Culture shock....

Mum and I have now been in Morocco since yesterday morning and it's only now starting to warm on us. It could have something to do with the fact that it took us 2 days of getting up at 4am to get here, and that we came from 2 blissful days of getting close to nature at the Cinque Terre... so when we flew in yesterday morning we were exhausted, stressed and probably fairly sick of each other, only to be hit hard with the heat, the awful smells and the poverty of the area. There is clearly no garbage collection system here and the plastic bags and bottles fly around the place, accumulating in alleyways and dried up agricultural fields, while fruit from the street stalls rots in the gutter an flies buzz around everywhere. The men sit in cafes and watch us strange western women walk down the street; women are nowhere to be seen. But it would seem our hotel in Casablanca wasn't in the nicest area...

Today we got the train to Meknès and have seen the medina and mosque. It is cleaner, more colourful and more cosmopolitan. So I spent money on stuff at the first opportunortunity! Very uplifting :-) In the meantime I am LOVING the food (tagines every day so far, mmmmmm) and everything is SO cheap! We have a small tour group of all ages and a few diff nationalities where I think everyone will get on great for the next 10 days. I have also fallen in love with the Moroccan children - while their Arabic parents can be quite judgemental and give us funny looks, the kids are inquisitive and give us cheeky grins, flashing their beautiful wide brown eyes: I wanna take one home!!!!

Tomorrow we leave for Fez where we will have 2 nights, can't wait!!!

Cinque Terre - not as spectacular as I had expected, as everyone had talked it up so much as THE place to be, and I certainly don't agree with that! However it is a really unique place; you would never find 5 coastal villages, all so different and yet so close, withing a national park. Really glad I saw it and did the walk, it was a beautiful 2 days!!! Especially since we got to catch up with Sonia; our Italian exchange student from '03 (who, incidentally, has not changed a bit!).