A 4.30am start today to book an Uber to the airport where we check-in and board for our flight to Casablanca and then on to Marrakesh. There’s time to sit back while we wait for passengers from a late connecting flight. An hour late and we’re in the air. The pilot makes up some time but our two hours to connect to our next flight has been cut to 1 1/2. We miss the transit desk and so it’s back through the airport, there’s still 45 mins to get to the gate. We eventually get our boarding passes and make it through passport control only to find that the departure sign says our flight has been delayed 1 1/2 hours. Phew! Time to catch our breath and relax but, a quick check on the phone says the flight is already boarding. There it is through gate 8. A mad scramble but we’re through and on the bus on the tarmac. We join the throng of locals around the steps to our Royal Air Maroc, twin turboprop, 60 seater jplane. No real queue here and the locals seem to expect that they’ll fit more carryon luggage in the cabin than could ever be checked into the hold.
Still, we make it to Marrakesh and stand waiting at the baggage carousel with several others who were on our first flight from Doha. Unfortunately their air tags and ours confirm our fears that our luggage has not made the same transfer we have and is still in Casablanca. A visit to “baggage claim” - “Sorry sir, thankyou sir, we'll let you know when it arrives.”
We meet up with Karen’s cousin Blythe and her husband Iain from Scotland, again struggle to find our pickup, then to our hotel for the night, the Wazo. It’s full of tour groups and the buffet for dinner is fairly frantic, food is reasonable but they’re behind the eight ball trying to keep up with crockery and cutlery.
A walk to the shops 2km down the road, they didn’t open till 9pm, lets us buy some extra pants and clean socks etc to get us through the next couple of days. Let’s hope this clothing/luggage deal doesn’t become a habit.
The breakfast buffet sees the same frantic hordes of tourists fuelling their bodies for the day. We do the same, transfer to our next hotel, then walk to the Medina, the old town, where we’ve booked a cooking class. Ramadan means that shops are shut while everyone is fasting so it’s a good way to guarantee lunch.
We wait on the street watching the small, single person businesses. This is the Bunnings area and there are shops for paint, hardware and concrete supplies, all delivered by donkey and cart.
Hassan, our chef for today meets us and leads us into the local street market where we choose fresh olives, herbs, aubergine, peppers, tomatoes, etc all weighed out on an old balance scale.
Another 100m and up a couple of flights of stairs to a room with a kitchen on the side. Green mint tea is traditional and we learn the art of washing the tea, boiling it on the stove then adding lots of sugar. The skill is in pouring it from a height into a small glass to create foam on top. Sugar comes in different forms from small individual cubes through to large 2kg cones, often taken as a gift instead of chocolates or flowers. The tea is nice, but I’ll probably stick to our standard Dilmah.
Today we’re cooking 4 Tagines: beef with almonds and prunes, chicken with preserved lemon, kefta-meatballs and a vegetable tagine. There’ll be two side dishes: zaalouk-aubergine salad and tektouka-sweet peppers salad. Hassan guides us through peeling, chopping, dicing and stirring to create six tasty dishes. Could be the best food we'll eat in Morocco.
We return to the hotel then it’s time to retrieve our luggage from the airport. My taxi driver speaks little English, I have no Arabic or French but we still manage a conversation about how far we’ve flown from Australia and we part good friends. Our luggage is easy to find, but judging from the number of other suitcases waiting for their owners, this may be a regular occurrence.
7pm, time to meet our guide, Abdul, and the others in our group - 3 young Australians, currently working in London, an Irish woman currently working in Scotland, another Scot, a Frenchwoman and 10 Americans. They’re a good mix of ages and stages in life. We’re looking forward to our time together.
No comments:
Post a Comment