Ric thinks

MOROCCO.........
(click on pics to enlarge then click back cause it doesn't open them in a new window)

On my recent trip to Surf trip to Morocco 4 flat days out of 7 seven gave me plenty of time to meet the locals and get ripped off, don't get me wrong everyone gets ripped off first time in Morocco, its just a case of learning to haggle and keeping your eyes open, for example the taxi from the airport to the hotel cost 400dh but the taxi the other way was only 200dh add to that the hotel guy Hassan could have charged us double after asking us both for 1200 for the room and then falling laughing over at how fresh in we were, he explained that only one of us had to pay and then proceeded to wrangle a bottle of rum off me in the blink of an eye (and if you know me that's not an easy job) it was a good thin Phil had one too.

There's a few things they're well known for and of them hash is one of the most well known, it was one of the first things we found and sampled only to discover that it seriously impaired the ability to haggle!!

After getting up at 4am and testing the small engines of their fishing boats right outside our hotel the local men spend their days gambling and watching the world go by from one of the small restaurants sipping mint tea or as they kept telling us "Moroccan whiskey".

Simun one of the cool local berber guys showed us that to pour Moroccan whiskey from a height was a show of respect.

Here's Phil wishing he could haggle or even just open his eyes a bit!!

Me wishing the same!! (about two seconds later I auto piloted to bed) We met some great guys that were from S.A and France they REALLY liked to chong it up.

This is Morocco's famous Argon tree it is said to produce the finest cooking oil in the world but its branches are so spiky that that harvesting the fruit was a tough job, to combat this the locals have bread miniature goats that climb the tree and eat the fruit, the seeds are very hardy and pass through the goat undigested and can be harvested form the dung mmmm nice, "yeah well why don't you eat the seeds outta my shit!"

In this pic the stuff that looks like gravel in front of the tree is in fact muscle shells there is a fire place at the base of the tree where the locals cook the shellfish and relax smoking the hookah (big waterpipe basically), you can get them in the bars there, one guy who worked in the only bar in Thagazout had the pleasant job of lighting all the hookahs that got ordered, he was so hardcore that he even finished all the ones off that the tourists left, shit me he must have been coughing up green bouncy balls in the morning.

The food was pretty good and amazingly cheap we ate at the peace cafe mostly where billy the kid and simun worked, we got drunk with them a few times they were pretty mad. This was non-descript meat with an egg, nice

RESPECT!!

Cheesy sky shot!

Go on Phil you can do it, open them just a little bit (Billy simun and phil chillin)

so heres the surf

Nice! The first four days were pretty crap a bit like borth, we went in the wettest week of the year and the rain just runs off the land so quick brown mush washed out to sea just like borth. But the last few days were amazing too big if anything, i needed a bigger board and a bigger set of balls too!!

The locals have some pretty beat up boards, there was loads of bics with folds in and all the surf shops were full of wrecks. Rich one of the s.a guys bust two fins out of two of his boards just doing bottom turns, pretty mad.

click on this and look at the tiny surfers, this day was huge, i surfed inside at double over head, but these guy were getting triple on the big sets. Strangely the water was pretty empty on the days it got big and rammed on the small days.