Ouarzazate

It is a city of around 80,000 inhabitants and a very laid back town it is after the craziness of Marrakech. They have a lot of very wide boulevards so walking around was easy and as it was Sunday I think it was fairly quiet. There are a huge amount of cafes and infrastructure for travellers but as this is the off season we had the place to ourselves. Lucky us. We were invited to Hakims parents home to share lunch with them and was it good. Starting with lentil soup made by his Mother with absolutely delicious bread that was made and baked in a oven in the back area of their home shared by the neighbours. The oven was made with traditional mud and straw and charcoal and looked a little like the backyard pizza ovens that are becoming popular in our country. The soup was followed by a tagine and we were shown to eat the Moroccan way eating one handed with the bread and picking up the vegetables and meat a little at a time…maybe by the time we leave here we will master it. The orange juice we had with the meal was freshly squeezed from the tree growing inside the courtyard in the house. It was one of those meals that make travelling the joy that it is. After lunch we walked. The weather since the first day has been cool but not as cold as England. The city is renowned worldwide for the movies that have been filmed here like Rules of Engagement and Black Hawk Down. Hakim had some stories to tell of the helicopters and sand scenes that occurred in front of the Casbah. Very interesting. We walked around the city with Hakim and Joy who is a young American girl who arrived in Morocco 6 months ago and fell in love with her tour guide Hakim and decided to stay. They are now engaged to be married soon and the rest is history so they say. There are a lot of hurdles to overcome but they seem to be overcoming them. They are a very giving couple and have only recently started hosting people but I feel it will be great for Joy as she does not have friends yet in Morocco. We did not see any stars in the cafes and restaurants only in the sky. Hakim is a guide and is going to take us in to the desert and gorges for three days. We will hire a 4wd and he will drive us where we want to go and Joy is coming along for the ride. Morocco has a lot of things in place to protect its tourists and one of those is to make sure there are no unscrupulous local people taking advantage of us. We saw this first hand as we were walking around the city with them Hakim was stopped by the police to find out if he was authorized to show us around. He was not in the capacity then as a guide but as a friend showing us around. The tourist policeman did not believe they were engaged and that we were friends so the police came and took him to the station but they knew him and he was released. It was funny but not funny and caused few anxious moments for Joy.