Morocco - 28 September, 2000

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Travel Distance

Today we did no driving (nice change) and we remained at the campsite all day.  As it was the turn of the cook team Jacqui and I are on to cook, we spent the morning at the market.  This would be our first time cooking for the group - three groups have gone before us and they set high standards.  We were lucky, today was the day the weekly market was in town, so we spent quite a bit of time there marketing. It was quite interesting - they had just about everything, from clothing to food stuff.  The traders from all over would come to town to sell their wares, including the mountain people with their big hats and donkeys to carry their wares (the town was filled with donkeys today, and they were "parked" all over).  We picked up our vegetables and eggs there, looking for the best variety that we could find.  It was quite fun to shop in the local market, trying to find what we needed.  I am sure that we paid more than the locals, but it was still a bargain.  We wanted to buy some meat, including chicken, but while they had chickens, we decided not to buy there.  The chickens were live and while they would kill them for you, that was all they did.  We did not want to spend the afternoon plucking the chicken.

We therefore walked back down to the center of town, where we went to a butcher.  We picked up some beef and chicken.  We wanted to just get the better bits (even if we had to pay for the not-so nice-pieces), but he gave us the whole chicken, minus the feet) and the beef came with bones, etc.

We then went back to the campsite to do some work on the meat to prepare for dinner.  We cleaned up the meat and then prepared a marinate, which we let it soak in for the afternoon.  We then went back into town and and lunch at an outdoor cafe.  We had tajines, which is a very famous Moroccan dish.  It is basically a claypot dish with a meat and vegetables.  It was quite good.

We then walked around the town a bit, and we were invited into a shop for some mint tea and a look around the wares.  As we had to get back to cook, we did not have too much time to spare.  We headed back to camp, so that we could begin to prepare dinner.

We decided to make kebabs, with couscous and a carrot/apple salad.  We started off the meal with some mint tea.  It was a bit of a challenge, but we think went ok.  The whole meal (including tomorrow's breakfast) came to about Dirham 380 (or about US$38, or so) for 23 people.

After cleaning up, Jacqui and I spent the evening working on our journals.  It then started to rain a bit, but it came and went.

Tomorrow, we head for Rabat.