Back on the road - Marrakesh, Morocco

With four words of Arabic and the tiny remnants of high school french we landed in the pink city of Marrakesh. Morocco is well touristed and a little expensive but gave us a taste of the sand dunes, nomads, oases, kasbahs, mountains, and coast as well as the arabic culture with minarets rising from every village (and the 4am call to prayer). Anyway we had one night booked in a riad, our lonely planet and no idea.

Djemaa el-Fna or La Place is the central square in the walled medina of Marrakesh and can only be described as a spectacle. The myriad of souqs surrounding the square sell everything...antiques, carpets, silver, lamps, spices and each is affronted by a morrocan very keen to show you his wares. Very keen. "Please just one look, inshallah"

As dusk settled in we primed ourselves with a fresh squeezed orange juice from stall 42 and started to wander. The Djemaa el-Fna ramps up several more notches at nightfall when the smoke starts pouring from the rows of open air foodstalls selling everything from tajine to enormous piles of snails in their own juice.

Elsewhere snake charmers, storytellers, medicine men, acrobats, jugglers, musicians and women doing henna tattoos fill the spare spaces each surrounded by jostling crowds of onlookers. Interestingly though there are lots of tourists the overwhelming majority of people looking on are moroccan. The sound of drums was almost hypnotic and came from every direction, somehow all in rhythm, almost obscuring the whispers of hasssshhhh coming from the dark faces in the crowd . It is a spectacle. Incredible really.

Two days is enough...