Fez, Morocco

Well in no particular order.....all is well on trip. Morocco is great, and as i said, the locals are really friendly. some nights we bush camp with no facilities, but for the last few nights in Fez we have been staying at a good site with hot water and loos.

Our driver is Gavin, a proper Aussie bloke, with a good sense of humour and is a safe and confident driver and should be a good guy to have in charge in the coming months, even though he and Summer, the other guide, have not been this way before. Some of us are a bit unsure why we are spending so long in Morocco. We have had a few "rest days" when we could have moved on. Still, a chance to do washing and chilling.

The 23 of us are split into teams and each team of 3 has different duties each day, but our team seems to have got off quite lightly so far. We did cook kebabs and cous cous for everyone when it was our turn. it took ages but was good in the end. Dinner is normally finished by pm and there is not much to do after that so most are in bed by 9pm. There is nothing to do, partly because the campsites are so far from, the towns.

But we did go out in Casablanca. We went to some very local pubs which was fun. not ,any ladies in the pub, and they might have been ladies of the night. The locals got upset at being in the background of our photos because Berbers dont like being photographed which we did not really know. Anyway one of them got chucked out for shouting at us and we apologised and it was fine. Then we headed across town in taxis intending to go to a posh club, but of course they didnt let us in cos we only had sandals on. The only other thing to do was to go across the road to Maccas. Not what we expected but we had a good laugh. In the morning Phil the Kiwi and I walked to the King Hassan 11 mosque, the third biggest in the world and very impressive.

We had a guided tour around the medina in Fez yesterday. You need a guide as there are 9600 narrow streets in the medina and they all look the same. Some streets were packed and pretty crazy. Lots of interesting sights and smells. Inevitably the guide took us to a carpet shop after promising that he wouldnt, so some of us just waited outside.

Have run a couple of times, just a few kms. A couple of the other guys have been doing weights, with gerry cans of water and Gavin does his fancy yoga so i thought i should do something.

well thats all for now. this is a french keybo*ard so keys are in the wrong plqce....doing ,y head in.

tried to upload pics but its too slow. next few days in the mountains....