Day 99: Gasping fish

In Essaouira.

The boats rock in, the fish is off loaded, straight onto the outside grills at the harbour for truly the freshest seafood lunch ever.

Shame about the giant cockroach attached to Fran's coat when we left.

Day 98: Berber kitchen

In one of the berber kitchens (not this one) there was a fire like this, two large cooking pots, a couple of tagines, several jam jars, some upturned paint pots for extra seating and ... at my final count ... a total of 14 tea pots.

Day 97: Sai'ida

The smart, bright, beautiful sister of little Aziz.

Day 96: Aziz

With the cutest dimples in Amizmiz.

Day 95: Shadow puppets

The most memorable part of the trip was the three days spent riding horseback through the Atlas Mountains. We stayed with Berber families en route and met the most wonderful, amazing people as a result. The houses had no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no TV, magazines, computers. So we played shadow puppetry on the very bare kitchen walls with the light from a 'standard lamp' - made from a long piece of pipe poking out of a calor gas canister with a piece of gauze wrapped around the top.

The little boy, Aziz, was totally mesmerized by it.

Day 94: Tagines

Tagines are the new black as far as I'm concerned. Having owned one and used one intermittently over the past six or seven years, I've always liked the slightly theatrical nature of cooking and serving food in one of these. I also really like the combinations that Moroccans use in cooking meat - lamb and prune, lamb and apricot, chicken and preserved lemon. However, I've always been slightly hesitant about them too; there must be something about my Western trained cooking brain that feels that putting pottery on a flame is inviting all out kitchen disaster. I am constantly fretting about whether or not the pot is about to explode.

But tagines are a wonderfully sociable and communal way of eating. Cooking time are not exact because tagines are often cooked on open coals that can't be set to Gas Mark 4. It cooks as it cooks, you add water to keep it moist and off you go.

Traditionally Moroccans took their lunch tagines down to the Hamman and left them to cook on the smouldering coals out back whilst they enjoyed a steam and a scrub. Even now, not many Marrakechis have ovens so anything that needs baking is taken down to the local bakery where it is cooked in the big, bakery ovens.

We did a cookery course with Souk Cuisine whilst in Marrakesh (hence my sudden authority on tagines!). There were six of us shopping for, preparing and cooking a six course Moroccan meal. I was making Sardines with Chermoulah and after preparing all the ingredients and getting the dish ready for cooking, I had to trot off through the souks, pinnie on, baking tray in hand, down to the local bakery and line my dish up with the other offerings that local residents had brought to be cooked at the bakery. The cookery day was such a great experience, I would recommend it to anyone heading to Marrakesh for their holiday.

And the bonus is you get to eat it all at the end, washed down with some lovely Morroccan wine.

And from now on, my tagine is going to be coming out a lot more often. Lunches up the allotment. Dinners on the beach. That sort of thing. Weather permitting of course!

Day 93: Riad Edward I

This typifies afternoons at the Riad Edward. After the craziness of the souks and downtown Marrakesh, we'd return to this oasis of tranquility, sip mint tea, eat homemade biscuits and swim in the envigorating (ok blasted freezing) pool in the downstairs courtyard.

You'll see many more pictures of this beautiful place which became something of a second home (and one that is a lot more luxurious than our first). Due to the Europe-wide shutdown of airspace our stay there became unexpectedly extended and by the end we were the only ones rattling around in the place as no new guests could arrive either.

Day 92: Cordoba

We arrived in Cordoba at 9pm on Tuesday after setting off from Marrakesh 24 hours earlier, exhausted after sharing a sardine tin sized comparment with 6 fellow stranded refugess and in very great need of a shower. But a walk around Cordoba at night and an ice cold cerveza in a terrace bar was an even greater need and these were the very surreal colours of the walls of the Mesquita, the sky and the moon that evening.

Day 91: Cordoba Chamber Orchestra

Silvia (Guardian Angel No:3 ) plays cello for the Cordoba Chamber Orchestra and managed to sneak us into the Gran Teatro to watch a rehearsal for their upcoming concert. It was brilliant and made me see classical music with new eyes - it's is so full of passion and drama, I don't think I'd really appreciated that before. This is a huge oversight on my part, especially since both by grandparents were professional violinists. My new resolution is now to rectify this and go to more classical concerts.

Day 90: Guardian Angel No 3

Before I go back to the holiday in Morocco and begin to tell all the great stories of the past couple of weeks, let's start with the debacle of the last few days and the amazing lady, Silvia, who saved our skin, put us up for as long as we needed in the beautiful city of Cordoba. She didn't speak a word of English just as we didn't speak a word of Spanish and yet somehow we consolidated a friendship through a bit of broken French and a lot of very exaggerated hand gestures.

Superstar!

Volcano stops play

Currently feeling like I´m never coming home...
Stuck in Cordoba for the moment after an epic journey from Marrakesh overland. Night train to Tangiers, fast ferry to Algeciras, coach to Antiquera and train to Cordoba. Arrived 9 pm last night after 24 hours of travelling. Time now to refresh and regroup before attempting the onward journey. Hugely expensive, demoralising and rather tiresome now.

I have some great stories to tell but it´ll be a while before I´ll get to tell them. Some great photos too but no chance to upload...

See you in a while.