Happiness is a bed on an overnight train

Marrakesh, scenes from the plaza and medina




At Jamal´s drum shop and his house for dinner.













At Ouzoud, the waterfall








Salaam Alekum...
Having emerged out of the magical madness that is Morroco, I sit here writing to you all from Malaga, Spain. Sarah and I just spent the last week in Morroco, an experience unlike any other I have had before. Our first night we stayed in Tangier, where the people were unbelievably nice. About fifteen people helped to direct us towards our hostel (purely from the niceness of their hearts) a fellow diner at a restaurant shared some of his yummy dates with us for dessert, a hundred others who offered help, kind smiles or conversation.
Having trouble knowing exactly where to start in describing the Morrocan experience. Wandering through the narrow streets and allies of the Medina in Marrakesh there are brightly colored shirts, tons of plastic fake amber jewlery, cheesy daggers, leather shoes, things for the everyday lives of the people who live there like saftey pins, mint, huge piles of olives, spices, hanging slabs of meat, notebooks for the kids who are returning to school. The spice sellers all try to get us into their shops where they give us a quick tour of the oddities that they keep in the jars that line their shelves. Blue iridescent beetles that work just like viagra, leeches for what ails you, and "if that cream I gave you doesn´t work, you can come back tomorrow and stick those leeches on my head!" And, yes there really are snake charmers who sit surrounded by cobras playing the whiny sounding flute and old berber ladies who will read your palm for 100 derham as long as you don´t mind that neither of you speak the same language.
Sometimes we find refuge from the madness in a music shop, owned by our new friends jamal and abdul. They make us endless cups of mint tea which you pour from two feet in the air into a tiny little cup and sip with satisfied slurping noises and chit chat. Jamal learns we like Tracy Chapman and thus begins the endless loop of Tracy Chapman music that we listen to in his shop surrounded by fabrics, drums, more fake daggers, carpets, and traditional berber guitars. We´re touched as we read the huge scrapbook that Jamal has complied over the years of postcards and notes that people have sent him from all over the world after they met in his shop in Marrekesh and debate the state of the world and other such philosphical notions. We also spend long periods of time hearing about Sarah, Jamals niece, who is about one and a half and who he very much wants us to meet. We accept his dinner invitation and zoom across Marrakesh on the backs of the motorbikes that everyone weaves through pedestrians, taxis and small allies with potholes and stray cats. I get my only official tour of Marrakesh (Jamal used to be a guide) by the light of the full moon where I get to see various gardens, the olive orchards that surround the city, the royal palace, and the place where the huge storks (just like the ones we saw in Teruel) roost at night on top of the huge earth wall that surrounds the Medina.
Jamal´s brother´s wife who is gigantically pregnant prepares food for us all, ptoato salad, french fries and some yummy curry thing which we all eat out of the same plates, reaching across eachother to pick up tasty morsels with our fingers and sop up sauses with our bread. Jamal eats faster than anyone I have every seen. The food flies into his mouth at the speed of light while he continues to talk even though there are french fries hanging out of the side of his mouth and small bits of rice fall onto the table. Then we drink tea on the roof terrace, listen to more Tracy Chapman, and listen to the cooing of the pet pigeons his brother keeps.
Our days in Marrakesh pass fairly peacefully, yes we are hassled, but Marrakesh has cleaned up its act in the last few years, we learn from the local rastas that as a Morrocan you can be fined and even get jail time for talking to tourists if you are not a permitted guide so in general the environment is somewhat more laid back when it comes to hassling tourists. And we find refuge in little things, like going to visit one of the guys who sells dates, apricots, figs, and nuts to buy some of his goodies to hand out to people and nibble on oursleves as the day goes by. He always greets us with a huge smile and presses little tidbits of his treats into our hands for us to munch while we make our purchases. The friendly guys who work at the hotel give us free bannana milkshakes, we lean back against cushions after stuffing ourselves with olives, potato salad, tomato cucumber salad and other such delicacies.
After a few days in the dusty city, we head out of town to Ouzoud, the biggest and most beautiful waterfall in Morroco. We are dropped off in Ouzoud, and as the taxi zooms away, we feel slightly confused because the landscape here looks just as dusty, hot and uninviting as the rest of the surrounding landscape has been. Parched from our hot taxi ride, we shrug and start walking. As we pass through the miniscule town, the sound of rushing water begins to massage our eardrums. A hugely tall waterfall crashes down and creates a small valley that is lined with olive trees, squash vines, small cafes where you can camp and wild monkeys that climb the steep walls and wrestle about in the bushes. We camp at the bottom of the waterfall, away from most of the hustle and bustle where it is quiet, and I can sleep, because by this point my lymph nodes have miraculously swollen to the size of golf balls and sleep is the only thing on my mind. Sarah watches as the setting sun makes the waterfall change all the colors of the rainbow while I sleep peacefully under grape arbors on pillows on the ground. Sadly, we only get to spend one night in this little chunk of paradise because we have already bought our tickets in the sleeper compartment of a train headed back to Tangiers the next day. So after a relaxing morning in the shade of the grape vines, where I write notes to Sarah in a notebook because my throat hurts too much to talk at this point, we walk up the 700 steps to the top of the waterfall. We climb back into the hot dusty taxi in which a total of six passengers plus one driver are crammed into a mercedes and wind our way back across the desert with the sun beating through the windows, endless olive orchards and herds of goats munching the dry bushes of the countryside. Our butts hurt like crazy, and I´m still feeling feverish, but the journey was more than worth it.
Back in Marrakesh, we sneak showers at the hostel, eat dinner, drink more free bananna juice and board the night train for Tangers. I immediately fall asleep not to awake until the next morning when the conductor taps on our window to announce our arrival.
Now, back in Spain, we head to finca cruda tomorrow or the next day to enjoy a bit of mother nature and get our hands in the dirt.
So much love to all of you,
Liz