Fez

So, I am sitting on my little deck, outside my lovely room in Fez, which is well inland in Morocco.  It is lightly raining, but the temp is pretty good.  Colder than is usual, but okay.

It has been a really long day and the longest part of it was the lead in to getting on the ferry from Spain to Morocco.  What a process and once on the ferry you have to spend your entire ride of close to an hour, lining up to get your passport stamped through a totally antiquated system of one man checks paperwork, one lady looks on, passes it back and you take it to another man, who then puts a numbered stamp in your passport.  I suspect there are refugee boats out in the Mediterranean and they don't want all the tourist to see them, so they keep us tied up inside the boat, in a line that zig zags across the whole vessel, to the 3 checkers and stampers.

Makes you appreciate how our own system is really so efficient.

Call to prayer has just sounded out across Fez.  I really like the sound of it, makes you realise you are not in NZ now, Dr. Ropata.

Morocco is an incredibly varied place from what I can see.  We have been through the towns and then on into the suburbs where life is pretty much what you would expect with high rises, heaps of aircon units and satellite dishes.  Further out, things take a different turn and the living conditions are much more like Egypt.  The stock fences are made of this huge cactus and just about everything is used for a building material, from old pallets, to wood or bamboo to make lean to huts.  The livestock looks pretty moggy and there are camels roaming the grass areas.  Not heaps, but they were there.

Much of the land seems to be in crop and the guide
 talked about how the current King has spent the last 20 years working on bringing the people Morocco wealth through trade and partnerships.  A heap of big companies such as Mercedes Benz and Hyundai have factories here, but the condition of them using the labour is that they cannot sell within the country.  Good business for Morocco if the workers come from here.

It is raining steadily now and I have to be up by 6 tomorrow and breakfasted and on the bus by 7.30, so I might go to sleep.  I am hoping tomorrow will be a really interesting day and that we get some time to just look around at our leisure. Some people on the bus need to take a chill pill.