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Looking back on our time in Marrakech. What a great camping spot we had in our own little quiet corner in the centre of the city. Here are some thoughts.
 The Immam is SOOOO much better than Aourir. It is like waking up to an angel at 5 in the morning. I like this guy. I was talking to Karim about the responsibilities of the Immam. I think he has it rougher than the Christian priests and pastors. He does his big call to prayer 5 times a day. Yeah, think about it 5 times a day. He is hanging with a friend. Ooops, time to go. He wants to have a bit of a lie in. Oooops, time to get up. He does this every day of the week AND the call to prayer is just beginning. After the bit on the loudspeaker he goes downstairs and prays with people and does a bit of teaching. I think the Immam works hard.
So, the souks. Yeah, easy to get lost. At day you can wander through the souks. Well, wander is the wrong word. Because every stallkeeper wants you to come in. Now, I think we are getting a bit better at this but we still need to get better. Alana and Abi got lots of attention from the young men. They complained, of course, but they kept getting dressed up and going back in and well, 2 plus 2 equals… The hard time with the souks is if you have a particular place you want to be in them.  By the end I found what I was looking for and had a greaat time walking around with the kids. We looked into lots of stalls that showed people working on the different stages of making shoes by hand. Saw a man soldering with a little heated hammer instead of a soldering iron. A man demonstrated how to make rounded discs of metal. We saw several people punching designs out of metal. Lots of smoke, lots of noise, lots of creative people. Loved it.
 In the evenings to eat a couple of times as food to cook your own meals with in the centre is hard to come by and we figure when we go back into Europe we won’t be eating out much as it is much less expensive down here. There is this souk of prepared food that pops up in the evenings at the fna area. All these little swirly metal boxes surrounded by table and tarps come in to join the orange juice and dried fruit stalls. Every evening this village is created and stays up til about 4 in the morning. A note about eating out. You go to a normal western style restaurant, even one with moroccan food you will pay big. If you go and get pizza or other exotic foods and you will pay big. A rule for every country is that if you want to get better local food for cheaper prices go to where the locals eat. Sometimes you need to insist. One time me and the girls went into the non-touristy part of the souk. As we were leaving a man told us we were going out of the area we were wanting to be in. We said we were looking for Moroccan food. He directed us back to the tourist restaurants. No! We want to eat moroccan food where Moroccans eat it. We were directed into a tiny little restaurant with thin white-tile counters against the wall, little plastic stools and about 5 guys grilling lots of food next to us. All this in a stall about the size of our truck. We loved it! Back to the pop-up prepared food souk. We went out for Harrira (moroccan soup) one night with a desert, well. It was swirly and sweet and you eat it with your fingers. Karim said there is a legend about this sweet of a great battle between a japanese warrior and a moroccan warrior. Of course, the moroccan warrior won and this dessert is in the shape of a Japanese swear word.
I would like to finish off with a warning from Alana and Abi about their time in Marrakesh.
Beware of the Henna ladies – they are evil.
We are now in the Cascades. We have met up with the German family again and they told us of this German future campground in the Cascades on the way to Fez. Sounded good so here we are. They will arrive tomorrow.
We are SUCH slow learners but we are finally starting to catch on. We continue to have bad experiences at traditional campgrounds. We normally meet some nice people but looking back, the fact is that we are weird and getting weirder is making it harder and harder to stay at normal campgrounds.
These are our problems. Our truck looks weird. We look weird. We are traveling full-time. We are traveling with kids. We are traveling with extra adults that we are not related to. We are now traveling with a Moroccan friend. We invite local friends, new and old, to come and visit us. So we have memories of getting kicked out of British campgrounds because we “didn’t look right”. We have had to smuggle friends into a campground in Portugal for a BBQ party. We are continually getting in trouble for the kids not wiping out the sink well enough after washing dishes or wiping down a toilet properly. Our kids are not slobs but they are not mini old people either. No matter how many bad experiences we keep on going back.
 It is not relaxing at all when we go. We normally do mountains of laundry, shower, refill the water, recharge the batteries, etc. Campgrounds are hard work for us. And, as they say, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. When we lived in a motorhome full-time in America we could stay quite cheaply if we were staying for a longer time and we were driving an old Winnebago. So, we stayed at our 4th motorhome park since we have been in Morocco. 4 in 2 months, not to bad, especially since we stayed at 2 for 1 nite and 1 for 2 nites and the one we stayed at longer was called a campground in only the loosest of contexts (no door, or even a curtain, on the pit toilet and no security man sitting by the gate all night). We also frequently ate and sang in the house of the man running the campground while we were there. That is another story. A good one.
So, we went to another campground in Safi. The only campground in Safi. We hung up our mountain of laundry. Karim was not allowed to stay with us because he had lost his ID and is waiting to get it sent by his brother. A drag but fair enough, he slept in his tent elsewhere. But when Karim came in the next morning to have breakfast with us the angry man at the front made him leave. I asked is it because of the ID or because Karim is Moroccan. 
No answer. We left. DUDE.
The following nite we were on our way to Marrekech and decided to wild camp instead. What a great experience. Andrew and TJ found our place. They discussed the criterea. They were privacy, hills, rocks, trees., safety. We took a Piste (donkey trail) off the main road near some hills and found a great place! Andrew was quite pleased with our 4 X 4 vehicle and took lots of pictures of the Land Rover on the hill as we left. He took no pictures of the new sedan we passed on the way out.
 While we were there we met lots of amazing people from the nearby villages who gave us Leben (fermented milk) and eggs and bread and goat butter. Alana and Abi have a great story of a house they were invited into. I think we all have stories of cows trying to steal the veg we were cutting on the table, bird houses in the bushes, snake stories, little kids, generosity. All in all a great time.
Coming into Marrakesh we were again confronted with the choice of campground or not. I mean, seriously, we are going into a big medieval city, we are big, we only have addresses of campgrounds and we ARE pathetic creatures of habit. Well, we resisted and instead of trying another campground we drove into the city looking for a parking place thinking we could just leave every night. Instead we found a parking lot next to the main mosque and the souks. Great location. When we came in they said it would be 50 derams and asked if we were planning on sleeping here. Uh…. yeah. We were sent to the back lot where we are hanging with about 20 white plastics and self-builds. We are a short walk from the souks and some public toilets.
Yeah, about toilets in Morocco. Don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you don’t want to know. It is kinda weird talking about it on a blog but it just needs to be said. The toilets are squat style and toilet paper is generally not used. They use water from a tap that you can find in each toilet along with a small bucket. You can buy TP here but it is expensive. To the defense of the Moroccan toilet system. Squat toilets are healthier than sitting down ones and water is much cleaner than toilet paper. Just facts that were established early in our time here. We STILL have had an extensive adjustment period but am now feeling comfortable with the Moroccan system of things in this area. Sometimes we still reach for the TP just not nearly as often.
 While I am at it about getting kicked out of wild camping places in Morocco. If you are way out in the wild. Don’t worry. Just meet the neighbours, if there are any and be nice. Offer to share your meal with them or a cup of tea. We have been kicked out of one wild camping place in Morocco by the police but they were really nice and said some of the wild campers got robbed there, they haven’t been able to catch the thieves and they wanted to protect us.That isn’t so bad.
If you are looking for our great parking lot in Marrakesh and are looking for this great motorhome parking place we are under the phone tower with the storks that is behind the main mosque and the big park. The parking sign is on the main road going to the Fna place.
So to wild camp or go to a campground. I give you full permission to question me if I become a softie and go back to a campground. There are lots of alternatives to the campground for laundry and bathing and water. Yeah, swords raised, one for all and all for one. We shall wild camp!
Thought I would post my response to Pippa’s nice email as they are really good questions.
” would like to ask if you would add some information to your blog about how and why you decided to travel. Did you own a home and work jobs previously? Is it hard to travel between countries? Visas etc? What about crime, have you ever had any problems break ins etc?”
I will answer the easy bits first. We have owned 3 houses in 2 countries. We gave up our last house that we owned in order to use the profits for Andrew to go to school. We still think that was a great choice as it was a catalyst event that sent us on the track we are on now. When we sold the house we went to the camping store and bout a sierra designs family arch tent and really good sleeping bags for the family in order to celebrate our freedom. When we bought maggie our truck the kids were quite keen on noting that we were home- owners once again – only our home has wheels.
We have worked jobs before. Regular ones. I have worked in offices and hospitals. I was trained as a nurse. Andrew has normally worked many part-time jobs at one time. I think he likes to wear lots of different hats.
The hardest thing about travelling between countries is our own fear of the unknown. It seems the news loves to broadcast the negative about anything bad so more people to watch or something. It seems those with bad stories of travel get heard more. You know, that one person who gets robbed – not hearing about the thousands that had no problem at all. Not all the visas and documentation can be lined up beforehand. Sometimes calls need to be made just before a new frontier to arrange insurance, a visa needs to be obtained at the border or plans just need to be put on hold. Right now, we have been looking into going to Mauritania and Senegal. When we tried to get visas in London it proved near impossible. In Rabat you can get visas in one day and 34 euro. After realizing that we could get our visas, however, we found out we need a carnet de passage for our old truck which will take over a month to get. We will need to change our plans now and try to get a carnet de passage for next time. There is no replacement for the information you get around the table with other travellers. We all learn from each other as we are doing it. Sometimes you have to backtrack 800 km to get a visa or visa extension, sometimes you go to a nice man in a small village who gives you the stamp you need. Lots of unknown but I am thinking we fear the unknown too much because the unknown seems to bring more opportunity than dissappointment. at least for me. We just need to be flexible and embrace the unknown. If we dont get across a border into a country there is always another path – possibly a better path and we can go back and try again at another time. Also, visas can be expensive when you multiply that by 6 or 7 or 9.
For us the hardest border to cross, by far, is the British border. If you dont have a british passport and your passport has too many funny stamps expect to get interrogated for long periods of time by scary, intimidating people and possibly sent away – for a 19 year old member of our group she was handcuffed and escorted to a detention centre before they could book her return flight 4 days later. There are more scary stories from this border among our friends than all others put together.
We have had things stolen in the past. Not this trip so far. At one point, when we lived in San Francisco our cameras kept getting stolen. We ended up buying a working toystore variety of camera and that one didnt get stolen. You have to be reasonably careful – as you do at home, lock your doors when you go out, dont put your phone next to your window, dont leave tempting items on your dash, dont pull out a fancy phone or computer in a slum, etc. We have a safe – but that is mainly for passports and essential documents. We also keep photocopies of passports and extra photos in our safe. It also helps to keep in mind what our real valuables are – each other. All else can be replaced.
Now, for the hard questions. How and why we travel. I try to put as much of the how in the blog as I can think of. I know there are things I am overlooking. For that I apologize, I’m trying to get better.
As far as why. Wow. I think if you get right down to it I think it is what makes us feel alive. With both me and Andrew there is a part of us that sort of dies inside if we dont travel. When we start travelling there is a part of our minds and hearts that wakes up and becomes electric. We see things in a whole new way. Like, we were created a little different.
It is funny how our western cultures seem to accept geographic stability as sensible and nomadic lives as irresponsible and immature when things used to be just the opposite a long, long time ago. To travel full-time nowadays there are so many stereotypes to break down. The stories of full-time travellers not caring about the earth, trashing the place and steeling everything is just rubbish. We have been hanging out with people very aware of their carbon footprint. Teaching africans how to compost in their gardens, carrying their trash til they find an acceptable place for it to go. Trying to bless those they stay with or around with food and love and music and money and respect and encouragement. There is community, sharing food, knowledge, rides, a needed hug and kiss. I think when you travel full-time you are more vulnerable. Sometimes a thought will race across my mind, “I am trusting my life, my passport, etc to someone I have known a few weeks… or a few hours.” We need to trust each other. We must. We dont have the luxury of big houses to hide in – we need each other.
Told a story today about getting rid of trash while wild camping in Antwerp. Thought I would tell it here as well.
First of all, travel tip, dont use big bin bags. Small carrier bags are easier to get rid of when wild camping.
So here we are in Antwerp. We had just done a big clearout and there are no large bins around. We had an assortment of bags of recyclables and trash. We all got on our bikes with a bag or 2 of trash on each bikes handlebars. We new of 3 places with bins. We took off to these 3 destinations with a prearranged rendezvous point. As we took off in our 3 different directions we looked like a scene out of some bizarre old kids movie like goonies or something. I must state that Liz did not fare quite so good at the descreet part of the whole operation. I look back from the recycle bins I had just been using to see a guilty and distressed smile on Lizzy’s face as she desperately tried to shove her small bag into an even smaller hole in the park trash container. Well, I guess you had to be there.
Back in Spain. We love the familiar site of the Huge black cow billboards dotting the country. Not sure why they are there.
At one point on the long drive Andrew points out a Trapist Monastery on the Left side of the road at the same time I pointed out a small chocolate shop on the right of the road called “Trapa”. WHAT? TRAPIST CHOCOLATE! BUT THEY MAKE SOME OF THE BEST BEER IN THE WORLD! Now Andrew is not prone to Uturns but he made an exception. Everybody got out. It was GREAT chocolate and we do love our chocolate.
While traveling I always encourage the kids to try new tastes and experiences. Last time in Spain I was out with Liz and Abi and saw a sign for Churros in a window. We didnt know what they were but decided to give it a go. Liz did not forget the experience and coming through Spain again she found them again.
When I asked about the toilets, Hannah not only told me where they were but gave me other advise too. She told me to push the red button to lock the door, which I did confidently. I tried the door again and sure enough it was locked. Just as a smirk of satisfaction crossed my face a sudden, the lights went off and an extremely loud sound made me jump and reach for the door like that was all I could depend on to keep me safe. But it was no use, the water just kept shooting out, soaking the bottom of my jeans and making me feel so scared that the fact that it was only water shooting out at me seemed to have escaped my frozen with fright brain. I pulled and pulled at the door desperately and continuously accomplishing nothing, for it had locked just like i’d hoped it would 3 minutes ago.
Eventually it stopped and when it did I stood there shaking out of control as if someone had just put a knife to my throat. Why I felt like that is beyond me, perhaps I should keep off the adventure books for a while. the lesson from this is very similar to others: “Don’t push the red button” or you may find yourself in the bathroom as it vigerously self cleans itself.
I considered my lesson learned. Or so I thought…
Another country, another terrifying self cleaning experience. This time I had an audience. As I banged on the door and screamed for help Mum, Dad, Abi, Hannah, TJ, Sam and Donald all watched, laughing! Unable to do anything else.”HELP!” I screamed. “Push the red button” mum said back, but she couldn’t be heard above the chaos.
I came out shaking and told my second story (as you can see in the picture above) as everyone failed to hold in all the giggles they had left. Why does it always happen to me? I asked myself as you’d probably expect I would. Is it some kind of curse or am I just too stupid to make sure it doesn’t happen again? Or do the toilets have it out for me…
Our next French Aire was a parking lot right on a beautiful beach that was next to a small village at the very southwest of France. The boys had a friend to meet and dad could do admin. He had to be creative but it was possible. There was electricity for the truck and access internet in the village with his ipod. Unfortunately his laptop computer cord is still MIA but he got lots of essential things done. The man in the picture above was doing his thing as we arrived. Yes, it is a man sitting in a kite riding the wind. He went back and forth on the current for much longer than we felt like watching.
This is the Aire with cold Hannah coming back from the beach. There are over a hundred spaces at this Aire, electricity, a bread van comes around every morning and we met some great people.
Sam and Donald going swimming even on the coldest days.
It rained for 2 days of our time at the beach. Some people say we have a rain blessing. The only rain here for months and we bring it. I wouldnt quite call it a blessing. hmmmm.
No this is not one of us. There was a big, NOISY college party over the weekend next door to us. The party included lots of ketchup and flour, camels and bungie jumping. Hannah really wanted to do some bungie jumping but we had the great excuse of IT IS A COLLEGE PARTY AND YOU”RE NOT OLD ENOUGH TO GO TO COLLEGE.
Hannah politely asked this boy for a picture. Yes, it is what it looks like. This boy rode round and round the parking lot with his dog riding right in front of him with paws on the handlebars.
One of our neighbours was this really nice French lady named Gizelle. Abi had just finished her first crochet project. A hat made of cut up old t-shirts. Gizelle showed us some mini hats that she had crocheted. They were so detailed and precise. AND guess what they are made of. You will never believe it. Carrier bags. You know, the ones they try to give you from every shop you go to and you get duped into taking them because you are too lame to remember your eco-friendly ones. Oh yeah, and the guilt is so bad you just cant seem to throw them away, thinking about those poor little turtles that eat them and DIE. So anyways, Gizelle has found and answer to those drawers and drawers of carrier bags. make them into hats.
Or egg cup holders.
She showed me how.
Did we tell you we discovered “Stellplatz” in Germany. Absolutely brilliant spaces for free or minimal cost in Germany. So we bought ourselves a little book, in German, that has paid for itself over and over. Actually, I think it would be impossible to find without a GPS. So, we decided to try our luck out with the Aires in France. Now, these cheap places to stop have minimal facilities. Many are just places in a parking lot. Some have electricity. Most you have to bring your own toilet. So to get to these we had the book, a german dictionary, a french dictionary and our GPS. We were thrilled to find that at one stop that little symbol in the corner meant A SHOWER. We have been shower challenged since realizing that most campgrounds are outside of our budget so we were thrilled.
Only to find that the showers were very cold and…. hmmmm. how do you say…. wild west…. saloon like….. semi-public. However, we all took advantage of this beautiful, minimal shower.
While on our bike trip Elizabeths tire went suddenly flat. We think the culprit might have been the GIANT NAIL sticking out of her tire. So we left the nail in so we could figure out where the hole is and pulled out our pump and our handy dandy tire repair kit, laid it out next to us, looked at each other and realized we hadnt a clue what to do next. There were no instructions. This really nice family stopped moments later and dad came to our rescue. Dressed in his Sunday walk best white clothes he taught us how to fix a tire properly while fixing the multiple holes in Lizs tire. Arent random kind strangers wonderful.
This is our table. It is old We got it from an auction in Orkney for GBP10.00. We had a few small new camping tables. They are long gone. Couldnt handle the lifestyle. This table is brilliant. When we put it away inside the truck it becomes a wall. Sometimes it is a prep table but most of the time we surround it with chairs and eat around it. Take my advice dont buy cheap tables. If you are doing this as a lifestyle. Find a sturdy old table that collapses (or you can make into a collapsing table). We have some people that are happy with the expensive ones you buy from caravan shops but dont buy one of the cheap camping tables unless you plan to replace it in less than a month!
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