to Paradise and beyond

We had to take a horrible bus from Essaouira to Aourir. It smelt. I didn't like it. Then there was a most annoying man who kept interfering and making simple things complicated but we ate a kilo of lovely lamb tagine and took a taxi for a reasonable amount despite his best efforts to "help". Then we were in Paradise Valley. Jimi Hendrix went there in 1965. This is pretty miraculous as he was first in Morocco in 1969. It tells you just how special a place Paradise Valley is. We stayed in a lovely although very warm auberge with our favourite hotel person to date, Mohammed. People visit Paradise Valley to swim in the pools created by the river, a simple 3km walk... according to the Rough (very) Guide...  from our guesthouse. It was 8km. It was very hot. There was no shade. It didn't feel much like paradise at this point. After many hours of searching we found a friendly Moroccan hippie who showed us the way and gave us bread and honey, I think Ross would have married him at this point, had he asked. The valley lived up to its name and we did some swimming and jumping and sitting in the very refreshing water. Mostly I sat while dozens of tiny fish nibbled away at my toes (AG). Then some Dutch people turned up and spoilt it all. They may have been young, tanned, toned and beautiful but this didn't stop one of them from being wrong. As we retreated around the corner to change out of our wet things one of the "gentlemen" in their party swam around, out of sight of his friends, but into full view of us and proceeded to lower his trunks and add his own fish to the waters of Paradise Valley.

After some slight illness on Ross' part we carried on further into the mountains to Immouzer. Site of a large waterfall at times but after years of drought and at the end of the dry season a mere trickle. Still very pretty and we got to do some more swimming, this time in the coldest water known to man (ish) in the very very very deep plunge pool.

This morning we left there and are now here. Taroudant.Inland from Agadir dir dir.... (Ross insisted on this).

Goodbye for now.