SPAIN, PORTUGAL - Part 1 - Feb. 14, 2012

SPAIN, PORTUGAL – Part 1
February 14, 2012


Around the world certain brand names are easily recognizable…MacDonald’s, Pepsi, Toyota. Some

look or are spelled differently than we may be used to. This is Coke in Arabic.

Weather has turned cold…VERY cold…with temperatures at 8 C and cold winds all the way from Russia at somewhere between 25 and 5000 kph. Everyone is dressed in their best winter attire with matching complaints. This was one of those rare occasions that drinking more wine did not help. That’s how cold it was! But the scenery and the beaches are still very enjoyable.

Drove up to Seville, about 250 km. Dawn and I were here for a few days in 2008 at the start of our last big cycling trip. Seville is one of the oldest places in Spain and has the largest cathedral in the world; it is claimed to be larger than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Not sure about that but it is huge and even more garish. The architecture is very impressive and the carvings and moldings are as overdone as any.

It is always a pleasure to take pictures of Asian tourists in these types of places. In its heyday Seville was thought to be the richest city in the world after Spanish conquerors brought back shiploads of gold taken from South America.

A tall monument with a likeness of one of Christopher Columbus’ ships, the Isabel, stands proudly in the center of the city. Chris’ second and fourth voyages started from Seville when wealthy patrons funded his voyages. (We, on the other hand, must fund our own. How times have changed!) Our time in this beautiful place was limited so we headed back to camp on the local, and inexpensive, bus.

Our Dutch friends, TV gave up while here but a call to an electronics shop saw the man come to the campground to pick it up, repair it and deliver it…on the condition that we held back Frans’ and Willemien’s German Shepard which scared the hell out of him!

And now, it’s Portugal, a country more mellow than Spain but also more serious. More old-fashioned and more simple. The countryside is hilly, beautiful, treed but quite dry and prone to forest fires, and…last but not least as for many of the countries in Europe…very broke. The overspending and the over-construction happened here as well though not to the same extent as Spain. This last part comes out in the demeanor of the people, proud but discouraged. Dawn and I went through the center of Portugal in 2002 during our first European cycling trip. We fell in love with the country and the people.

We camped about fifteen kilometers west of Faro on the southern coast. Nice campground a few hundred meters from the Atlantic shore. Hoards of Dutch with most of them riding their bikes of course. But they seem to have a peculiar way to attach training wheels. Or are these to prevent wheelies?

We probably have never shown you pictures of the inside of our van/bus/home/resort. So here they are. Remember…this is the lived-in version after we've shut down for the night.

MOROCCO - Part 2

MOROCCO – Part 2
February 3, 2012


And so we continued south through the mountains. We had originally planned to go southeast more but that area is an uncontrolled drug growing region with plants covering the hillsides. One town is considered to be lawless with The Lonely Planet travel guide describing it as the place where criminals whose faces cannot be seen elsewhere in the country live. Those travelling through the region are thought to be there only to buy drugs. At the time we were to go through the area news came to us that problems were encountered. Decision made…we headed the chicken route.

The straight southern route we chose was lush farmland with spring crops giving off a bright green hue with new shoots covering the rolling hills. This region apparently gets over a meter of rain per year and it showed…no sand dunes here.

Little traffic gave us room to dodge broken roads and small herds of sheep. At one point the bike carrier on our friends’ camper broke when they drove too fast over a sudden bump. The rack was beyond fixing so we had to empty a large storage compartment in their camper, partially dismantle the bikes, and put everything else back in around them. Rain started to come done as we were doing this which made us speed up. Until, that is, we had to stop for a laugh. A Moroccan man walking on the road looked at the two bikes leaning against our van and very calmly and nonchalantly said in French, “You give me a bicycle?” Looking at him in total disbelief I replied “You’re exaggerating a bit don’t you think.” To which he politely responded “Oh, sorry.” And he simply walked off. Okay then…have a good day afoot.

We stopped for lunch during an especially heavy part of the downpour in a gas station. Covered though outdoor seating made for cold eating. Sitting next to a butcher stand with carcasses hanging in your face didn’t help my appetite.

The calm emptiness of the countryside was broken by the sudden appearance of the edge of Fez, a messy city of over one million. Now the focus was on surviving more potholes, air pollution, insane drivers, next to no road signs and the continued rain. Pedestrians, animals, motorcycles were constant obstacles. One driver almost hit Frans and Willemien while another almost nailed us. It felt like we were in a video game. Some guy on a motorcycle said something to our friends (we gathered he was offering to take us to a campground). Usually this is not good. We followed him to a campground in Fez with a bad reputation and it was too late in the day to find the other one clear across the city. He said this was the same as the other one we were looking for. When I confronted him with the word “BULL!”, his story changed. Welcome to Morocco. And of course he was back the next afternoon at our campsite to tell us that he was at our service and that his brother would be here the next morning to guide us in the medina in Fez. He would not listen or take no for an answer until…I lowered my sunglasses, pointed to him and forcefully said “NO! WE WILL GO TO THE MEDINA BY OURSELVES! UNDERSTAND?!” He finally left. By the time we left the campground two days later there was no one left. And the bad reputation? Very well deserved. Dawn and I can honestly say that after having used campgrounds in many countries, many of them Third World, this was without a doubt THE worst one!

The medina in Fez is some four square kilometers with endless alleyways leading in every direction. The place is crammed with shops, places to eat, people, the odd donkey being hassled by the owner, goods of all sorts, countless barbers, sounds of every nature and…smells. Ah the smells.

The smells range from coffee, foods, and spices (all good) to aging meats and animal skin tanners (all bad). The tannery business is in the middle of the medina. One place does the actual dyeing (each day is a different colour), another does the final preparation of the hide, and another works the raw goat and sheep hides brought in. The odour in the latter cannot be described other than heavy, thick, putrid, gut heaving, gagging, and very, very, VERY, putrid (did I already mention that one?). The men working in the filth are sitting in it and wallowing in it. I forced myself to rush to the edge of the place to take a quick picture before roaring back. Breathing through your mouth instead of your nose is of no help.

Remember this is the oldest medina in the Arab world. Many of the buildings have seen better days. Some of them are held up with wooden support beams braced against the building across the alley. A “you hold me up and I’ll hold you up” sort of thing.

With the help of a shop keeper we found an amazingly beautiful (inside) restaurant. Good food with the ambiance of a traditional rich Arab’s ancient home took us far away from the craziness outside.

The rains we had driven through a few days earlier also dropped a meter of snow on the high mountain roads we were to head south on. Frans felt very uncomfortable driving on narrow, crooked mountain roads so the snow didn’t help. Another change of plans had us going straight west from Fez to the coast, again through lush farmland. Warming temperatures met us at the side of the Atlantic Ocean. We headed south and by chance found a campground which is probably one of the nicest in Morocco and next to the water’s edge. On the way, and only for a short time, something (we still don’t know what) was being sold by the edge of the road.

We decided to have a tagine meal in camp one day. For about $11 you get food cooked in a tagine for two plus bread. The bread is delivered by a camel.

We did make a new camel friend…a cool looking dude complete with a hash pipe. His name is Ali Baba.

With bad weather in the form of colder temperatures (10C) and rain lower down and probably snow higher up, we decided to give up (sadly) on our plans to get to the desert we headed north again to Spain. Our plan now is to get back to Morocco in October mainly to get into the desert.

Feb. 2 we drove back up along the western coast to Martil to the campground we had first used on our way down. Rolling farmland with a few large sand dunes immediately on the coast. Some of the same style greenhouses we saw in southern Spain are also used here to grow fruit and vegetables. One difference? Many are used to grow bananas…on full-sized banana trees! We hadn’t realized these were grown inside.

The next day we crossed the Morocco/Spain border into Ceuta (still on the African continent), drove through the insane traffic of Ceuta and took the ferry. Must have gone through a dozen checkpoints from the border to the ferry as this is one of the biggest smuggling (drugs and people) between Africa and Europe. Our van was checked by inspectors, cops and dogs with many (people and dogs) of them having a BAD attitude!

Back into Spain with hundreds of windmills, beautiful scenery and a very nice camping place with grassed sites. We’ll probably be here for a few days even though the temperatures are very cold with a bitter north wind blamed on the Russians!! In North America. it’s the Canadians…here it’s the Russians…just doesn’t pay to be up north!

MOROCCO - Part 1

MOROCCO – Part 1
February 2, 2012

After Ronda we pointed the van toward Algeciras, Spain. The scenery was amazing on a very crooked road in the rugged hills dotted by small white villages clinging to the mountainsides. These places seemed to have little obvious reason to be there in the first place.

Arriving in Algeciras was a bit harsh with the smells of industry and the grubbiness of a port. Here is where we would take the ferry to Morocco. We managed to find the ticket office our friends in France had recommended, behind a grocery store in a light industrial part of town, and bought our return tickets for E180 ($260 Cdn). With tickets in hand we headed to the place we were told was full of other campers staying overnight before the crossing the next day…a MacDonald’s parking lot. By late evening at least fifty motorhomes had gathered. Things were fairly quiet apart from the out-of-sorts young Moroccan asking if we wanted any drugs.

The crossing took about one hour in a very busy maritime channel, the Strait of Gibraltar, connecting the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The view of Gibraltar was amazing from the water. Much higher and having more bulk than we thought it also falls sharply into Spain. Ceuta on the African continent is part of Spain so we yet had to cross the border into Morocco.

Crossing the border…forms for us, for the vehicle, three check points; hundreds of people on both sides wanting to help you (for a fee), crazy traffic following no road rules…ah yes, Morocco was very near. We drove to Martil, Morocco to a campground where there were many Europeans heading south. Later in the day we took a taxi (this in Moroccan for “crazy driver with broken car”) to a town about eight kilometers away to see the local market. The market can only be described as bedlam complete with sounds, smells, and sights to overwhelm the unprepared (that would be us). Spices to animal carcasses, barbers to carpet shops, vegetables to tin pots, furniture to fish heads…and everything in-between. Wild, crazy but fascinating and amusing. The crush of people didn’t always let you decide where you wanted to go. The round-trip taxi cost us 100 Dirhams ($15 for 4 people) though the price had been agreed beforehand at 60 Dirhams (“Ah, but that was not the price to go into the CENTER of the city.” says the cab driver. Of course it wasn’t!!)

At a small store the next day we went looking for frozen fish for our friends’ dog. We were taken to fresh fish and when we pointed to ice and fish together we were taken to buy ice. Oh well. Buying alcohol in Morocco can also be problematic since this is a Muslim country though not one to be considered extreme. First booze is very expensive; secondly it may be difficult to find and when you do it is in the very back of the store, “hidden”. It is to be taken out in a bag of some sort and not to be openly seen. A bid odd for a country, though Muslim, which has vineyards and produces its own wines.

Being Muslims, the faithful are called to prayer five times a day over loudspeakers sitting atop slim tall towers called minarets. The “call” is actually sung and when well done is pleasing to the ear, though at 5:30 in the morning it takes some getting used to.

Most Moroccans speak French and Spanish as France and Spain were occupiers at one time or another. Most signs are in Arabic and French. People are very helpful and friendly but it still pays to be on your guard.

Late January we headed to Chefchaouen reputed to be one of the most beautiful towns and medinas in the country. Medinas are old parts of Arab cities, usually walled, where people live, work, own shops and where usually no streets exist…only narrow alleys bustling with people, donkeys, sounds, smells, sights…in other words, general craziness. Absolutely not to be missed. The campground high above town has majestic views of the surrounding mountains and of this town of 50,000. The campground was full of French tourists, had no hot water and was a fifteen minute steep downhill walk into town partly through a cemetery. We walked into town and took a taxi back.

The medina in Chefchaouen is as spectacular, as amazing, as awe-inspiring, as unique as anyone can expect. The varying shades of blues, used to ward off bugs, gives the place a soothing touch. The lack of people in the parts we walked through added to the place’s simplicity and honesty. Kids roaring around, donkeys being led somewhere, small workshops humming with sounds of woodworking or fabric weaving. Stairways leading steeply up, around blind corners, sometimes looking like the way to Fred Flintstone’s house. No description, no pictures can get you to grasp what this place is like…you must be here yourself. In one shop Dawn and Willemien each bought a Bedouin style head scarf after much kidding and price haggling with Rashid, the effervescent shopkeeper.

Later…lunch… prepared in the traditional north-African tagine clay pots, was one of the best meals we have ever had anywhere. Simple vegetables and couscous…absolute heaven.

In another part of town, where some of the locals bought supplies at the local outdoor stands, not-so-lucky chickens hung helplessly with aluminum masks over their heads. Why? Didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know.

The next day, just outside the city, were cork trees which seemed unusual and out of place here. Cork squares were piled two meters high like wood to dry in the sun.

This country seems to have lots of school-age kids though few in the country-side attend. They instead help with chores. Partly because these kids are not in school, stopping along the road means hoards of them show up especially if you were handing out pens as we did one day.

One of the common attires the men wear is a full length robe with a peaked hood made of heavy material. It looks like a Harry Potter outfit!