V5 travels: A train ride across Morroco - FeS to Marrakesh And Indiana Jones

We left our hotel reasonably early to catch a train to Marrakech.

An electric train but very old style. It was quite comfortable as we were travelling first class - six to a compartment and soft fabric seats. The train trip is somewhere between 6 and 7 hours and travels via Rabat and Casablanca so we saw some more of the country.

The landscape seems to go from extremely fertile to dry and baron within a kilometre. While things seemed well maintained on our arrival in the country at Tangiers, is is now apparent that it was almost a mirage….this is a third world country trying desperately to pull itself out of third world and into a 21st economic trading environment…I don’t know where the money is coming from.

As we jostled along we looked out the windows and saw lots of olive trees, crops, grapes, more fruit trees, more donkeys, irrigation channels, sheep, wild yarrow on the verges and what I think was Scotch thistle!!

As we moved more toward Marrakech, the landscape turned to desert..plains and mountains of red with only occasional vegetation. I spotted an occasional cluster of buildings surrounded by green - they must be Oasis!

On arriving at the train station, we were met with a very modern and impressive station entrance and out onto the road tall palm trees lined the forecourt and roadside. The traffics seemed a little busy but nothing like we were to experience a little later in the afternoon.

Our hotel was very Moroccan with Moroccan furniture, tiles and painted ceiling in our room…it has a fridge which is a blessing in this heat - we haven’t had one for a few nights now. It is a little bigger than previous, but still only okay - I wouldn’t dare say salubrious!

We wanted to make the most of our short time here, so after dropping our bags we walked up to the Jardin Marjorelle - a beautiful private garden designed by a French artist and once the home of YSL - there is peace and tranquility and beautiful design with surprisingly few different plants - lots of succulents. The garden is walled by a 10ft brick wall so it is a little oasis as right outside is the madness of Morocco traffic…think something like the motorbikes in Ho Chi Min and you have a sense of the chaos!

We did not have long, so hot footed it back to the hotel before heading to the main square or Souk. It was around 6 pm and the square was relatively quiet - so we wandered the markets for an hour or so before meeting to have dinner on a roof top terrace to watch the sun go down.

After dinner, we went back through the square - and my goodness it was a different place…it was the souk from Indiana Jones! It was packed with people walking about both local and tourists and watching a completely unorganised series of performers busking….snake charmers, monkey dances, drum beaters, belly dancers, birds and animals (ie a poor peacock standing with his legs tied so he couldn’t move and people could admire his colour). The senses were completely assaulted…sight, sound, smell, touch! It was intense, scary and exciting all at the same time.

There were also large street food stalls that had tables undercover where people could eat a variety of foods. One of the touts came up to Fi and tried to entice her to dinner, when she said she had already eaten, he said ‘I don’t believe you’ and started getting in her face. I stood up for her and said ‘believe what you want mate - off you go’ to which he turned and got a little nasty…I have no idea how they think that such touting will make people want to eat dinner with them and I think we may have got a little taste of the patriarchy that still exists in this country.

The whole visit was a surreal experience in a 20 hour day!