Category: Blog

My favourite photos from the trip!

Breakfast as the sun came up, it felt cooler this morning – the weather forecast for the day was almost 10 degrees less than the previous, hot, day – just 24 degrees forecast.

As we left the accommodation by car, we saw the local area for the last time – unfinished buildings, scrub land, rubbish piles and the mosques from where the 5 times a day calls had emanated.

An easy drive to the airport with Abdul, who explained it might be a bit busy in places as it was rush-hour. We were unconvinced by the volume of traffic being anything other than quiet compared to home!

Arrival at the airport, tip paid, and we headed into the terminal. Check number one, all bags were x-rayed and we went through a metal detector. The operator was very interested in our bag filled with cameras, cables, a laptop and other electronics…..emptied for him to look through, he asked if we had a drone. No drone. He seemed disappointed.

Despite being checked in with boarding passes in hand, we still had to go to the check-in desk to have our boarding passes stamped with a security marking. Check number two. These in hand we headed to the usual x-ray security checks – but to get in to the main security area we had to have our papers checked again – check number three. At main security we had the same question about drones after they scanned our bags, and another disappointed police man. Check number four done we left the x-ray area and went to border control. Check number five was again quite tense, with the policeman in the booth analysing our details individually – no family groups allowed here, it’s one person at a time. We then left the security hall, to be funnelled into another queue, where a single police officer checked everyone’s passport and boarding card had been stamped – we think check number six was to ensure all of the previous checks had been done correctly. Then into departures, we found the gate and sat down. Fifteen minutes later, we were ousted from our seats by an airport worker cordoning the gate and seating off. Everyone was ushered out of this zone, only to have their papers checked again, to be allowed into the same area, where we sat in the same seats. Some lucky passengers had not only this check, number seven, but also got sent to another area where they were doing drugs/explosives wipes on passports and electronics. Check number eight.

However, it’s fair to say most of the eight checks seemed cursory. Guards were not always watching their x-ray screens, and they didn’t seem too interested in what was in our bags when they looked inside.

Onto the plane, and a final view over the city before a quick and painless disembarkation at Manchester, wasted security fast-pass purchase as it was empty, and a walk back to the car for the drive home.

Today was always going to be our lazy day and we started as we meant to continue with a 9am breakfast!

Each day the eggs have been different, and the fresh bread/pancake/crumpet has been different. They arrived wrapped in clingfilm as the kitchen is on the other side of the site and the kitchen ladies do not hurry! This morning our coffee arrived as normal and I poured it and topped it up with milk for both of us. Keith threw his back about ten minutes later and then choked. It transpired that the mesh on the cafetière had broken so his last mouthful was solid grounds!! Made me laugh and avoid my last mouthful obviously!

We went back to the room after breakfast so I could get changed… yoga on the roof terrace was my plan for the morning. I borrowed a mat, grabbed my phone and went to see if I could find any muscles! I lasted about 10 minutes in the sun before I had to find some shade to finish my practice… even at that time of the day it was too hot.

Next was chilling by the bar with reading books and the dogs. A gynae surgeon we had met the day before came to join us for a chat and we talked about their path from Norfolk to Cornwall, her husband’s journey from a search and rescue pilot to a gin distillery manager and the choice between nursery and live in nanny. Same old conversation really!

We STILL managed to be late for lunch when we hadn’t even been anywhere, but fortunately the ladies didn’t look too cross. Amusingly, my roasted pepper and feta bruschetta was missing the feta, so I had to ask the day manager for some. She didn’t sound very polite when she asked one of the ladies to fetch me some. The delicious soft white cheese that then appeared was clearly sheep/goat’s cheese, but not at all salty. Not my definition of feta but better than nothing.

After lunch, Keith went back to his chilling and I went to get changed, ready for my Hammam and massage experience. The day manager wasn’t desperately helpful when I asked what I needed to take/wear, so I went for my bikini and hotel provided dressing gown.

I was a little apprehensive, but the lady that greeted me was friendly and smiled constantly. It is a little unnerving to have all of your clothes (apart from your bikini bottoms) tugged from your body, but I was open to this new experience and determined to comply as much as possible! She took my glasses and asked me to lie down on a covered bench in a very steamy room with a large metal sink in the corner full of boiling water. She left me briefly and then when she came back, I got a good idea of what to expect from the next hour and a half. There were four metal buckets of varying size and she proceeded to crash them all into the metal sink in an attempt to retrieve some of the hot water. The first three didn’t fit but the cacophony that resulted from the crashing about made it hard for me not to giggle. The whale song normally present at this point in the UK was missing.

She clearly scalded herself on the first bucket she brought out, but fortunately, before she threw it at me, she added a lot of cold water from the tap on the wall. To get a good idea of what this experience was like, just add the noise of water falling a foot into a metal bucket to the soothing sounds I have already described.

I have never been water-boarded, but having an entire bucket of water thrown along my body while lying on my back felt pretty close when my nose filled up! Again, I was very tempted to start giggling. Three buckets thrown at my front and two at my back, once she had tugged me to turn over and I was definitely wet.

She spread some black soap all over me – modesty was not encouraged at this point, no tentative gentle gestures of European masseurs. She was firm and thorough. Then she left. I started to wonder what was in the soap and how long before it started to burn my skin, but I shouldn’t have worried because it didn’t even tingle before she came back.

My only warning that she was going to try and drown me again was the crashing of the buckets and the roar of the water from the tap. It was quite exciting as I didn’t know whether it was going to be a hotter bucket or a cooler bucket… there was a wondrous variety to keep me from relaxing too much.

Soap removed, she donned a wicker glove and started to try and remove the skin from my feet, legs, hands etc. Blimey that made me glow. I particularly liked when she made me sit up so she could show me the products of her work – 7 years it took me to grow all that!

Gently rinsed again and tugged upright and into a different room. This time she motioned for me to get dry and lie face up on the massage table. She was soaked through and sign language implied she was off to get changed. She crashed about in the other room for a bit, so I presume she rinsed off before and washed the room down before she put dry clothes on.

When she came back, she put some generic massage music on her phone and got to work with some oil. This part of the treatment was genuinely relaxing and she clearly knew what she was doing, finding knots in my upper back and working them free.

After the massage she dressed me, took my hair bobble off my wrist and put my oily hair up in a pony tail and then fed me sweet mint tea before waving in a very clear gesture of dismissal. You will be relieved to hear that there is no photographic evidence of any of the above.

The rest of the afternoon was spent dozing in the shade by the pool and reading the book I stupidly started from the hotel library (The Affair – Jack Reacher). It was surprisingly pleasant to do nothing and even Keith seemed to enjoy it. It was even nice to listen to other people’s children playing in the pool as they were nothing to do with us and we did not need to react to their giggles or screams. Everyone else in the hotel is travelling with nursery/primary aged kids and we are getting used to the envious looks they throw in our childless direction!

Keith spent a little time taking photos around the hotel before we scurried obediently off for showers before our allotted dinner time. The shower in the mud hut/ecolodge can only be described as unsatisfactory. Not only is the water that comes out of it potentially lethal to our gut, it also dribbles out the side of the shower head and is reluctant to provide any kind of consistency of temperature. I quite enjoyed watching Keith’s first shower as he skipped in and out of the flow with little yelps of alarm, but it was less fun to experience it first hand. Needless to say it made it very hard to remove large quantities of massage oil from hair or body

We had entertainment at dinner that evening… the next door table (parents and two boys: 7 and 9) were on their main courses when they arrived and the score was 5:7 to Mummy. We weren’t very good at the question of sport round… neither of us scored more than 1 point. We were more successful when the younger boy moved on to general knowledge with a bit of celebrity thrown in. We were not even slightly subtle about joining in their game, but in fairness, when there are only two tables in a restaurant that is otherwise silent, what else is there to do but gracefully concede! They didn’t seem to mind but clearly we were paying more attention than them because at one point the question was about expectations at a Roman funeral: did mourners a)…. b)…. or c) drink wine with the ashes of the diseased sprinkled on it? The parents did not sufficiently compensate for the reading age of the quiz master and were as horrified as you can be while reading Facebook on your phone at the same time at the idea of c). It was clear he meant to say deceased not diseased. I suppose there are scenarios where the two are synonymous, but it did make us giggle

We couldn’t sleep after dinner as I had to finish the book I had borrowed and pack ready for an early departure the following day. I am proud to say that I used my time very wisely and finished my book at 11.30pm. Needless to say, I was a tad grumpy being woken up at about 6.50am by the first call to prayer.

Another 8.30am breakfast today… to the horror of the hotel manager who clearly thinks we ought to be relaxing followed by another car ride with Yassine.

Today’s plan involved exploring Marrakech with a guide. Having done our research online, we were not brave enough to venture into the Souk unsupervised!

Our guide for the day was called Yosef and started by telling us a little about himself. He has a BA in English with linguistics and speaks fluent Japanese (which he proved when we came across a snake of Japanese tourists and he began to talk to them) as well as English, French, Arabic and Berber. His knowledge of local history was impressive and as we walked he showed us everything from recent earthquake damage to walls standing since the 11th century.

We had a list of what we wanted to see and Yosef was enthusiastic about our plan. We started south of the city with a visit to the square minaret on the biggest mosque in Marrakesh, displaying the Jewish influences on architecture when it was built and today. Unlike in other countries, Morocco only has square (not circular) minarets.

Our next stop was the Saadian Tombs housing the remains of various royal members. We enjoyed the organised queueing and giggled at the Spanish and French tourists who didn’t understand the system and had to stumble apologetically to the back after the gardener and security guard got lairy!

Many of the graves outside were not named, and some are possibly empty because they are a memorial for plague victims for whom remains could not be recovered. The tombs of the king and queen were much more ornate (as you would expect) with beautiful tiling and repeated geometric patterns. We had to explain to Josef what tessellation was. He enjoyed and referred to my maths teacher status regularly!

Josef took us to the Bahir Palace next, which was named after the wife of a prime minister. We discussed the status of prime minister in Morocco, and the resultant riches they enjoy. The areas open to the public are examples of places that the prime minister would have entertained important foreign guests. Josef talked us through the uses that each of the rooms would be have been put to as guests were brought from the outside and closer in stages to the important host.

To avoid a long(ish) walk to the north of the medina, we jumped in a taxi with Josef. A slightly frightening experience. The driver clearly has to renew his brake pads every day, based on the amount and ferocity he used them.

Once the other side of the city we continued our tour.

Fortunately, Josef knew where he was going as the route we followed was quite convoluted and I would not have been able to re-trace it. He took us to an area which has components repeated over and over around the city: a hammam, a mosque, a fountain and a community bakery. The fountain is no longer operational, the hammam was closed (although perhaps just temporarily) and the bakery had moved with times! Josef told us that baking bread at home was a ritual that women wore as a badge of pride. In cities or towns women shaped and let the bread rise daily and then took it to the community bakery to be cooked, and to be eaten at home. Now people choose to buy bread, there are a lot of bread sellers on street corners and fewer women take pride in their home baking. This means that the community baker cooks bread for street sellers and shops, not individual homes. Josef took us inside a community bakery and introduced us to the baker. The gentleman was clearly happy to be paid for his photo to be taken and happily slid all the things he was cooking out of the enormous oven to show us. He was cooking some bread but also a fish dish (sardines by the look of them) and various other things. The oven was enormous, a shallow in height space that was the size of a whole room. While we were in there, a woman arrived with her bread and left it with no communication with the baker still posing for the photos!

By this point we were tired and hungry, so to kill two birds with one stone, Josef took us to the Secret Garden to look around and have lunch. In retrospect, we probably wouldn’t have bothered. There are much more impressive gardens in the UK and the food just the Moroccan equivalent of museum food all over the world! The impressive thing about the Secret Garden is the way water was engineered from the mountains, into a local aquifer and then by underground channels to the garden. Without the water, the garden would not be possible and represents a serious investment in time and money. Walking around it, it becomes apparent how little green there is in the rest of the inner city.

Like children after a nap, Josef collected us from the Secret Garden and carried on his tour. He found us an accommodation house that caravans used to stay in while they were delivering their wares to the souk. Apparently it was used by a film as a location, but I can’t remember which film! It has been converted into a series of small shops around an upper balcony.

Our next stop was disappointing. Josef didn’t warn us in advance but took us to a herbalist. It was quite a long stop as the delightful young salesman was diligent in displaying every one of his products to us. Unfortunately, most of the products were ones we had seen before at the cooperative and had no intention of buying. The salesman was very funny and teased Keith about needing hair loss products. He was also very convincing about his opinion that Keith was 10 years younger than he is! He was obviously disappointed when we did not purchase anything, but hopefully his next customer was more generous.

Two more stops to go and our feet were starting to ache. The last bit of obligatory culture was a visit to the largest Qur’anic school in Northern Africa – Ali Ben Youssef Madras. Josef went into full flow on his pet topic of the potential greatness of Morocco given the length of time that they have been teaching students religion, philosophy, geography, history, logic, mathematics etc., and his frustration that it is hamstrung by financially based decisions made by today’s politicians.

It is a beautiful, well kept building a bit like a boarding school with various sizes of individual rooms mostly with very low doors. There is an intense feeling about the place, like you get in a library.

Lots of things we saw triggered interesting discussions with Yosef about why the political, socio-economic and religious environment in Morocco is the way it is today. He displayed a significant lack of confidence in the government of the country, a disappointment in the system of education (they have just emerged from a four month long strike by teachers over pay and conditions) and a fierce sense of national pride. He could list so many historic and modern Moroccans who had invented, developed or improved technology (the lithium battery for one) but most of them lived and worked in France or America. He seemed saddened by the fact that the government did not seem to want Morocco to develop or to encourage higher levels of education in the children. He gave the impression that most Moroccans had only rudimentary education as it was not valued by parents so they did not fight for their children to have it.

He talked about the explosion of population – 3 million when the French arrived (1907-1934) to colonise and 40 million now. That explains why children build their own houses and implies most family sizes are as big as the ones we have been discussing. Yosef said his Mum was one of 15 and he was one of 7.

He also talked about the pyramid that maintains society here: economic, politics and religion. He asked how Islamic states were perceived and portrayed in the west and we talked about our experiences at home and how politics isn’t really discussed, with any evils emanating from the region being blamed on religion by our press. We learned, though, that Islam is not a religion, but a way of life and religion intermingled, and that there are various branches of Islam each with their own interpretations of how to live.

Josef was almost out of enthusiasm by now, but our last stop was the souk to get a look around and get presents for the children. Josef asked ahead of time what if anything we wanted to get and then took us to specific stalls to get what we wanted. The tiny booths on each side of the paths contained dark workshops and piles of goods. Each one was manned by a gentleman of varying enthusiasm, most of them communing intently with their phone. They were not as pushy as we had been led to expect and it did not feel intimidating, except when Keith and Josef pulled significantly ahead of me and I felt a bit exposed.

Shopping completed, Josef took us back to the agreed meeting point and passed us back into the care of our driver. Sadly, Yassine was otherwise engaged taking Tom to the bank, so another very polite young man, Ahmed, took us back to Fawakay. The car was very hot on the way back and Ahmed was less chatty than his colleague.

Showers, lots of water to drink and a cuddle with a dock-tailed cat called Weasel prepared us for a pre-dinner cocktail. Obviously it is very important not to be late for dinner as the ladies get twitchy, so we took our cocktails in with us. Tom was starting to struggle with managing the staff in the owner’s absence. He shared his frustration with us, and we laughed about it with him, while he made our drinks.

Dinner tonight showed evidence of the care of the chef, with our salads made into the shape of hearts! At first I thought they had got the date of Valentine’s day wrong, but it turns out that is normal. The food was good, but the after effects were seriously uncomfortable. Perhaps they had washed the salad in dirty water, but whatever it was, it left us regretting our dinner choices.

After waking early to check on the progress of the children and their skiing, we snoozed for a bit, buried under a thick blanket. The call to prayer from three different neighbouring mosques ended that and we got up to get our pre-trip breakfast.

Some unattached children wandering the gardens were not happy that we got fed first, but those that plan ahead eat first! A slightly odd selection of olives, dates, omelette, muffin, orange juice, coffee, toast, butter and apricot jam made a comprehensive meal and we were ready to start our adventure!

A happy coincidence (possibly contrived!) meant we had the same driver as the day before, a lovely young man (Yassine) who had told us that he had got married 6 months ago. He gave us a tour of the King’s father’s palace as we drove through some ridiculously tight gaps and arches in old walls, with bikes squeezing through in the opposite direction. We had briefly discussed the Moroccan education system and the traffic rules after watching a family of four on a moped. Apparently only the driver needs a helmet so his wife and two toddlers don’t need to bother. Amazing.

Our first outing in daylight, we saw a lot of rubbish – it’s everywhere. Yassine said that the reason there was so much rubbish was because villages are required dump their rubbish in specific collection places (which basically means at the side of the road), for the government rubbish workers to visit and burn/collect. But they don’t burn/collect frequently, meaning it blows everywhere. And it is literally everywhere. We’ve never seen a place so littered with rubbish. He said his village was tidy but the one near our hotel is particularly bad. He said that the ‘wild’ dogs were becoming more of a problem and that at night people were scared to go out. There is clearly a link between food rotting on the streets and these wild/feral dogs happily breeding. We saw lots of puppies today.

We covered how Yassine’s marriage was arranged (by his parents), where he went on honeymoon (Northern Morocco), the fact his younger brother had already got married (same way) and has two children, his older brother (who is 39) teaches Philosophy, saved for 15 years to buy the materials to build his own house and has no immediate desire to get married – but when he does he will choose his own wife. He owns a car as well.

We talked about the education system (private vs public), the languages taught in school (Arabic and French in public, plus English in private), and the steps required by law to marry a girl who was under 18. This was a surprising conversation and required Googling when we got back to WiFi. Yassine is 31 and has just married an 18 year old girl “from the mountains”. They are living with his parents and he is the only person who has ever asked me how long it took after my marriage to produce my first child. His brother lives next door in the house he has just built, on land owned by his parents. You don’t buy here, you build on land gifted by your parents, with land being divided and subdivided through generations – and they live on that plot for life, upgrading their house over time (or maybe building a newer house next to the old house, using the old house for storage). We have seen more ruined houses than ever before and most occupied ones are single skin concrete block, inexpertly constructed and looking very precarious.

Yassine didn’t need to go through this process (phew…) but if you DO want to marry a girl under 18 the law has now changed to make it harder. First you need to get a letter from a doctor (he didn’t specify what this was for, but Google says Islamic law requires the girl to have started menstruating) then you have to take that, the girl and her father to a judge. It is apparently advantageous if the prospective husband earns more, owns a house and doesn’t live with his parents. All of which logically makes him older.

We managed to continue making conversation after this bombshell.

He told us he has 37 cousins who are about the same age as him. He couldn’t believe how small our families are. His mum is one of 6 and his dad was one of 5. Apart from 2 of his mum’s sisters who moved north when they married (because the woman moves to live with the man – always), everyone else in his direct and extended family lives in his village. He had a small wedding party – only 200 people, but he said if he invited his whole family it would have been more than 400 guests!!

He didn’t seem to mind being pelted with questions and asked us plenty in return. He is a mine of local information.

Our trip today was planned to take us to see a waterfall called Cascades Ourika in the Atlas mountains. Yassine asked if he could take us to some interesting places on the way. Of course we said yes! Our first stop was a pottery warehouse. We wouldn’t have found it or been brave enough to go in by ourselves but the owner gave us a personal demonstration of how he makes the items he sells. His pottery wheel had a direct drive with the table his clay was on so he had to push it away with his foot to make it spin. It immediately made me want to put in a geared link so he could just press a pedal; surely less repetitive strain on his knee. I imagine, given he told us that he had been doing it for 44 years, that he would have been dismissive of such a suggested improvement so it is probably a good idea I didn’t mention it. The sheer volume of goods was incredible and the  size of the kiln and the amount that had been chipped or cracked of damaged before it was fired: astonishing – probably more than one hundred thousands items, mostly, but not all, pottery.

We bought a mini tagine with a Berber pattern for about £3.50. We didn’t have any small enough notes, so the owner told our driver to come back later to pay for it!

The next stop was an all-women co-operative, making argan oil cosmetics. Yassine was greeted like a favourite uncle by the toddler outside: his legs firmly hugged and his sunglasses stolen. We were sung to as we walked in (Keith particularly enjoyed this attention!!) and then a very composed young women explained the process of de-shelling, cracking and extracting the “almond” from the centre. I think we would call it the kernel, but it did look like a skinny almond. The shells are fed to the animals, the outside of the nut is used as fuel and the waste from crushing the kernel to extract the oil is made into a paste that is used in the hammam bathing ritual. No waste at all! She demonstrated each of the oils, creams, shampoos etc, explaining what properties of the ingredients were good for psoriasis, eczema, hair loss etc. while we drank mint tea and tried the peanut butter and edible argan oil (if you are interested, they roast the kernels to make food grade oil). There was a moisturizer made with honey that smelt delicious, so I contributed appropriately to the local economy. Afterwards a guide told us that locals used to benefit from the goodness of argan oil, but now they cannot afford to buy the raw nuts as cosmetic companies have pushed the prices up.

Having retrieved Yassine’s sunglasses and given back the toddler we carried on our tour.

Next on the agenda was a traditional Berber (Northern African tribe who pre-date the arrival of Arabs) house that has been turned into a working museum. The owners’ children, nephews etc.. showed us around whilst one of their sisters was brewing the tea, baking bread and cooking a meal in the open kitchen. The house was bigger than I had imagined but the rooms were quite small. It is built, not from stones they could get from the river, but with sandstone that has better heat insulative qualities than granite, which absorbs the heat and so in summer would make the inside of the house intolerably warm. They had doors made from olive wood and cedar and very little else. There was a bedroom and a parlour or receiving room for guests) but clearly the family lived in the kitchen. The door from the street belied the open courtyard with a grain mill and working areas as well as the family’s hammam (think sauna) chamber for their weekly sweat bath and mud scrape.

We had seen damage from a recent flooding event caused by a heavy rain storm as we drove along the valley, but this was the first time we had been close to the diggers and men clearing the path of the water and removing large boulders that had become dislodged.

The Berber house was the last stop before we arrived at the last village accessible by road into the mountains. There are 28 more villages between the one we stopped at and the highest one. Our walking guide said it would take about a day (walking) to get to the highest one and that the government are only now looking at building a road.

When we arrived, our guide was out on the hike, so we had a drink while we waited for him to return. We are obviously trying to avoid tap water so the menus are a minefield! There was only fruit juice to choose from, so I had lemon juice and Keith had pineapple juice. They were both delicious but mine was packed with sugar so I was buzzing when we set off. 

The hike had some steep sections and the path was not at all clear so the guide was a good idea. We were better equipped and fitter than most people trying to get to the waterfall so we passed quite a few people going up (walking in fashion trainers, flip-flops, etc..). It is distressing to see the number of items of rubbish in what should be an area of outstanding natural beauty. There were quite a few stalls on the way up selling oranges, sweets, nougat and drinks, but not many people appeared to be stopping.

The waterfall was pretty and not particularly busy, with a café and toilets right next to it. Keith attracted quite a lot of attention with his cameras, but the guide collected us when he had finished and we carried on our trek. We carried on around the valley instead of just going straight back down, which I was pleased about as some bits of path were very sketchy. The views of the village were good from the path and our guide could show us where he lived. We saw and heard robins, sparrows and blackbirds on the way down but Merlin (bird song identification app for those who don’t know/care) couldn’t cope with our location.

Back down in the village we thanked and said goodbye to our guide and got some lunch. Yassine seemed happy reading his book in the car while we ate chicken kebabs and a chicken tagine. Very tasty.

Another bracing trip to a Moroccan public bathroom and then we set off back down the two way, single track road that they are mending in a dozen places, with vertical cliffs up one side and river the other. The trip home was much quicker as we didn’t stop and we could focus on squeezing Yassine for more information! He drove a different route into the city, taking us past his village.

Back in the hotel, I went straight for the pool. The car was uncomfortably warm in the late afternoon and we had both become sweaty. The temporary manager (Tom) assured me the water is heated but I would call it refreshing! Still, a quick dip and a big drink restored me enough to enthuse about our three course dinner to the local staff. The “boy” had lit the fire in our lodge when we got back, so it was pretty cosy and bed called. The night sky is dark here – lots of visible stars!

A painless flight, enlivened by having Simon Faraday from Ghosts sitting right next to us and having Giovanni Georgio (but everyone calls him Giorgio) flying the plane, was followed by a thorough experience in security and almost seamless collection by our driver. We couldn’t see much in the dark on the journey to the hotel, but enough to see where the palace walls ended and the shanty town started. The road to Fawakay villas is not well maintained and the surrounding village is filthy with rubbish, which seems quite normal for Morocco (confirmed by our driver the next day).

The hotel itself is different to anywhere else we have stayed and our room literally a large mud and straw hut (eco-lodge!) with a bed, bathroom, some cushions and a roaring log fire. The greeting was warm and the snacks left for us very welcome after a long gap since lunch! Tom (who is running the hotel this week, whilst the British owners (friends of his) are away in South Africa) checked we had everything we needed and explained how to get breakfast and meet the driver in the morning. He warned us to keep the door shut so the donkey didn’t go in and eat everything and introduced us to Eddie, Patsy & Brian (dogs) and the cat whose name I didn’t bother to remember.

After snacks we prowled around the room examining everything, brushed our teeth in bottled well water (avoiding the tap water) and tried to sleep. Tom did warn us about the wild (I would argue feral is a better description) dogs barking, but he didn’t mention how noisy the cicadas/frogs were. I have yet to clarify which it was. It felt weirdly irresponsible to go to sleep with the fire still burning and I keep waking up panicking that the room was full of smoke and we had used all the available oxygen. The mattress added to the challenge as it felt like rock.