{"id":1819,"date":"2012-02-16T19:15:18","date_gmt":"2012-02-16T19:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=1819"},"modified":"2018-12-17T17:19:49","modified_gmt":"2018-12-17T17:19:49","slug":"1520dh_and_worth_every_penny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/1520dh_and_worth_every_penny\/","title":{"rendered":"1520Dh, and worth every penny, erm, cent"},"content":{"rendered":"

We’re here: N31.49183 W9.76303. It’s a campsite on the Atlantic coast, walking distance from the seaside resort of Essaouira. Not that we’ve walked in, we only had the energy to make it over to the beach and watch the camels. It’s been lovely and sunny all day, slow-cooking us in the cab as we drove and I discovered our dash-mounted fans no longer work; perhaps a victim of my attempts to fix the cab heater. Oops.<\/p>\n

Ju met Pascale, the lady who runs the campsite at Marrakech<\/a> this morning to pay the bill. 1520Dh for three nights – about \u00a3126 (current rates \u00a31 = 12Dh). Considering the average campsite around here is 100Dh a night, and there are some for less than that, this may seem somewhat excessive. However, the campsite actually costs 150Dh a night, which is good value for such a top quality campsite. The rest was for laundry (80Dh a load), hot, delivered pain au chocolat (10Dh each), transfers in and out of Marrakech (40Dh each, each way, totalling 160Dh), a bottle and a half of wine (140Dh a bottle), two 2 course gourmet meals (195Dh each), a couple of 33cl 1664 beers (30Dh each), a 150cl bottle of water (20Dh). We basically had a blow out.<\/p>\n

Our nosh-up last night was top notch. Served in their custom-built and self-designed\u00a0restaurant, looking out over the infinity pool reflecting up-lit trees, by the campsite owner Andre and cooked up by his wife Pascale. There were only the four of us and a German couple in the place. Crucially, it was accompanied by a few bottles of Moroccan ‘Vin Gris’ or grey wine. This is made using red wine grapes, but instead of removing the crushed grapes after a few hours (which makes rose wine) or days (red wine), they’re removed immediately. Tasted great.<\/p>\n

Once we’d eaten Andre (originally from Belgium) got us a wood fire going so we could sit under his carved plaster ceiling (2 men, 6 weeks to complete), sip wine and chill out. As always, everyone wanted to know how Andre could afford to build this place and some interrogation took place. Turned out he used to run a campany which had dealings with Moroccan mining companies (silver,\u00a0phosphorous, and some others) and had sold this company. Him and Pascale had done some travelling, including adopting 3 brothers and sisters from Brazil and finally buying an olive tree grove outside Marrakech, designing the campsite himself (only paying a Moroccan\u00a0architect\u00a0to sign off the designs) and building it. Incredible, and none of us can suss how he will ever turn a profit from the place. Maybe he doesn’t need to, as he later showed us pictures of him competing in a 4×4 race across the desert in the south.<\/p>\n

We asked them what it was like running a business in Morocco and they told us:<\/p>\n