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Uma Thurman was on our plane. I had never imagined she would fly budget. Anyhow, there she was occupying the front two rows, with the aircrew fawning over her all the way from London to Marrakech, and taking photos with their mobile phones, which clearly weren’t turned off.

The first we saw of Morocco was the northern tip, framed in the same oval window as the tip of Gibraltar. It’s only when you see them from above that you realise how narrow the Straits are, and why so many wannabe refugees try to swim their way across.

South of the Straits was Africa, and this was to be my first time on the continent. First impressions were good. Any country that lets cats run freely around a runway can’t be all bad, and if they can stroll casually through passport control and rub around your feet as your bags are scanned, all the better.

We’d arrived 90 minutes late, the pilot blaming it on the airline being ‘disorganised’ - refreshingly honest - and stepped out into the middle of a Marrakech rush hour. The roads that cut through the boxy pink buildings were choked with raspy scooters and bikes. At one set of lights alone more than 100 streaked by, and between them there were only two crash helmets. One bike carried two people; the first laid out on his back, with his head on the handlebars, back on the tank and legs across the pillion. He was the passenger. The driver sat on his knees, his legs straddling his companion’s thighs to reach the stirrups, and one hand on either side of his ears to control the throttle, brakes and front wheel. It would have been impressive in a circus. On a wide main road it was surely suicide.

The roads were lined with roses, which are a major export crop. Morocco sends 12 million blooms to Europe each year, most of which probably end up being carted around pubs in buckets and sold singly at the end of a drunken night out.

Beyond them it was largely red dusty waste, strewn with rubble and rocks. We turned at a corner where camel drivers stood with their animals and pulled in at the hotel that would be home for the next two nights, until we headed up into the mountains for a night in Bedouin tents. It was then that we got our first taste of the sickly mint tea served from silver pots in small gold-rimmed glasses to aid our digestion. It was like liquid chewing gum.

We didn’t know it then, but clearly the Moroccans have a very sweet tooth and we’d be served this almost undrinkable drink six times a day. The fruit drink we had at dinner (where, surprisingly for a Muslim country, the buffet included Parma ham) tasted like it had been blended with a kilo of sugar. The rims of the glasses were coated with it. Every meal was followed by small rosewater biscuits. Breakfast always included a healthy selection of sticky rolls.

Jalal said this was fairly typical for an Arab country, and certainly it was something we got used to over the next four days, as you approached every dish expecting that it would be either heavily salted or incredibly sweet.

Or that there would be a slice of meat hiding under some innocent looking vegetables to trick the travelling vegetarian.

None of us stayed up so late, and with a few exceptions we were back in our rooms by midnight, ready for an early start the next morning. The middle of the day is so hot that our meetings have been timed for early morning and early evening, with the middle of the day left free for exploring the Souq, or heading out across country in chunky 4×4s.

As I slipped into bed and looked up at the ceiling I spotted a little plate in one corner and got out for a closer look. It was pointing east, towards Mecca. I guess that, like the sweet food and drinks and the lack of any portraits on the walls, is another thing we’ll see more of over the next four days.

Technorati Tags:
morocco, marrakech, africa

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Journal, Travel, Work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.