Vendredi 27 février 2009

La nuit était chaude pour un mois de février. Mais mon sac est trop lourd, je n’ai plus la force d’avancer et encore moins de chercher le bus. Je décide donc de lever le bras droit et un taxi arriva. Tant pis pour l’argent, mais là, c’est à un cas de force majeur.

21h30 heure locale, soit une heure aprés mon arrivée à l’aéroport : j’arrive à l’auberge. De l’autre coté de la porte d’entrèe, des marches rouges s’élévent rendant l’aboutissement de cette journée encore plus longues, l’arrivée finale se fera au deuxième étage. Difficilement, je les gravis. à l’accueil, on me remet la clé de ma première chambre. J’entrouve la porte, une chemine bleue est suspendu au barreau d’un des six lits. Je partage ma chambre avec 2 hommes. La curiosité me poussent malgré la fatigue, à sortir pour voir à quoi ressemble San Diego un vendredi soir… Je me suis tous de suite sentie à l’aise dans cette ville. L’ambiance est appaissante, tout en étant festive. Je déambule sur la 5eme avenue au rythme d’American Boys (une chanson très tendance en ce moment).
22H30 : Ok, c’est bon je vais me coucher. Devant la porte de l’auberge, je rencontre un français qui m’embarque avec son groupe pour faire la tournée des bars. Je dois profiter de chaque instant. Je dormirai plus tard. Le groupe se compose de trois ou quatre français, une suisse, un danois, un allemand, et un couple d’anglais. Nous rentrons dans le premier pub. Je danse sur la piste endiablée un “jump around” avec un groupe composé de 8 personnes que je ne connais pas. à noter que le groupe de musicien a un look très kitch, crête et pantalon en velours rouge. Nous changeons de bar. Cela fait deux heures que mon errance a commencé. Le groupe se dissout au fur et à mesure et je me retrouve seule avec Kevin, un breton, nous parlons de litterature et de voyage tout en déambulant dans la nuit chaude les rues San Diego. Kevin m’embarque pour voir le van de son cousin, que l’on a par ailleurs jamais retrouvé. Il est 2h du matin, nous rentrons à l’auberge, installont dans la piéce commune de l’auberge. La piéce sombre accueillait déjà une partir du groupe, qui s’étaient disloqués pendant la soirée. Kevin me parle de son père décédé, j’ai l’impression de l’avoir déjà rencontré. Il décida de rester éveillé jusqu’à 4h30, pour rejoindre l’aéroport pour s’envoler vers New York. Je savais que c’était la dernière fois que nos routes se croiseront. Je lui souhaite une bonne nuit, et lui fait un signe de soutien de la main.
3h30 (samedi 28 mars) : je vais me coucher. Il y a neuf heures de décallage entre la Californie et la France. Il est donc théoriquement midi trente. J’entre dans ma chambre. Mes partenaires ronflent et je m’endors au rythme des firemans qui me font penser que je suis bel et bien aux Etats-unis.

Samedi 28 février 2009 :
Réveil à 10H00 : douche froide, je n’ai pas réussi à régler l’eau et café au lait. La connection à Internet fonctionne bien.
Les missions de ce matin sont :
- acheter de la glue pour réparer le casque audio que Kevin m’a cassé la veille.
- acheter un canenas.
- acheter une puce pour mon téléphone portable et contacter Ryan et Dennis.

Finalement, j’ai dût racheter un portable, je n’ai rien compris à ce que le vendeur m’a dit. Pour le coup, je pense que je m’être fait arnaquer. Je n’arrive pas à joindre Ryan et j’ai laissé un message incompréhensible sur le répondeur de Dennis. Arriverais-je à les voir ? j’en doute…

12h : je rentre à l’auberge et je m’inscris pour une excursion à Tijuana, au Mexique. Départ à 3:30pm. 17$ la soirée, transport, dégustation locale et diner compris. 14h  : j’arrive enfin à joindre Ryan via facebook puis par sms. Ils m’attendent et sont impatient.Je ressors, me balade le long de la marina. Il fait beau et l’odeur de l’océanme fait un bien fou. Je retourne à l’auberge, mange un jambon beurre que
j’ai ramené de Paris et part ensuite au point de rendez-vous pour le Mexique. Le groupe se compose de 11 personnes et l’accompagnatrice. Je retrouve la suisse et le danois de la veille. Nous prenons le train depuis la cinquieme avenue. Le voyage aura duré 40 minutes.

Beats up hoes down

Download Faux Excursion

Hace unos días, viendo fotos de las excursiones que hacía cuando estaba en el colegio, vi fotos de una excursión que hicimos a Sorbas, y allí visitamos el parque natural. Y la verdad que conservo muy buenos recuerdos de ese día.

En el Paraje Natural “Karst en Yesos de Sorbas” hay más de 1.000 cavidades excavadas en yeso, con numerosas galerías repletas de distintas formaciones rocosas de yeso, a lo largo de kilómetros. También hay que recordar que es un espacio protegido, así que si lo visitáis, intentad cuidarlo.

Hay varias rutas que se pueden hacer para visitar y conocer los Karst en Yesos de Sorbas. Unas son más básicas y destinadas a niños pequeños, y otras son más técnicas para expertos en espeleología.

A continuación os dejo el elink de la página web que se encarga de organizar las rutas y los viajes. La web está bastante bien, porque se explica bien las distintas rutas y los precios de cada una.

http://www.cuevasdesorbas.com

Así que si no sabéis que hacer este puente, os recomiendo que os informéis y vayáis a visitarlas. Yo la verdad que apenas me acuerdo de nada, pero volveré a ir.

Y bueno, esta es una más de las cosas que se puede hacer en Almería si tener que gastar mucho dinero. Y para los que se sientan aludidos abajo dejo la foto que encontré, a ver si alguien se reconoce.

Y para secretos a voces, éste que les voy a contar y que definitivamente tienen que anotar para cuando se animen a viajar a Los Cabos, en la Península de Baja California.  Muy cerca del pueblo de Santiago, en los alrededores, existen varios manantiales de aguas terminales que hacen las delicias de los turistas.  Muchos de ellos están de vacaciones en Los Cabos, hacen la excursión a los pueblos de la Sierra de la Trinidad y hacen una parada obligada en alguno de los ojos de agua ( Agua Caliente, Los Chorros y Santa Rita)  convirtiendolos en divertidos spas al aire libre en los que se hablan varios idiomas, porque van visitantes de distintas nacionalidades.  Ahí en medio de esa paz y esa agua caliente natural, encontramos amigos que nos recomendaron algunas otras excursiones interesantes fuera del circuito turístico convencional.  El mismo día nos fuimos un rato a conocer el RAncho San Dionisio, donde se hacen unas caminatas espléndidas contemplando el paisaje desértico.  En este lugar nos ofrecieron un tradicional licor de Damiana (http://www.natura.com.mx/fichas/damiana.html), una hierba típica de la zona, con la que se hacen infusiones y es medicinal.  Interesante.

Por B. Zurbano y O. Saadi

El reportaje Viaje insólito es el resultado de un trabajo realizado por dos miembros del Grupo Periodismo Social que vivieron y dejaron constancia de uno de los viajes a la playa que el educador social Jorge Morillo organizó el pasado verano para las familias del asentamiento chabolista de San Juan de Aznalfarache.

En este asentamiento llegaron a congregarse, a raíz de varios enfrentamientos ocurridos esta primavera en las Tres Mil Viviendas, alrededor de cien niños. Jorge Morillo, a través de la asociación que preside, Educar en la Calle, organizó, como otros años pero quizá este con más motivos, una serie de excursiones a la playa para todas las familias con las que el trabaja. La mayoría son gitanos, pero sobre todo, son personas de zonas marginales como El Vacie, las Tres Mil Viviendas o el propio asentamiento.

Viaje insólito recoge las emociones vividas en la última de las excursiones del verano, la protagonizada por las familias del “asentamiento chabolista de San Juan”.

Si hay algo que definitivamente hay que resaltar en un viaje a México, cualquiera que sea el destino turístico elegido, es la amabilidad de la gente.  Todo el mundo está dispuesto a ayudarte siempre y a recomendarte lo mejor.  Eso pasa sin duda alguna en el Park Royal Los Cabos (http://www.club.royal-holiday.com.mx/?fuseaction=home.resort&id=44&lg=1 donde el personal fue tan amable que cuando vieron nuestro interés por explorar lugares más allá de lo convencional, no tuvieron inconveniente alguno en recomendarnos recorrer los pueblos situados en la cercana Sierra de la Trinidad.  Ellos mismos nos consiguieron una excursión para salir temprano a conocer quizá uno de los secretos mejor guardados de Los Cabos:  Santiago, Miraflores y San Bartolo.   El recorrido no es nada largo y quizá sea un buen paréntesis en unas vacaciones donde se está disfrutando de la playa y el sol y de las actividades acuáticas, y es una manera de conocer otra cara de una región que se distingue precisamente por ser muy distinta al México que conocemos por las publicidades.

Alright, so not a whole lot has occurred since my last post in Nice, France.

No… wait. That’s a complete lie.

One of the most important things that’s happened is I’ve learned I can not go to India on this little excursion around the globe. Why? Well, I got to Barcelona and was only going to stay for one day. When the hostel reception asked me why, I mentioned that I had to go to the Indian Embassy in Madrid and get my new Visa for the country sorted out ASAP. They told me there’s an embassy consulate in Barcelona and I was like, “Hey, might as well stay and get it done here since it’s such a fucking beautiful place.” Because it really was. Las Ramblas is really cool, the weather is beautiful year round, it has a gorgeous beach and harbor, and the people are pretty friendly. That’s about how I can sum it up. Nothing too crazy happened there outside of the usual pub crawls, getting drunk and making an ass out of myself on the dance floor.

So the next day I wake up and manage to make my way to the embassy consulate. I take in the sounds of groups of school children playing in the schoolyards during lunch time and enjoy the fact that I’m pretty much in the suburbs of what seems like a paradise city. Finally finding my way via small side streets and checking the almost non-existent street numbers on the houses, I see a small, handwritten sign beneath the buzzer for the embassy. Back in highschool, I took three years of Spanish, but I’m not going to lie and pretend like I’m fluent. The one thing I could make out was the word “cerrado”. Fuck, I thought. If I remember anything from those three years, besides how to say “I like to eat monkey head in a cage.”, it was that meant “closed”. Fuck, I thought. But I rang the buzzer anyway.

“Hello?”
“Hola”
“Open?”
“No open, closed.”

Yeah, so the fucking embassy was closed. I arrived there November 12th, and the last day it was open was November 11th. I missed it by a day.

So off to Madrid the next day.

But wait… it’s not that simple. It never is.

Not with me, anyway.

I set an alarm on my phone to go off at about 7 A.M. the next morning, It was a three hour train ride to Madrid and I wanted to get there early enough to get my business done and have enough time to see more of the city with some daylight. But there’s always a problem.

Somehow in my sleep, I managed to turn my phone off. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. But they say everything happens for a reason, right?

Right.

If I had woken up on time, I never would’ve seen Josh and Claire (two of the group of Aussies I had met in Nice, who happened to end up at the same hostel as me in Barcelona) at breakfast that morning and the following event never would’ve occurred.

“Oh, hey Ryan. Where’re ya’ off to?”
“Ah, I gotta get to Madrid and I’m in a bit of a rush, I turned my phone off last night in my sleep and missed my alarm.”
“Oh that’s right, you need to sort out getting your Visa for India. Where else are ya’ goin’ anyway?”

So I run down the list of countries to which I’m going. This includes Egypt.

“Ah, I’m trying to get my nan’s (grandmother’s) ashes to Egypt.”

You see where this is going now.

So in a very concise, five minute conversation I manage to agree with Josh that I’m going to take his grandmother’s ashes to Egypt, spread half of them around in the desert and bring the rest back with me to Melbourne when I arrive there. I’m not sure if he’ll be there or not, so we’ll work out the details when the time arrives.

Anyway, it wasn’t until I got to Madrid that I found out I wasn’t going to be able to go to India. I get to the hostel late, not realising that the three hour express train from Barcelona to Madrid is an extremely popular route. Get to the train station at 1, and I don’t leave until 5:30. Kinda sucked. I did have time for a nice paella, coffee and some beer though. But I got to Madrid on a Friday night, and it’s difficult to keep track of days when you’re traveling. I was about to head to the embassy Saturday morning when one of the hostel staff members actually told me that it was Saturday morning. Shit.

So Monday rolls around and I head up to the embassy. Long ass line. One of the people waiting in line suggests I go to the consulate just a few streets away to save time and see if it’s possible to even get a new Visa before Thursday when I fly to Morocco. I do this and discover I simply don’t have enough time, even with a Visa in my name already. They’d have to cancel the old one and process the paperwork for a new one, which would take about a week and a half for a foreigner since the Spanish, American and Indian embassies all have to get in touch and talk about the situation or whatever the fuck has to go on when this sort of thing happens.

Farewell India.

I’m trying to look at it in a more positive light and am thinking that I am just not meant to go this time. This gives me more time in some other areas, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I can plan a trip in the near future dedicated almost solely to India and give myself a few months there rather than a few weeks. Whatever whatever, I’ll sort it out.

There’s a nice English book store in Madrid I would suggest for any travellers in the area, by the way. It’s called J and J’s Book store (it’s actually an ampersand but I’m typing this on an Arabic keyboard and can’t find the damned key) off the Noviciado (Line 2 – Red) metro stop. Great selection and very good prices. Many of the larger stores will be asking for 20-30 Euro for a new book, but you can get most used books there for around 4-6 Euro. Great coffee, friendly staff and they have weekly events like Intercambio night on Thursdays and Quiz night on Fridays. I spent a good day and a half there before I headed out to Morocco to recharge my batteries before I spend the next few months as far removed from Western civilization as I’ll probably be in my entire trip to come.

So… off to Morroco this past Thursday, the 19th of November, 2009.

I had no problems getting to the Madrid airport and getting on my plane. I was a bit nervous though, since when I was at the English book store, I brought up my story to some of the folks there. I asked if it would be immoral to open up the small tin of ashes I had been entrusted with, and they said it would be only normal to want to see what I was actually carrying. There was no reason for me to disbelieve Josh, but I wanted to make sure the package actually contained ashes and not some kind of drug he simply wanted to get rid of. So the moment of truth came…

I managed to cut through the tape binding the two halves of the tin together and slowly pried it open. You would’ve thought I was opening Pandora’s Box or the Arc of the Covenant the way the entire bar had crowded around me during the last few millimeters of drawing off the top of the tin.

It was fairly anti-climactic. No ecstasy. No cocaine. No heroine. Just some hardened ashes to be spread around in the desert. There be Nan.

So yeah, I was a bit nervous checking my baggage in the Madrid airport since it technically is illegal to do what I am doing. I did a bit of research the morning I was flying out and I am indeed transporting a dead body, or more specifically, a biological agent across international boundaries. I had it buried deep in my checked baggage and just watched it off towards the X-ray machine. Out of sight, out of mind. If worse comes to worse, I can just let customs remove it from my possession. So long as I manage to get it to the Egyptian desert and fulfill my duty.

So… Marrakech.

It was definitely overwhelming as soon as I got out of the taxi to Jemaa el Fna square. THE Square of Marrakech in the old Medina. Neither pictures nor words can describe the madness that this place brings within the first ten seconds of stepping foot there. You simply have to experience it for yourself.

I manage to find my way to Cafe Argana like the directions to the hostel suggest after asking a few local souk owners who try to get me into their shop. I follow the directions from there and come to an impasse. The street I need to walk down is closed off because they’re shooting a scene for the next Sex in the City movie. Fuck.

“You have to go around.” One of the security guards tells me.
“Can you tell me how?”
“No, it’s impossible. You will get lost, ask someone on the way.”

And he was absolutely right. Even if I had a map it would be completely useless. So I just kept walking, trying to stay on the main streets and using my internal navigation to get back to the street I had to take a detour off of. Shop owners keep trying to pull me in to look at their goods, but I keep telling them, “No… no… I need to find my hotel.”

“Oh, I know a hotel.” They would say.
“I already have a reservation.”

They would then let me on my way.

Finally a shop owner manages to get me in a small conversation and I tell him of my predicament. He tells me to wait a second and his friend pulls up on this bike that’s not quite a motor powered bicycle, and not quite a vespa. Some sort of medium between the two, very popular around Marrakech. The shop owner tells me that his friend knows the address and will take me there. I ask him how much and he just says I give his friend a tip at the end and come back to his shop to look at what he has to sell.

Fair enough, I figure. But I’m not coming back to go shopping.

So in a matter of only two minutes I go from complete distress in my wanting to find this fucking hostel buried somewhere in the snaking alleys of Marrakech to a euphoric motorbike ride (even if I was riding bitch), with a complete stranger through the same streets, zipping through the crowds, taking hairpin turns way too quickly to be considered safe with the amount of awkwardly weighted baggage I was carrying, and coming close to colliding head on with manned donkeys pulling over-sized wheelbarrows full of what looked like fruits and nuts.

Intense.

I get to the hostel, give the man a tip and decline my trip back to his friend’s shop. I imagine he was fairly pissed, but honestly I just wanted to check in and have a quick nap before heading out into the souks again.

It was a completely different world at night when I walked into the main square. Open-aired barbecues perfumed the air with smells of snails, lambs head and tajine. Bum-rushing waiters and stall owners vice-grip your biceps and wrists in an attempt to get you to sit at their restaurant. Vendors atop three foot tall platforms selling nuts and freshly squeezed juices (must haves!) wave you on and call out Hello in three or four different languages. These people, for as poor as they may come across, are very intelligent and know how to cater to tourists. I’ve met a fair number of men on the street who can speak conversational basics in English, Spanish and even sometimes German, along with their fluency in both Arabic and French.

But nothing really happens that first night. It was the day after when I got into the shopping mood and started trying to haggle.

I bought a couple of leather belts since the one I did have was starting to give way (it’s braided) and loosen up more than I would like. I thought I got a good price, but it wasn’t until a few days later when I realized exactly how I low I could manage to get souk owners to drop their prices with a few varied techniques.

But back at the hostel after my first full day in the medina, I book a tour (2 days, 1 night) to some Casbah’s, the Atlas Mountains, and the desert. It was quite the experience.

I wake up the next morning around 6 A.M. to catch the minibus for our tour at 7. We’re 12 in number and squeeze into this thing for a daunting 6 hour ride (with a few stop offs for lunch and shopping) to our final destination where an hour and a half camel back ride will take us out into the desert. I’m not going to go into any details about the people I met, since it was the general kind of talk that happens between backpackers. I will mention this one fellow though, Abdul, who was born in Yemen but lives in the U.K. currently and has for about half his life. He could speak Arabic and he was handy to have around when we needed information or wanted to converse with some of the people we came across.

I would love to describe the landscape we passed on our way to the “desert”, but it’s simply impossible. The tour driver took us on these winding (almost to a point of being terrifying) mountainside roads just barely wide enough for two vehicles, and in some instances with no guards to keep you from plummeting a good 500 feet straight down a cliff side should your tires catch some loose bit of dirt, or one of them pops, or an oncoming car forgets to turn and just decides to send both of you to what could only be described as hell after the vehicles’ gas tanks explode following the drop.

Scary, yet beautiful.

So the first casbah was cool, but really nothing intense and not nearly as authentic as I would’ve liked to imagine it could’ve been. It did have its old parts, but the people there weren’t too apt to let us just wander around their home without supervision, and we weren’t willing to dish out any money to hire a guide none of us understood.

So we move on after a good lunch (mint tea and a Berber omelet – definitely recommend) and buying a scarf for the desert sun. Eventually we get to where we pick up our camels and Berber guides, and head off into the “desert” after sunset. I keep using quotes to describe this for one simple reason. I thought I was heading out into the Sahara. I know it was only a two day, one night tour, but the photo was definitely misleading. There was sand, don’t get me wrong. There were sand dunes as well. But it just wasn’t the desert.

Oh well, I’ll get there when I arrive in Egypt.

Camels are rough to ride. You learn quickly to not be stiff, and that there’s a lot of gyrating going on in order to keep yourself minutely comfortable. Dirty jokes are mandatory.

We get to the camp site and sit down while our dinner is being prepared. It arrives (chicken tajine for 12 with some vegetarian side tajines) and we all chow down with strangers eating out of the same dish. Some more mint tea follows and we’re left to our own devices for about an hour. In this time we all go outside and lay down on the rock/sand mix and stare up at the sky.

There’s plenty of ways to describe the sky out in the desert using colorful adjectives and creative grammar, but I’m not going to try. I can only say this:

It was the first time I could actually see the edge of the Milky Way. A thick white band stretching across the sky just south of center and curving as it reached the horizon. Constellations became nearly impossible to pick out because of the sheer amount of stars covering the pitch black night sky. It became only more intense after the moon dropped beneath the horizon and allowed us a clear view into the world beyond the world. On our backs for a good thirty minutes, a group of twelve who’ve never experienced this before (mostly from Central Europe and the U.K., myself the only American as has become the usual case in my travels), we pick out a good two dozen shooting stars. About one every minute, yeah. Who the fuck needs meteor showers when you can see bits of space debris burning up in our atmosphere every sixty seconds?

I hope at least one of my wishes come true. It’s just playing the odds game, right?

I was the first to see the bonfire.

I stood up to go into our tent to grab a drink of water and see a bonfire being built behind us. The group gets called over and we get treated to traditional berber music played by our hosts on a set of old, plastic gasoline containers. It was great. Some of us danced and clapped along in rhythm and we were joined by another group on the same excursion as ourselves.

This comes to and end and then we sleep…

Or at least we try to.

It was excruciatingly cold. I had heard that the desert gets cold at night, but I wasn’t ready for this. The blankets did provide some shelter, but you really had to double up in order to get remotely comfortable. It takes me a good hour and a half or so in order to fall asleep the first time, but I was woken a few more during the night as some dogs, whether they were tame or wild I know not, near our campsite barked continually at only God-knows-what, and I wasn’t the only one struggling to find peace. The rustling of a dozen bodies cocooned in blankets atop sleeping mats was enough to assure me I wasn’t the only one awake. But I did manage a good four hours (I think) of sound sleep throughout the night.

We all wake up to a nice sunrise behind the nearby mountains and a simple breakfast of bread, jam and tea and head off back on our camels to our minibus to head back to Marrakech. The second ride was easier than the first, even if we were a bit sore. With some experience under our belts, I think a fair portion of the group was comfortable with riding the smelly, spitting beasts of burden. I can still feel it as I type this, but the biggest pain isn’t in your balls, you learn to put them in the right spot to avoid any painful slapping against the camel’s ridge-like spine, but at the inner joint of where your legs and hips meet. Having to straddle an animal that large for extended periods when you’re not accustomed to it simply does a job on you.

So off to another casbah, again I cannot recall its name. It was where the arena scene from Gladiator was shot, so I could easily Google it and give you a more accurate idea of where I have been, but I simply can’t be bothered right now as I’m in a rush to catch a train up to Casablanca. This casbah was much older and more authentic than the one we had seen the day before. One of the men still living there gave us a tour (and didn’t even ask for a tip at the end, he was simply proud of his home and his heritage and wanted to tell us all about it), and took us up to the top (maybe 300 ft?) where we could see the groves of date and palm trees stretching for miles upon miles to nearby towns and villages. This place was nearly 3,000 years old and still had people living in it. So far removed from western civilization, and so dependent on the income from tourists who simply want to walk through a real piece of history, but simply cannot comprehend the level of depth which lies within the adobe walls. 10,000 people once living there had thinned to less than a thousand over the millennia, but it was still a civilization with language, crafts, religion and all the other minute variables which give culture to a people.

So we have lunch and head back off to Marrakech, but not before stopping at a small shop along the way.

It was definitely worth it as it was a shop where oils (both for eating and washing) and soaps were created using an old process (or at least we were led to believe it was so with the process being shown to us as soon as we entered the doors – they very well could’ve had machinery in a back room or some basement or factory down the road where the goods were made with a much higher rate of efficiency) of grinding the pulp of nuts into a sort of cake which was then squeezed by hands to produce the oil used to make the products.

I bought some rose scented soap and we all hopped back into the van to Marrakech. We get there and split off for an hour and a half for a shower and clothes change, but before I do that I sit down and have some snails. It wasn’t that exotic for me, as I have had escargot when I was in France, but these were honestly a bit of a let down. There were no spices and the snails were a bit bland; think of them as salty, boiled mushrooms that have a face staring right back at you in a state of despair, as I’d imagine that’s how a snail being cooked alive must feel.

Anyway, we regroup and head off for a bit of shisha (flavored tobacco smoked out of a hookah) at an off-the-beaten-path one of the guys with us had visited earlier in the week. It was a welcome smoke and then I head off to bed.

The next day was more of the same (window shopping and passing on), except I was walking around with these Swedish girls and Australian boys who were sleeping in the same 8 bed dorm as myself. Some coffee on a terrace looking over the medina and another go at practicing my haggling skills.

Wait, I missed something.

I did entitle this blog “In Marrakech: Deaf people die an exotic cuisine for me!”, didn’t I? Right… so here’s why.

The overwhelming number of bicycle riders, whether they be motorized or push style, is just incredible. They use their horns, bells and whistles of all sorts to let you know when they’re coming by down a busy side street. Just stick to the side, walk in a straight line, and you will be fine even if they brush past you lightly. If you can’t hear this coming, you might just step out to the side at the wrong time and get clipped by a bike whizzing by, or a small truck, or a donkey pulling an over sized load – that’s really the last thing you want to happen here. So yeah, deaf people die if they’re not careful.

Exotic cuisine? Let’s just say that my last full day in Marrakech was accompanied the most awkward thing I’ve eaten thus-far in my life. I didn’t even know you could get this. Earlier that morning I was out on the top terrace of the riad I was staying at and was having conversation with some British guys on a short holiday taking off back home later that afternoon. What did they eat the night prior?

Sheep’s head.

Yes… and let me tell you, it was fucking delicious. Though it might not seem appetizing at first, it’s a must try if you can stomach the sight of a a man chopping the flesh off a freshly boiled head of an animal (and it still has the vague shape of a head after cooking, by the way) right in front of you, toss it into a bowl, and spice it with some flavored salt. The salt is delicious too.

So yeah, that’s pretty much my story in Marrakech and my short excursion out into what kind of was the desert but still wasn’t quite the desert, and the Atlas Mountains and its casbah’s. I have to go rush to the train station to catch one up to Casablanca, take a flight for a night’s stay back in Madrid tomorrow and then head on off to Cairo on the 26th. From there’s it’s overland travel through Egypt, Israel and Jordan for two and a half weeks and then flying out of Amman (spelling?) to….

Well, I’ll save that for when I get there.

Two days until Egypt!

Peace out and take care

-Ryan P.

I hope no one that works airport security reads this, or if they do, after I’ve already left their country! I’m only transporting ashes because I’m a nice person!

!!!

First job of the day was to pack the car up with strips of horrid carpet and transport them to the dump on the way to a Swansea shopping trip, to the DIY store and then to Sainsbury’s.

The last carpet show

By the time we got to Sainsbury’s my tummy was rumbling loudly.

“I think we ought to have lunch now, before we shop,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m hungry, that’s why.”

On the way into the restaurant we passed a sign advertising a two-fer-a-bargain-price on roast turkey ‘Christmas’ lunches.

“That’s what we ought to have,” I said.

“Can’t do that.  It’s not Christmas yet.”

No argument, I’m afraid.  So we had scampi and chips instead, good, hot, and tasty.

Thank goodness, it was followed by a very short, weekend-only shop because Graham nodded off in the car on the way home and, by the time I’d parked, I could hardly keep my eyes open.

“Come on, Dolly,” I said when we’d unpacked and stowed stuff away.  “Cuddle time.”

She led me up stairs and onto the bed.  I’m not too sure I’d have made it without some assistance.

Empezamos nuestra andadura en el turismo rural en Enero del 2008 y nos consideramos todavia unos novatos en este tema. El otro día hablando con un colega que lleva muchos años metido en este mundo, nos decía que cada vez se daba  mas cuenta del mucho desconocimiento que hay, sobre todo por parte de algunos que se dicen profesionales en la materia, entre ellos, algunos departamentos de organismo oficiales que llevan el turismo rural aquí en Castilla La Mancha.  Decía muy enfadado, que estaban  todavía en la edad de piedra diseñando costosas guias y folletos que no sirvan  para nada, en lugar de ver la realidad, por donde y hacía donde se movía el mercado,  Internet y Televisión. Insistía que lo que se necesitaba era gente cualificada e innovadora  que creara verdaderos planes para el desarrollo del  turismo rural en Castilla La Mancha.

En nuestro círculo de amigos, ya cundió el rumor de que el must del verano austral es irse a descubrir el otro México en Los Cabos, entre Norma y yo hemos hecho un trabajito hormiga de prensa que bajita la mano empieza a inquietar a unos cuantos amigos, que ya están empezando a decidirse por unas buenas vacaciones en ese destino turístico tan, pero tan promocionado por nosotras, viajeras incansables.  El esposo de nuestra buena amiga Andrea es un pescador inagotable, debe conocerse todos los buenos lugares del mundo para pescar, pero extrañamente nunca fue a Los Cabos, así que Andrea ya está haciendo un buen trabajo de inteligencia para irse con toda la familia a veranear con su membresía de Royal Holiday a Los Cabos ( http://www.los-cabos.com.mx/Tours/deep-seafishing/?View=reserve&Clav_Servicio1=4).  Mientras su esposo pesca, ellos disfrutan del mar tan azul, el sol y el paisaje.  Además les hemos contado tanto de la increíble variedad de actividades acuáticas y de las excursiones, y creo que ya están con un pie en el avión.  Así que, a pescar nomás…

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