Wednesday May 6th Last day in Sidi Ifni and our breakfast was excellent, crepe with bananas and chocolate sauce was the first course. There was plenty of bread to put in our bag for later as well as toast and marmalade which was very good. Given how oranges are abundant in Morocco I wondered why marmalade was not served more often, why it was not a speciality of the place. Anthony was dressed to impress in varying shades of green, dark green silk shirt, light green waistcoat. The bill was eventually presented to Anthony. I went up to the room, I could add nothing by hanging around, though I caught Rolando's eye, when he had appeared again. He explained he was taking a bus to Marrakesh later, we could only imagine the heat and noise of a bus bus that full, including children, on an hot day, and wish him well with that. H seemed pleased at the idea...
I felt a mild numbness at us leaving, which oddly made packing, and making sure we left nothing behind, seem more efficient. I gave Anthony space on his own to pack and from the distance I kept Anthony seemed fine about packing too. But then there became the problem of where he had put the car keys 'so that he would not lose them'. Where ever they were for forty five minutes he could not find them either. The bags were by the car, the car was locked, the room was searched three times, separately, by both of us, along with checking the table we ate our breakfast at, and underneath the table. the search did give me the opportunity to steal the odd postcard. Eventually the keys were discovered in the top right pocket of the waistcoat that he was wearing, where he had put them 'for safe keeping' all along. I'd swear there is something subconscious about the process of losing/hiding the keys but the 'sub' part of the subconscious means I should not, and won't, ask about it. The relief of being able to leave over-rode any thoughts of recriminations about the delay.
In retracing our journey back to Tiznit we passed Mirleft along with many more small settlements which would be called 'ribbon development' in County Down, where I come from. I was struck again by the character of the vernacular architecture, the mosque is always the one building with a tower among so many low level buildings. On seeing so many mosques here I admired them for the simplicity and elegance of their architecture, and the way the colours they were painted give them all a variety I know the church buildings at home lacked. Where whether church or mosque, they have to be the tallest buildings in the settlement. I used to believe that their height was a matter of status. Now I realise that whilst religious buildings are high status places, the point of the tower was always that it was an echo chamber for amplifying the sound of the call to worship; the taller the tower the further the sound made from the top carries. It is surprisingly easy to conflate height, size, and status, whether with humans or with buildings.
There seemed to be an oddly similar height/status principle at work with many of the newly built ribbon settlements that were built close to the road. The fronts of the houses were two or more storeys high, but the rooms built in a square behind the frontage would be only one storey high, and there would be clusters of such buildings, built together. I had no idea why this was done. My best guess was that if the owners got settled and had established their trade and lives there, then they could extend the property upwards by building another floor, but on starter incomes/bases life on the ground floor was all they could afford.
We stopped in Tiznit to have a freshly squeezed orange juice at a breakfast bar and look at the map/check our route. I took what will probably be my favourite picture of the week, of a German Shepherd dog resting in the shade of a bicycle where both dog and bike were part of some vending spot where newspapers were sold to passers by who stopped at the traffic island they were stopped. We left Tiznit with the city walls to our right, where I glimpsed the entrance to a souk. For a micro-second I wished the car could be stopped and we could investigate what was on sale/for show in there. I do feel that the life on foot seems to be the life in scale with awareness.
I had no clue that even as I glimpsed the souk entrance that we drove past, for just one second, there was a dazzling full awareness slow car journey ahead, which would be well in scale which would leave us lost for words of awe and wonder. But the big challenge before that was the negotiate the outskirts of Agadir, for us to get on the road for Immouzer Dess Ida Outane.
Agadir seemed huge, but then were plunged into what seemed like the centre of it, all high rise smoked glass fronted buildings that gave off strange abstract impressions as they reflected light off each other, and reflected the multi-coloured skyscrapers nearby. With views like that I did not mind one or two missed turnings and brief reversals to find the turning and the lane we were meant to be in, and had just missed. When we got to the coast road away going away from Agadir we felt calmer.
It was on the coast road out that I had my check shirt opportunity, Anthony wanted a pee, and stopped so that I could investigate a rummage market, to give him time alone. By the time he went up the steps I had found the loose fitting checked shirt that was obviously the best, he paid the stall holder the loose change that it cost and i put it on over my T shirt. We were away again.
The entrance to Paradise Valley was low key but well signed. After that the scenery slowly seemed to get more and more immersive, until it was as if we were both on a slowly enveloping LSD trip through the landscape of the valley, Like an LSD trip we were travelling at two speeds at once, one speed was the speed the car was doing conveying us along the road, the other speed was the was seemingly slower and to do with how we took in the trees, the narrow road, unchanged in twenty five years,, the streams and the traffic going as slowly as we were going from in the other direction. For maybe five hours we were wowed and wowed again by the constant variations of rock texture, dead and living trees, and the occasional steam, with the occasional surreal looking shop on the end of the bend of a road in the middle of nowhere that sold honey and pottery. The goods outside of the shop were perfectly safe from thieves, and they were arranged as if the scene was a living postcard that you would store as a memory, the image was one that you could not take away in an intact physical version of it-putting a border around it would shrink it to nothing.
Lunch was like previous lunches, except that nobody passed us this time whereas with previous lunches we were in more populated places and were happy to be waved at by passing strangers. After we reached the last big peak the bends in the road became fewer, the road became straighter. This was how I knew that we were on the last part of our journey for the day. By 4 pm we were in Immouzer Dess Ida Outane, a small one street town which for us arriving at it in the peak afternoon heat was quiet. Seeing the three dogs keep watch on the wall as we entered the town seemed symbolic. It was the height of activity.
Our hotel was special to Anthony. He had been here twenty five years earlier, and I could see why he wanted me to experience it; the gardens were extensive, very lush and semi-wild. One thing Anthony and both agree on is that neat and tidy gardens are dead gardens, and the extended planting around this hotel, which must have stretched to an acre or two, was the second great immersive experience of the day.
After settling in and seeing a little of the gardens I went into the town with my camera, more doors of Morocco, rusty doors, painted doors, security doors-who knew that the doors that lock on the back of articulated lorries could be deployed to make businesses secure? When I returned to the hotel gardens I did the full tour of them and found Anthony at the far end, where he was admiring the scent of the one of the two types of lavender there.
The rooms in this hotel were more modern and less personal than in previous hotels, but the hotel was cool and spacious overall. The nearest there was old fashioned character was the various rugs scattered on the floor before the stairs up to our room, though the paintings on the walls ascending the stairs were interestingly gnomic, full of symbols that may or may not meant something serious.
The setting for dinner was perfect, candles and a white table cloth, white cloth napkins, and a from inside the dining room a view over the declining light over the valley that was wonderful. Alas the meal did not deliver in the same way. The vegetable soup was thin, the vegetable tagine was okay and perfectly textured but, oddly, it lacked spices. But with a perfect french apple tart for pudding we had no reason to with-hold praise for the food. Our waiter wanted to like us, or wanted us to like him, I don't know which. Anthony laughed when on our own he called the waiter 'the retainer', which as night staff he as, and I asked is he wrinkled? He told us stories of bee keeping and collecting/selling honey for it's medicinal properties, of his work as experimental scientist, and near the end of the meal he showed and gave Anthony something that he was clearly personally invested in, his own formula hair restorer. The waiter had even thought of airport security, the bottle it was in fitted well into one of the liquids security bags.
I was slow to go to sleep, I needed more distance from Anthony that I could have in the room. In the morning I woke him up with my snoring, so he woke me up. Still, we have had this agenda of snoring/being unsettled with sleep for most of the thirty years we have known each other.
For day 8 of this Holiday Memoir please click here.
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