Morocco

As we leave this magical country, there’s some things that we will take with us…
The scenery: there’s a constant among the many fantastic sights we’ve seen – mountains. We’ve either been in the thick of them or sighting them in the distance. Rock is one of the hardest substances known to man, yet these mountains have been eroded and shaped by the weather gods over a mind-boggling time, to form what is now Morocco. Even in the desert, we were amongst mountains of sand.
Speaking of the desert, the Sahara sand was the finest sand I’ve ever had run through my fingers. It flowed like water, as though under some mystical spell that brings it to life. It was extraordinary, again created by the overwhelming passage of time.
Water: Abundant in the north, scarce in the south. Roads invariably cross rivers by dipping down into the river bed and crossing it with a concreted section. There’s no need to build a bridge when the river never flows. It hardly ever rains, but then again, there is always evidence of massive water movement at some time in the past, judging by the size of the river beds and flood plains, and the massive gorges and canyons. There are dams in the north that hold back vast volumes of water for irrigation and hydro power. The south-north contrast is noticeable.
Animals: Cats are everywhere throughout the country. They are tolerated but not domesticated. Their job is to keep the rodent vermin under control, and they do it very well - we saw no evidence of mice or rats anywhere. Storks are everywhere throughout the country, creating huge nests anywhere that’s high and out of human reach. Donkeys are common on both country roads and cities. Known as the medina taxi (a horse is a medina Mercedes), donkeys are an essential part of simple Moroccan life.  Sheep and goats are always grazing at the roadside, under the watchful eye of their shepherd. Your heart is always in your mouth as you drive past such a flock - all it takes is for one to break away from the flock and run in front of oncoming traffic.
Houses: people live in houses of concrete blocks or mud and straw, and most of them are only half finished. The bottom floor is inhabited, and the floors above are empty with reinforcing steelwork poking through the concrete framework. We learned that people don't pay tax while their house is under construction. So, they never finish. Aesthetics are never a consideration.
Satellite dishes: In Morocco, it only takes a once-off payment of 50 Euro to buy and install a satellite dish on your roof, to give you have access to hundreds of European and African channels. We saw the biggest concentration in Fez, where the numbers of dishes at roof level could only be described as a forest. Here’s a recommendation for a good business opportunity – become a satellite dish technician in Morocco.
The rubbish: sadly very disturbing in country areas. Plastic bags are like snow on the ground. Ugly, worrying, and very eco-unfriendly. 
The King: Mohammed VI is obviously a very popular monarch, after 17 years on the throne. Well educated, very wealthy and only 52 years of age, he could be described as progressive with some of his reforms. His picture is everywhere – shops, cafes and hotels, where he is either in a suit or at play with his young family. We only ever heard endearing comments about him.
Finally, the people: Always warm, friendly, welcoming … and Muslim. If only those people around the world who have come to distrust Islam in recent years, could experience the Moroccan hospitality and kindness, they would realise their folly. Yes, Moroccans are different – most women cover their heads, and do all the work; men only socialise with men and pray five times a day. Most live simple lives, doing whatever it takes to survivie, but they are eager to help, do not discriminate on race or creed, and will greet you with a smile.

Fez, northern Morocco

Boumalne is a little town on the edge of a barren plateau in the middle of Morocco. Nothing much happens there, but it has some very decent 4 and 5 star hotels. When we stayed in one of them, there were several other tourists also doing so. In fact busloads of them. The reason why this place is so popular is two nearby gorges – Dades and Togra, and we did the loop to see them both. Those poor tourists would not have seen what we saw, because there’d be no way their immense buses could have negotiated the tight corners.
The Dades Gorge begins with a road running beside the small Dades River at the bottom of a narrow canyon. Soon we began to climb up the canyon wall, leaving the river far below. After a half-dozen zigs and the same number of zags, the hairpin bends leads us to the top of the canyon, where we stop at a strategically located café. Looking down makes you draw your breath, and you can’t help but hold it for a few seconds. Two wonders comes to mind – how on earth has Mother Nature created this, and how on earth have the Moroccans built that road that scales a sheer rock face?
Before moving on, there was a group consensus to recognise the date, and we all stood together while looking out over this magnificent scenery. I was quite relieved to be able to  remember the Anzac Oath (“They shall not grow old, as those who are left grow old …”), meaning that I didn’t yet have Alzheimers, and someone finished with “Lest we forget” before we had a minute’s silence. So a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis stood as one and had their own little private Anzac Day service in the middle of Morocco. The moment could be best described as poignant.
Further up into the gorge, the roads turn to gravel and become quite rough, but we soldiered on, and didn’t regret it. Looking from above, huge hands of mountain stretched out its fingers to create hundreds of separate canyons of rock. We’d never seen anything like it, and again we tried to comprehend how many eons it took to form this terrain. We eventually reach the Todra Gorge, which created by the Todra River, and like the Dades, this river is surely too small to have created this gigantic and freakish canyon. Sheer rock walls on both sides are only some ten metres apart and tower 160 metres above us. It was understandable why these gorges attract so many people from around the world. They were both incredible.
With just a few days left for our Moroccan journey, we have continued to head north, and the countryside has changed from rocky barren plains to lush green fields, orchards and forests. We are still surrounded by mountains; they either flank us directly or appear on the horizon in the distance. We have made it to Fez, Morocco’s second-largest city after Casablanca, and we spent the afternoon exploring its medina. This is believed to be the largest city area free of any motor vehicles, and supposedly contains 11,000 laneways. We found it more interesting than the medinas of Marrakesh and Essaouira, remarkably clean, and vibrant with shops of every kind. It has the oldest university on the world (859AD). Its historical significance is recognised by UNESCO, listing the medina as a world heritage site, and there were many 13th Century buildings being renovated, funded by UNESCO. We saw, and smelled, the famous leather tanneries, as well as hand-made ceramic tile and carpet weaving factories. We learned that Australia helped Fez’s ailing carpet industry a few decades ago by donating some fine micron merino wool.

Sahara desert, central Morocco

Following Mike to our Agdz riad, we were wondering what he was leading us into. Off the main street into a small laneway, then into an even smaller alley that the van was only able to negotiate due to Xavier’s precision driving. Maybe a centimetre to spare from both side mirrors. Through a high double gate into a small car park, we then walked through a door into the hotel grounds. Pathways wound their way around resplendent rose gardens, and a central fountain with its own resident tortoise. The owner was an ex-pat Frenchman who had renovated his old place by adding rooms and daubing them in the traditional adobe mud and straw. It was such a surprise to find down the alley to nowhere.
There have been several memorable days on this trip. The day after leaving Agdz will be one of the most memorable. Our destination was the large town of Arfoud. We stopped at a very opulent hotel called the Xaluca, but didn’t check in – this will be our accommodation for tomorrow night. Instead, we each filled a day pack with some overnight essentials, and stored the rest of our luggage in Xaluca’s storage room. We all piled into three 4WDs, were driven about an hour out of Arfoud across a very barren and rocky plain (no roads) to another hotel, behind which we could see large orange sand dunes.
Waiting for us out the back were camels, one for each of us, tended by men wearing traditional blue Berber robes and colourful head scarves. They helped us mount our camels, and we headed toward those large orange sand dunes. Within minutes, we’d been enveloped by hills of sand, and we were in the Sahara desert. Rising to the top of each dune revealed a sea of other dunes disappearing into the distance, indeed it was like being in a mountainous sea of orange water, frozen in time like a huge photograph. It was after 6pm, and the setting sun was changing the hues of the sand around us. The sheltered sides became darker in shadow, while the sunny sides became a deeper red-shade of orange. It was an ever-changing alien world.
Our destination a couple of hours later was an oasis, quite literally, at the foot of a mountain of sand. We socialised beneath an open-air canopy until being called into the dining room, ah – dining tent, for the delightful Moroccan meal that our camel drivers had prepared over a gas stove. The lighting was from solar panels, and water was from a well that only needed a depth of three meters to reach the water table. The evening finished with our Berber hosts playing drums for us, singing in their traditional Berber language about living in the desert, just as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. It was an honour for us to be invited to also bang a drum with them. It was nearly midnight when we retired to our own tent made from camel hair and a carpet floor. A full moon made the middle of the night look like a cloudy day, and it was eerie how much light was shining from the heavens above.
I woke the next morning just in time to see the sun rise. The actual event only took 30 seconds for the entire sun to poke its head above the distant mountain range, and then to be fully visible. The light, however, made the desert an ever changing picture show for an hour. It will be something I’ll never forget.
In contrast, we will quickly forget our tender behinds from riding the camels. They don’t believe in stirrups in Morocco – we should apply economic sanctions until they do. We also saw hundreds of others doing as we were, and of course they all require hotels to stay in. No wonder that Arfoud is  supposedly the tourist gateway to the Sahara desert.

Foum Zguid, central Morocco

Tafraoute is obviously in a strict Muslim area. Yesterday we had lunch at small hillside village, with a short main street of the usual shops and a couple of rows of houses in the back streets behind them. Sitting and observing whilst waiting for lunch, we did not see any women. Not a single female walked the main street. Hundreds of men tended their shops, did deliveries, walked and chatted with each other. The one-sided social populace was disheartening, but then again quite rare in our travels. We guessed that the women folk were housebound doing the chores, but they must’ve been around because we saw plenty of young children in the streets (all boys). The lunch of tagine and lentils from the tiny cafe, by the way, was delicious. It’s quite amusing for us to observe the chaos that we create when twelve hungry tourists rocking up to these small village cafes. They are never organised to cope for such a sudden influx, and the first thing they all do is rush nextdoor to the butcher to buy fresh meat and the baker for bread. We benefit, of course, by having the freshest lunch possible.
Leaving Tafraoute to travel further into the south-east of the country, we passed through more mountain passes. This is getting quite ridiculous. Even the “World on Wheels” travel notes for this tour apologises for Day 11 – “Sorry, but more picturesque riding on great roads, through more mountains”. I’m getting a callous on my right index finger from the constant pressing of my camera shutter. This scenery is beyond words, but I’ll try.
The morning to Igherm passes through, and over, another mountain range. We spend some time crossing a valley floor, before ascending a steep incline in twisting curves and then descending in similar fashion. There are mountains beside us that risk a cricked neck to look at their peaks. Almost close enough to reach out and touch, giant rocks rise up from the valley floor, in sharp relief from the rising morning sun. There are more mountains behind these ones, and still more beyond them, so we can see a three-dimensional painting of ranges that seem to go on forever.
In the afternoon, the landscape settles down to become a flat valley floor with steep cliffs on either side. The only vegetation is the occasional tree, about man-height, growing from an obviously sandy soil. The barren rocky terrain has given way to a barren sandy one. Soon we see a herd of wild camels, and we know that we’re in place that’s totally foreign. We stay the night in what must be termed an oasis in this harsh environment – a hotel about 5 kms outside the small village of Foum Zguid, and it has a swimming pool. While our brains try to decipher how this can be, our swim is oh so delightful in this thirty-degree heat.
The next day, tour guide Mike tells us that our next night’s stay, Agdz, is only an hour’s drive away, and that’s not proper use of valuable daylight hours, so let’s take the long way round and explore. What starts out as the shortest travel day becomes the longest of the trip so far – nearly 400 kms.  From Foum Zguid to Amzraou, Ouiad Drias, and finally lunch in a tiny village called Mhamid. Which is just as well because this is where the road ends – beyond this village is desert. Just over the hill, about 20 kms away, is the Algerian border. This is an oasis on the edge of the Sahara, and its café had delicious chicken kebabs, fresh bread, real orange juice, and WiFi. It was hard to believe. Our driver Javier described it quite aptly as the end of the world.

Tafraoute, western Morocco

Further south from Essaouira finds us in even warmer weather. The mighty Atlantic Ocean is to our right for the whole way. At the halfway point of our tour, we stay the night in Mirleft with a fantastic view of the ocean, then venture to Sidi Ifni, and inland to Guelmim, which is as far south and west as we will travel. We then start heading north and east to Tafraoute, for the return leg of our journey, passing through more mountain passes and rural country that is hilly, dry, rocky and barren. I say “rural” because we still see farmers tending flocks of sheep and goats by the roadside, or tilling the ground with hand-held implements. Dry stone fences are fashioned out of rocks (there’s no shortage of them in these parts). Houses are simple and basic, some are even tents, for we are in Berber country. A fascinating ethnic group indigenous to northern Africa for over a thousand years, Berbers are now mainly in Morocco and neighbouring Algeria. Famous soccer player and current coach of Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane, was born to Berber parents in Algeria.
There is, however, absolutely no water here. We cross many bridges over non-existent rivers, where it looks like no water has flowed in years. We’re told that the rivers come in winter, fed by the seemingly endless procession of mountains around us. Most of these bridges have had their roadway bitumen destroyed and washed away, leaving them as dusty, rough patches of gravel.
Country folk only seem to do what’s necessary to live. They only grow plants to either eat or sell to eat. You never see anything ornamental growing, and therefore small rural towns are dust bowls. Tendering a garden around your home is not a good use of Morocco time. Houses don’t have fences, and herded animals eat grass from the side of the road; after all this is free feed. We see many flocks of about thirty sheep and goats being herded by a single man, sometimes a woman, grazing by the side of the road, where greenery seems to grow more readily that in parched paddocks. All the shepherds must do is stop their animals becoming road kill.
Why collect your rubbish when you can throw it into ditches? The countryside is adorned with decorated plants like its Christmas, but the decorations are empty plastic bags that have been blown by the wind from roadside rubbish dumps. Strewn household garbage in rural parts has become a disturbing regularity for us. At least bigger towns and cities have clean streets, parks and gardens. We even see town workers clearing and sweeping streets. It’s a pity those in isolated communities don’t do so as well.

Essaouira, western Morocco

As we bid farewell to Marrakesh, there’s many thoughts running through my mind. Graham Nash’s classic song from1969 “Marrakesh Express” is one. “Catch the train from Casablanca goin’ south, blowing smoke rings from the corner of my ma-ma-ma-ma-mouth.” Billy Thorpe’s final album to the world, “Tangier”, released a few years after his death, was inspired and recorded in Morocco, and the first song is entitled “Marrakesh”. As Billy’s song says, with children at play under the Marrakesh moon with nothing particular to do, we all shared some tasty Moroccan red wine and contemplated on the last two days.
Outside the medina is like any other modern city in the world, in fact it reminded me of St Kilda in Melbourne. But the old city inside the medina walls is special, with either large open spaces (such as Jamma El-fna) or very narrow laneways. They all contain tiny shops selling anything and everything. You walk down the middle of the laneways at your own peril, for small motor bikes shoot past at considerable speed. How they avoid collisions is amazing, but they are oh so very annoying – you must remember to keep right. The smell of two-stroke fuel reminds me of a lawn mower; indeed the engines in these motor bikes are no bigger than a lawnmower.
There are beggars in the streets. Most women wear hard scarves, some have their face fully covered. Men gather with other men, women with women. The sexes only mix as young families with children. Tourists are obvious, especially the young women who wear very little. I think it’s a pity they don’t pay respect to the local culture and cover up just a little bit more. Maybe I’m being a prude, but I want to respect these kind, friendly locals.
The medina is a maze of streets and laneways. Finding our hotel would’ve been interesting if it wasn’t for another “fixer”. Coming into Marrakesh, stopping at our first seriously busy intersection for traffic lights, there was a knock at my passenger side window. A guy wearing shabby clothes and riding a decrepit old motorbike that should’ve been in a museum, spoke to Javier in Arabic. Harvey replied in Spanish, and the guy immediately switched to Spanish, and asked which hotel. He’d seen our motorbikes, and the name on the van, and surmised correctly. On Javier's reply, the fixer said “Follow me” and took off. Javier looked at us, shrugged, and proceeded to follow. We eventually made it to the riad, and the fixer earned his tip because our hotel was surrounded by road surface works and closed streets, and would’ve been a nightmare to find. These are resourceful people, and are clever at recognising a potential business opportunity.
In the medina we saw snake charmers, horse-drawn carriages, street musicians, and hawkers flogging mobile phones or selfie sticks or watches. We heard the call-to-prayer several times a day, and Jamma El-Fna is surrounded several minarets attached to mosques. And cats. Everywhere in Morocco there are cats, and their population swells in big cities. They may be feral and homeless, although we saw several shopkeepers provide a bowl of water, but the cats are never fed. I imagine this is because they help keep the mouse and rat population at bay.
Next stop was Essaouira ("essa-where-ah"), a fishing town on the Atlantic coast in Morocco’s west. I’d heard a lot about Essaouira from the legends of 1960s rock. In fact our riad hotel had pictures of Jimi Hendrix on the wall in their restaurant. Essaouira also has a medina containing the old city, and our hotel is right in the middle amongst narrow laneways and a myriad of shops. It’s a short walk down to the wharf where the fishing boats had just come in and men were cleaning their catch in readiness for that night’s restaurant trade. All we had to do was follow the sea birds – a million of them hovered overhead in anticipation of some fishy entrails. What the birds didn’t get, the cats were cleaning up. We were careful not to step in discarded fish guts as we walked past some weird looking creatures for sale, many in the process of getting sliced and diced by gritty old men with facial stubble but steady hands. The smell was overpowering, and we didn’t hang around for long.
Today, heading further south, strangely (for us Taswegians) getting closer to the equator, and warmer.

Marrakesh, Morocco

Riding through yet more Atlas gorges and canyons on our way to Marrakesh, it gets me thinking that there’s always people by the side of the road doing nothing at all, probably thinking to themselves “This is a nice place to sit, I might stay here for a few minutes”, which means a couple of hours in Morocco time. Then, “I'll cross the road to sit under that tree over there. Oh look, here comes a white van while I’m still half way across. It’s got a Spanish driver and two Australian passengers. But I’m in no hurry because I’m on Morocco time, so they will have to wait for me.” And so poor Javier has to avoid people dawdling across the road, for they’re in no hurry. Neither is the farmer herding his sheep along the road, or the horse-drawn cart with the whole family on board. They are all on Morocco time. So we have learned that if the restaurant says your food will be ready in 5 minutes, they mean 15. If breakfast is for 7:30, expect it at 8. If you ask a Moroccan for the time, they look up at the sun and answer “half past April”.
I’ve been to cities that never close down (ref: Peter Allen), but I’ve never been anywhere like Marrakesh. After just a few hours here, Marrakesh can only be described as a chaotic, frantic frenzy of people, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and donkeys. Everyone is going somewhere in a hurry, in contrast to the last few days. The old part of the city is called the “Medina”, and is located behind a wall that surrounds it. Our hotel is the middle of the Medina, and is therefore surrounded by the aforementioned bedlam. Just to venture outside the front door is like entering some strange ceremonial pageant of a very foreign culture. Our hotel is another Dar or Riad, what used to be a grand house is now a quaint hotel. Rooms are small, but decorated in traditional Moroccan architecture. It just adds to the Moroccan experience.
At night we strolled along to the Jamma el-Fna, an old town square that becomes a nightly throng of people seeking a meal or a bargain. Nothing has prepared us for Jamma el-Fna. It is a throbbing mass of humanity, thousands upon thousands of people of every nationality, crowded together within a few hundred square meters. The crazy cacophony of sound is broken by the rhythms of street bands singing in Arabic to the playing of simple yet pulsating percussive music. Street stalls sell food of every description. You are hassled to come spend your money at their stall, and if you have a joke with them, they will laugh with you, shake your hand, and move onto their next victim.
I can see why Marrakesh has inspired so many artists, particularly rock musicians, since the 1960s. This is an exciting place. And we have a rest day from the tour to explore it.

Ait Benhaddou, northern Morocco

Night two was in a town called Ifrane, which couldn’t have been any more different than the night before. Unlike Chefchaouen, this Alpine village was only built in the 1930s, at 1600 meters, to capitalise on abundant ski fields in winter months. To cope with high snowfall, each house has a steep-sloped roof, giving Ifrane the apt description of “Switzerland in Morocco”. On the way to Ifrane, we stopped to explore the ruins of Volubilis, what was the southwestern-most outpost of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. We drove through some spectacular hilly country, but as Mike explained, these were only the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. More, and even more spectacular, was to come.
Night three was in a region more than a town, Bin el Ouidane, and our hotel was perched on a hill overlooking an expansive lake that’s been created by the construction, in the early 1950s, of a large concrete dam. Firstly, we had to cross a mountain range, part of the Atlas mountains. We passed the hydro power station on the way up the mountain, and we followed the water pipeline going up. The view from the top of the mountain seemed to give a panorama of the whole of western Morocco. This country sure does have some seriously high mountains.
Night four was in a little village called Ait Benhaddou, near Ouarzazate (“wa-za-zut”). This area is known for film making, such as “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Gladiator”. But to get there we had to cross more of the Atlas Mountains, and it was a journey to remember. Being a motor cycle tour, we tend to take the road less travelled, providing riders with the thrill of windy roads and plenty of corners. Maybe not so easy, however, for passengers travelling in a van. Javier's van fits three people across the front quite comfortably, and the twisting, narrow roads may have had us rolling around the cabin, but the ever-changing view demanded our full attention. With a different outlook at each corner, we were mesmerised at every turn. Peaks in the distance were decorated with snow. Below were deep ravines and gorges, on an unimaginable scale, and we were driving through them. The United States may have the Grand Canyon, but Morocco has the grandest of them all.
Barren rock cliffs, with our road cut into its side, going on into the distance, darting in and out of ravines and out of view, before re-appearing a few kilometres on. And occasionally, we would spy a house, made of rudimentary mud and stone over a timber frame. People actually live here! The family car would be tethered at the front door, a donkey. This elementary lifestyle may be deceiving, however, as a second look would reveal a satellite dish on the roof. Fertile ground at the bottom of the canyon would always be growing a crop of some sort, with easy access to water. Access to the bottom, however, was never easy. What we were seeing defied our imagination.
Coming down from the mountains lands us in a barren, rocky desert. Our Ait Benhaddou accommodation was an authentic dar, a glamorous guesthouse in Morocco, made of genuine adobe walls – mud and straw mixed together. Arched doorways that you have to bend to walk through. Over the back of the hotel is the hillside palace, actual living quarters for people but also used in many movies over the years, including “The Living Daylights”, “The Mummy”, “Jewel of the Nile”. It looks like a magic kingdom from our window, and it was to roam through. And this place is in the middle of desert. This is such a long way from home.

Chefchaouen, northern Morocco

Today I felt like Christopher Columbus discovering the New World, for we’d never seen anything like what we saw on our first day in Morocco. But first of all we had to get through Border Control. I learned that there’s a little piece of Spain in Africa, as the ferry departed from Algeciras on mainland Europe to Cueta on mainland Africa, sailing right past the Rock of Gibraltar. Cueta is a little town near Tangier but is still part of Spain, and our touring party of a van plus eight motor bikes alighted from the ferry and drove a few kilometres along the coast before crossing the border into Morocco. The scene at the border checkpoint could only be described as chaotic.
There were hundreds of people milling around a series of booths, but only about one-tenth were actual border officials. The rest were locals, itinerants, beggars, men and women, young and old, with absolutely nothing else to do than sit, stand, chat, stare, beg, argue, sleep, and wander aimlessly. Some of them, however, are “fixers”. They offer to help you with your paperwork in crossing the border. Our driver Xavier (we call him Harvey) was well accustomed with fixers, and he befriended a guy who stayed with us for the entire two hours. Two hours filling out forms, getting them stamped, getting the motor bikes checked, inspecting the back of the van, more stamps, then signatures, then lining up at a window to eventually get a lady to type your details into a computer on MS-DOS, using just one finger for the “hunt-and-peck” method. If her mobile phone rang, it meant more delay as the computer would time out and she’d have to start all over again. Proceed to the next checkpoint, inspect passports, more scribbles and stamps, while trying to avoid getting run over by cars, bikes and bicycles, most of them completely unroadworthy and carrying anything from bulging bags of groceries or cement to old lounge suites and mattresses, all tied down with packing tape. When finally we got through, Harvey rewarded our fixer with 10 euros and we were on our way. Apparently only two hours is good for this border crossing. Harvey has had 5 hour waits in the past.
And so Anne and I set foot in Africa for the first time. With the Mediterranean Sea to our left, and the Riff Mountains soaring to our right, we sat in Harvey’s van as we followed the motor bikes along the coast past Tetouan before turning south and inland. Driving through the Riff mountains, we were looking up at sheer cliffs of solid rock, peaks towered above us like huge spires, some were shrouded in cloud. Eventually we arrived in the hillside town of Chefchaouen, driving uphill through the town as far as the narrowing streets would allow us. The final two hundred meters to our hotel had to be done on foot. As if this ascent wasn’t enough, our assigned room was on the top floor, up three flights of stairs.
By the time we’d reached our first night’s accommodation in Morocco, we’d become overwhelmed by what we’d seen. Chefchaouen is known as The Blue Town, due to the predominate colour that most of its houses. Founded in the 1400s, the small dwellings and cobblestone streets were obviously very old, and we felt as though we’d walked through a time portal. Men wore the djellaba, a loose fitting robe with a pointed hood (George Lucas dressed his Star Wars character Obi Wan Kenobi in a djellaba), and women wore a hijab in some brilliant colours. Doorways were small archways leading to small rooms with exposed beams of thick timber. Floors were tiled mosaics of many colours and patterns. Windows were arched, with patterns carved into wooden shutters. To top it all off, the Riff mountains gazes down on Chefchaouen.
As Anne and I stared at this scenery, seemingly at the top of the world, we felt that world away from little Tasmania.

Granada, southern Spain

Our only venture outside Malaga was for a day tour to Granada.  The two hour bus drive took us through the Montes de Malaga (the Mountains of Malaga). This is a serious mountain range that goes right across the south of Spain and towers over several cities, including Malaga. It also creates the valley that guided us to Granada. Steep, rocky, tree-less slopes were in sharp relief in the early morning sun, with the occasional village sitting in the lower foothills. The summits have snow on them, which has dismayed the locals, as it only snowed in recent days and they were hoping they'd seen the last of winter. The main crop in these parts is olives and some asparagus, with the entire valley floor taken over by parallel rows of olive trees.
A visit to Granada must include the Alhambra, a palace and fortress complex dating from the 13th Century. What makes this place interesting, over and above the excellent carvings and mosaics, is that it spans both Islamic and Christian periods of Spanish history, and it was where Christopher Columbus received royal endorsement from Spain’s Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand to sail west and discover the Americas (in fact we stood in the very room where he was received his orders). It’s amazing to think that this place was ignored for hundreds of years, and even lived in by squatters, until the defeat of Napoleon in the early 1800s. It’s now a UNESCO site and one of Spain’s most visited tourist attractions. We certainly found that out – it was as though every Spanish tourist was at Alhambra with us. It was well worth seeing, and having a tour guide to explain the history of each room added to the experience, but it was hard to not feel like we were cattle being herded.
Another interesting fact, as related to us by our Granada tour guide, Paco. Malaga was the birthplace for three very famous people: Pablo Picasso, Antonio Banderas, and Paco the tour guide.
We had a much more pleasant experience yesterday exploring Malaga’s Gibralfaro, another hilltop fortress but not as big a tourist attraction. It gave fantastic views of this wonderful city, and we wandered its parapets without hassling crowds. Just up the road from our apartment is a genuine Spanish bullring, and we were given an excellent view of it from the Gibralfaro. It’s actually only used twice a year, and I hope that’s due to a decline in its popularity. Talking to some local teenagers, bullfighting may well be a short-lived tradition in Spain.

Malaga, southern Spain

Mike is a long-time friend from my childhood (we were next door neighbours from age two), and runs a company called “World on Wheels”, leading motorcycle tours of several countries around the world. Yesterday we met Mike for lunch in the Malaga marina – he is here to finalise his tour preparations before Monday’s departure. As he lives in Sydney, we don’t get many opportunities to catch up, so it was crazy to greet each other in a city in southern Spain. Right now he’s also our tour lead, and you will no doubt hear more about him in coming weeks.
After lunch, Mike and I both fulfilled a long-held goal. We rode a Segway. We each hired one of these electric-powered two-wheeled marvels and “drove” around the streets of Malaga for an hour, lead by a pretty young guide called Gabi. These machines are amazing – it was as though we were as one with our Segway. We only had to think of direction and speed and it obeyed, when in actual fact it was the gyros simply responding to our subtle manipulation of the handle bars. In Australia they are banned from public places and on public roads, but here we ducked in and out of people on Malaga's footpaths. I can’t see me ever owning one however – my Segway cost 8,500 Euros, more expensive than a motorbike.
As we prepare to leave Spain after a very short time, it strikes me that these adventures are meant to be crossing things of our list of life-long goals. But our four days here have only made us determined to return and explore Spain proper. This place is too alluring and beautiful to cross it off the list after only four days. The departure from our rented apartment was a fine example of what we’ve experienced in Malaga. Our host Filippo insisted on driving us to our hotel, instead of us catching a taxi. His flat was in a perfect location, walking distance to the beach and the city centre, on a bus route, and with a million-dollar view over the Med. His kindness was an added bonus.
So tomorrow we leave for Morocco with a dozen other Australians and Kiwis, and our Spanish driver. We will finish that tour in three weeks by returning to this same hotel.

Malaga, southern Spain

After leaving home at 1:30pm on Monday, we finally made it to Malaga at 3pm on the Wednesday, which was actually 11pm our time. Two and a half days to get to our first day of the tour was a perfect excuse for an early night, our lights went out at 8:30. The journey, however, wasn’t just frustrating delays – we met some interesting people along the way. The elderly Swiss couple on the plane who’d just toured Oz and NZ, and the store owner at Zurich airport whose shop sold fresh fruit and veg to hungry travellers. The lady selling caviar (do people really pay those prices?)
The final person we met on the journey was key to our travels. He’s our landlord while in Malaga. We chose Fillipo’s place on the Air B&B website, and he welcomed us with a friendly smile and sympathy for our lost night. His unit is at the end of a dead-end street that winds up the hill from the main road. The climb may be a test of our fitness, but it affords the same view that the website promised. The Mediterranean Sea stretches out before us, dominating the panorama from extreme left to right. Wide, blue, busy, ever-changing. Malaga is obviously a major port, with water traffic of all kinds coming and going, right in front of us. We can see two large cruise ships in dock.
Thoughts on Malaga after the first day – motorbikes and scooters, little toy dogs being walked by little old ladies, restaurants and palm trees. Reminded us of St Kilda in Melbourne. The streets are very clean, people obviously use the many rubbish and recycle bins. The prominent feature, however, are the Mountains of Malaga, that seem to keep the city to the coast and stop it encroaching to the north. Resourceful house builders have defied this, however, and built their homes on steep slopes on the side of the mountain, naturally taking in the view. Everywhere you go in Malaga there are mountain slopes, and its resident inhabitants, looking down on you.

Melbourne, Australia

So, not a good start. What began as a ten minute delay in Launceston for the shortest leg of our journey, due to a “very minor mechanical problem”, then became a 30 minute delay. Then an hour. Every ten minutes came an update announcement that there was no update. After one and a half hours, we were getting concerned that we might not make our connecting international flight. Finally boarding two hours overdue, our late arrival in Melbourne confirmed our concerns.
Virgin paid for the night’s accommodation at a Tullamarine hotel and the evening’s meal, plus re-scheduled flights for tomorrow, but does that compensate for a whole day lost from our holiday?
We certainly were not expecting to have a night in Melbourne. I'm reminded of seven years to what my good friend and tour guide Mike said after a certain motorbike accident, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. John Lennon’s famous song lyric
is haunting me today.

Launceston, Tasmania

Another journey to the northern hemisphere beckons - this time the focus will a return to Turkey to complete the same Ferris Wheels (now called "World on Wheels") tour that was so rudely interrupted in 2009. Anne and I had always vowed to return. There will no doubt be some emotional moments when we confront what was a traumatic time in our lives, but those moments, however, will be overshadowed by the joy of being back in this fantastic country. The recent bombings only make us more determined - no brainless lunatic will stop us doing what we love.
Our tour guide and bus driver will again be the wonderful Barish and Yussuf, who saved our sanity 7 years ago by looking after us above and beyond the call of duty. We also plan to visit the Istanbul hospital where we spent a month saving my foot, and we will catch up with Dr Myk, the surgeon who operated on my injury - he's told me by email that he well remembers looking after us, and he still has our fluffy kangaroo, given as a gift, on his desk.
By chance, the 2016 World on Wheels schedule offered the opportunity to tour Morocco before Turkey. Not only that, but this tour starts and ends in the south of Spain - both countries on our list of must-see places. Too good an opportunity to miss.
And don't worry - I won't be on a motor bike. Anne and I will travel in the air-conditioned comfort of the support bus.