Week 8

17th August (Lou)
Left Moulay a little sooner than planned but our van was crawling with children so we told them we had to leave and they finally went... headed to Essouara, had a walk along the beach (sand blasting galore) and into the town, market galore. Had a fish lunch in a busy market fish place and had red snapper, sardines, sea bass, prawns and squid for for about 8 quid each. It was yummy and Joe ate loads of fish and he doesn't usually like it so was v good! Wandered around the market for a bit and ended up drinking crazy tea in a mans spice stall and we then thought 'be polite, buy something' so got a few bags of spices and some tea with 4 quid in our pocket and it came to 43 euros. Stunned, we said we were out of money, which was the truth, but he then insisted on frog marching us to the nearest cash point, and then subsequently 4 more as they were out of order, and getting his money. So we paid in the end about 20 quid for some tea and one bag of spice and a crapy piece of soap. Left us with a bit of a bitter taste in our mouths so returned to the van and made plans. We have decided to stay in Morocco another week or so making it two weeks total. Its cool here and very different but we decided it would be great to go back to some of the places we stopped at on the way, so our way back will basically be a 'tuned' way here; we will stop at all the places we really liked, for longer periods of time. This planning session made us both feel a little more perky I think.

I had a shower!!!!!! First one in 3 weeks! Cold but I didn't care! Amazing!!!!!!

18th August
Had a morning of hanging about in the campsite, using the washing facilities to their full extent, eating lots of lunch and then we headed to the medina (market) determined to have a much better shopping experience this time... And we did! It was good, we wandered about, avoiding spice man stall (although he came and found us somehow wandering around the market and said did we want tea, the answer this time was a firm 'Non Merci'. We found an amazing drum shop, we had been admiring the drumming in Marocco so we headed in and chatted to the guy for ages, he as really nice and friendly, but genuinely, it seemed, not so much just out to sell stuff. Joe bought a drum which is amazing! And then we were asked if we wanted tea. We decided that seeing as we had already bought stuff, that he couldn't guilt trip us, so we drank tea, and he was really nice, not out to get us at all. I bought a cool box drum thing and we chatted for ages in French and conversation turned to horoscopes, and after a long converstation the decision was made that Joe resembled a Langostine. Far too complex to explain but something to do with the moon?

19th August
Got chatting to a cool Oz guy in the campsite over breakfast and then headed to the beach to survey the windsurf conditions. Its pretty damn windy is my observation! So I have discovered internet in this beach cafe where I can see the windsurfing (although I can't make out Joe) I offended some Austians by saying I thought they were German but one of them was very friendly and chatted to me a lot! There are camels and horses on the beach and sand EVERYWHERE, it is so windy!