it’s beginning to look a lot like christmas

It was early morning on Christmas eve when we set off in our four mini-buses to start exploring Morocco.

We had been told the night before in our introduction meeting that the tour company had been unable to hire a coach because during the tour the bus is expected to do a little of off roading and coach companies don’t really like the sound of their coaches being taken across dirt roads 4WD style.

The mini buses suited our tour, we discovered, anyway. The roads we travelled on in the first morning up into the Atlas mountains were really narrow and the mini buses took these with much less hassle than a massive coach would have.

I think what surprised me (and many of the people on our tour) was that the Atlas mountains were covered in quite a lot of snow. I think that the general consensus when travelling to Africa was that it was going to be warm and that warm clothing was unnecessary.

How wrong we were.

Or, more accurately, how wrong were some of the people that we travelled with were. I’d been lucky enough to have our tour organiser tell me that she’d been in Morocco only a couple of weeks prior to us and it was freezing at night. So, I’d made sure that I (and Matt, although he did need a teeny bit of convincing) had warm clothes. I absolutely HATE being cold.

There was a lot of driving on that first day – it seems so long ago now – but I think that it was one of the longest “travelling” days. In other words, it was a long time sitting in a bus and doing not much else. Our bus (bus number three) had a great bunch of people, but the poorest engine you could ever hope for in a bus. It struggled up hills so badly that all the other mini buses overtook us. I felt like Steven Bradbury, without even a hope of the rest of the buses missing a turn and ending up down the side of the mountain.

We made it to our first hotel in Gorges du Dades as it got dark and we soon realised that it is possible to be cold enough to snow indoors, without it actually snowing.

The rooms were so cold (they are built to keep in the cool in the summer) that we could see our breath when we spoke and although I had a shower as soon as we got into the room, I hear that lukewarm water and a freezing cold room doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience.

Dinner was good fun; local beer and tagines, it was lovely and once we’d finished it was so cold and we were tired that we all slowly drifted off to our rooms.

When I woke, I was amazed that the room was actually colder than it had been the night before; I didn’t believe that could be possible. But it was…

And it was soon obvious why – it had snowed overnight and outside there was this covering of white powder.

We ate breakfast and then set off for a walk up the hills to look over the village. The views were so pretty and it was great to get the body moving after a whole day in the bus the day before. I quickly warmed up and took some photos – one of my favourites is Matt enjoying the view.

All he needs is some Photoshop'd lightning and he'd look like a dark Jedi!

And I kinda regret this one:

I was loud and proud to have made it all the way to the top!!!! Too bad I wasn't quick enough to stop before Matt took the photo!

We muddled our way back down the hill and ate lunch at our hotel, before frantically packing (me – Matt had packed his in the morning before we went walking) our packs up and jumping back into the bus for our next stop.

I wish I remembered what exactly we stopped at this location for, but I think that it was purely for the view, which was pretty amazing. The trees looking almost super-imposed over the backdrop and it was cold, but the sun was shining – which made for a pretty, yet incredibly daggy picture of me. The colours of the rocks was just amazing; I actually wondered whether it is what Ayers Rock looks like.

Awwwwww, aren't we sweet? And I'm dorky?!? How do we pull it off?

We visited a commune where they made carpets and showed us the correct method for making mint tea on the way to Gorges du Todra, which I read online is considered the Grand Canyon of Morocco. The views were difficult to describe, amazing and beautiful and Matt and I tackled rock climbing up the face of the gorge. Definitely a great feeling when I reached the top, although Matt beat me by a few minutes. In my defence, he did start before me!

The rock face that Matt and I pulled ourselves up was across a smallish creek and the easiest way to cross was leaping from stone to stone. It actually really reminded me of Badger Creek back in Healesville, which then really worried me because every time my family and I visited Badger Creek when I was a child, I ended falling into the creek trying to cross by leaping from stone to stone.

Carefully I made my way back over the rocks, having successfully navigated up a wall of rock. Our guide helped me because at one point I stopped in the middle of the creek and started blubbering about falling in and it was so cold that nothing would dry. He walked back into the middle of the creek and, balancing on some rather unsteady looking rocks, he held my hand and guided me safely to the other side.

Boy I was happy. I had conquered a small, beginners rock face and had danced across the creek all without injuring myself. Those that know me, will know that is a feat in itself.

I turned to witness Matt leap from one rock in the creek to another, realise it was unsteady all too late and fall/slip into the creek. (I’d embellish that story to make it much funnier but I know that I’d get rude comments from certain people and insistence that he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, merely minding his own business when he fell in.) Needless to say with the cold weather and the lack of heating in the rooms, Matt’s Merrells (runners/sneakers/trainers/shoes) never made it back to Ireland.

Sadly I don’t have any photos of the hotel that we stayed in at the Todra Gorge, but was it amazing!! It was set up in the middle of the Gorge and we had to cross a little bridge (without railings of any kind) to get to it. That night our tour guides and the hotel staff put on a Christmas dinner for us and Matt and I made friends with some non-tour people, including a girl from Templestowe!

After dinner we were treated to a local band and everyone got up to dance. The hotel staff (who were all men) were dancing around with us until someone who appeared more senior told a few of them off and they all moved to the side and just watched. Slowly we all started to sit back down and once we all had, the hotel staff got up and were dancing around again. We were all a little baffled until I wondered aloud whether it could be to do with the fact that there had been women dancing and perhaps it wasn’t acceptable for them to dance with us.

So Matt, the brave soldier that he is decided to test out this theory and got up to dance with the men.

I then had to take a photo to prove that he was dancing

After quite a bit of dancing, the band finished up and we all ventured out into the cold of our rooms to jump underneath the covers and hope that it didn’t take too long to heat up.

So, all in all Christmas was a little different to what I’m used to, but was definitely memorable.

Next stop was Erg Chebbi, camel rides and a night in the Sahara!