Fes to Chefchaouen. 2 June

This morning we took a bus from Fes to Chefchaouen, stopping halfway into the 4 hour trip for a picnic at a roadside café. Khaled was being dad and had brought meat, bread, fruit, cheese, tomato, dates and, bless him, avocado! While we all sat at a table, he ran around getting our meat cooked at the barbeque outside, cutting bread and putting our burgers together. The Moroccans are also super into melon, which to be honest, is a bit boring, and also Elise really doesn’t like melon. So at the end, while the bus was beeping for everyone to get on, and all the locals were already there waiting, we still had two full plates of melon left. So us two set Khaled a challenge to eat it all, and he did it like a king. By the end he was dripping melon all down his chin, and while we went to get on the bus, he went to clean his face and the plates. And then the bus left without him and it was all our fault. He came running out, and we told the driver and in the end he was back on the bus and there were no hard feelings. Lucky.

We got to Chefchaouen (literally meaning, ‘look at the horns’ aka mountains) and then took taxis to our hotel, Dar Echchaouen (look it up, because our photos didn’t totally capture its greatness). Chefchaouen is an incredible little city, and every house must be painted blue and/or white. The tradition came from a community of displaced Jewish people from Spain, who painted the city blue when they moved there to remind them of the city they had come from.
We were given some free time, and we, Sam and Phoebe sat having some fizzy drinks in the shade on an outside lounge. After a couple of hours we all followed Khaled into town, past the washing place in the river, which looked pretty amazing. The town itself is wonderful, the shades of blue make the light in the little alleys refract in interesting ways and it’s a totally original atmosphere. As we were descending into a more open market area, a local man took one look at Elise and was instantly in love. He proclaimed for some time after we'd passed that he loved her eyes and was crazy about her. Mostly he yelled "I NEED YOU!" and it was the best ever. Elise quickly walked away with the other 3 laughing as we trailed. Khaled stopped at a fabric store, mentioning that it was a good place to buy scarves. He then decided he was going to totally ditch his formal ‘quiet, serious tour guide’ act and throw us right into the path of his apparently true (strange/great) personality. Suddenly, he swishes the scarf around his head, put his pinky to his mouth and says coyly ‘Hello, I am Jessica’.  And be prepared, Jessica makes many appearances throughout our trip from this point on.

We meandered a while up, down and around, ending up in the main square. Khaled took us up to a restaurant terrace above the city, where we ate a super tasty dinner as the sun went down. Just after sunset, the calls for prayer began. We had heard the calls of prayer multiple times a day throughout the trip, but it had never sounded like this! The calls coming from the numerous mosques in the valley, echoed around the hills for 5 minutes, and we all went silent in awe.
Walking home, we 20somethings asked Khaled where we could get ice cream, and he started to click that this was something that would happen a lot. We all walked back to the accommodation, trying to manage steps, ice creams and bags.

Resting back in the same outdoor chair as before, we 4 girls opened a bottle of wine and had a bit of a chat, but got sleepy quickly and decided to go to bed after a small glass each and donated the rest to some worthy souls.

Prickly Pear

River washing station!

Hercules we guess

Much amaze at washing station

Birth of Jessica

Love A&E