Friday, October 14, 2011

To visit or not to visit?

While waiting for our immune systems to do their job against the epidemic of cold raging on Chocobo we tried to decide about our next destination. If you think that we have a detailed plan in mind about the path we will follow and everything we will visit in the next six months then maybe you’re not reading this blog for long enough. In fact, as a general rule we have a good idea of the general direction we will head to and the seasons we have to respect but for the details we don’t plan more than a week in advance. The reason is that we change our minds every five minutes according to our impulses of the moment. Danielle in particular is notorious to act with spontaneity . For example the other day we were at the post office sticking Moroccan stamps on an envelope and we wondered who could well be the man on each of the stamps. A young Moroccan happened to pass by and with no more formalities Danielle turned toward him and asked ''Who's that guy?'' while pointing on the stamp. The guy looked at us as with a super smile, hesitated a moment and then replied ''But this is the king!'', holding his big amused smile. In a sense, he probably was not completely wrong and realized it then started to laugh to tell us that this was the current King Mohammed VI of Morocco and immediately we saw the incongruity of the situation and started laughing. Continually changing our mind and responding too quickly creates sometimes comical situations but it is greatly useful when we need to respond quickly.





So the dilemma we have is that we have two months to spend in the area before we can cross the Atlantic sometime in December. Presently we can chose between leaving Morocco and head directly for the Canary Islands, where we will have to spend almost two months doing almost nothing, or sail south to the city of Agadir and take a tour to go camelback riding in the Sahara. For the most adventurous the Agadir scenario is self obvious but we have to remember that we are travelling for over three years and after 45 visited countries we are not as trilled as we were at the beginning to see new things. It is certain that this is probably our last chance to take a hike in the Sahara because for our future travels we will have to choose between hundreds of extraordinary places to visit in the world that we wouldn’t have seen yet. Moreover, these things are not cheap and if you look carefully at our cost page you will realize that the bill of this trip begins to be as steep as the Grand Canyon so it is very tempting to go basking freely on the Canary’s beaches and to wait quietly for the hurricanes to calm down in the Atlantic.

So while one day we are settled to put on our backpacks and to climb our dromedary and the next day we are as determined to head directly to the Canaries we spend our days relaxing, doing some chores on the boat, shopping a bit at the medina of SalĂ© and at night watching movies about three movies every day! The boat overflows with supplies in prevision of the time we will spend in the Atlantic so all we need are fresh fruits and veggies we can find at ridiculous prices on the stalls of the medina. We don’t have to deal prices in Morocco and this makes our life much easier and simpler. Prices are not always marked but after over three weeks we realized that merchants all asked pretty much the same thing for the different products. Restaurants also are quite cheap. It is maybe not Thailand but we can still eat a good meal for about $12 per person or less. So if you ask us what our life looks like these days then let’s say that we relax, we enjoy the good food, we warm up under the African sun (while nights are relatively cool) and as soon as the wind picks up again in a few day we sail away at sea but we don’t know for what destination!