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Travel Log - real

Travel Log 2 - Within France
Travel Log 1 - Marrakech, Morocco.

A not so long ago - a very interesting trip to Morocco. And here is what I wrote ...

=== Trip to Marrakech, Morocco. ===

We arrive back around mid-day Wednesday Dec.20 in a Royal Moroccan Airlines jet, a direct flight from Marrakech to Paris, Orly, which is only about 15-20 mins. away from the 'maison' ... and our 6 chickens ... They are laying very well. Annie has commenced to distribute some of the eggs up and down our street ...

The trip was great. The stony desert on the West of the Atlas mountains reminded me of 'outback' Australia. We hired a small car (Renault 4), and toured around. From Marrakech we ventured to the West coast, about 150 Km, and two trips into the mountains. Perhaps 3 really, since one view of the Mountains was done in a small Cessna 172. We climbed to 2,260 m in the car, and only to the same or a little higher, to 5,000 feet in the Cessna due to some clouds at about 5,500 feet.

Of course one great difference between Morocco and Australia is the population density in the desert areas. Annie suggested it was hard to even have an 'Urgent call of nature' beside the road without a Moroccan coming along, and many of the young would immediately ask us 'tourists' for money.

Sometimes a cigarette was acceptable like when we once stopped on a lay-by where there was a Camel. This view was quite spectacular, as you are just about to drop off the quite high desert plains onto the continental coast, with the sea, boats, etc almost visible ... Annie refused to RIDE the Camel, but I did take some seconds of video of the Camel, and this 'cost' us just a few cigarettes.

I mentioned at one stage, when returning around dusk to Marrakech along a long straight flat stretch of road, when two Moroccans crossed the road, that in Australia that would more probably be Kangaroos crossing the road than people ...

The Paris of 8 degrees C that we returned to was certainly a little colder than Marrakech, but as Annie read from one of her books, it is a cold place with a hot sun ... I caught a little tiny bit of tan, but it was quite difficult when the sun went behind the cloud for what seemed like a long time. It was almost a case of cover up and then whip it all off when the sun re-emerges ...

A friend, when told of our impending visit to Morocco said <<... it has always been one of those mysterious, magical sounding places that has been on my list. >> I too had this mental picture about the place before our visit, and perhaps have not really changed that by the visit.

I am sure the "mystery and magic" comes from some great movies made in Morocco. On the plane back I read a little about say 'Ali Baba and his 40 Thieves', and some Bible stories, like I think 'The Ten Commandments' or such being shot/made in Morocco.

The ABSOLUTE MAZE of shops in the centre of the city, each with an encouraging doorman trying to entice you inside reminded me of Asia. Maybe like a compressed Hollywood Road, in Hong Kong, or some arcades in Singapore. Each shop is only 2-3 m across. Also like Asia, amongst this brash set of 'tourists traps' were honest merchants selling grain and fresh produce in bulk, and some good bargains on very well hand-crafted jewellery in silver and gold, with lots of choices of stones are available for the real 'searchers'.

The Country certainly needs some economic development, but that is quite difficult for a largely agricultural place. There is obviously some mineral wealth in the Mountains, but this is quite difficult to fully exploit due to the cold dry nature of the mountains, and our other pressures to maintain some of the 'wild' ...

Of course one can not help but feel some strong sense from such mass market place, especially with the background of this very warlike race of people. This is always re-enforced by the fact the main market is INSIDE a WALLED CITY. And even out in the country, some places we visited a more like a Fortress than a simple village.

We had dinner one evening in quite a grand village that re-played some the countries history. After our dinner in the 'leaders' tent, they had horsemen galloping directly at you, and when about 10 yards away fired a 'Blunder Bus' gun into the air.

I think they were quite lucky nobody dropped dead on the spot just from the 'fright' ... Of course it is all a GRAND SHOW, Cabaret, Dinner Dance, ..., what ever you may call it at a very large 'Restaurant' or perhaps Moroccan Night Club, but it all helps add to this "mystery and magic" ...

And OF COURSE THEY HAD A MAGIC CARPET GO BETWEEN TWO GIANT PARAPETS - Quite a nice cable car and lights display. I think everyone in our little group of 9 from our hotel enjoyed themselves, even though sitting outdoors in the night to watch the show can be a little chilly. But you just can not have 10 - 20 galloping HORSEMEN firing GUNS in a tent, can you?

Consulting my Grolier Multimedia Encyclopaedia - Release 6.03 - that Arabs constitute the majority of the population, although the Berbers, the original inhabitants, constitute about 1/3 of the people. Morocco sits atop Western Sahara and adjoins Algeria. It regained independence in 1956, and put back a traditional monarchy. The Berbers now mainly populate the mountain villages.

As we saw, many of these villages only 'just' have A telephone, and electricity only sometimes. Very tough subsistence farming! Lots and lots of children waved as we drove past them minding the family sheep or goat herd. There was rustic beauty when one felt they were genuinely happy to see you rather than looking upon the 'tourist' as the only source of wealth.

I will try to work out how to attach a Video (and Sound) clips of some stuff I shot while in Morocco, but present a little unsure how to map the S-Bus output of the Cam camera to my current video and sound card. Actually I think I will have to buy another video 'grabber' card first however ...

Of course if I had a very good scanner, I could SCAN the photos we took, some from the air, and CREATE A WEB PAGE for you to visit and SEE the images. As the SPEED of our 'connections' increase I could even add VIDEO CLIPS to the presentation.

Alas, the VIDEO card (TV <-> PC) card I bought, a Miro DC1 Plus package, has had its problems with Windows 95 support. I have still to upload the latest driver to try to get rid of my last hurdle to producing MPEG data stream, or even AVI data, so I could easily add the VIDEO ... You are ON the web page, so that part was correct ...

A very ENJOYABLE trip! As stated, reminded me of Australia in some ways ...

Until the next update ... maybe years from now ... light years or galaxies away ... there is this system ... I am presently up to my ears planning my 1996 ‘contributions’ to the Computer industry. May it continue forward, giving more information ...

Geoff.

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