In the Great Red Land

I preface this entry by saying that I don't know if this is an Arabic or French keyboard but it's crazy. I will have to upload a photo of it sometime just to share the utter bizarreness of it all...

Morocco is an amazing country - every moment is an assault on every sense. The first I saw of this country was Marrakesh from the sky is an endless stretch of red, that orangey, pinky, utterly earthy red dotted with the dark green of olive groves, cactii and palms. The first thing I heard on getting to the Marrakesh medina square was the song of the snake charmers and the endless call of hundreds of vendors beckoning you to sample their wares. The first thing I tasted was the spicy dish called tagine (served in a oddly comical conical pot) all mopped up with the excellent bread here. And I can't even begin to describe the exotic mix of smells in Morocco - a hundred different spices frankinsence, myrhh and others I couldn't even begin to name. But the thing that completely overwhelms you is the endless desert heat beating down.

If you close your eyes and just try to cram every single stereotype the name 'Morocoo' evokes, add in a few thousand tourists and a few hundred locals ripping off the tourists then you've got a pretty damn good idea of what Marrakesh is like. It's definitely not Europe and I'n definitely not in Kansas anymore...

But I'm actually now in Casablanca which is more like a city sitting on the precipice of modernisation. It's pretty much what any relatively poor neighbourhood in Shanghai would look like but with mosques. Although it's not as quintessentially 'Moroccan' as Marrakesh I almost like it more as the people here are infinitely more charming. It's a treat simplyto have a chat to the locals at the hotel and the markets - although if one more person cajoles me with calls of 'Japan! Japan!'...

(Photos to come when I find an internet cafe with USB access...)