Relaxing in Ounagha After the Marrakesh Half Marathon

Zagan the motorhome has Big Ben (Phil and Jule’s Hymer) on one side, and a rather lush olive tree on the other. In front is a grassy area, planted with more mature olive trees, and lit in patches with a setting African sun. We’re in Camping des Oliviers in the tiny (and very much Moroccan!) town of Ounagha, a few km inland from Essaouira on the Atlantic Coast (N31.531742, W9.547741). It costs 80 Dh for two people and a motorhome (without electricity – we’re using some of our LPG stash) for a single night, but that reduces to 60 Dh a night if you stay for two nights. We’re booked in for a couple of evenings – all of €6 a night, including the WiFi I’m using to pump this up to t’Interweb, oh, and 50 cents a night for Charlie.

Camping des Oliviers in Ounagha, Morocco

We’ve done a little video of the place in case you are thinking of coming to Morocco in your motorhome – this should give you an idea of what a typical campsite is like.

The view from the campsite gate

So, yesterday the four of us ran the Marrakech half marathon. It was all Phil’s idea, many moons ago, and we’ve been slowly, erratically training for it, running in a third of the countries of Europe in the process, quite an incredible thing. As I bobbed along in among thousands of fellow athletes (ahem), the sun gradually lifted higher over the High Atlas mountains, glaring in my face and evaporating energy. Along palm-lined boulevards, beside age-old ramparts, through olive trees and past legions of impatient Chinese mopeds held back by the police, the run seemed endless. My running mate Phil ran with shin splints, a painful condition runners get sometimes, and one which meant he ended up in all kinds of discomfort. Jules had the same virus we had a week or so back, which left us very much without wings. Ju’s foot bubbled up in blisters. I managed to avoid all of this, and just had to go through the usual mental ‘I wish this were all bloody over’ battle, especially when I guessed I’d done 18Km, just before the 15Km marker appeared and denied me.

In the end we all made it round, all 21Km of it, avoiding the odd donkey and ancient dim-eyed Marrakechian who wandered onto the course in the process.  We’re waiting for the times to be published on the marathon website (they’re in – my tired old body managed sub 2 hours, which I’m very happy with), but suspect we might not have won… Our legs ache, various minor injuries are being nursed, and I’m supping a cold beer. Am I glad we did it? Oh yes, it was something to remember! Am I keen on doing another one any time soon? Let me have a few more beers and I’ll get back to you.

Being here creates a small problem for us. There’s too much to write about (yes, this is a pretty bloody awesome life). Too many things to photograph. Too many strange things to ponder. Too many tastes to try. Too many small experiences to live through. These blog posts could all be as long as your arm, but I’ll try and avoid boring the teeth from you and keep ’em short(ish). In the past couple of days, as well as running, we’ve had the great fortune to be invited to the Café de France by Daniel and Chon, fellow camping caristers, and very well travelled ones at that (danieletchon.com – in French – their next trip will take in Iran). From the upper terrace of the café, overlooking the frenetic madness of Djeema el-Fna, we had the luxury of chatting with them about their time in Morocco, discovering they’d spent 20-odd years visiting and living in the country.

Daniel and Chon – danieletchon.com

View of Djeema el-Fna from the Cafe de France

The poor couple were battered by wave upon wave of our questions, weathering the storm and paying for our drinks, before taking us on a tour de force demonstration of how to find and haggle for good quality hand-made babouche (slippers) in the den that is the Marrakech souk. When we got back to Zagan I wrote four pages of notes on everything they told us, but the key thing which stood out for me was this: to enjoy being in Morocco, you need three things: patience, a sense of humour and respect. Of all of these, the first seems the most important. Everything takes time.

They described, with a wry smile, how everyone in Morocco knows a plumber. You get to know them since they visit your house many times: the first time to fix the problem, then a few days later to ‘fix’ it again, then a few days later to ‘fix’ it another time. If you lose patience and get angry, they simply claim a gremlin created the problem, how could it be their fault? At this point, I imagine, the sense of humour comes in handy. Chon told us the first time they were here, 20 years or so ago, a 4×4 would be a good idea. Now most of the roads are paved, and easily passable, and umpteen other improvements have been made to the infrastructure. Morocco, they said, is changing, but 20 years isn’t enough to change the way people think: they still think like Moroccans.

Getting a lesson in souk buying. Chon was very much in charge!

We also met up with Richard and Ali, who live in Fowey in sunny Cornwall, where Phil and Jules also reside, making a rendez-vous under the Koutoubia minaret last night and making one last foray into the square for grub. They’re here by air and riad, taking a break from work back in the UK, and we chatted about their life in the middle east after having endured the usual “ave a butchers, mate”, “same shit everywhere”, “what you, zombie?”, “free drinks for you, my word”, “five years, no diarrhoea” avalanche of touts. At one point Phil had six guys in his face. Richard politely told one tout, in Arabic, that he might come back tomorrow to be told to “f**k off back home”, which he shrugged off. Eating in the square is something to do once in your life. We’ve done it three times, and I’m figuring that’s about enough.

Eating in Djeema el-Fna

The restaurants in the square are in among madness. Touts, shouts, noises, beggars and smells, so it’s a bit disorientating. Once we settled in we noticed the stall next to us was all Moroccans. Why? Much plainer food, and the prices were a tenth what we were paying. 4DH is 32p for a bread stuffed with boiled egg and potatoes. Mint tea was 8p

This morning we had a chat with Phil and Jules before hitting the road for here. “Did you hear that guy razzing it up and down the car park at twenty to one?”. “Yep”. It turned out Phil had got out of bed and requested the young chap, who was one of the official guardians, to cease and desist. Quite what Phil said will remain known only to him, but whatever it was worked and we all got sleep for another few hours before someone started revving up a motorbike, followed by the mosque dawn chorus. Hopes are slightly higher for a better night’s sleep this evening, although the local minaret here practically leans over the campsite, so a 5:50am request to worship is likely…

Supermarket shop on the way out of Marrakech

The drive from Marrakech to here runs down the N8 and R207, and is a pretty easy run. Half of it’s dual carriageway, 100 kph, with a police speed trap nabbing a Porsche in front of us. I’ve learned from my own nabbing a few days ago, and was doing a sedate 80 kph when we saw the speed gun flash in the distance. The road ran away from the hills and across a plain, more arid than we’ve seen the past few weeks, through dusty, busy towns where lines of horse-driven carts trotted away from weekly souks.

Not far from here argan trees appear, the nuts of which are ground into expensive oil for cooking, cosmetics and the like. Goats like to climb into the trees and eat them, eventually killing the trees, which, I imagine, annoys the tree owners. However, tourists like to see goats in trees, so a kind of compromise seems to have been reached where the goats are only allowed into a single tree. Ju saw ’em, as did Phil and Jules. We didn’t pull in, they did, and were almost immediately set upon by a man carrying a baby goat demanding money for the photo they’d just taken. Sadly, we did not witness the wheel spin at the start of the 100m goat carrying race which followed (the world wife carrying championship comes to mind though).

Goats in The Argan Tree! Taken by Julie Yardley and Phil Russ. Man running with baby goat: just out of shot

It feels to me like we’ll see another Morocco now. The big cities are done. The Atlantic coast, the High and Anti Atlas mountains, the palms, stones of the hamadas and the sands of the Erg Chebbi are ahead of us. The small towns, like the one we’re in, await. And from a brief look at this one, it’s as authentically back-water Morocco as we’re likely to see. Dogs lie in the street alongside beggars. Young men weld together gates in sunglasses. Donkeys are tied to trees awaiting loads to lug about. Smoke streams out of concrete bunker cafes into pavement. The carcasses of animals hang ready for the request to chop a bit off. The idea of suing the council for tripping over in the street is utterly, utterly laughable. It’s not pretty, but it is entirely fascinating.

I like this for some reason: painted on the wall of the guarded parking in Marrakech

Right, more beer needed. Take it easy folks, cheers, Jay