Morocco (5)

	In Marrakech we caught up again with Leon and Claire from Holland and the six of us planned to do a piste in Western Sahara together, again from Chris Scott’s ‘Sahara Overland’ book. We stayed at a beautiful campground run by two French couples that catered mainly for big white campervans. It was the first clean toilets we had seen in Morocco.

Marrakech was a fantastic city and we toured the souk before mooching through the open-air theatres and munching round the various food stalls. Freshly squeezed orange juice at 18p a glass. There was such an exotic array of places to eat and tastes to try, so we tried it all.

When we left Marrakech after three days, we split up from our friends as we each had different itineraries before Western Sahara; Leon and Claire ended up in a garage having their Landy’s head reconditioned, and Campbell and Linnéa went to climb Toubkal.

We also headed up to Imlil (at the base of Toubkal) as I was still toying with the idea of a winter line on the mountain, but when we arrived they had six inches of new snow in the village and my toe started to get cold in the car park, so we bid a hasty retreat along Tiz an Test pass.

As it got darker the blizzard conditions on the pass worsened and as we turned the last mountain col we were faced with a steep snowy descent. We opted to pull in at the Belle View Hotel at the head of the pass, as it was now bitterly cold and blowing a gale.

It almost appeared deserted, except for the low light of the gas lamps and the embers in the fire, but we were welcomed in by Mohammed the hotelier and his brother in law Larbie, a Berber trader waiting to cross the mountains with his donkey when the snow cleared.

We shared some soup and a Berber omelette and chatted to the two lads for a couple of hours. Larbie was taking artefacts he had bought from nomads in the east to sell at the coast, a week’s walk away, and would return with tea, sugar etc to sell on return. He had recently married and was saving up for a house. At one point the conversation moved to stars and constellations and Larbie asked if we wanted to see a related object he was going to sell at the coast. Now, we have seen some tat in Morocco so weren’t holding our breaths, but wow, were we surprised. He unwrapped a solid brass Arabic carved dial that was the most beautiful object. It had several moving discs and could be used for astrology, astronomy or sea navigation. In it's style it really brought forth images of the Altimeter detailed in Philip Pulman’s ‘Dark Materials’ trilogy. It was no way in our budget, so we asked if he had anything else.

			His two bags were an Aladdin’s cave of treasures, and nothing of poor quality either, but immediately my eyes were drawn to a most beautiful Berber knife. The negotiations of trade and commerce lasted several hours over a couple of beers and a sniff of home-made Sloe gin, but eventually the score was: Keith gets a knife, Larbie gets my old walking boots (which gave me frostbite) and old crampons, old ice axes, old climbing rope and 70euro. I’d find it hard to place a value on the trade off, and even now I’m not sure the knife is worth a huge amount, but the experience of the whole evening of bartering in a dimly lit room, in front of the fire on a high mountain side with the blizzard howling outside, in Morocco, was priceless.

	In Agadir we bought two new tyres, collected our RAC Carnet de Passage from the DHL office and had Julie’s 12 week scan. We wandered into a clinic on the main street and asked if it was possible to get a scan, and after 15mins wait we were being seen. When filling out the forms at reception I totally embarrassed the both of us as I filled in Julie’s name as Julie Anderson (her maiden name), before quickly scribbling it out, and realised then that this might look suspicious, and from that moment on it definitely did look suspicious, and I hadn’t the French to hand to explain the mistake.

The doctor was very nice and professional, even if I did think he had a semblance of Borat about him. The machine was rudimentary, in fact I have seen better in vet surgeries but you could see the baby was where it should be and there were no obvious limbs missing, just an extra head.

After the scan, the doctor instructed Julie to lie down for the next 6 months with no climbing stairs, he nearly shat a biscuit when we told him we were driving to South Africa, but calmed down when we agreed that Jools would spend the entire trip lying down in the back of the truck.

All done, he started writing a prescription for Amoxycillin, when I asked what for he explained it was because Jools had mentioned a little cystitis. We convinced him we didn’t need it and that we had Augmentin in our own medical kit, so he tore up the prescription and started to write another. This time for pessaries, again we asked what for, and again he said for the cystitis (?). Jools explained that things were all fine now and that she didn’t want anything,so he tore up the second prescription, and started another. “What now?” we asked. “Oh these are obligatory, every women takes these when pregnant” he replies and I thought ‘every pregnant women that came to your surgery, I’m sure’. At this point were backing out the door clutching our printout of the scan, which was actually just a black piece of paper with the lightest fuzzing of white and no discernable features at all. We thankfully brought the camera and took a photo of the screen.