Anyway, I thought it was time to update my blog again, as I am WAY BEHIND(!). Therefore, check out this blog if you’re interested, I promise to post at least 3 days of updates every day.

The next trip is coming up too. I’d like to tell a lot about that one, as it’s the start of a world trip. First we’re heading to Mongolia (Asia) via Russia and all the ‘something’-stan countries.

*NEWS* It may be postponed for about one year.

I’ll keep in touch.

The way you see it the most, full of people, sometimes 7 persons (2 on the front passengers seat).

Marrakech, Morocco. They drive sometimes a couple of million kilometers here, one Taxi driver said.

Before we left Marrakech I searched for a shop where I could buy something to hold the stool on the roof, because we had to travel the rest of the journey with that huge unhandy stool I bought.
Next time we’re in Marrakech we will try to find our way a bit further away from the big touristic Djamaa el Fnaa square.
Close to the parking lot we bought 220liter vegetable oil and left Marrakech. When we were at the embassy we had to show a receipt, which we did not get. No receipt? Then no passports. ‘You DID receive a receipt’ they said stringent.
‘No passports back!’ Then we had to wait, important people were told about our problem and we had to wait and wait. They asked Melissa in and out and then we both had to come in. They were mad at us for not having this receipt and we were mad at them because we didn’t get one!
I told them we had to get it back, not our problem that THEY made a mistake. The we finally were told we could get it back, but not today, it will be tomorrow. Great.
So, we went back to this crappy camping again, ironically named ‘Oasis’ I guess. Well, it was such a nice place anyway, we loved to stay there, *Sigh*.
Then Ramon got sick, he started to throw up and we’ve put him to bed early when he was able to sleep.

We bought a boatload of vegetable oil in Morocco

Cheerio!

Our hotel in the old medina.

Eating at stand 25, Djamaa el Fnaa

Buying something in Marrakech is a tedious job, everytime you need to start the whole procedure again when you see something you’d like to buy. This ‘what-does-it-cost, no-way, that-is-way-too-expensive, I’ll-offer-you-this, etc. etc.’ thing is fun for the first time in Morocco, but it’s quite irritating if you just want to look around and know the prices of thing to decide if you want to buy it or not. We delved in the souks close to the square but wanted to get out asap. We were definitely not interested to stop at every stop and play the game.
They all start to scream at you ‘Hey! Hey! Want to look! Look at this! We have special price for you! Where are you from? Hey stop! Don’t leave!’.
We know their trick, they ask you where you’re from and then classify you. Whey you say you’re from an asian country youre finished, they charge you the maximum, statistics learn they pay nearly the price they ask. Then, I believe second worst are americans, they seem not to be familiar with the process. West European aren’t much better either. South Europeans are better and even more the north Africans. Of course, the Moroccans theirselves know about the whole game and pay the least. I read this in a Lonely Planet before and Melissa and I started to give the strangest answers possible, like Antarctica, Sudan, Irak or just Morocco. Then they stare at you and look funny at you, their trick doesn’t help them further. Then they start to guess Then we start to ask them the same questions ,like wher they’re from.
Melissa was looking in a shop for a nice cushion and I was just standing next to her in the shop. One guy started to talk to Melissa and so the other started showing stuff to me, as I was standing a bit bored (hoping they would leave me alone, which did not seem to work).
I told him I’m not interested in anything but he kept on showing stuff to me. He ended up telling me that I’m not interested in moroccon handcrafts. I told him, I was, I wanted to buy his old stool he is sitting on all day. That was possible he said (of course, they would sell their own hands if you make a good offer). He asked me if I really liked it, I told him it was real ‘berber quality’ to make a bit fun of the moroccan way of trading. He could laugh about it and played the game too. He pointed at the broken part of the chair and how it was fixed wit some cheap rope saying ‘real quality!’. ‘Yeah, yeah! Real good souvenir! Real solid berber wood material from the atlas’ I yelled. He started to trade in the moroccan way too, he asked 200 dirham! So I did what I usually do an started with a stupid offer of 1 dirham, we had lots of fun and ended up at 50 dirham, still way too much for this crappy stool, but we had fun and I paid it. The other guys from the shops around all came to see what was happening and laughed.
He told me that this stool had to be packed very good and we had to take good care of it. This was the only thing we bought in the souks, we went to the market place again and gave Ramon another Henna tattoo, this time we bargained and we got if for 20% of the price from yesterday.
Tomorrow we’re heading for our visa again in Casablanca.

There’s enough food for vegetarians too

If you weren’t hungry, you sure will when crossing the Fnaa square in the evening.

And yeah, it’s like this every evening

Cheese!

Getting another henna tattoo.

This moron proposed to get a picture of Ramon and him. Then he charged us money for it. Yeah right! I suggested him to pay us, as it seemed equally reasonable to me.

The boring camping in Casablanca, named “l’Oasis”, pretty ironic if you ask me.

If you need to change the engine, you just don’t tow the bus, but do the replacement on the highway itself and having someone getting the parts you need, awesome!

The taxi’s are green over here.

The 100k milestone!

The place were we’d hit the 100k milestone in Morocco.

After a while we entered Marrakech, parked our car at a guarde parking lot and started exploring Marrakech and find ourselves a hotel. It was darn hot over here and we decided to buy some orange juice, especially Ramon needs those vitamins. As we walked on the square they all started to scream and wanted us to buy the juice at their place. We stopped at the first one but decided to buy a one juice at one person, so we distrubute it equally. The two other guys we laughing and we’re happy we did this, the first one ended up with selling just one juice and wasn’t too happy with it
We had some experience with the moroccan way of trading but today we got fooled again, they did not tell us what it costed but ‘helped’ us by picking ‘the right coins’ when they ask to show them what you have, acting as though they will help you out with the foreign coins.
So we paid, 5 at one place, the other 3 and the third one 4 dirham, well, whatever .

At the Djamaa el Fnaa, in cosy Marrakech. It was damn hot that day!

Ramon getting a henna tattoo

Djamaa el Fnaa

Djamaa el Fnaa

Ramon wanted a henna tattoo so one of the woman agreed with 100 dirham to create one. They offered a small free one at Melissa’s arm but this small one got bigger and bigger and we ended up with paying for both the tattoos.
No freaking way! We got an agreement. I kept on saying no and we did not feel guilty, we know that trick
Then we ate some food at the restaurant with the view over the Djama el Fnaa square and went into the old medina to hotel Essouira, where we slept on the roof some years ago. After trying to book a room they told us that they need our passports, which were at the embassy in Casablanca… There was no way to book us in because this is a strict procedure and they could get fines for it. We had to go to the police station and arrange some papers stating that we are who we are, which would cost money too (of course) So there we are, in Marrakech and no place to sleep. We decided to ask the next one, paying directly and see if we could arrange something.
2 hotels furthers we asked the guy and explained our problem, he told us after thinking for a while it was no problem, he only had a room for four persons, which costed 200 dirham (around 16 euro’s), so that’s no problem, we were in, without the hassle of going to the police station.
We went to the car to get our stuff, we decided to take the jumpstarter, the 12V-220V converter and the 220V fan, because it was darn hot in that room, 35 degrees in that room is no exaggeration!

Typical hotel in Marrakech, the old medina

On the road again, heading to Casablanca.

Morocco is beautiful!

W123′s all around!

Somehow our clocks were 2 hours ahead of time, we found out at the office window of the camping, so it was 22:30 instead of 00:30. This gave us some extra sleep, 7am in the morning is now two hours further away
We had found ourselves a good spot, away from the others. It was pretty quiet on the camping and we went to bed early, after we prepared at the sloppy toilets.

The nice camping in Azrou

Our friend at the campsite

Feeding the cat, which was named ‘Mitsy’ by Ramon.

Mitsy happend to be a beautiful cat.

Ramon played with the camping dog and a straycat today and we both enjoyed our peaceful rest. Today some spanish people arrived in their Landrovers, they were working on their brand new Landrovers, at least, they looked like new. I enjoyed the scene, two Landy’s arriving and they start to play mechanics directly, The cliche seems to be true, with a Landrover you spend half your holiday under the hood.

The cliche is true They just entered the camping and knew their place

The streets in Ouezzane

We then passed very small villages, where people have nothing besides each other and houses of mud. They’ve got their goats and sheep and work on the land. There were no cars or mopeds arond, the kids ran through the village to catch a glimpse of this yellow car moving though their village. We had spend quite some time on the small roads, sometimes halting so Melissa and Ramon could do a search for bones, which they collect. At one stop a boy walked towards us and wanted to chat, he was able to speak english, which happenend more times in the east of Morocco I found out.

Along the route through the rif mountains.

Conserving the hey with clay. In the back you see they let trees grow again on the hills, after years and years of cutting trees, big areas in Morocco are completely treeless and just sand and stones.

Houses in the tiniest villages.

At he end of the day we enter Ifrane, a very wealthy place often called the ‘Geneva of Morocco’. A decadent place with villa’s and a respectable university and lots of greenery.
We then drove some time after a smellly truck I decided to overtake it, then, while we were on the left side of the road we saw a roadblock, of course we had to stop and a severe looking police officer wanted us to pay 400DH. I thought he just made that up and refused to pay. This did not please him and he did not want to give my license back, he got mad and yelled at us that it was prohibited to overtake on that part. In fact he was right, but I refused to pay and made a scene of it. He walked towards the other officers to tell them I did not want to pay. They stood there talking for a while and then he came back, he told us because of the little boy in the back, he gave my license back and we could go on. I was stunned, I turned the key and thanked him and drove away, we were pretty much delighted. Darn, this was close! We saved about 80 Euro’s!

Driving through the plains

Looking for skulls and bones of animals, one of Melissa’s interests.

The plains

Big tree in Azrou

In the beginning of the evening we found a nice camping in Azrou. It’s a very nice camping in Morocco, which is very rare. This place is really a recommendation! I think it’s the only camping in Azrou, close to a big old tree of 800 years old, where there should live berber monkeys.
There was another dutch couple on the camping we spoke to. We chatted with them for a while and then had our dinner, a nice meal pepared by Melissa. Then we arranged a nice place for Ramon to sleep and we sat outside for quite a while and decided to stay here at this relaxing place. We sat outside and enjoyed the place very much.
Equipped with a rooftent, good chairs, a waterfilter and waterbags, good torches, a jumpstarter and even a table this time! It started to look like we’ve become professional campers.
At a certain moment we saw one of the people walk out the thet, this french guy, a father of a family walked towards the edge of the camping. ‘What is this guy doing?’ Melissa asked. ‘The toilets are the other direction, he won’t do what I think he will do, or does he?’.
Indeed, he used his torch to find himself a place and when somewhere behind the trees his torch went out. ‘No way!’ I said. ‘This filthy freak is going to shit over there, where Ramon was playing this afternoon’. I just couldn’t imagine she was right, the distance between the toilets was practically the same as the distance he walked right now. ‘Use the lamp!’ Melissa said. I took my torch and shone in his direction and then turned it off. He was still standing. I turned it on and kept the torch on this time. He started walking again, knowing he was ‘in the picture’
Slowly he walked back to his tent stood there for a sec and then walked towards the toilets. ‘Darn, you were right’ I said to Melissa. ‘Those awkward french people!’ we laughed.
We sat there for a while at our spot and enjoyed our first night on the camping. The ideas about we what we also could have done made us even laugh more, like the idea that we would wait for him to poop and then start flashing the light and making noises, oh well, our type of humor I guess

After a long and very interesting day, Ramon could go to sleep.

Beautiful door. Chefchaouen, Morocco

Today we took all kinds of small roads and wanted to take a beautiful route through the rif mountains. We drove via a lot of country and small village roads. We took the smallest routes and enjoyed the countryside, the moroccans were clearly not used to tourists here and this showed they then behave different from what we’re used to: They don’t scream at you and they don’t bother you, they’re just curious and very friendly. When you stop they come over and just watch you and try to be friendly, without any commercial interests.

Rif mountains

A touristic route we took today.

After a while we were in the mountains again, driving over dirtroads which were winding through the landscape. Then we were very luck, as bird watchers we were stunned by what we sawn then. Golden Eagles! They do live here but as our birdwatcher book told us, it’s a very rare sight in the Atlas.

Enjoying the small roads through the Atlas. At this place we spotted some golden eagles, very rare!

We ended up in Ouezzane today and parked the car on a guarded parking lot. Then we tried to find the cheapest hotel around, but that was a bit too miserable. The rooms were filthy and the shower on the roof which we had to use in the morning, was used as a toilet too, the shit was on the floor and this was a bit too primitive for us
We managed to find another simple hotel, only beds and no shower but we had a washbasin in the room, pretty clean and enough for us, which was important.
The room costed us 80 Dirham, no discounts. According to the hotel owner, there had never booked any dutch person in this hotel. We checked in, filled in the paperwork (which needs to be done at every hotel) and ate some shitty fries at the cafe downstairs.
While eating the crappy fries, we sat in the middle of the live on the streets. There were only men outside in the evening. The local nut hang around here too. They seemd to care for him, one of the people around took his stone which he was carrying in a plastic bag, trying to explain him he mus not walk around with it. This man threw the stone away and warned this man again (or so I think). After some time, we saw the local nut wandering around again with his stone in this plastic bag.
We then went for a walk through the main street. This street was full of life in the evening, we did not see any tourist around here the whole night and we seemed to be an interesting topic for them. They stared at us, when we stopped by to find some slippers, and dealing about the price was funny for them . they stared and laughed at us, as if we were walking around naked,
After some research we found that the first one offered the slippers for 20 dirham, the secnd for 100 dirham and the last for 25. So we bough them for 25 dirham at the last place. The moroccans were in fact were very friendly. We all enjoyed it very much on the market and when we were done we went to some odd place and drank a mint tea (of course).
When we were back at the hotel we drank some wine at the balcony and stared at the same street again where we sat and saw how the restaurants cleaned up for today and backing the last meat and then putting back the decorative lettuce leaves again after they cleaned those display cases, great All the waste was neatly put into garbage bags and put at the roadside. After a while the streets were quiet and everyone went home.
We sat there on the balcony for quite some time and saw how first recyclers came on the stage, the homeless people. They opened the bags again and started to pick things out and consumed what they thought they could eat. After they disappeared the next participants entered the stage: The dogs. They ripped open the garbage bags and started to look for their food and consumed all they could, leeaving the place scattered with old garbage and teared open bags. When the dogs disappeared, the cats came by to see if there was left something for them.
It ended up as a big mess on the streets, and we were wondering if they did not think about garbage cans or something.