Day 12 – Sunday 5th June – Cherry Festival, what Cherry Festival?
After the excitement of the previous evening’s activities I had a leisurely start. Checked emails, Skyped with Lauren, did a small amount of Logging and Transferring of the past week’s footage. A mammoth task that I really shouldn’t have put off for as long as I did! I’d barely even scratched the surface when Neal popped up and asked if I wanted to head out for a bit of lunch. I’d not even had breakfast yet, so with an emphatic yes we headed out to the “Fish Place”. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what they sell, but I will tell you how delicious it was… It tasted fantastic! Really simple food: 2 fried fish (whole, but beheaded and cleaned), bread and a spicy dipping sauce. All eaten with fingers, bones left on the paper tablecloth that also acted as a napkin for oily fingers. It cost us 11DH each (~ £1), an absolute bargain as we both left absolutely stuffed. I had however spared a little room for my newfound vice: crepes with honey. 6DH ensured that both Neal and I were fit to burst! On the way back to the apartment we called in at the ahadaf and I grabbed some ingredients for dinner and tomorrow’s lunch. We leisurely strolled back and after a few hours we met as agreed, and made our way back into town.
On the advice of the chaps up at the tourist group the previous day we (Neal, Barbara and I) had decided to head to ‘Ain Leuh at about 4 o’clock for the cherry festival. No busses ran the 25km trip, so we were going to go by Grand Taxi. We went to the taxi rank by the bus station, only to be told that it was the wrong one, those taxis were headed to Ifrane. We left none-the-wiser as to where the rank for ‘Ain Leuh was, and after half an hour of aimless wandering we stumbled across the correct one hidden behind the police station. It had started raining during this time and was getting steadily heavier. After a bit of quick haggling where we were quoted 10DH each, and then 12DH when the driver changed his mind (we think this was due to the old Mercedes not being full – it only had 1 person in the front passenger seat instead of 2, and 4 in the back, not 5!) We squashed in the back and made the half hour journey there with a nice accompaniment of Berber music blasting out of the car’s stereo.
The view from 'Ain Leuh
Upon our arrival the torrential rain that we had driven through had thankfully stopped, but the skies remained grey. We arranged our return for 20:30, and then Barbara asked where the cherry festival was. They pointed across to an a walled area and said “it was there yesterday!”. We were a day late! We were in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere with three and a half hours to kill – Great! We went to where the festival had been, it looked like it would have been impressive with lots of stalls, and a big area for performers. Slightly saddened we decided to have a walk around Ain Leuh. That took all of 20 minutes, so we headed to a café to pass the time how Moroccan’s do, with a mint tea watching the world go by. I’m not sure if it was boredom, or the copious amounts of sugar in the mint tea, but we became rather hysterical and any mention of cherries would send us into fits of laughter. After exhausting just about every cherry and festival related joke we could think of and all the mint tea had been drunk we just sat in uncomfortable silence. We definitely wouldn’t make good Moroccans. After 25 minutes we were ready to leave, but with nothing else to do Neal had enforced a 50 minute minimum time limit. We sat there with sporadic fits of laughter as we watched a man walk past with a crate of cherries, we observed a fight over a moped, and even an evangelical/crazy muslim lady walking up and down the road denouncing everyone for not being good muslims.
Finally Neal’s self inflicted time limit was passed, and we were able to leave the café. Neal found a shop that sold belts to he would no longer have to hold his trousers up. He reckoned it was the best 25DH he’s ever spent (probably the sugar talking!) We walked back to the main square and found one of the few places that sold food, and sat down in the diminutive upstairs quarters. None of us were feeling particularly hungry after our large lunch, but Neal ordered for us. ½ kg of meat. We didn’t even know what we would get, so we weren’t sure if this was lots, or a miniscule amount – more hysterics ensued about our unknown portion size. It was a perfect amount for 2 people (Barbara didn’t eat any). The meat was essentially hand made burgers served with bread – delicious! It was almost time for our taxi back. We went up the hill and got in the taxi. This time both Neal and I were sitting in the front passenger seat. It was a bit of a squash.
Back at the apartment we told Sandra that she had missed out on a fantastic festival. She didn’t believe a word!
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- The view from ‘Ain Leuh
