The Melting Pot.

Marrakesh is amazing and so vastly different from our tiny little world in NZ.  Everyone here seems to speak languages upon languages and if they are not fluent, they can certainly make themselves understood.  This goes from the most well dressed business man, down to the lady that mans the toilet (and yes, there are ladies for whom that is their job)  French and Arabic are the official languages and I have only had one non comprehende moment, when I repeatedly said to house keeping that my room didn't need making up and she eventually seemed to understand and said something to me in Arabic, to which I nodded, more out of manner than comprehension and her and her off sider, pushed the door open, bought the cart to the door and proceeded to clean the room.  Okay!

This video is a panorama of the square at Marrakesh at about 7.00pm last night.  This square is immediately prior to the labyrinth of alleys that make up the Souq (market), with everything from gold to weaving on sale.  I cannot describe the pulse of the place which hails from Abrabic and African descent and to be honest, just about everything in between!!!!

There are a whole group of people who are making their money out of tourist taking photos,  so if something is going on with the snake charmer, or the acrobats, or the monkey handler and you happen to take a photo, the come over and give you a really hard time, until you front with some money.

From the poor old donkeys, to the horses, to the snakes and monkeys, it is seriously not a good time for animals!  There are also quite a few kids and refugees and homeless people who don't look to be having too much of a riot either.

As we were leaving this afternoon, I saw one of the monkeys bite a guy on the finger.  He was bleeding and holding his finger and the monkey man (for want of a better word) was making a get away into the crowd.  One of the bit finger guys mates gave chase and took on the Monkey Man.  There were a few heated words that I assume went ' your rather disease ridden primate has caused an injury to my associate' although he was F-ing and blazing a bit more.

The Monkey Man was not the slightest bit interested and once he had had enough of the mate complaining, he just flicked his monkey on to the complainers shoulder, which kind of ended the whole conversation as the complainer just wanted the flea infested thing off his shoulder and his mates bite became a HUGE nothing in comparison.

So.... this afternoon, we purchased some Fez hats at the markets.  Mainly because they are 'the hat' of the region.  We negotiated the price, paid and then the lady went off to get ones that weren't faded by the sun.  So......... she left her stall and we ..... waited..... and waited..... and...... waited.  She was gone AGES and at one stage, someone came to her stall and wanted to buy at hat, to which we began to negotiate prices and just had a heap of fun pretending.  Out of the woodwork came a heap of Moroccan stall holders who thought we were just as likely to run off with her produce, so we stopped being silly and just waited and ....... eventually she came back and gave us the hats with a huge smile as clearly she had ripped us and was delighted!!!!

Cathy was convinced she was just some random lady who had negotiated a price and got the money and then had just vaporised.  We have not found it to be the case that people here want to rip us.  Yes, they are looking for a windfall, but the will come down and down and if you walk away, they really come down.  We are just not use to playing that game and as Kiwi's, we just want the price tag!!!!