Sunday 28 September 2008

I'm Home

I know I should have at least posted to say so at the time. I've pre-dated this so it looks like I did, but I didn't.
I keep trying to finish off the final post, but plunged back into work, etc. and have still failed. Sorry.

Wednesday 24 September 2008

Ali Baba's Desert Journey (Not)

On a map at the wind-tunnel hotel, the proprieter pointed out that it's possible to travel from Erfoud to Merzouga either by asphalt (normal roads) or "piste" (desert tracks), but that there are lots of tracks so we'd need a guide.
Passing through Erfoud, Keith stops at a car workshop and one of the guys there, a mechanic I thought, agrees to guide us. I'm driving as we leave the town on asphalt and, due to a miscommunication, briefly get stuck in the very first deep-ish drift of sand across the road. Great!
Deserts don't turn out to be what I'd thought. Yes, there are great expanses of sand dunes, in various shades between yellow and red depending on the area, but there's far more area of hard-packed sand, covered with many small stones, mostly between the sizes of grit and grapefruit.
It is quite fun driving across the desert tracks, with the occasional patch of deeper soft sand that would be able to bog us down and so we have to go more quickly across or power through.
When we get to Merzouga, the mechanic claims the agreed price for his services was 700 Dirhams, not the already-exorbitant 500 Dirhams that Keith understood. He's a bit stupid, as we were considering employing him to guide us on the next, longer leg of our journey. No way now.
We find Merzouga horrible. It's just a tourist-trap on the edge of the dunes full of hotels all offering "chambres, camping, bivouac."
As the mechanic gets out, another guy introduces himself and tries to establish himself as our "fixer". We decline, and choose one hotel set a little apart from the others for a cold beer with a view of the dunes. Refreshed, we decide to shake the over-eager dust of Merzouga from our feet and head for the small town at the very end of Morocco's tarmac, Taouz.
We have to pass by the "fixer" chap on the way, and stop when he waves us down. He won't take "no" for an answer and stays hanging in through the window. We have to drive off to get away, and even then we see him getting onto a motorbike to chase after us, but we double back and lose him. I guess the mechanic told him just how much money he managed to get from us, and wanted similar for himself.
Another fixer approaches us when we stop just outside the town to check the map, but gives up politely at our disinterest.
We read in the guidebook that there are places to camp in the desert, with GPS locations on roadside signs. We're stopped by the roadside trying to make the TomTom simply show us direction and distance (which it won't let us do), when a Land Rover pulls alongside and yet another "fixer" introduces himself, explains his wares and gives us the card of his hotel. This guy does seem different, smarter and informative rather than persuasive. Also, he offers us a good rate of 200 Dirhams a head for dinner, bed (with aircon) and breakfast.
We drive to Taouz, find there's nothing for us there and reluctantly turn back to Merzouga, deciding to locate the hotel. It's one of the first we come to and the fixer, Hassan, is waiting outside.
We consume our own beer and wine before and with a pleasant dinner. Afterward, we discuss options with Hassan for cross-country travel through the Sahara. We settle on a two-day trip to Mhamid, with our bus folowing Hassan's Land Rover, sleeping in the desert "with family" and going over the mountains on the second day.
Hassan and his colleagues give us nicknames: Keith is Mohammed Tagine, Sarah is Fatima Cous-Cous (which she loves) and I'm Ali Baba (because of my beard).
We set out at about 11:30am (don't ask), with Hassan and brothers Achmed and Ibrahim plus either Sarah or myself in the Land Rover and Keith plus the other in the Landcruiser to minimise weight.
The trip is fabulous, and we see several different landscapes during the day, starting with areas of dark volcanic rock that we have to pick our way through, and including a super-smooth lake bed, which we race across at near-motorway speeds.
Toward the end of the day, we see puddles by the roadside and stop for a closer look. They aren't puddles - they're the edge of a huge flood which we walk onward to stare at from the top of a sand-hump. Apparently, a short way forward the road will be under 4 metres of water. This completely blocks our way forward to our overnight stop and to Mhamid. Judging from the last time this happened, the route will remain impassable for 20 days. Shortly after we turn back, the old men in a village tell Hassan that the water suddenly arrived between 9am and 9:30am this morning, which is why Hassan didn't hear about it when he rang ahead earlier.
The water has come from the Atlas Mountains. This is the same rainfall that fell on us there, causing the landslips that blocked the road! Now it's blocking our route again.
We return to the tiny hotel, on it's own in the desert, where we stopped before for cold drinks.
As a last flourish, the guys drive the Land Rover to the top of a high sand dune, giving me a fabulous view over the range of dunes stretching beyond, by the light of the evening sun. Keith tries to follow but, due to his narrower tyres, bogs down half-way up and has to be pulled out.
We catch the hotel owner just as he's getting on his motorbike to go home. It turns out that the rooms are still being built and don't have lights, power or bathrooms. There's a separate toilet block with at least one sit-down toilet.
Dinner is lovely, a lettuce-free salad dressed with olive oil laced with cumin, followed by a tagine filled with cous-cous, vegetables and some meat which I think is chicken but comes on very non-chicken-like bones.
One thing we've learned about the desert is that there always seems to be some wind, although its strength varies. The bus gets very hot with the windows shut, but driving with front windows open has been entirely bearable. I shut the outside door of the hotel sitting/dining room and the temperature rise means it soon has to be re-opened.
The guys suggest that we sleep on the flat roof rather than in our hot rooms, so we do. Under the substantial blanket the temperate is very pleasant. Lying there, the sky amazes me. With no light or air pollution, the million stars are stunningly clear. For the first time I think I see the milky way. Just before 4am I wake up and find the insects have too. Expecting the guys to get up soon for their 4am meal before the Ramadan daytime fast, I retire to my room.
The revised plan is to make our way to a town not far from our start point (hence not-travel, the flood is the non-desert part from the post title). Some of the way is across sand cut into continual humps by wind or water and proves very heavy going. As we emerge we see more water - our way is blocked again! The depth would only be 2 metres this way, but faster-moving and just as impassable.
We turn back again and head up into the hills, climbing ever higher. We hit water again, but this time the guys decide it's passable. For the first time, apart from one watersplash the first day, we drive into standing water. A bit further on we find the floods have swept away part of the river crossing, so we have to make another way across. Keith gets through with no problems, saying that this is right in line with his experience from Australia.
We find ourselves in an area with palm trees everywhere, some sitting in flooded fields from recent rainfall here.
The guys take us to a local co-operative where a very pleasant guy takes us inside, gives us water and sweet tea ("Berber whisky") and tells us a story about Moroccan history, ethnicity, culture and language, all as depicted in the carpets he shows us. Keith and Sarah say that they live in places too small for rugs like these and the chap takes it well. I decide to recompense him slightly by telling him a joke that a carpet salesman might find useful: (to a woman) "Why is a man like a carpet?" "Lay them properly the first time and you can walk on them forever." It's not a great joke, but the sales chap and his friend are simply delighted.
As we're leaving, the chap asks whether we have any books he can read to improve his English (not that I think he needs that). A little while ago, my dad took up the practice of passing on books and not wanting them back. I'm sure he'll be very happy indeed that a pleasant and cultured Moroccan on the fringes of the Sahara is now the proud possessor of works by James Herriot, Jack Higgins and some Napoleonic political actioner.
We're short of cash to settle with Hassan and co. and we have to go back to Erfoud to find a working ATM.
We round off the day with a 150km run through the dusk to a town with nice hotels to minimise tomorrow's drag to Marrakesh. We'll overnight there, and afterward face the long drive home.

Monday 22 September 2008

Death of a Friend

At about 4pm on Sunday 21st September 2008, in the town of Merzouga, surrounded by desert sand dunes, I slammed the Landcruiser door on my Fujifilm FinePix Z3, shattering all its glass parts. The Z3 had been a faithful and well-loved friend through many travels. I can only hope I'll see, and see through, its like again.

Adventures!

Sarah and I have cheated. We've brought enough clothes for the whole trip. Keith hasn't, and so has to answer the world traveller's question: "how do I get my clothes (esp. pants) clean?" He handed his laundry over to the hotel, at a cost of 30GBP for less than 10 small items (i.e. more than it'd cost to buy new in Tesco, but Tesco isn't here). He has to wait until after the noon checking-out time before their return. Not a success.
We top up with fresh food at a supermarket in expectation of five nights' camping between Fes and Marrakesh. They seem to have everything normally seen in a supermarket in France or Spain, except alcohol. I try to ask two assistants for spaghetti in a tin by means of visual aids, but have to give up after confused looks and twice being offered bolognese sauce.
We drive south toward Midelt, weaving up into the Atlas Mountains with some impressive views. We're crossing a high plain when torrential rain starts. Visibility comes right down and we're soon peering out to spot rivers of water streaming across the road. A couple of times muddy water splashes right over our windscreen, blinding and disorienting us. We try to pick our way forward gingerly, but minor landslides raise our fears that the road could have been washed away, as Keith saw when 4x4ing in Australia, and we're forced to park in the middle of the road and sit it out.
Eventually the rain slows and stops. We find that only about 100m in front of us a fair covering of rocks and mud has been thrown across the road. There's still a river running across the road and, of course, it must have been rather stronger when it moved the rocks. We clearly stopped just in time.
Sarah and I get out and walk through the obstacle to check the depth. It's OK, but Keith drives through before I can get in a good spot to video it. We traverse similar places until, in the advancing nightfall, we pass a couple of people standing beside the road. We have no common language, but they tell us of a problem just ahead. A bridge has partially collapsed, taking most of the width of the road's tarmac strip with it. The remaining ground is just wide enough to pass over on a diagonal. All around there's gaps where there clearly used to be earth.
With about 15 minutes of daylight left, the prospect of trying to pitch the tent right in the wide open, beside the road and on very rocky ground, is extremely unappetising. Then we come across a big landslide, maybe 50 metres across and including rocks up to two feet in size. One vehicle is stopped opposite, with another bogged down having tried to cross the least bad bit. Half a dozen men are trying to lift it out and I help with the final heave.
A chap named Mohammed introduces himself and invites us to stay at his house 9km away. We give a lift to him and an old man with twisted foot and arrive in full darkness.
Mohammed's house is a long oblong single-storey building. It looks so square and substantial that he has to explain it's build of packed mud with walls 50cm or more thick. The first thing I notice is the satellite TV dish outside.
Mohammed makes us very welcome, with sweet tea, which he teaches Sarah to pour (from a height so it cools and mixes, first cup poured back into the pot). We also have sweet Ramadan "breakfast" pastries, bread and a sweet, brown dish of paste tasting of peanuts. Big "sweet tooth" thing going on here!
There is no mains anything, but that's hard to spot. The plentiful and clear water comes from a well several hundred metres away, pumped and transported by vehicle to a tank on the roof. The electricity is from solar panels, charging a battery large enough to run films in English with Arabic subtitles on a colour TV until I went to sleep on a matress in Mohammed's sitting area under the warmest blanket I've ever felt and, Keith tells me the next day, the Moslem Prayer channel played on a black and white TV all night long.
There's a stand-up toilet inside the house, behind a curtain, but the smell doesn't reach beyond.
I suppose it's time for a word on communication. In general I don't claim any foreign language prowess, but I've actually retained a fair amount of my schoolboy French and Spanish. Desperately inelegant and ungrammatical, but enough to be understood at the second attempt. I didn't foresee it, but most of the communication with locals on our holiday has used this, with most of North Africa having been French colonial possessions. Last night's discussions with Mohammed, which required my non-prowess in French, included explaining his family album (after asking if he had a photo of his 3-month-old daughter), British visa restrictions (3 million Dirhams or a "white" green-card marriage), Plutonium's critical mass and the certain fall of America by 2020 (the last two unrelated, I'm sure). By the end I was quite tired.
Breakfast involved bread and olive oil, usually an evening starter for me.
After that, we chose to go for a walk, to see the local plateau and caves, plus a stone of which Mohammed has a photo on his wall - something to do with an ancient father. The walk is advertised at 2km, which I interpret as 5km and (we think) turns out as 8km, all between 11am and 2pm in the heat of the day. The views are genuinely interesting, and we don't regret it, but Sarah suffers from sunburn for days to come.
One of the most interesting parts for me is the way that the next village is using a cistern to irrigate areas and grow maize, tomatoes, etc. beside the desert.
Mohammed introduces us to his friend and neighbour Mohammed, who invites us to spend the next night with him. We get the idea that we could spend days here, but decline gratefully and get lots of fresh figs to eat - lovely.
When we leave, we give Mohammed a lift into Midelt and say farewell fondly. He's hardly gone 30 seconds when someone else is trying to sell or swap a hollow stone containing attractive crystals. Cigarettes are one optional currency - I wonder how many it would have cost?
Going South toward the desert, the camping book we bought with our ferry tickets in Spain suggests a place in the mountains, the Jurassique (c/f local fossils). I'm hesitant to criticise, as the proprieter is friendly and we make good friends with his son Salaam, sharing food together. However, the camping area of the turns out to be a wind tunnel and mid-way through cooking the evening meal we have to abort due to wind force, and eventually complete cooking in their lounge (this is apparently not the first time)!! Somehow we manage not to set light to anything!
Sarah and I take rooms, as the wind is too high for tents or raising the roof of the bus. My towels and bedclothes don't smell fresh and the hot water, indicated by a red light on the heater, doesn't reach the shower "head". The facilities for actual campers, as in Keith, seem to work properly. Salaam assembles us a breakfast with Berber sweet mint tea, honey, apricot jam and substantial Berber bread, which is really nice.
We head on toward the desert, past a beautiful blue lake between orange cliffs in the Valley of Ziz.

Sunday 21 September 2008

Fes

Our guide at Volubilis drew us a map of how to drive to the camp site we had ended up getting our Tangier hotelier to ring and book for us. We were the only visitors there. Theoretically, there was a swimming pool, which I didn't see but Keith said it only contained a foot of green slime.
The site owners' son Emin, who was about 3 years old, came and we made friends with him. His French was probably about as good as mine, but somehow we communicated.
The campsite was quiet apart from the continual background noise of different dogs barking to each other somewhere in the hills.
Dinner was distinguished by the late discovery that the fish we'd nearly finished cooking was halibut rather than haddock. Fortunately the result was still quite pleasant.
After this, we watched the movie "Hancock", half on my laptop until the battery ran out, the rest on Keith's. Funny to be doing the Hollywood thang in the middle of nowhere, and without mains electricity.
A quiet night's sleep for me, but less so for the others. Instead of "good morning" I got: "you don't half snore." I said it was a lack of alcohol, as they didn't hear a thing the night we hit the wine :-)
We got up really slowly, with a cooked breakfast and time for showers, and didn't start off until 2pm.
Scratching ideas of visiting Moulay Idris or Meknes, we head straight to Fes, which the guide book (back to Lonely Planet now) recommends as the best city for tourists to see.
As we'll be going on from Fes into the "wilds", Keith and Sarah decide they'd like a night in a nice hotel. Me, I don't need any persuading. We pull up in front of a few hotels in the new quarter, and Keith jogs in to inquire prices. The first isn't a hotel, the second is over 200 GBP, the third is the Royal Mirage Hotel and acceptable at about 100 Euros.
A "fixer" attaches himself to Keith and, after saying the hotel has bugs (it doesn't) and he can take us to another, suggests a tour. Strange thing is that he seems to be suggesting we start it some hours ago? It turns out that Morocco has had two time changes recently, one for summer and the other for Ramadan, making sunset (when Moslems can eat again) as early as 6:30pm - sneaky! It also means we started today at 12pm rather than 2pm - the world has changed to match our late wakeup times: amazing!
After being so happy with the guide at Volubilis, we let the fixer take us on a tour of Fes, but Keith makes clear that he doesn't just want to be dragged round shops.
The tour takes us to the tile and mosaic apprentice school, and factory shop; weavers and obligatory "dressed up" photo-op, where they are restrained until Sarah inquires a price; tanneries seen from a balcony accessed through the back of a shop, where all it takes is a close look at one jacket before I'm driven through a sequence of trying on until my protests that we must leave become sufficiently adamant; moving between these is an assault on the senses, the thousand stalls in the narrow alleyways have their own sights and smells and there's the repeated risk of being mown down by a supertanker of the souk - a fully-laden donkey, slow-moving but looming out of the midst and inexorable.
I love it and don't really mind the shops - the sights are there to see because of the trade they do - but Keith and Sarah regret taking the tour feeling they've seen the same elsewhere and would rather have wondered around themselves and seen "less". That's what we'll do in Marrakesh, but it has efficiently covered Fes in the scrag end of day that we actually had available.
We walk to dinner in a guidebook-recommended restaurant, but find it's only doing an unimpressive set menu. Despite this, we manage to order a tagine-served meatball dish that isn't on the menu

Thursday 18 September 2008

Warning: Post May Actually Be Useful

As a change, I'm afraid this post may have content of potential use to other travellers. I'll try not to make a habit of it, and won't start just yet.

Having joked yesterday that I'd wake at 10:45am to catch the 11am end of the Hotel Duquesa Golf breakfast, I find I actually wake at 10:50 and manage to fill my plate before they start to clear. We spend a lazy midday and early afternoon by the pool, then decide to visit Gibraltar today to save time tomorrow.

*Gibraltar*
When the Brits took Gibraltar in the 1700s, the Spanish retreated just out of cannon range and took up positions at La Linea de la Concepcion, expecting to be back in a couple of months. It's now a major town with a Carrefour hypermarket!
Set the satnav for Gibraltar, but when you get to the point where you'd have to turn sharp right to go 70 metres to some structures that look like border controls, instead hang a sharp left (or go to the roundabout ahead and do a U-ey, then right). There's a largeish underground car park that isn't very expensive - we paid 6 Euros - and has clearance for a 2m high Landcruiser.
From there, it's a short walk across the border and you can catch a number 9 bus to the near end of Main Street (as we did today) or a number 3 to the far end (as we did tomorrow, if you follow my meaning). Both run every 15 minutes and cost 1 Euro single or 2.5 Euros for an all-day pass. Buses stop at 9pm.
Although Gibraltar uses Gibraltar pounds sterling, we didn't find anywhere we couldn't use nasty foreign Euros, although we did find some "heavily loaded" exchange rates - our fault for not having real money.
The bus dropped us in Casemates Square at 6:30pm and we walked the length of Main Street, spotting a cable car from the end. We headed to the bottom, just opposite the Fire Station with plackards of protest outside, only to find that the last lift up is at 7:15pm, almost half an hour ago.
It looks so good that we decide to return tomorrow. After a beer, we catch a taxi back to the frontier.

*Not Gibraltar*
Apart from the bar/restaurants just over a footbridge from the Hotel Duquesa Golf, there a a number of restaurants "by the port" (actually a large resort complex) slightly further away. Reception advises us to get a taxi each way, which turns out sensible but expensive at over 6 Euros for less than 5 minutes. Amazingly, nearly every restaurant is Chinese, with the remainder Indian. Oh no - Brits abroad! Just as we're about to wait for a table at the only Mexican, we spot "little Italy", a square with two Italian restaurants facing each other. The Italian-flag-coloured waiters of El Capitan take position, hovering ready to swoop should we show too much interest. The brown-and-orange staff of Ciao start to float over, but an El Capitan staffer heads them off. We float sideways to defuse a confrontation, then choose Ciao because Sarah doesn't like the other place's name.
We round off with cocktails at "Pantalan 56", a cocktail bar with great ambience, but only the brave should attempt their Margherita with ginger and chilli, as I did.
Because the stationery at our hotel says "Suites Duquesa Golf", that's what I ask the taxi driver for. We end up in a sidestreet outside a place where we asked for directions when we were lost yesterday. I keep saying "Golf" until we end up at the right place.

*Gibraltar Again*
This time we catch the Number 3 bus and get off near the cable car. 8 Gibraltar Pounds for cable car only, 16 with "nature reserve" and more with dolphins, both of which we omit because St. Michael's Cave that Sarah particularly wants to see aren't marked that way. We get to the top at 4pm, just after the snack bar has shut. I get the "multimedia experience" (a Windows PDA with earphone) but get two in a row with low batteries, so learn little from it.
Now comes the real learning point: there are a number of attractions up on and in the rock, including and the caves. They are at either end of the rock, 3km apart, so to see them all will require a 6km+ walk in the burning sun.
So: don't bother with the cable car - get a taxi driver or minibus tour to drive you up from the town and between all of the above. We didn't and so missed our second-and-only chance to see most of the interesting things.

*Tangier*
We'd decided, based on Thorn Tree Forum posts (on the Lonely Planet website) to travel Algeciras-to-Cueta (a Spanish territory on Morocco, as Gibraltar is a British territory on Spain) to get an easier border crossing.
However, we saw an official-looking ticket booth on a fast-road junction and got persuaded to travel Tarifa-to-Tangier instead. Even with a 2m-high car, we still get a year-long open return for 388 Euros, as opposed to the 244 Euro each way that the internet had prepared me for.
Having tickets in advance means that we just turn up at the port and leave without fuss, so a good idea.
According to the adverts, the ferry crossing is 35 minutes. We make the 9pm sailing, but it doesn't leave until after 9:30pm and we don't reach Tangier until 10:45pm.
We fill in our white entry form and our yellow exit form (which we don't need yet) and get our passports checked and stamped on the boat.
Keith is, fortunately, driving as we roll off the boat. A guy in a dark blue waistcoat with a round white logo on it (who I think is a civilian assistant) asks for the vehicle registration document, which we've forgotten to have ready. While we get that out, the guy waltzes off with Keith's passport, which quite worries Keith.
Eventually a different guy comes back, perhaps one with better English. He takes Keith through the filling in of the temporary vehicle registration form, which we'll need to get stamped before leaving the port. Someone else asks Keith whether this is his first time in Morocco. As it is, he has to go off and, as he tells it, answer questions in a police cell. He says the foot passengers are queuing to face the same experience.
The small van ahead of us gets emptied while the other guys in light blue uniforms and peaked hats look on. Every space inside is full! After about five minutes unloading, not one but two motorbikes come out. They've got nearly full-size angines but very low seats, so we assume they're for children with a real head for speed (or very irresponsible parents).
Keith returns without the vehicle form, then another blue-waistcoat guy goes off with Keith's passport, this time causing less consternation. Eventually, it comes back with a stamped form and we're free to leave.
Each time one of the blue-waistcoat guys touches our passport he asks for a tip. We've genuinely left Spain with almost no money (for which, I think I'm stupid) so we give them only change, saying we have no money. I actually changed my last 50 Euros into 550 Dirham on the boat, but keep quiet about it.
I think we finally left the port about 11:30pm, so overall not too bad for a border crossing. We did have ideas about seeking a vehicle accident form and breakdown insurance at the port, but these go by the board as we become so keen to escape.

And so on to the next phase. Colleague Tony has recommended a couple of hotels from his recent trip. One is the Hotel Continental, Tangier, which I researched a little on the internet in the Duquesa Hotel/Suites/Thingy. After we got the ferry tickets, Keith rang and booked, but didn't need to give any card info. I looked on Google maps and Google Earth and found three different locations plotted. Cheers!
I also found directions, unfortunately two different sets, which don't agree. Consequently, the others decide to ignore both and follow a map in the guidebook. At 12:30am we're still lost and going in circles when Keith starts going the wrong way up a one-way street. Among the people who make genuinely helpful comments (try the same in London and it might be different) is a taxi driver. He tells us we're 20 minutes from the right place and suggests we follow him. Some time later we pass the port entrance and are looking up at the hotel. Upon request, he suggests 100 Dirham would be appropriate, so he gets that and much extra gratitude.
So here are the road directions from the Tangier Ferry terminal to the Hotel Continental: As yu're on the last straight bit of road inside the port heading toward the port gates (well, gateway) look up and to your right.You'll see the hotel and save much heartache. The moment you come out of the port gates, turn right. After only 100m or so you come to what looks like a T-junction, but actually the road bends right. Turn right again and go into what looks like a cul-de-sac. On your left is a white ramp. Do a hairpin left at the end and go up that. It leads into tiny alleyways with signs to the hotel car park. Despite appearances, it is possible to fit a 2m high, 5.5m long Landcruiser through these, but I'm glad it was Keith doing it.
We arrive at the hotel and a quiet older man is summoned to check us in. We fill a form in each and wait while he copies the details into a huge book, one person per line across two pages.
Web comments suggested the hotel, the oldest in Tangier, is a place of faded glory. Yes and no. Yes, because there's some places where you really don't want everything shiny and new. No, because they're obviously doing quite a lot of work to refurbish the hotel in a non-disruptive way. I get single room 101 half-expecting a broom closet, but it's a nice sized room looking onto an inner courtyard with TV, aircon and a bathroom that's obviously recently refitted to a good standard. When I take my shower at 1am, the hot water isn't - but that's not an unpleasant surprise. Only murmur might be that only one bulb in the 5-bulb ceiling fitting works, but that's all that's needed. I have a lot of sympathy with people trying to make a place hospitable without wasting money.
It's Ramadam for the whole time we're here and I'm curious about how it will affect us. The room marked "Restaurant" is closed with a large padlock and chain through the handles. I'll have to ask Tony how things are normally. Instead, I'm seated on an outside terrace on the first floor of the hotel, looking down over the port, and given a bowl of rolls and pastries, fresh orange juice and coffee. Nice.
The hotel doesn't take cards, so first task is to find an ATM. A staff member tries several times to give us directions, saying it's one minute, but it still takes us 15 minutes to find anything. We leave, following the signs to the motorway to Rabat, on our way to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, just north of Meknes.
Parking is 10Dh and entry is 10Dh per person. We get a guide to show us round, and are glad we did. There's a number of mosaic floors, upright columns and the big arches at each end of the main street. Wonderful, if you like that sort of thing (and we do).
Funniest thing are the largeish piles of broken pottery, just laying about. Time Team would wet themselves for a couple of bits off the top!

Monday 15 September 2008

Ups and Downs and Ups

The glory of Cordoba is the Cathedral Mosque (Mezquita). Once upon a time, this was the most populous city in Europe and a Moslem centre to rival Mecca. When the Moslems took the city, the Visigoth Cathedral was demolished and a fairly low building was constructed, its flat roof,obout 8 metres high, supported by rows of pillars. A series of four rulers successively extended this until the number of "bays" equalled the number of days in a year. Then the Christians re-took the city and built a section in the middle that's more like a traditional Christian cathedral, with spire etc.

This has resulted in a unique and marvellous building, with which we were very impressed and surprised that it hasn't had more publicity.

After this, we decided to head for some ruins 7.5km out of town. Having just bigged-up the satnav in my last post, it had real problems today and kept ordering us the wrong way up one-way streets and making us go in loops when we disobeyed.

To be fair :-) the map detail in Spain has been amazing, showing service roads inside campsites and shopping malls! I guess they must have really changed the roads in the last 5 years, including, it seems, building a big new bypass sunk into a trench right across the road we wanted to follow.

The 7.5km ends up more like 20km and takes well over an hour. When we get to the ruins we find they shut at 2pm on Sundays, the same time that the Cathedral Mosque re-opened after morning services. All that way for nothing.

We then set out toward Gibraltar, taking a gamble and using the new bypass. We see a nasty head-on 2-car smash where the road goes from dual-carriageway to one-lane-each-way. Significantly, a helicopter ambulance sits beside, not looking like it'll be used soon. Sarah said she drove more warily after seeing that.

After much flicking between Rough Guide guidebook and map, I find a campsite described about 30 minutes short of Gibraltar. I swear we did five laps of a couple of kilometres of dual carriageway, including many surrounding roads. Eventually the truth becomes clear: they built all over the campsites a year or so ago and now, even if we go back up the coast, there's nothing we can get to before 11pm, the presumed closing time.

We give up on camping and try to reach a hotel we've seen roadside hoardings for. Even that doesn't turn out as simple as it should. Nevertheless, they do have spaces and we're in by midnight. It turns out that the Suites Duquesa Golf is lovely and not too expensive. During a fruitless search for a bar open after Sunday midnight onvthe advice of reception, we decide to stay two nights and take it easy tomorrow.

So that's an up to finish off a day with an up at the start but a couple of downs in the middle. Not too bad overall.

A final word for the Rough Guide guidebook to Spain. We hate it. Apart from the campsite near San Sebastian, it has let us down at every turn and most placename spellings don't seem to match the roadsigns. Sarah only bought it because the shop didn't have the Lonely Planet guide. Maybe another shop?

Sunday 14 September 2008

Sopping but Super San Seb

Today almost ran to plan, but very late. Once we were all up I cooked breakfast and washed up. With people going for showers at different times, we weren't ready to go into town until 6:30pm. We found we were all out of Euros and just had enough for three 1.20 Euro bus fares into town with 38 Euro-cents spare between the three of us.

Obviously, first stop in town was an ATM. The bit of plan about sitting on the beach didn't come off, because the day was grey and cloudy, with frequent showers of varying weight. I did offer Sarah the chance to "top up her tan" but for some reason she declined.

I'd been to San Sebastian once before, maybe 20 years ago, when local friends-of-a-friend showed us around. This time we managed to make our way pretty directly to the old part of town, where there are many crossing alleyways full of bars.

Keith suggested that we do proper Spanish-style tapas. This was new to me. Many of the bars fill their counter with plates holding a huge variety of finger food. One asks for a plate, puts a selection on it and then shows the bartender and orders one's drinks. Unlike the continental bar practice I'm familiar with, one pays then. I guess it makes things simpler and allows one to leave easier when finished.

It was fabulous drifting around such an exciting place, munching tapas like the locals, although with beer rather than the wine most locals were drinking, after our wino excesses of last night.

In a square, a stage and loudspeakers were being set up. There were also people of all ages waiting around, each with a placard showing a picture of someone, their name, a date and a place name. Each was different. At one point, the people formed a hollow square and someone started talking through an amplifier. I'm not sure I'd have been able to make out the words if it'd been English.

I don't know if the pictures were of political prisoners or 'disappeared' people from a foreign regime. I don't know whether it was an orderly protest ahead of whatever was going on on tbe stage later. The people who came onto the stage once the demonstration was over appeared to be children. I imagined them preparing something all term and then a huge downpour robbing them of an audience. We went elsewhere, so I don't know the truth of that either. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a journalist (or travel blogger). I didn't even tell the others that last time I was here I saw a Basque Separatist riot and police using shields and firing rubber bullets.

I don't know how many bars we went in during the evening, but the whole thing was a wonderful experience, and the frequent showers didn't dampen our spirits one bit. So a resounding success with the explore, eat, drink and be merry parts of the plan.

We were all happy to round off early-ish and get a taxi back to the campsite at about 11:30pm. We grabbed maps and had a nightcap in the campsite bar. After the success of our long drive yesterday, we agreed to aim for Córdoba tomorrow night - a trip of 884km (TomTom says). We can spend Sunday there and have a shortish hop to Morocco on Monday. Today must be our earliest bedtime of the trip.

The following day starts wet and gets distinctly drier. I wake in the tent to sustained heavy rain. My theory that there must be a way to pack up the inner of my tent before the flysheet proves fatally flawed, and very very muddy. Keith says he has one similar, but with that critical design flaw solved. I wonder if Tesco's do trade-ins?

The drive doesn't prove too problematic. We each do about 200km and then another 100km each to finish. Very soon after we leave San Sebastian the weather clears, and things keep getting drier until we're in the countryside just north of Madrid, which looks really parched. Honest, we'd have brought yesterday's weather with us if we could.

I said there would be more on the cramped 3-abreast seating in the bus. Keith and Sarah decided rapidly after the first day that they didn't like that, and now somebody has to sit in the back the whole time. We've evolved a rotation: back, front passenger, drive, then relegated again. Travelling in the back isn't as bad as I thought, although Keith and I both have to slump down far enough to see forward. Keith and Sarah both say they like it (but neither volunteers for extra stints) and I haven't felt car-sick yet.

We arrive in Córdoba (I'm writing this on a PDA and getting the ó character is a real faff, so I put these in later.) I choose the Andalucia Hotel from the guidebook almost at random. There are 5 in there not called "hostel" and there's no indication on relative prices. We find a parking spot and go looking for the hotel, which it turns out is mid-refurb and shut.

During our search, I spot the Hotel Selu, which is very well-appointed for a 3-star and near to useful places. We stay there.

Out again for more beers. We don't see any bars with tapas layouts like in San Sebastian, but order from the menu at alleyway tables of a "CaƱas Y Tapas" (beer and tapas) place. The menu refers to "ration" and "half-ration". We over-order somewhat, but can easily cope with the shame. Bed before 2am - fairly modest.

*Kit*

Time for some words on equipment.

The star item has been Keith's 5-year-old TomTom satnav. OK, so it tried to kill us on the steps and get us arrested in the pedestrianised area, and it needed resetting every day on average whilst in France, and its slowness to update has made us take the wrong turning several times. Despite this, it's been a whole lot easier than having to map-read for each other, and has got us to places we didn't even have maps for. Life would have been much more complicated without, and will be in Morocco - because there doesn't seem to be any satnav maker with maps of North Africa!

Second prize goes to the torch on a headband I bought on a whim in Black's. I've always thought people wearing them looked like twats. It doesn't matter. The pleasure of having light wherever you turn your head is a winner. Good engineering solution, even if a very poor sartorial one.

Honourable mention goes to the cheapo tent from Tesco's. OK, so you can't put it up or down if it's raining, but while it was up I was dry and snug inside and reluctant to come out. Fair enough.

Friday 12 September 2008

Progress!

Yesterday was interesting.

The reason why we targetted Blois was a wish to see the Chateau Chambourd, the largest in the Loire although dwarfed by Versailles. It is amazing, for a number of reasons. The roofs are a mad hotch-potch of domes, cones and huge rectangular chimneys. There's an introductory talk in English at 12 so we take breakfast and coffee while we wait. When we go in, the lady denies there is any such talk before 3pm, although the screen above her head clearly disagrees.

King Francis I built this as a hunting lodge. The highlight is a double-spiral staircase up the middle of the keep so that people starting from the same floor but on opposite sides will never meet as they climb. The keep has a 4-time rotational symmetry around the staircase, with each quadrant having a suite in the square centre and another in a round tower at the corner. This gives 8 equal-status suites on each of 3 floors - it's a block of flats for 24 noble families! Each suite comprises a large main room, maybe 25m by 35m and very high, plus a number of smaller rooms. It's like each of those rooms is the size of the main hall in the days when lord, ladies and serfs would all live in one great hall in the manor house. Francis I only visited here for 72 days in his 32-year reign. He and an entourage of 3000 travelled around the country visiting different towns and bankrupting them through the costs of providing hospitality all those people for two weeks at a time. Apparently, this contact with the people helped keep the monarchy popular. An early plot against the young Louis XIV made him stop doing this and he hid in Versailles. That progressively eroded the support for the monarchy, setting the seeds of the French revolution. Funny how big events can have such small causes.

The chateau was always unfurnished, because the party would bring their furniture and finery with them and assemble it on-site, dismantling when they left.

We get back to the bus just before 2pm and agree to put as many miles on as we can, aiming for San Sebastian, just into Spain. In compensation, we'll stay there a whole day before moving on. This turns out to be a really good idea.

The guidebook lists a campsite in the hills above the town, and we reach it on the dot of 10pm, hoping to slip in. No problem! Reception is open to 11 anyway and staffed by a lovely friendly lady. We set up camp and head off to one of two bar/restaurants next door. We order food around 11pm (the spanish often eat late) and leave around 1am.

Here's a strange thing: almost none of the toilets I found in France had seats on them. I don't know if this is penny-pinching, theft or some leaning toward the supposed sanitary benefits of the stand-up toilet. Anyway, this humble bar in a Basque village has a seat on its toilet.

We have no difficulty in deciding that we strongly prefer this to the toilet-seat-less, early closing and rather starchy France we've seen so far.

We celebrate on with most of the wine we bought in LeClerc, which seemed it'd last us through the holiday, a game of cards and deep chats. I retire to the tent at about 4:30am, leaving the others chatting. About 20 minutes later we bump into each other down at the amenity block, where we chat more as we wait for a burst of rain to stop.

The following morning isn't. I wake at 1:30pm and start writing this. Keith surfaces at 2:30pm. No sign of Sarah yet. Today's plan was theoretically: into town, sit on beach, explore, eat, drink and be merry. Only time will tell if we can cope with all that complexity.

Thursday 11 September 2008

First Steps

Over the first couple of days of our holiday it's become clear that we're a tad short on planning, and suffering for it.
We never did have the planning session. Sarah got up at 8am, had breakfast, then went back to bed. I had breakfast as I predicted between 9:40 and 10:00, then went back to my room because I couldn't find anyone. Keith missed breakfast altogether. To be fair, Keith did say yesterday that he hadn't made a hotel breakfast in 11 years.

"To be fair" is Keith's favourite phrase, which I've deliciously hamstrung him in by pointing out as much. Now he blames his use on me! I like to think the phrase is a reflection of Keith's agreeable character more than his resonse to the outrageously unbalanced statements it sometimes amuses me to make. In either case, those are the blows.

So we met haphazardly at the bus at about 11:30am and set off without much discussion toward Rouen.

Once we agreed upon the fact of our hunger, we still missed or ignored a few suitable places for lunch. This continued until we swept past a fighter jet mounted at the roadside, with a relais behind. This turned out to be the Aeroclub de la terre de la Seine, where we each had the 16 EUR menu. Whatever we ordered, it came with the same hash-brown-like discs, veggies and mushroom. We didn't mind, and none of us had space for dessert.

On to Rouen, and we have to do 2 laps of the town before we can find a non-underground parking place. Keith told a story of one such claiming 4.4m headroom at the entrance, but only 4.1m at the exit. Such dazzling lack of foresight leading to a long queue and a long reverse.

Parked, we take a beer and I learn that neither of the others has brought a raincoat on the trip. I run back for mine when it starts to drizzle, and end up wetter from humidity and perspiration than they get from the rain.

We take in a beer at a hostelry in the "Rue de la Grand Horloge" (road of the big clock - how romantic). We have a beer delicately called Delirium Tremens and served through pumps topped by a row of 12 ceramic pink elephants.

Most interesting thing we see in Rouen is the building now filling the square where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. It has swooping rooves reminiscent of a dragon's scales and tail. Most of it is a church, with a fish market beside, all in the same style.

We make it back to the Cathedral for the laser light show we're looking forward to, only to find it's cancelled in September apart from 2 days (neither being today).

Having rung and been told that the camp site in Les Andelys doesn't close until "22 hours", we happily turn up at 21:30 to be told that new arrivals had to be present before 18:00. The man lets us in grumpily.

I'm not sure who he was grumpiest at - us or, with the campsite almost empty, the people he put us right next to - a bicycling couple who were already in bed in their tent before we arrived. First we spoke softly and earned a rebuke from a ghost in a dressing gown. Then we whispered and their tent emitted grumbles when we latched a car door as quietly as we were able, or zipped up tents to turn in.

Sleeping hasn't turned out as simple as advertised. The bus turns into (effectively) bunk beds. Keith said he and Sarah would share one while I went in the other. I based my packing on that, bringing a tent as a last resort.

Unfortunately, Keith hadn't consulted Sarah. The tent is now essential accomodation for one of us each time we camp. We'll enjoy it in rotation, which seems more than fair given the situation.

Despite the inadvisability of trying to erect an unfamiliar tent in the dark, my memory returns, it's up in 10 minutes and Sarah takes up residence.

The campsite is below Chateau Gaillard, a now-half-ruined castle on a commanding height over the river that was one of the last obstacles to the unification of France. In the morning we take a brief tour and imagine how things were.

Next is a trip to the house and gardens of Claude Monet. On the way there we divert in Vernon, following signs for a LeClerc hypermarket, where we get food, kit and particularly the wine we'd have liked last night. We look out for hot, ready-to-eat pizza, which some hypermarkets sell, but come up empty and make a pragmatic decision for traditional French regional McDonald's, as the time is getting on.

Monet's house is interesting mainly because it contains very many paintings, all of them in Japanese style. Sarah says it's related to Orientalism, a passion in France lasting into the early 20th Century. The garden is the main attraction for me, though - a blaze of colour to excite the senses when seen in the morning from the great man's bedroom window.

We head off, aiming to reach Blois by evening. We ring the nearest campsite listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook. They shut for new arrivals at 7pm and there's no way we can reach it until 8:30pm.

The last leg before Blois is all motorway, so we don't see any campsites on that. We arrive in the centre of Blois and find the tourist office predictably shut. However, we think ourselves lucky when a nearby shop window has a touch-sensitive window with a computer monitor behind. We see details of a few campsites before settling on one that sounds large and close by.

I say "we think ourselves lucky" because what follows is two hours of traipsing around looking for it. We find one campsite with directions from many customers of a bar in Vineuil, but it's locked up and deserted. We find a few more areas with numbers of parked caravans. However, it's the flat-bed trucks parked beside that finally help us decide these are gypsies rather than tourists.

The shop window also told us that there's an area for camper vans to camp on the quayside. We go there and even find a space, but Keith decides sitting in a dark tarmac car park jammed between other vans isn't his idea of camping.

We give up and ring the Hotel Du Bellay from the guidebook. We do eventually reach it, despite the TomTom satnav trying to send the bus through pedestrian areas and up long flights of steps. My room is modest and clean, even if the room containing the sink and w.c. is not in the best state of repair.

After passing several restaurants busy closing, we find a bar that sells food until 11 and beer until well after midnight. The main topic of conversation is the progress we're making toward heading south. We need to make more miles tomorrow, but that makes it difficult to get into campsites (our preferred option, when possible, to keep the budget down).

On our way back to the hotel, we find a statue that some wags have equipped with a broom, etc. Sleep isn't long in coming.

Tuesday 9 September 2008

A Journey of 5 Thousand Miles Begins With...

Calais (from which, greetings).

Departure should have been easy. I only had a couple of things to do for work on Friday, putting final touches to documents. Unfortunately, as so often seems to happen, a "bush fire" caught light and damping it down soaked up the whole day. It's OK - I'd just do the documents on Saturday or Sunday. I also had those two whole days to pack, so no problem at all.

Cut to Sunday night, when Olympic-class idleness sees me no further forward, but turning the light on every five minutes into the wee small hours to add another item to the list of things I should have packed by now. Hence Monday is a mad race to find and bag everything, finishing in a long, hot, sweaty and fruitless search for the paper part of my driving licence. Damn!

In the midst of this, I still haven't done those bloody documents. I throw myself on the mercy of colleague Ray who, phlegmatic as usual, resignedly takes over my burdens. It'll be beer o'clock when I get back.

Travelling companions Keith and sister Sarah finally arrive late-afternoon to pick me up. Even then, they have to sit and wait (with creditable patience) while I earn my gold medal in last-minute faffing.

Keith's "bus" is a huge Toyota Landcruiser in bright white with a 4.2 litre diesel engine under a bonnet longer than my whole car. As part of my sole weekend achievement in booking our 11pm Monday Dover-Calais ferry crossing for the princely sum of £37 (including £0 high vehicle supplement), I learned that she is exactly 2M high and 5.5M long. Despite these impressive proportions, she isn't very wide, and sitting three-abreast up front proves "snug". Of which, I feel sure, more later.

To get the hang of driving the bus, I'm in charge from home to supermarket and thence Dover. The driving position is very unfamiliar, sitting very upright and looking down at Range Rover drivers. The blind spots are HUGE, and I find myself staring for far too long after each overtake at tiny stick-on convex wedges that Keith has added to the door mirrors, waiting for headlights to recede. Heaven help us if one drops off!

At the port in good time, we're moved to the earlier sailing. I order a burger while Keith has a smoke. As they bring the shutters down, I try to find him but fail. Keith is stuck with an "all day" (all night) breakfast on board for nearly three times the price. Apart fom lorries, the boat is nearly deserted.

Keith's satnav leads us to the Campanile Hotel, Calais, where he's booked us in for the rest of the night. After some juggling, we fit the bus neatly into the last space in the car park, backed into the twigs and leaves of a tree in which we then have to stand to unload.

The button of the night bell sticks, and I struggle to spring it back out. Twenty minutes later it can stay stuck in for all I care - there seems to be nobody listening anyway. Keith specifically checked 24 hour opening and booked guaranteed late arrival. The emergency phone number goes to voicemail.

At least we've learned to pull the bus forward out of the tree before we re-load.

We see an Ibis Hotel across the road, and get within yards of it when a one-way system suddenly makes it a mile away. They have rooms. Ibis - dull and plain, but reliable.

Keith and Sarah come to my room for a night-cap. Tomorrow we'll decide what we want to see in France and plan our route south. Exciting!

We run out of cider and I switch to lager, paying for it in the morning. I search every bag pocket for a headache pill, but to no avail. It'll be a while before I make that mistake again - the lack of pill, rather than the drinking