blue buildings, maroc mountains

"You're not in Spain anymore" … I say to myself as I squat over a porcelain hole in the toilets at Tangier's bus stop.

The bus ride to Chefchaouen in the Moroccan mountains is hilarious really. We pay the equivalent of $4 for a three hour bus ride on a local bus. It fills up to the point of people standing in the aisles as the bus lurches along the road.

Then from above lies the captivating mountain town you are walking into; where all the buildings are painted blue.

Water and hash and wool; they are what Chefchaouen is known for says the friendly Australian after I use the tap water to clean my teeth.

Tagine for dinner, couscous for lunch, at least two fresh mint teas a day. Sitting in a café in the centre of the medina; the café is a tent, its walls and roof lined with red and orange woven mats. The colours had drawn us in. We watch the passersby, the women in their full length gowns covered head to toe, we watch the old men in a similar costume and I feel as if I am in a page of 'Where's Wally' Moroccan style. We watch the donkey carrying hundreds of refilled coke bottles and then returning up the hill with clinking empty bottles, back and forth, again and again. We watch the man who sits on the steps all day selling his Marlborough Reds. We didn't see any customers.

People are friendly here. There's no hassle. I adore wandering through the blue, taking photos of doorways and bumping into wide eyed Moroccan children who play in the narrow alleys.

Back in Pension Souika, the German starts a mini campfire in between four bricks on the coffee table and we shelter from the rain. Stoner conversations, the earthquake in Chile has changed the axis of the earth and time will never be the same again. Then the Englishman notices that the ashtray had a baby. The ashtray had a baby??