Monday 9th July–Epic travel day into Morocco

Last night I dutifully set my alarm for 9am, giving us plenty of time to be ready for Jaimen’s orientation tour at 10am. We pulled down our roller shutter blinds and fell asleep – only to be awoken by noisy people in the hallway this morning. Thinking it was early, we glanced at a watch – five to ten, oops. Turns out I forgot to change my phone back to Spanish time. Oh well, I guess we weren’t going on the orientation walk then.

    

Andy and I got downstairs around 11am and had about 40 minutes to check out, grab some breakfast and do a mini walk around the still-pretty-by-daylight town. We soon met up with the group and headed to a tour of the famous winery in Jerez, Tio Pepe. The winery itself was really pretty, lots of vines and old barrels, including some big romantically lit function spaces and lots of barrels signed by famous people (Picasso, Spielberg etc.)…. there must have been big modern metal vats here as well but they strategically decided not to show us those! At the end of the tour there was a short wine tasting session. I was all pumped up to taste the famous wines/sherries only to discover that they weren’t very nice at all! Perhaps just something I’m not used to.

    

After the winery tour our epic travel day properly began. This included a 1hr and 45 minute bus, followed by another 30 minute bus. We stopped a while in Tarifa, grabbing some Sangria and Tapas and enjoying the view of Africa from across the water. At around 7pm we hopped on the ferry – a lot of this trip involved standing in line to get our passports verified, Andy bought a big bottle of duty free Vodka. Around 45 minutes later we were on Moroccan soil – and then onto another bus!

    

This bus took around three hours to get to Chefchauon, through the Moroccan countryside as the sun set. It was exciting to be in a completely different landscape, dry and hilly with white houses dotted across it. Clearly it is a lot more run down here, as expected, and by the time we arrived at our hotel after 10pm I think we would have crawled into beds of any state. But this hotel is amazing. We just all walked around with our jaws dropped – it is a little piece of paradise, with beautifully lit gardens, a huge pool, colourful Moroccan decor everywhere. After settling in quickly we headed downstairs for dinner. This was amusing – they brought us three huge plates of salad, which we thought was the whole meal. But there was also bread, kebabs, tomatoes, vegatarian tagines, chips…. it all just kept coming (and it was all amazing too). At around 1am we were in bed, exhausted but very satisfied and excited about relaxing here tomorrow!