The Bloom

As many of my previous posts have mentioned, our explorations here have led us to see Morocco as a country made up of vast expanses of barren dusty land interspersed with the occasional lush oasis nestled within a hidden valley. On our recent trip north to Melilla we drove through a land so changed since our last visit six weeks ago it was like driving through a different country. With rain comes spring and the ‘bloom’ has arrived.

The road north is a very picturesque route, even when it is dry and barren. Mountains, plains and a lake or two interspersed with the occasional small town. A lack of people keeps the rubbish to the minimum. This is one of the worst countries I have known for bushes blooming plastic bags or the national flower as they are becoming known.

This is one of the dump sites that are all over the place. At least here it's reasonably in one place and not all over the landscape.

Driving through after the rains have passed and dusty rocky slopes have been replaced with a variety of iridescent greens of fresh grass. It has become a Telly Tubby land of rolling green that doesn’t look real. It left me with an irrational desire to jump out the car and skip and roll in it like a 5 year old. Fat happy donkeys wonder contentedly in shoulder deep grass. Wild flowers run riot and as the sun dips the landscape shimmers with gold.

The strength of my reaction to this green surprised me. Having spent a disproportionate amount of my childhood sitting in fields I should be more than used to a little grass around me. We have more than enough rain in Manchester for the fields to be green year round. Living here has given me a new found appreciation for grass. I don’t take it for granted any more. Witnessing hundreds of kilometres of apparently unfertile brown land transform into waves of green billowing in the wind has to be one of the most spectacularly refreshing seasonal changes I have ever encountered.

Melila

I was quite convinced that having already eulogised the wonders of our local Spanish enclave that there would be little to write about on our recent visit. We had already experienced the cheap shopping, the café culture and being ridiculously taken advantage of in a tapas bar, how could we top that?

Ok, so this trip we did not get given ten free drinks in the first bar we walked into, it was only four. However this was perhaps a good thing as after a day of school followed by a 500 kilometre drive, we would never have made it out to do any shopping the next day. As it was we returned to Casa Marta where the same waiter over-enthusiastically topped up our drinks and gave us extra tapas before to our surprise plonking a plate of four steaks and tempura vegetables on the table. When we asked for water in an aim to slow down the alcohol consumption, he laughed and said “I no have that!” with a devious smile. Yet again he was not keen to let us leave without sneaking another drink into us. How often do you have to try and work out a tactical escape plan to pay and leave and avoid the free alcohol? Do we really look that deprived?

Feeling more fragile than we had planned the next day we still managed to get everything done we had intended, this included another ridiculous alcohol shop (we now have about 37 litres… must not panic buy) and a long lazy seafood lunch in the sun. That night we decided for the good of our health we should avoid Casa Marta and find another tapas bar. 

We went to Entrevinos. Reasonably full when we entered we were forced to stand at the bar. After the attentive care of our friend in Casa Marta we felt a little lost in Entrevinos, eye contact was hard to make with the waiter and the tapas situation was confusing. This was obviously not the place where we’d be getting free food and drink. Part way down our first drink the man next to me offered me a chair and bought us a round before he left. We then found a table and were given a steady stream of tapas and then free drinks at the end of the night. Why that man bought us a drink I have no idea. He didn’t talk to us and he wasn’t the manager like I first assumed. We obviously do look that deprived.

Entrevinos was a very interesting bar. For the first hour or so there was a constant stream of model like women coming in in groups. This was obviously the place to be. True this is no great achievement when as yet we have only found two tapas bars in town. And believe me we have tried. At around 10.00 when the place was packed with women, the men started to arrive. They arrived in packs. They may always chose to travel this way or it may have something to do with the fact that a Barca match had just finished. The thing was the long narrow bar was so busy by then that all the women ended up on one side and all the men on the other near the entrance. From these positions they then not so surreptitiously eyed each other up with the occasional brave individual breaking rank and heading over to the other side.  This was still going on by the time we left, hangovers having gotten the better of us.