It has been a little while since I wrote my blog, mainly due to the fact that I have been busy trying to complete my Map and Thesis (dissertation for geology students) and other assignments.
Every Easter I have to go on to an assessed field techniques class. The first was in the Isle of Skye (Scotland), the second was in Scourie (Scotland) and the third was to Morocco. Unfortunately, I could have done with the training we got whilst in Morocco for Spain as it was geared for to the advanced level fieldwork required to complete the Map and Thesis. No worries though, learning via shear panic is always more helpful in the long term...
Morocco started off as most of my travels do, with delays and frustrations at the airport. After finally changing planes due to technical reasons we shot off to Marrakesh and from there a 6 hour journey through the Atlas Mountains to a place called Ouarzazate. Here we stayed in an ok hotel just to break the journey up to the place we actually needed to be, a place called Bou Tharar. This was a small village in the middle of nowhere but with fascinating geology, of course this had to be the place where we did our first bit of assessed work. This training ground would have been useful before going on my trip to Spain but hey ho. I won't talk much about the geology but the area was beautiful (some photos here) and had children everywhere. We were warned early on about the kids asking for 'stilo' or pens but nobody was prepared for the swarms of kids that seemed to come out of nowhere. Despite being told not too, I could not help but give a pencil to this one kid who followed me around for most of the morning, didn't beg and, along with a few others, was interested in what I was doing. They wanted to look through my hand lens and read my book which was actually really cute. Anyway, when I gave him the pen (thinking there was only 3 kids here) another few climbed from out of this ditch and came running over. It was weird and the pens had to go away.
I normally would not like to be rude about hotels and stuff but when we first walked into this hotel, in the downstairs dining area, there was a squatting toilet. As you can imagine, the first thing that I needed to do was check the toilet in the room and to my relief, it was a normal toilet. I like to think of myself as someone who doesn't mind roughing it, but squatting toilets is a no no.
From Bou Tharar, we moved into the Dades Valley for a bit more hiking and a sedimentary log assessment (one of the most boring bits of field work). The hotel in Dades was much nicer and with a pool, a freezing cold pool. Food was not as nice mind. Some more geo touring and writing notes about all the interesting regional scale geology that was taking place in Morocco followed up until ready to travel back to Marrakesh.
The journey back was not as painful as I first though, only 7 hours and the hotel at the end was a nice 4 star hotel. I won't talk much about it here as will write a part 2 with all the good highlights etc.
Morocco started off as most of my travels do, with delays and frustrations at the airport. After finally changing planes due to technical reasons we shot off to Marrakesh and from there a 6 hour journey through the Atlas Mountains to a place called Ouarzazate. Here we stayed in an ok hotel just to break the journey up to the place we actually needed to be, a place called Bou Tharar. This was a small village in the middle of nowhere but with fascinating geology, of course this had to be the place where we did our first bit of assessed work. This training ground would have been useful before going on my trip to Spain but hey ho. I won't talk much about the geology but the area was beautiful (some photos here) and had children everywhere. We were warned early on about the kids asking for 'stilo' or pens but nobody was prepared for the swarms of kids that seemed to come out of nowhere. Despite being told not too, I could not help but give a pencil to this one kid who followed me around for most of the morning, didn't beg and, along with a few others, was interested in what I was doing. They wanted to look through my hand lens and read my book which was actually really cute. Anyway, when I gave him the pen (thinking there was only 3 kids here) another few climbed from out of this ditch and came running over. It was weird and the pens had to go away.
From Bou Tharar, we moved into the Dades Valley for a bit more hiking and a sedimentary log assessment (one of the most boring bits of field work). The hotel in Dades was much nicer and with a pool, a freezing cold pool. Food was not as nice mind. Some more geo touring and writing notes about all the interesting regional scale geology that was taking place in Morocco followed up until ready to travel back to Marrakesh.
The journey back was not as painful as I first though, only 7 hours and the hotel at the end was a nice 4 star hotel. I won't talk much about it here as will write a part 2 with all the good highlights etc.
Did you use the squatting toilet lol
ReplyDelete