We arrived in Hurghada at around 10pm. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, Hurghada looked from the outset to be Egypt’s answer to Vegas… lots of big hotels with flashing lights, palm trees and even something that looked like a rollercoaster in the distance – kind of like an Egypt theme park. We couldn’t have been more pleased, both by the kitchness of the place and by the fact that we were only staying there for 8 hours. All the ‘couples’ on tour got sent to one hotel, along with Lara and Jess. Turned out to be lucky for us as the other hotel was somewhat below standards, with filthy rooms and ash and pubic hair on the bed… 8 hours was too long for them to stay – they headed for the pub where they spent almost all that time.

Next morning we got up early and were given sumptuous ‘breakfast’ bags consisting of…. I think you can guess. We were then taken down to the ferry port where we were heading to Sharm El Sheik, across the Red Sea. Nato had been hoping for a Moses-like parting but perhaps he had been praying to Allah instead of God, as it looked like we were going to have to take the ferry. But Allah did his best, as the ferry crossed without incident and only an hour and a half late. We arrived in Sharm El Sheik, which is where all the rich English package holiday tourists go. Being poor Antipodean package holiday tourist, we were instead driven an hour and a half along the coast to the cheaper and more chilled out Dahab, where we were to spend the next 5 days.

Dahab turned out to be a perfect place to spend 5 days, kind of like a holiday in the middle of our holiday. For the next few days we were to have a very hectic schedule of horse riding, snorkeling, scuba diving and massages, in dispersed with lounging by the pool, eating seafood, shopping and drinking 1 pound daiquiris. First, however, we had a mountain to climb.

Having been denied his Red Sea crossing, Nato decided to pursue Moses’ footsteps elsewhere, namely by climbing Mount Sinai. And on the way of course, he would check to see that God didn’t have any other commandments to add to the original 10 (Thou Shalt Support Parra, for example). Kato and I, sure that God would never be a Parra fan, thought it best to accompany him up. Lara, who couldn’t care less about football, decided to send her camera up with us and drink beer instead.

This was wise in more ways than one, as not only did we have to climb a mountain, we had to do it in the dark. At 1am to be precise. We would then theoretically arrive around 3am and have about an hour’s sleep before sunrise. I’d be lying if I said that the scenery on the way up was spectacular, but the nearly-full moon and the pretty good camel path (better than some roads we’d been on in Morocco) made the going a bit easier as we made our way up past the hoards of camel riders, drink sellers, taxis, hotels, chairlifts, escalators… well maybe not the last few, but give it a few years… Only one of our group gave up on the last leg and hired a camel. The rest of us puffed and sweated our way up and arrived at about 3am at a drink stall that was nearly at the summit. There we had to wait for half an hour until we had spent enough money on hot drinks and blankets before we were allowed to struggle up the last forty meter climb to the top. The last forty meters however consisted of somewhere between 300 and 750 odd stairs that put the hobbits more in the footsteps of Frodo and Samwise than Moses… Still ,they arrived at the top in time for a quick kip before sunrise, snuggled between the 100 or so other gringos up there.

Sunrise was suitably spectacular. We took a few good photos with Lara’s camera and listened to a traveling troupe of Columbian church chiorists, leading themselves in several choruses of ‘God is Great and Shits All Over Allah’ or something of that nature… fortunately for them Allah doesn’t speak much Spanish. Or it seems so, as they weren’t smoten, though they did have a bit of trouble getting back down the mountain.

We headed down ourselves, enjoying the scenery much more this time and pushing past those straggling gringos who hadn’t quite made it up in time and would no doubt shortly be campaigning for that chairlift. We arrived at the bottom where with only two hours to kill before the opening of the monetary where we would be visiting a bush that was supposed to be on fire. Nato was a little worried that it would be all burnt out by the time we got inside, but our Junior tour leader Tom assured us this was not the case. Tom was in training to be a tour leader and had been sent up the mountain with us as the other tour leaders knew how sucky it was. He managed to get us up and down the mountain but steadfastly refused to do any guiding, assuring us that he was a tour leader, not a guide, referring us instead to our ‘Lonely Liar’ books (which we didn’t have.. being package tourists and all..). Two hours of waiting and ten minutes in the monetary. We fought a hundred other tourist for a look at the shrub but to Nato’s dismay it wasn’t even smoldering…. We went back to Dahab and went to bed.

The next few days passed in a delightfully relaxing blur of the abovementioned activities with various members of our troupe heading off at various stages ahead of us. We had happily taken the offer of our tour leader in Cairo to spend an extra day in Dahab, but even so the time came for us to take the night bus back to Cairo.

The bus was a little 25 seater, not the most comfortable bus for the night. Added to which it was freezing cold and the driver was obviously unfamiliar with the road, as there was much breaking, accelerating and the like. Not good for a restful night’s sleep. We got back to Cairo and spent most of the day in bed. Kato, who had come down with a last minute bug of some kind, spent all day in bed, getting up just in time to catch the 3am flight to Athens…

We also bid farewell to our gringo friends, who left us with the parting comment ‘I can’t wait to get back to London so I can have some real hummus’

And thus concluded out package tourist experience….

We awoke from our night train induced morning nap around lunch time and decided to do… well, not much really. The hotel had a pool so we took the opportunity to lay around it. We were package tourists after all, we decided to behave like package tourist. We were waiting for the rest of our tour group to arrive. They had just spent two days on a felucca (a kind of small sail boat) cruising up the Nile, which sounds relaxing but apparently had been fraught with problems, particularly for one of the groups who had been stuck on board a boat with their extremely pissed and sleazy tour leader (known as No Spew Stu for reasons we won’t go into here). We had vetoed the felucca on account of time and Nato’s desire to avoid being on a boat for two days (based on previous boat encounters I can hardly blame him) and it was beginning to look as though we had made a good choice.

The tour groups finally arrived, looking tired, dirty and sun burnt. Along with the tour groups were the tour leaders, No Spew Stu (as previously mentioned) and our leader Rachel (much cooler than Stu and not at all sleazy). Between them they were in charge of 45,000 gringo tourist…. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration but drop a few zeros and you’ve got pretty much the right number. Amongst these tourists were 3 Venezuelans, 2 Singaporeans, 1 Brazillian, 2 Americans and 44,992 Aussies, Kiwis and Saffas, all living in one share house in Acton (London). It was like being at the Walkabout with the added drawback that we couldn’t leave.

Fortunately we didn’t spend a great deal of time together as a group, but there were a few outings for which we were required to be together, the first of which happened on our first afternoon in Luxor where we visited the magnificent Luxor Temple. With one tour leader at the front and another at the back, we were herded in pairs, all holding on to a little yellow rope that ran down the middle of us to keep us all together… well maybe not but it still had a distinctly kindergarten-excursion feel to it. Nonetheless, Luxor Temple was amazing, even more so as we had arrived in the late afternoon and watching the sun set over the multitudes of statues and sphinxes was incredible. And we only had to spend about half an hour with the group… Then the five of us (Nato, Kato, Laro, Jeso and I) headed for a stroll through the market which didn’t last long as most of the stuff there was same same but crapper, and the calls of the hawkers got boring very quickly, most of them being directed at Nato and being along the lines of ‘Hey, you very lucky man, three wives, give one to me’ or ‘Hey, you Ramses Two (one of Ancient Egypt’s most prolific Pharaoh’s, as our guide explained, who was more concerned with quantity than quality… this extended to his children as well, of which he had around 50, many of them not outliving him). We were particularly impressed with one guy who seemed rather desperate as he pleaded ‘One for me, please! I am very tired and need a wife!’ I’m not sure what he was tired from but the idea of a tired sleazy Egyptian man impressed the girls even less than a regular sleazy Egyptian man. Maybe he was tired of the market – we were after about 5 minutes and found a little Egyptian place for dinner, deciding against the English Pub that most of the rest of the group went to.

Next morning we went out to the Valley of the Kings, Queens and Workers. This time we were separated however so we only had another 20 or so gringos for company rather than the 40 we had the previous day. The Valleys were hot but nonetheless impressive, as we visited several ornately decorated tombs of the Pharaohs. Ancient Egypt is divided into roughly three eras, and the Pyramids belonged to the first two periods, where the ancients believed that by building a huge Pyramid in the shape of the sun and burying their beloved Pharaohs within it, the Pharaohs would be transported to the afterlife along with all the treasures they had been buried with. Unfortunately most of the treasures made it not quite so far as the underworld and instead continued to float around in this one in the hands of hundreds of grave robbers for whom the Pyramids acted like a kind of golden beacon (and who were more concerned with feeding themselves in this life than some dead Pharaoh needs in the other). So the last of the Ancient Egyptians decided that the Pharaoh’s afterlife needs would be better served with tombs than with Pyramids. This didn’t really help matters much, as all of the tombs were still robbed except for one, the tomb of Tutankhamen whose treasures were instead pilfered by the Egyptian Museum (with a couple of bits as ‘gifts’ to the British Museum and the Louvre). But the upshot of the tombs was that all the work that had previously gone into building the Pyramids now seemed to go into decorating the tombs, many of which were incredibly well preserved. The greatest and most beautiful of all the tombs, our guide told us, was that of Queen Nefertari, whose tomb was unrivaled for the ornate-ness of the carvings and the preservation of the colors. It was also closed for renovations. Or something. Maybe she was putting in a patio out the back…

After the valleys, we went on a donkey ride through one of the local villages. Well, the girls went Donkey riding. Nato and I stayed behind and spared the poor donkeys, many of whom looked like they were on their last legs. Then the five of us went for a little felucca ride along the Nile to see what we were missing. Mostly water buffalo, some ferries and a few other feluccas, it turned out. Not all that much, though it was nice and rather relaxing after the heat of the Valleys. That afternoon we checked out the markets, only to discover that they were still crap and still full of sleazy Egyptian men with the same lines as the night before, though they seemed a little more subdued during the day.

Next morning we had another delicious breakfast of cold boiled eggs and bread before heading out to Karnak Temple. Personally I thought it not as impressive as Luxor, but maybe that was just the effect of being back among the 45 other gringos, not to mention the midday sun. But we did get to take a horse-drawn carriage there and back, eliciting much amusement from passing Egyptians.

That afternoon we headed to Hurghada, where we would stay overnight before heading across to Dahab. We had to wait until 6pm before heading to Hurghada as we were to be traveling by police convoy. This was due to a regulation that applies to pretty much all travel between Cairo and Aswan and states that any vehicle containing a gringo must be accompanied by armed guards (the trains) or police (the buses). This was ostensibly in response to the 1997 shooting of around 60 tourist at one of the Luxor temples, but has since evolved into more of a money-making scheme by the government as all tourist traveling must be registered and paid for. As far as terrorist targets go, an organized convoy of tourists traveling on a well-known road at a designated time in a convoy of around 60 buses and 2 police cars sounds like a pearler so how it was supposed to assure our safety I’m not quite sure. But such are the vagaries of the Egyptian Government. And as package tourists, who were we to ask questions??

We spent a night or two in London, enough time to send a box home and have a bit of a birthday soiree (on the ground this year) for Nato, who turned 21 while we were there. Nato, unfortunately, seemed to be developing some kind of London allergy and spent much of the two days sick.

We also picked up Lara for the next leg our trip, another foray to North Africa, this time to Egypt. We decided to make this one a package tour, just to show ourselves what we had been missing out on….

I know it’s a little unlike us, but we decided to take the cheapest flight we could, which always seem to have adverse ramifications. Our departure time was quite agreeable (4:30PM), helpful cause otherwise it’s 50 pounds in a cab to Heathrow, nullifying the effect of the cheap airfare. We did however get to spend 4 fun filled hours in Athens airport, from around 10 pm at night, Drinking expensive coffee and watching the latest in Greek POP! Then it was off to Cairo. Now we knew it would be a little harsh arriving at 3am in a new city, but we figured we had a transfer from the airport. We were met by a rather excitable little man as we came through customs who immediately started shouting demands for money and passports. Being too tired to work out if we were being robbed or “guided” we handed over fistfuls of cash and our passports. He eventually came back with them and yelled at us in his customary tone to go and collect our bags, and told us to be smart about it. Now the baggage handlers I’m sure at the best of times work to their own pace, and at 3 in the morning, I don’t think they were in any hurry. So it was that we waited, much to the dismay of our new little friend… At one stage he came over to ask us if we had our bags, this was while we were watching an empty carousel revolving. Are you sure he asked. We were pretty sure….

Anyway we made it to the hotel after a lovely little tour of Cairo in which we had to take the guide home first. Where we collapsed onto our beds…

We managed a few hours sleep before getting up to meet our Cairo tour leader, and the fourth of our tour party, a nice Western Australian girl (living in London of course) called Jess. We also found out we would be spared the rest of our tour group for the first couple of days till we caught them up in Luxor. So the four of us let our tour leader Keren talk us into dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe Cairo which turned out to be quite an interesting cultural experience in itself, particularly the 7.30pm dance performed by the staff (some more enthusiastically than others it must be said). Keren assured us that actually it was a big hangout for young Egyptians not just gringos…

The next day we had a huge gringo day consisting of a trip to Egyptian Museum followed by the Pyramids and Sphinx. Plus the usual couple of gringo cross sell trips to the papyrus shop and to the perfumery. Being only four people and one bear however we managed to talk our guide out of a trip to the perfumery and only got the papyrus hawk. Along with all the camel ride, kick-knackery and drink hawks along the way.

First stop was the Egyptian museum where all the good stuff was (that is, the good stuff that was not in the British Museum or the Louvre), having long since been removed from the original sites. Our guide gave us an abridged version of the 5000 year history of Egypt along with some pretty impressive props. Then we headed for the pyramids, which aren't as far out as you would expect and are also, fairly surprisingly, a popular day trip for Carioans. This being Friday, the Muslim Sunday, they were all out and about with their kids and picnics and stuff. There seemed to be some kind of rock concert being set up at the site of the Sphinx too, which we had to admit would be a pretty cool place for a concert.

We took the usual gringo pics and copped the usual hawks and had just left the Sphinx to go get a drink when we seemed to be being followed by a pretty persistent hawker who was waving his mobile phone at us. We didn’t think the phone would be for us as we were pretty sure no one we knew had this guy’s phone number so we kept walking. Until we heard him yell ‘Wait! I am you’re driver’… which indeed he was. You can see we were already suffering from an excess of hawking… with so much more to go..

That night we ate some more Egyptian fare before heading to the train station for a night train to Luxor. We were traveling First Class which we were all pretty excited about until Keren told us that this was what most tourists traveled on and it was only just above the goat and chicken class of travel. Still, we didn’t think it could be any worse than our Spanish night train and indeed it wasn’t. The seats were pretty comfortable and the locals on board kept the noise level down to a dull roar. The only downside was for Lara whose neighbor (an Egyptian male of course) took the opportunity to stare at her boobs…. For the whole 12 hours. But we did have the luxury of getting picked up at the station in Luxor and taken to our hotel where we had a delicious breakfast of cold boiled egg, sweet bread and jam, then promptly collapsed in bed…

As some of you may be aware, this blog is getting a little behind - so I'll hurry things along for you. The remaining week in Western Europe went something like this:-

Granada - Climbed hill to big castle (the Alhambra), very cool. Ate free tapas and drank beer. Missed Italian friends.

Seville - Got lost. Many times. Found far too many people speaking English (or American) and very bad Spanish. Visited tall church tower, very cool. Ate more tapas with too much mayonnaise. Caught night bus of death to...

Lisbon - Climbed another hill to another castle (also cool). Hung out at free Portuguese festival. Watched a terrible rollerblade display on a skate ramp. Got drunk on cheap cask wine and ripped it up like a wild dog with the greatest air skating display of all time on same skate ramp (Kato did herself a bit of a mischief). Tried to find other free festival, found English beggar instead. Repeatedly.

Porto - Found rain. And fat English people. But nowhere to eat. Found airport. More fat English people. Ryanair flight of death back to London.

Arriverderchi Europe!

We took another train ride, this time only four hours, and arrived back in Tangier with only one recommendation for a hotel / restaurant. Which we ignored. We didn’t managed to find our taxi driver friend from our first time there either but found a taxi driver none the less. Obviously off the train is not as good a haul as off the boat, as he only charged us 30 dirham to get to the hotel.

We took a hotel as close to the port as possible and headed out for dinner, celebrating our last night together with one more tajine and two whole bottles of wine, after which we were positively pissed.

Next day the sea gods were obviously happy with us (according to Nato this was because he didn’t eat any fish the night before) as we managed to leave almost on time and the 1 ½ hour journey took only 2 hours.

Then we were back in Spain – no more tajine or cous cous… no more hawkers… we weren’t quite sure what to do with ourselves..

What we did was pay another visit to the Andalusia Express. It chugged along, taking us back to that tourist mecca Bobadilla, where we would be parting ways with our new Italian friends (they were off to Seville, us to Granada).

And so it was that almost two weeks to the day it all ended where it had first begun, on the platform at Bobadilla where we left them smoking furiously and waving sadly goodbye….

We boarded the train to Fez with some trepidation, and none of us more so than Vito. The curse of ‘il culo de camelo’ had struck hardest with him and he wasn’t relishing the thought of sitting down for 7 hours. Added to which, the grippe now had him firmly in it’s grip (so to speak) and 7 hours of air conditioning wouldn’t do him any favors.

At first however it didn’t seem as though this was going to be a problem, as the air conditioning was all but non existent. The windows opened about a quarter of and inch, letting in a tiny bit of warm air. It was going to be a long trip… Vanessa responded to this in her customary way – by going to sleep – much to Vito’s annoyance. The rest of us read up on Fez in between drinking warm Arabic cola and hideously bad coffee.

At least we had the compartment to ourselves…. This lasted until we got to Casablanca, about half way, where a couple of people joined us. One of them seemed to work for the trains, as he promptly got up and fixed the air conditioning (in the guard’s compartment) from tropical to arctic. His friend, following the second cardinal rule of Morocco, that all strangers (particularly gringo looking ones) must be quizzed, started asking us the usual questions, where were we from, where were we going, was it our first time here, did we need a guide…. Actually he seemed to be a nice young man, but he did have a friend who was a guide in Fez (‘just to practice his English you understand, not for money’). We were soon to learn that it was impossible to catch a train anywhere in Morocco without coming away with a couple of recommendations… we did the best thing, took his friend’s name and phone number and thanked the guy for his hawk… I mean help. Over the course of the next three hours or so various Moroccans drifted through our carriage offering services of one kind or another along with some general chit chat. We left with several names and numbers in exchange for which we used our new standard ‘In Sha Allah’.

We arrived in Fez around sunset and negotiated a taxi to the Old City, which for anyone not familiar with it takes the shape of a giant medina-suq with around 9500 little streetlets and alleys to get lost in and a great lack of cars and motorbikes which was perfect for us. The taxi dropped us just inside the old walls where we quickly picked up a little guide. The book had warned us about touts and faux guides, often in the form of young boys, offering their services to take you around. In this case we decided to take one if only to ward off the others, and also because the book had warned us how easy it was to get lost in Fez and we wanted to put down our bags before we did so.

Faux guiding is illegal in all of Morocco and in Fez particularly there have been some pretty big crackdowns recently. There is even a story in the guide book about one young tout doing 3 months hard time for his efforts. As such, the guides are very careful not to look as though they are guiding, which helps then when the police are around but makes it a little hard to find them if they get too far ahead of you.

Our first hotel was completo so our guide took us too a few more. We finally settled on one in the main street. A little more than we wanted to pay and no private bathroom but we were a little sick of carrying our packs around. We said goodbye to our little guide friend, much to his disappointment as he wanted to show us to a restaurant as well… a decision that we came to rue as well. We found a place for dinner in a little gringo courtyard populated by about 100 cats, which Vito happened to be allergic to, making for a very relaxing meal for him. The food turned out to be about the worst we’d had so far and one of the more expensive. Fez wasn’t off to a good start…

This bad start continued when we arrived back to our room to find that they had commenced road works right beneath our window, which wasn’t so much a window as some bars with a couple of shutters. This continued well into the late hours of the morning, making for a rather irritable troupe the next morning, particularly Vito who was still grippe grabbed. Needless to say, we moved hotel the next day. Our new hotel was situated on the crossroads of no less than five mosques, but after the previous night even their competing dawn call to prayer sounded like a lullaby..

The next morning Nato, Kato and I ventured into town to get money (no ATMs in the old city..). When we returned, while waiting for the Italians, we had what we all agreed was the worst coffee so far.. and not in Morocco, in the world. We had the initial and all important conversation ‘you have coffee?’ ‘yes!’’real coffee? Not nescafe?’. What we failed to do but should have was launch a UN style search for a real coffee machine. In the absence of this, we could have gone to war on the basis that they were harboring coffee of mass destruction.. which they served to us. Looks like there is something to be said for a pre-emptive strike. I won’t go into details, but if anyone is going to Fez, I will give you the address so you can avoid it. Or bomb it if you so desire.

That day we wandered around the huge sprawling medina, defying the advice of the guidebook and every one of the guides standing by the side of the road telling us ‘you’ll get lost!’. Indeed, but we figured there were enough boy guides to take us home if it got too much, and anyway getting lost is half the fun. Turns out it’s not so easy to get lost anyway, as there are a series of helpful signs pointing you towards major attractions. We did get a little lost but managed to find our way back to where we wanted to be without engaging the help of a guide. Along the way we visited mosques and mausoleums, markets and more markets, tried to find a non-existent fountain and visited the fantastically stinky tanneries where we watched the tanners going about their business and inhaled the combined stench of dead animal, cow urine, pigeon faeces and a swath of other disgusting things that go into making the luxurious leather of Fez – the only upside to this cacophony of stench was that it was the first thing in three days that managed to penetrate Vito’s grippe. Nato rated it five stars for stinkiness, even worse than the long drop toilets at Uluru and even worse than his much revered garden-clearing ‘torte’ of 2000.

Vito was well and truly over it by now, markets, mountains, vache, pan, nescafe, cats, tajine, cous cous but most of all grippe. We all agreed to head to the new town that night and found a great café serving none of the above things (except a little grippe) where we had an excellent dinner. We couldn’t have been more pleased.

That night we were serenaded to sleep by the sounds of about 100 cats trying to make ferocious sticky cat love love to one girl cat, who seemed to have other ideas about it …. And awoken a few hours later by the symphony of 5 competing calls to prayer (one guy in particular sounded like he’d been drawing his influence from a little Barry White). We drifted off to sleep again, wondering how many Muslims position their beds facing Mecca to save time and sleep..

Next day we spent a few hours on our rooftop terrace enjoying the sun and watching the intricacies of the previous night's cat love. It seemed to go on for hours without much sucess and doesn't really explain why there are so many cats in town...

Then we bid farewell to Fez – not a moment too soon for Vito - and headed back to Tangier.

We left Merzouga in mid afternoon, after we finally paid for our rooms and camel trip. This proved harder than expected as apparently Bari was the only one happy to take our dirham, and he wasn’t around. Eventually someone went to fetch him and we gave him his dirham. Another difference in the Berber culture – we were yet to meet an Arab at a hotel not happy to take our money!

We reluctantly left the Erg behind and headed back through the desert landscape to the more fertile lands of the west. We gave Rissani a wide berth, heading for a little town called Tinhirir by the spectacular Todra gorge. After a relaxed and leisurely drive, we arrived in Tinhirir about mid-afternoon. The guide book had advised that the gorge is best explored in the morning so we decided to spend a leisurely afternoon wandering around town and relaxing after our trying camel ride.

Nato and Kato found the world’s slowest internet while Vanessa and Vito had a nap, and they all met up later on the sun drenched roof top overlooking town, the nearby palm valley and the back of the Atlas mountains in the distance. They then set off to explore town, and found a charming little city, a bustling square and a few dozen cafes and restaurants. We also picked up a new guide, and extremely enigmatic man, who took a full 20 minutes of following us around before he told us what he wanted (to take us to his brother’s carpet shop). He lead us up and around the ancient kasbah, a fairly interesting and unique view of the city that we probably wouldn’t have seen alone. Sometimes hawkers can be a good thing. We eventually arrived at the carpet shop (no obligation, of course) and politely declined both tea and a carpet viewing. The proprietor of the shop took this very well, wishing us all the best none the less and showing us the way home.

We strolled around a bit before deciding on a restaurant (the least populated in a row of dude ranches). We chose it because it was the only one that looked like it had a menu, and because of the polite and friendly boy who invited us inside. This boy, it turns out, was both chef and waiter, and as we were the only customers he lavished all his attentions on us. As anything in Morocco, nothing can be done alone, and our dinner seemed to involve much of the rest of the town as various people came and went, bringing food, water and other necessary utensils. A few of the local kids came in begging as well. One was particularly persistent, and Vito eventually sent him off with 10 dirham and the strict advice ‘No drogarti’ … (for anyone who doesn’t speak Italian, refer Chopper).

Dinner ended up being a sumptuous and rather extravagant affair, lasting several hours and with enough food to feed about 20 people, and ending with our host and several of his friends entertaining us with a lute and a makeshift drum (basically the table and a couple of knives). We left them with many thanks and a big tip and headed back to the hotel for a real coffee (no nescafe). There we watched Chelsea beat Barcelona to a spot in the Champions League quarter finals and had a decent coffee served to us by a lovely old Moroccan who was learning English ‘from a book’. ‘I am not a rich man’ he told us ‘but I am a happy man. I sleep well at night’…. Except for the Chelsea win, an altogether agreeable day.

And the next morning there was another surprise – along with the usual Vache, Pan and Oranges, we were served crepes… an extremely exciting turn of events! We set off for the Todra Gorge, our mood buoyant and cheerful.

The Todra Gorge did nothing to dispel this. A beautiful gorge with a little oasis at the bottom, the road through it follows an old river bed between soaring red mountains. We followed the gringo trail of camper vans through it. We then rejoined the road and headed east for the Dades Gorges, which also proved to be beautiful, more green and fertile than Todra, with more life through them, Moroccans herding their goats, tending their crops, washing their clothes. Occasionally there would be a gringo stop filled with fossils, tajine dishes and other knick-knackery and every half hour or so there would be a Kasbah Café Restaurant, all of which we cheerfully ignored.

In the afternoon, we arrived in the medium sized town of Ouazarzate, described by the guide book as ‘Hollywood in the Desert’ owing to the existence of a movie studio just outside of town. Apparently Morocco was a popular filming location, owing to low costs, good weather and the versatility of the surrounding semi-arid landscape. We decided not to stop there, but rather to push on to the nearby village town of Ait Benadou, home to the biggest and best maintained kasbah in Morocco, itself star of several movies, including Lawrence of Arabia and, more recently, Gladiator.

We managed to make it there by ignoring the directions of a young military cop in Ouazzarzet (who told us to go a gauche, of course) and arrived in the late afternoon. We found a cheerful enough hotel and were greeted by the usual friendly Moroccan boys who showed us our rooms and took our orders for dinner. The Moroccans here seemed to be particularly pious lot, as just about everything they told us was followed by ‘In sha Allah’ (as Allah wills). We were a little concerned when even our dinner order was greeted in such a way, but as it turned out Allah was happy for us to have dinner that night (though he seemed pretty adamant that it should be more cous cous and tajine).

We set off to the huge kasbah that stood enormous on the other side of the river. The first challenge seemed to be getting to the river, but we managed that via a combination of roads and people’s back yards, and crossed the river by means of sand bags laid across it like stones. On the other side of the river was a rather elaborately dressed Moroccan who ushered us to the entrance of the kasbah, where we paid someone 10 dirham to go through his yard. His two daughters offered us some freshly shelled almonds, which we took and headed up through the kasbah. Amazingly, after the initial guide to the door, there were no new guides to be had, and only a handful of hawkers selling jewelry and paintings along a little alley. We explored the narrow, twisting hallways and turrets of the kasbah before heading to the top to watch the sun set over the stunning surrounding countryside, a mix of lush green valley on one side and arid desert hills on the other.

After our Allah-approved dinner, the usual drums came out. This time our host insisted that Vito accompany him on the drums. Expecting to be the star, I think he was a little surprised at being upstaged by the visiting gringo. Of course, he wasn’t to know that Vito was in fact a percussionist by trade and a member of several bands. When our host discovered this, he was even more impressed and offered Vito a job and invited him to stay (with free room and board, no problem). To which Vito replied ‘In Sha Allah’ and we discovered what was to be one of our greatest weapons against the hawkers. Still Vito joined our lovely host in another song before retiring to bed (with the beginnings, it turned out, of the dreaded grippe).

Next morning was to be our last on tour before arriving back in Marrakech, but more importantly it was Vanessa’s birthday. We celebrated with a breakfast of Pan, Vache and Oranges before a leisurely morning spent in the sun enjoying the view of the kasbah. Vanessa, Kato and I were enjoying it so much we almost considered taking up our host on his offer. But Vito and Nato overruled this on the grounds that man can’t live on Tajine alone and we reluctantly set off through to mountains back to Marrakech.

The path to Marrakech took us through the magnificent Atlas mountains, and we climbed high enough at one point to stop for a quick snowball fight (which I won, though Nato thinks he did). The mountains proved some beautiful scenery which we all enjoyed except Vito, by now in the depths of the grippe, who interjected every now and then with ‘Basta Mountains!’.

We arrived in Marrakech to find it considerably hotter than when we left it. After finding both somewhere to leave the car and somewhere to stay, we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing. Kato and Vanessa headed for the hammam where they paid a nice young Moroccan girl to scrub the various layers of filth that the desert had left on them. Nato also headed for the hammam but opted for the do it yourself option. This proved a little less successful as, not quite knowing what to do and having no one in his hammam to follow by example, he sat in a slightly headed room for 45 minutes until he got too bored and cold, then he went upstairs to have a shower. Not quite as relaxing and possibly the first ever dry hammam.

That night we ate dinner in the grand medina and celebrated Vanessa’s birthday by not eating any tajine or cous cous. We also celebrated by going back to Moss Isley cantina for a glass of wine which, after a week or so not drinking, had us giggly and then sleepy in about 30 seconds.

Next day we bid farewell to Marrakech and boarded the Train De La Muerte…. 7 hours to Fez.

Day three of Le Grande Italio-Austalian Tour Du Maroc dawned sunny and bright. Of course, we missed the actual dawn bit (being travelers and all) but the sunny and bright bit showed no signs of abating by the time we got up for breakfast. We had finally found sun, and we only had to go to the desert to find it. After a trip to the market for the customary Vache, Pan and Oranges, we hit the road. We had a special treat in store for us this morning, a trip to the much lauded Le Source Bleu.

We followed the signs and eventually found a plateau overlooking a charming looking little valley, with a glimpse of Bleu below. We stopped the car and took a few photos over the bluff, before being ushered down the road by the locals to Le Source. As we descended down the road we were accosted by several kids, sacrificing their hand-made grass camels to our car. We wound up the window to avoid any more Camel-kaze but eventually we had to get out of the car. A rather frenetic man sold us a ‘ticket’ for the source and another one sidled up beside us, thus introducing himself in the Moroccan way as our guide.

Le Source turned out to be a smallish, shallow pool with a couple of schools of fish swimming around in it. Our new guide dutifully pointed these out to us ‘Water…… Fish…..’. The guide book had advised that in the summer this was a popular swimming haunt. Not sure about swimming but you could sure do some hardcore wading and maybe a little paddling, if you were so inclined. We weren’t, and departed promptly with a car full of new camel friends.

From there it was on through the beautiful Ziz Valley to the desert. The Valley itself was stunning, a gorgeous vista of date palms and irrigated fields, a oasis in the middle of the otherwise dusty red landscape. We followed the valley until it eventually petered out and we were left with nothing but flat, dry horizon. In the distance we saw the golden hills of the Chebbi Erg.

For those unfamiliar with the territory, the Chebbi Erg is Morocco’s only real sand dune desert. Near to the Algerian border, it is the closest and most accessible of the desert landscapes for visiting gringos who are after a real Berber experience. There is even a little gringo town called Merzouga on the edge of it offering camel tours out to the Erg. This is where we were heading to fulfill Vito’s ‘dream’ of a night in the desert. Trying as usual to avoid the gringo rush, we thought we’d check out Rissani, a town about 60kms north of Merzouga that we figured might be a little less populous and thus a little less hassle…. Just goes to show that even the second most travellingest bear in the world can get it wrong sometimes.

Approaching Rissani, we hadn’t even made the trade mark roundabout when the hawkers started. These ones were cleverly armed with little motor scooters so that they could ride along side us hawking. We had picked up about three of these mobile hawkers before reaching the first hotel. Vanessa and Kate went to check out the hotel (completo). In this time (about 3 minutes), Nato, Vito and I (the ‘hombres’) had met at least three new friends all of whom had hotels just five minutes out of town complete with camels, and all of whom just happened to be having a big party that night. Looked as though we might be the only gringos in town.

Unconvinced, we pushed on to the ‘Youth Hostel’ dodging locals and hawkers alike, realising that we had also made the mistake of arriving on market day. We were ushered upstairs by a couple of our more persistent guides, where we were greeted by the hotel proprietor, a somber faced young man who told us that there were no beds available, but that his brother had a hotel, just five minutes out of town.…. When it became apparent that we weren’t going to go for this, he ‘found’ a room that was available but that only slept three. But not to worry, he advised, we could sleep in the communal lounge area, no problem. No problem for you, Vanessa said, but a problem for us! We were just about to head off when he suddenly ‘remembered’ another room that was available ….

We retired downstairs for a group discussion where we were faced with the real drawback of the multi-lingual Moroccans, as every language we spoke in they could understand. In the end we resorted to jumping in the Car of Silence. Where we promptly decided to go to Merzouga.

On the way out of town, we passed the only other gringos in town trying to hitch a ride out… poor buggers..

Another half hour or so across an increasingly desolate landscape and we arrived in Merzouga where we were pleasantly surprised by a quiet street and a sunny café. At first sight there didn’t seem to be any other gringos in town, but nor did there seem to be any hawkers so we sat down for a coffee and watched the young Berber boys going about their business (which at the time involved trying to tow a Mercedes taxi with a 1.6 litre sedan of some kind). Eventually, a hawker turned up but not before the coffee did.

Our new hawker Yusef also had a much more relaxed attitude, something that seemed to be an increasing feature of the Berber (as opposed to Arab) towns. He sort of half-heartedly tried to sell us on his hotel (around the corner) and offered us a camel ride and night in the desert for about 250 dirham. Then he left us to our coffee.. Half an hour in the sun convinced us that we really didn’t want to drive around checking out hotels so we took him up on his offer.

The hotel turned out to be a perfectly reasonable little place around the corner, with double rooms with shower etc for only 50 dirham (about 5 euros, much cheaper than we had found anywhere else). We settled in and then set off to the dunes.

The dunes are really an amazing landscape. We had little picnic of vache, pan and oranges then just hung out for the rest of the afternoon, watching the shadows shift and change over the dunes, and generally accumulating a lot of sand everywhere. We also met a few little Berber hawkers in training trying to sell their wares, which basically consisted of a few fossils of the desert. Vanessa and Vito had very sensibly brought some kids stuff (pens, books, clothes etc) for just this occasion, and one of the Berber kids donated a couple of fossils in exchange for some shirts.

Once the sun went down, we headed to the restaurant for a massive pile of surprisingly good tagine and cous cous. Here we met Bari, who was obviously the boss of the place. Also a rather relaxed Berber, he had unfortunately had a few too many Aussie customers and insisted on calling us ‘Mayte’ at every given opportunity.

We also asked him about camel trips to the Erg and he explained that there were two options, we could either have a full day on camel including a trip to a Berber village for lunch for 600 dirham, or we could have the more basic trip out to the Oasis and a night out in the desert for 400 dirham. This came as a bit of a surprise as we were sure that this second trip was the same one that his mate had offered us for 250 dirham. We told Bari this, but he seemed to insist that it would be 400 and that if anyone could do it for less, he would give us a camel (an offer that we later forgot to collect on..). We told him we would shop around and left it at that.

About half an hour later Yusef returned (obviously sent by Bari to try to salvage some business from the gringos) actually the original 250 dirham oasis he had originally offered us was only an hour away by camel and not as good as the 400 dirham one. BUT because we were Italians (and Australians) we were his friends and he could do us a special deal and take us to the 400 dirham oasis for only 300 dirham. We figured it was probably worth the extra 5 euros not to have to search around the next day, and we kind of liked the haphazard, non-polished hawking style of these berbers, so we accepted. In celebration, they broke out the drums and some kind of Berber tamborine and started dancing. Well, maybe not in celebration of us but there was much drums and dancing.. Some gringo had brought his bagpipes along (I think he was French so why he even had bagpipes is beyond me) and let me tell you, bagpipes and Berber drums go together like lamb and tuna fish.

Next day we slept in and breakfasted in the sun again. Then, forgetting the cardinal rule of Morocco (that gringos must be accompanied at all times), we tried to set off for town on our own. A guide from the hotel was promptly dispatched and actually proved kind of helpful, if only I suspect to ward off other potential guides. We did have to keep declining his invitation to visit just about every house in the village, but we did eventually agree to go to the cooperative craft shop, where tea was served and carpets were rolled out (though less in welcome as to try to entice us to buy). We managed to avoid the carpets and left with only a few souvenirs.

Three o’clock rolled around…. The camel hour. We met our new camels around the back of our hotel, along with our new guides, a round and rather cheerful Berber called Ali and his mustached accomplice. We hopped on the camels (who were actually dromedaries but that’s far too hard to spell) and were off in camel caravan. For anyone who hasn’t ridden a camel before, they have a kind of rolling gait that is pretty much completely uncomfortable, particularly going over sand dunes.. you can see the problem here. This was the conclusion that we call came to in about five minutes. And we were in trouble you see as we had another two and a half hours to go before we got to the ‘good’ oasis (which we are pretty sure was the same oasis, reached by going the long way around). We did our best to sit back and enjoy the landscape but everyone’s ‘culo’ was getting quite a work out (some more than others, but more on that later….).

We finally arrived at the Oasis and disembarked the camels, not a moment too soon. The oasis lived up to it’s name and reputation. It was a lovely little area surrounded by palm trees and soft sands, with luxurious looking tents set up in a circle around a place for a bonfire, and what looked suspiciously like a bar in one corner.

Just next to this was a slightly less salubrious camp, a couple of palm trees and two or three tents.

And just next to this was a couple of blankets propped up by some sticks. This was to be our camp for the night.

We left the camels to rest and climbed up the nearest dune to watch the sunset, Vito fighting vertigo (the only person I have ever met to get vergito on a sand dune..) and Nato fighting Scarab Beetle De La Muerte. We found a good highish spot and watch the shadows, the dunes, the setting sun and the far off Algerian boarder.
The sun set, we headed down the hill to our tent. As we waited for our tajine, we watched the bonfire and listed to the sounds of the party that was happening at Club Med de Berber down the road. Our host, misinterpreting our interest, assured us that we would also have music after dinner.

Tajine arrived and we ate it Berber style with our hands and bread, before the promised drums and music, a variation on the previous nights, thankfully without the bagpipes. Outside, Nato and Kato watched the starts and satellites making their way across the sky. Seems Nato was waging an internal battle against the Tajine De La Muerte, and losing, as he let out a loud and extravagant ‘torte’, which our new Berber friend kindly attributed to the camelos.

Next morning we were uncharacteristically up to catch the sun and watched the dunes and shadows again, this time in reverse as the sun made it’s way up. We breakfasted sumptuously on Pan, Oranges and Vache, then it was time to get on the camels again…. The camels had other ideas about this however, Nato’s in particular who tossed him off as he was halfway up. Nato seemed to think this was the perfect excuse to avoid another uncomfortable ride, but our Berber friends were having none of this and wresteld the camel to the ground. At least they had by now given up the charade of the other ‘closer’ oasis, so we took the direct route home, cutting the journey in half. Still, the legacy of ‘Il Culo De Camelo’ would haunt us for some weeks to come.

Next morning dawned bright and a little chilly. Chillier for the Italians than for us, as they had drawn the short straw and ended up with the room with the non-closing window. So they came down coughing and spluttering, Vanessa more so as she seemed to be caught in the depths of the 'grippe'. Fortunately the coughing and spluttering was limited to our Italian friends and didn't extend to our car, though she did seem a little reluctant to get going.

We drove around in circles for awhile thanks to the now legendary navigational skills of the Beni Mellalians, but eventually we managed to find fuel for both the car (in the form of petrol and air) and us (in the form of bread, cheese and oranges). Vanessa was quite excited at the supermarket when we found the little soft cheese triangles known as La Vache Qui Rie. This excitement was to wane considerably over the next few weeks as the cows laughs grew more and more mocking...

But for now, we all set off cheerfully for our trip across the Atlas Mountains to the little town of Er Rachidia. We were cheered even further by the sun, which had finally popped it's head out from the clouds and looked as though it was there to stay.

Our first stop was just outside Beni Mellal, at a lagoon that the guide book had recommended, nestled a pretty valley. This stop turned out to be short lived, as we discovered that the lagoon was attached to a hydro-electric plant and the Moroccan government officials, mistaking us for some kind of international spies, didn't take kindly to us stopping to take photos. So we headed up to a lookout point where we could take all the photos we wanted (and stop for an Australian / Italian pee pee).

Up we climbed into the increasingly chilly Altiplano. We started noticing some white stuff on the ground which Kato assured Nato was salt, and nothing to be concerned about. Only a breakdown could cause us any trouble. A breakdown or.... a flat tire, which Nato noticed after our second photo stop. By now the salt was thick on the ground and it was decidedly chilly outside. Nonetheless, our brave Italian Vito set to work changing the tire while we did our best to help by supervising proceedings, in the best Australian Road Gang tradition. We must have done some good supervising as we were off again without too much trouble.

We stopped in the next town we could find to get the tyre looked at. This town was so small that I don't think it had a name, but they fixed our tire (using all sorts of modern technology, such as submerging the tire in water to find the leak) and in return we provided the day's amusement for the locals, who found us endlessly fascinating and wandered past several times each to check us out. We got the feeling that this was not on the usual gringo trail.

Tire repaired, spare off and so were we. We carried on through the Altiplano where the snow got thicker on the trees and the trees gradually became sparser on the ground. We were headed for the largish town of Er Rachidia on the outskirts of the desert. Before we got there, however, we decided to stop for an Italian coffee (it had been at least 3 hours since Vito's last nescafe). No sooner had we reached town when a hawker caught us at the round about and started ushering us into town. Unfortunately traffic was slow enough to allow him to run along side the window and even give us a bit of help getting into our parking space. So our quiet coffee (at a dude ranch of course) was not quite as quiet as we had hoped, but then there wasn't really much alone time to be had in Morocco we were discovering. Still, we managed to escape without buying anything (except a coffee for the hawker - we considered this cheap) and we were on the road again.

We finally arrived in Er Rachidia around dusk, and found another hawker on the roundabout on the way into town. Clearly some Moroccan town planner has bowed to the pressure of hawkers by positioning these roundabouts on the entrance to every big town. Fortunately there was also a policewoman, but rather unsurprisingly she was even less helpful than the hawker, and seemed unsure of even of her directions, telling us to go 'a gauche' which apparently in Moroccan French means both left and right, depending on which way you happen to be pointing.

But we found the hotel (this time with closed windows), around which there seemed to be a hive of activity. This had all but dissipated by the time we got back from dinner (more tagine and cous cous) at about 9.30m, but we did managed to find a patisserie and Vanessa and Kato even braved a dude ranch for some after dinner nescafe.

So a successful day, braving both sun and snow, Moroccan police (friendly and unfriendly) and the usual assortment of hawkers..

The Hobbits with that hairy bugger Mac (with clothes on for once...)