ali barbar and fatima cous cous

after the sahara we headed to the todra gorge. the gorge is in a valley between dry,rocky mountains. the valley leading up to the gorge is beautiful, palmeraries littered with villages and kasbahs. along the way to todra we meet a nice quebecy guy called olivier and became a little crew. on the first day we checked out the gorge and then went on a walk which climbed up the mountain next to the gorge and then along the plateau and then back down. some fellow travellers warned us that the track gets pretty faint up on the plateau and the best way to follow it was to look for the scratches made by mule hooves on the rocks! needless to say we got lost and so we ended up scarambling down a ravine for a few hours; when we reached the bottom we realised it ended in a sheer cliff so had to go back halfway up the hill and detour. when we got to the bottom we founds the path and it looked like it would have been a pleasant little stroll down the hill, but then again our way was more fun.

in the evening we got invited to a berber guys place for dinner, he was a carpet seller so obviously there was an ulterior motive. still he was a fun guy and we had a jam and then a wonderful cous cous meal with fermented goats milk before the real business began. in the end me and flick each swapped our mobile phones, some random pharmaceticals and 200 dirham for a carpet each. in morocco men are generally referred to as muhammed and women fatima, so the carpet seller in the end said 'muhammed happy, fatima happy, me happy' we agreed so the deal was done.

we were staying at a real shit hotel, they were unfriendly and turned off the power at 10pm. this turned out to be particularly annoying firstly cause olivier was in the middle of having a shower at the time.The second reason was the cous cous and goats milk ended up giving me food poisioning and i woke up in the middle of the night ran to the bathroom, stumbled and then threw up all over flicks bag. i couldnt even clean it till morning cause i couldnt see the damage. very classy.

as i mentioned women get called 'fatima' all the time here and cause shes white flick also gets the added bonus of being called 'fatima cous cous'. as we walk past shops we always here it yelled out, as you can imagine flick REALLY loves it! as im growing a beard my status seems to have changed from muhammed to 'ali barbar' not quite sure why. over here though ali barbar is famous not for having forty thieves but forty wives.

the photos above show flick beginning the trudge down the hill and the dreaded cous cous. note the star shape as each of the five people munched their way towards the middle.