt more relaxed.
Met back at the hotel and decided to stay another night as couldnt leave the facilities for long enough to go on the train Lisa, Leah and I walked down to the new town (gueliz) and returned with pizza and cards. More thumbnails ...
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