A lazy day with a walk through Guliez and to Majorelle Gardens, a lovely place but not as “tranquile” as Sue expected it. Tourist everywhere! Yves Saint Laurent created some wonderful colourful designs there which we will take home to our garden. Some fantastic cacti there!
In the afternoon and evening we wandered the souk for some shopping, finishing off with food at one of the stalls. We had just started our dinner when a 2 young(er) girls asked us ...what is that and what is that? They were on a one week tour of Morocco with their first day in Marrakech.
We walked over the square towards Koutabia thinking about a horse carriage ride back to the hotel, but for the first offer of 200 dirhams I just said no! Sue agreed and I said...” let’s just walk on, all the way past the row of horse carriages ...we will get an offer” And by the end the row of horses a man came to us saying “ Hotel du Pacha 100 dirham? And off we went!
The wonderful early century setting of the Hotel Du Pacha was perfect to end our day with a coffee.
Mileage: 0
Mike and Mark – Start heading inland, Mark takes a tumble.
We rode to Chefchouen, it was good to get away from the coast/ Rabat. We passed through some pretty damn good farm land, the area was quite clearly fertile, towns all seeming to service the rural/ farming sector. It was here (Souk-el-Arba du- Rharb) that Mark (unwisely choosing the Harry Hill plastic comedy chair) took a tumble. This caused much mirth amongst the cafe set, as Marks Base came over Apex, how we laughed.
This dear reader was only the prelude to another incident that was to overshadow the chair affair. Known as the ‘pannier falling off the bike bit’ because it involved a pannier falling of a bike. It was to provide some Moroccan woman and her donkey with dinner time stories for some time to come. Aluminium panniers travel very fast along asphalt when a large motorbike is used as the primary source of forward momentum. Narrowly missing said woman and donkey, they watched sparks fly and the offending pannier grind to a halt in some African bush (foliage as opposed to pubic region). After quick assessment and appropriate actions, duck tape and bungee ties came to the rescue (better than the original) fixing the pannier to the bike. At this point it became clear that marks bike was poorly. We chugged to Chefcheuan where men offered us ‘ rugs’, this was a constant theme, men saying they had good stuff, ‘ rugs like you wouldn’t believe, Moroccan gold ‘ rugs’ etc etc - didn’t see any carpets though.
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