Chefchaouen

Early morning this morning. Well not too early but earlier than I would have liked as we needed to get on a bus to Chefchaouen. On the bus we met a Canadian couple but only the man spoke English, the woman only spoke French where he was bilingual. I wasn’t feeling well this day and I think the windy roads and bumpy bus didn’t help. We stopped and had a mint tea at one point. After this stop we met a man called Teo. He is Croatian and speaks several languages like English, French, Spanish, whatever they speak in Croatia (oh right Tegan croatian! *hits forehead*) and some others I think.
When we arrived in Chefchaouen (don’t they love their vowels here! essAOUIra, chefchAOUEn, I saw a place on the way to Fez called OUAOUmana!!!) and we got a taxi to where Tao was staying and decided we’d stay there too as we hadn’t booked anywhere. Mum and dad got a double with a shower and toilet and in my room I have a single with a double bed.
After settling my stomach down for a few minutes we went to walk around the Medina. We hadn’t gone far before we started setting the pace of buying things. Mum bought some necklaces and Teo some mini Moroccan shoes.
We kept on and we bought some fried dough doughnuts. There was no sugar on it, just literally fried dough rings. I didn’t like them very much but dad was happy to eat mine.
We continued walking and found ourselves at a corner shop with strange knitted hats hanging from the shops outside walls.
We walked inside and Teo asked me to model some of them to see whether they might fit his niece and nephew. In the end I ended up buying one too because it was just so cool! It’s a knitted brown beanie with green, red and yellow stripes at the bottom with 2 antennae coming from the top!
Later we went for dinner in the square. We were asked by a French couple where we got our hats from and struggled with the English question. They were very relieved to find that Teo spoke French.

Today we just spent most of the day shopping except for when mum and dad left me at the internet café. They got lost finding the bus station and took twice as long as they would have hoped.
Afterwards we met up with Teo again in the square and had some lunch. A man came up to us with sunglasses that didn’t quite fit his face. He sang and played his violin for us but it was the way he played it that was really interesting. He played the violin as if it was a cello on his knee! Then when dad had a go he realised it was tuned in fourths instead of fifths as well. It sounded very different to the way dad plays.
So Dad went back to the hotel, Teo did some shopping while mum and I went into the
Kasaba. On the way to the Kasaba we saw a very strange sight. We heard a dog barking so I looked around to see and saw a huge brown dog standing on the roof of a house barking at a little dog on the ground! We got a picture but when mum pulled the camera out one of the women ducked because in the Muslim culture women do not go in photos. The same sort of thing happened in Dharkla Egypt (which I forgot to write about in the tour blog) when there were heaps of young girls talking to Kyuri and me and one of the girls who was 12, held my hand all the time. She gave me a rose but when mum wanted to take a photo of us she held back and so only the younger girls who weren’t wearing the scarf around their heads would go in the photo.
The Kasaba is a fort I think. There is a tower and some prisons as well. We went up the tower and spent a while up there taking photos of the whole panoramic view of Chefchaouen and the mountains.
We were going to go into the prisons but it was so dark we couldn’t see a thing. There was a little museum in the fort area where there were holes to shoot arrows from. One of the cabinets held “Instruments Traditionnel” including violins in the worst condition I have ever seen. So I guess the man at the restaurant was playing his traditional music. Mum believed that Chefchaouen was really just on the edge of losing its culture, just balancing before the fall into western tourism. We could see the tension during lunch when the mosque called and all the older men were walking one way into the mosque to pray. There was also a group of young men walking in the opposite direction and you could see that the older men did not approve. Also the women who would not pose in photos were from places hardly touched by the western culture. I think we were very lucky to see it the way it is now, as I don’t think it will last forever…
So anyway after the Kasaba I went back to do some maths but I decided to stop when I realised I was doing the chapter we had already done last term. Grrrr. We went out for dinner with Teo as it was his last night in Morocco.

I was woken early that morning as I heard dad leaving to climb one of the mountains. Ok so it wasn’t that early but after a late night last night 8 in the morning did feel painful :P I spent the morning doing the maths I was meant to be doing on the rooftop terrace of the hotel looking out at the view of Chefchaouen, listening to music and drinking hot chocolate. I actually don’t mind doing homework anymore because the places I do it in is so special it doesn’t bother me anymore!!!
Teo left around 12 and I kept doing homework until mum began to get worried about dad at 6ish though I don’t think I did 6 hours of homework. Dad got home at 8 o’clock and by this stage mum had gotten very worried. Dad couldn’t walk because he came down such a steep slope.
We went out for dinner at a Moroccan equivalent of McDonalds that wasn’t McDonalds which you can also find in Morocco. Dad found it very difficult to walk there because our hotel was near the top of a steep hill.

Next morning dad read me a fairytale story book in Spanish (though he translated it into English as my Spanish is hopeless). It was the story of the tailor who killed 7 flies in one blow.
After breakfast we went to an internet café to book some accommodation and to check and send some emails.
We then went to the bus-station to catch the bus to Tetaoun. It was raining lots and occasionally the bus roof would leak. Dad and I studied the body parts of a human in French until we arrived in Tetaoun. We took a grand taxi from there to Ceuta border, it cost 2 euros each which was pretty good as it was about a half hour drive. A grand taxi has enough seats as an average car at home but the taxi driver attempts to get as much money as possible so instead of 5 people including the driver there was 7, 2 people seated in the front seat and 4 in the back.
We arrived at the border and this was when we realised dad had left our lonely planet guide of Europe in the internet café. Good one dad! We had to fill out a few forms then got our stamps and headed in to Spain. I think I need to start a new blog now for a different country!