The Wind's Blue in North Africa...*
March 5-11, 2015 / Chefchaouen, Morocco
As I've always said, "when travelling, any friend of a friend of a friend of mine is a friend of mine ....".
Which is how we ended up in Chefchaouen, a funky town up in the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco: Dave & Nikki, another vagabond family whom we met in Turkey, put us in touch with their friend, Mohammed, who in turn, graciously helped us find a hobbit-sized apartment just off the main square at the bottom of the medina (old pedestrian city).
Chefchaouen is a bit of a tourist magnet for two reasons:
- It is a post-card-pretty town up in the hills with a medina that stretches across a hillside and lots of great day hikes in the nearby national park;
- Many of its buildings have been painted blue -- apparently a practice started by Jewish refugees who once lived here, but now a key feature of the town's identity.
(Being the capital of kif production in Morocco probably doesn't hurt their hippy-tourism rating either, but that wasn't why we were there).
Chefchaouen is a lovely a town to wander in, whatever your state of consciousness, and between all the blues, the architecture of the hillside medina, and the clear mountain light, its perfect for making pictures.
Here are a few that Zoe and I took (click on each thumbnail to enlarge it). Listen to this as you view them.
Did I mention that it's blue? Yeah, okay, you're get the picture. But it is super cool when you're there and the light hits the stucco just so.....you just gotta click a pic.
And it did get me thinking about how we might paint all the houses on our street the same colour...perhaps orange?
* Last night I couldn't sleep