This is a Catch Up Kind of Post.....

Tangiers, looking North from our hotel toward Spain.

Tonight we are in the port city of Tangiers or Tangers as it is known here.  It is perched right on the Mediterranean Sea and is the place that we are to catch the ferry back to Southern Spain.  It has a kind of French flavour to it and is really rather beautiful.

I have loved Morocco.  It is such a place of contrasts and is a whole step back in time, when you look at things like the accommodation of the people, the markets, the animal welfare, the transport.  I think that Health and Safety compliance would be a nothing to them as even the doors of the buses don't actually meet in any sense of the word and we saw a door that was a chunk of welded metal that almost was the right shape for the door frame, bar a good 15cm right round.

The roads are a riot of cars, donkeys, bikes, horse drawn coaches, motorbikes (like a Honda 50 step through that Dad had when we were kids), tripod things with a ute back, pedestrians and buses.  The whole time we have been her, moving through this, we have only seen one accident and that was between two motorbikes.  I am amazed there are not more!!!!  The very skinny alleys of the market area have kids on motorbikes and bikes racing among the pedestrians and at times everyone has to get out of the way for some poor sod who is pulling a small trailer along, laden with stuff.  I even saw a trailer with wooden wheels coming up the incline in one of the alleys and everyone had to get back against the wall.  If the poor guy pulling it had had to stop for some lame arse who wouldn't get out of the way, it would have been pretty tough for him to get started again on the cobbled stones, unaided.

Yesterday we went to a traditional Berber village and into a home of one of the villagers.  Now, to be fair, I am not 100% sure it is their real house, but it was presented as such and you could go and walk around the place and have a look and then share bread and tea with the people.  It was good.... and I didn't like it, all at the same time.  The floors are earthen and the walls are adobe.  The rooms have big pillars of timber holding them up and the floor goes either with the slope of the land, or is flattened out more with a series of different depth steps.  The kitchen was well inside, with no light and the toilet was outside and was actually just a porcelain hole in the ground.

The part I found most difficult to deal with was the animals that lived under the house, in dark cellar rooms, along with all their poop and hay and animal stuff.  I could well smell them before I could find them.  In one area there were two goats and in another, a donkey that had seen MUCH better days and a cow.  I have photos, but I will have to add them later.  I could not actually work out how the animals got taken out of these rooms and out to fields or the road or whatever, but surely it is not through the house???

It would appear that dental hygiene is not high on the list of priorities, but then again, if you can't drink the water, it must be hard to do your teeth without bottled water and drinking the water is definitely out, so I guess it is a compromise.   That coupled with the chewing tobacco they eat doesn't really scream 'that Colgate smile' to me!

Okay, this sounds like a really negative post and believe me I have really loved seeing the things I have been able to see.  What Morocco has shown me is that it doesn't take the latest TV or the gadgets, or the huge house to find happiness and contentment.  Does this mean I am thinking of moving to a simpler, less comfortable life?  Hell no!!!!

I can't wait to get home and just find my normal again.  Give me my seat warming car and rugby and wine in front of the TV ANY TIME!!

I wouldn't swap our life for anything!!!!!!!!