DAY 3 Marrakech to Imlil
01 December 2005
The morning was spent sorting out car hire for the rest of our stay. It seemed like the cheapest option would be to hire from a woman who came to the hotel each day. Although, for a change, the first price she quoted seemed reasonable, this was no barrier to a leisurely haggle as we sat around the table. She and Ol made offers and counter offers by typing numbers onto the screen of a calculator that was passed back and forth. In the end the price was about £15 a day for a Fiat Palio, with as much insurance as possible - Me and Ol were the drivers, and neither of us had driven of the wrong side before. After seeing the habits of drivers and pedestrians in Marrakech we felt we needed as much cover as possible. Unfortuately we had to wait to pick up the car, and arranged to meet at a local car park at 3pm.
With the morning all but used up, we had just a few hours to kill before 3. We used the time to get some last minute essentials for the mountains, which looked more wintry than I’d anticipated – I didn’t even have hat and neither Olly or I had gloves. I ended up in a stall and being dressed up in a hooded top and berber scarf. I was interested in the top, but the haggling didn't get us to a price we could agree on and ended in an unfriendly way, apparently fairly typical in Marrakech. At another stall we were more successful in picking up cheap chinese knock-off thinsulate gloves and a hat for me - at 60p it turned out to be a good investment.
By 3 we were waiting at the car park, and after a while the lady from the hotel showed up but unfortunately still without the car. Instead we now have to come back at 16:30, which a pain as our drive up into the mountains to Imlil would now have to be finished in dark. So, after we picked up a bit of food for the road, and three bottles of the same wine that we'd had with dinner the night before we back at the carpack again. When the woman arrived she led us across the road to a filling station where the our slightly battered car was parked. We filled it up with petrol and then put air a slightly flat tyre hoping it didn't have a slow puncture. We arranged to follow owners’ other car south out of Marrakech so we could get on the right road to Imlil. This was a great relief to me as I’d volunteered to drive on this first leg out of the city. Now I could concentrate on not crashing without having think about which direction to go at the same time. As expected the traffic was a bit hairy, but I stuck behind other car as close as possible, following their lead so that I didn’t have to confuse myself by figuring out things like who is supposed to give way to who at junctions and round-a-bouts. After a short time we were out of the city walls with a decent highway stretching out ahead into the flat spacious landscape. We pulled over for the car-owners to point out our turning, and then we were off on our own.
The car was interesting, having a number of special features that we discovered along the way. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t move the drivers seat from its unconfortably forward position (we later discover it could be moved by someone standing outside the driver’s side lifting the seat up whilst another person on the backseat pushes or pulls the seat forward or backwards). Another thing that quickly became obvious was that the gearbox was extremely sloppy. Even when in gear the stick could be waggled as though it was in neutral in a normal car. This made changing up into 5th challenging , as it was difficult to get the gear stick far enough over often than not you’d end up back in 3rd. Accounting for the waggle you had to get the gearstick over somewhere near the middle of the passenger’s seat to get into 5th, and would often end up fondling the passenger's knee.
We turned off the highway onto a single carriage way with the mountains now striaght ahead of us. After a while the road was no longer wide enough for two vehicle to pass, so excursions off the black-top to avoid on-coming cars were frequent (though fortunately the roads were quiet). This off-roading became more exciting as we got up into the winding mountain roads. Finding our route was made simple by the lack of choice, once off the highway there was only one town and one junction on the way Imlil. As we got higher in the mountains, with darkness falling, the car began to demonstrate some of its other little quirks. We discovered the heater doesn’t work, which was a minor inconvience. Then on a steepish bit of road the car lost all power, slowed, came back, slowed again, and then did a couple of jerks forward in in kangaroo-petrol style. After a tense moment's pause everything was fine again and we made it to Imlil shortly afterwards without reoccurence of the problem. As the oil light had come on during the car’s fiting spell we decided to check the oil. After popping the release lever we found that the bonnet was jammed shut and so that ended that line of enquiry. The car continued have these occassional fits when climbing hills thoughout the trip, but fortunately it always recovered after a moment or two.
Inside the Café Soleil there were two British men having dinner in a freezing cold dining room with a portable gas heater next to their table. The manager showed us up to our equally cold room, then we came back down for some food ourselves. While we waited we played cards and chatted to the Brits who are actually staying in another hotel, so we were the only quests in the hotel that night. They were going up to climb Jebel Toubkal, the highest peck in North Africa. We still hadn’t decided whether to do the climb ourselves or stay lower down doing a three day hike through the valleys which would be warmer and possibly easier going on my foot which I'd injured a couple weeks before. We're all pretty keen to do the climb, but left the decision for the morning. After dinner We went to bed early to get out of the cold, using our sleeping bags in addition to all the bedding and blankets provided by the hotel.
