I was actually lucky to get there in the first place! The day I had decided to make the trip from Fes was the day after Ramadan had finished. For those who don´t know much about Ramadan (I didn´t) - for one month every year devout Muslims don´t eat or drink ANYTHING between the time the sun rises to the time the sun sets. Once the month is up they have two days of celebration that basically involves visiting the homes of family members and eating all day long. Consequently nothing was open and instead of the 50 or so busses to Chefchaouen, there was one....and it didn´t go all the way to the town....
The company did however provide those who wanted to go the extra 10km to the town with a taxi. Unfortunately that taxi was a battered old Peugeot 205 that had to transport 7 men to the town....so I spent the last 20 minutes of the journey crushed between two fat Moroccans who had clearly not discovered the wonders of deodorant.
Chefchaouen is named 'the blue town', a nickname it receives because all of the buildings in the Medina are painted a beautiful creamy sky blue colour that give the impression the town is a fluffy blue cloud nestling at the foot of the Rif mountains.
The people are equally chilled out too. There was no constant hassles to buy things and no one following us around trying to guide us to placed for a tip. There was however a ridiculous amount of people selling hash. Apparently 90% of the marijuana that comes out of Morocco is grown up in the Rif. Even the waiters in the restaurants would give you the bill and ask if you wanted to buy ´some special smoke´!
I´d met an American guy on the bus and met an American girl and a Spanish couple at the hostel. We all went out for dinner that evening and watched the people wandering around the square from a beautiful roof terrace and drank mint tea til the early hours. The next morning we wandered through the winding blue streets and all agreed that Chefchaouen was the most peaceful part of Morocco we´d visited.
That afternoon it was time for some serious mountain climbing! I´d managed to persuade Joe, the American dude, that he actually wanted to go climbing too - so we headed off about lunchtime. The initial climb was killer - not least because it was 36 degrees outside, but also because 3/4 of the way up it started to get very very steep. By this time it was too late to find a different route so we pressed on. At some points it was full on vertical rock climbing (with no harness) which I loved! As we got higher and higher we came across mountain goats, large lizards and even a scorpion. The view from the top was truly spectacular and worth every bit of the effort.
We headed back down to check out an old mosque before meeting the others for dinner and lots more lovely mint tea. The next day it was off to Spain!! Pictures tomorrow!
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