26 March 2023, Marrakech, 29.00km
Basma’s room R399.50 [DH221]

Through Airbnb, we have rented a room in a private home just outside the Marrakech medina east wall off Rue Tachenbacht. The streets beyond the old city walls are just as confusing as those within and finding our accommodation so tired us that we literally collapsed on our beds and dozed for an hour before hunting out the shower one and a half flights up. The pretty mirror in our room does little to mitigate how tired we looked on arrival!
The house in which we have taken refuge, like all the older homes in Morocco, is tall and narrow with floors linked by steep tiled stairs, most devoid of handrails. Charl amazes me with his latent strength. At the end of a long day, he often has to lug the bikes up a flight or so to ensconse them somewhere safe or out of the way of others.
This house, three and a half storeys high, was originally constructed around a tiny courtyard open to the sky. The current occupants have covered the opening with corrugated plastic that has effectively turned the ground floor courtyard into a room. There are two lettable rooms and a basin on our level, and on the roof another two rooms, with a shared shower and squat loo a few stairs up. On the ground floor is a European loo, presumably used by the family, but also offered to us.
As we dozed this afternoon, the voices of women wafted up the central well to the mezzanine outside our room, along with the scents of aromatic spices cooking. It was reminiscent of childhood - voices not quite clear and the smell of food being prepared.
As we did in Casablanca, we have photographed key landmarks which we hope will guide us "home".
We cycled just under 30km today, but as 90% was on a mild incline, we arrived in the city exhausted and ravenous. We started our day with store-bought yoghurt and bananas and snacked on the road on an orange and crisps, and later on salted peanuts, but we are hungry for "real" food and have not yet fully resolved the scarcities associated with Ramadan.
I confess, when we saw an open McDonald’s, we made a beeline for it, despite a double cheese burger meal costing twice what it does in South Africa. (Don't despise me for knowing the price of a McDonald's burger!) [Where we stopped for peanuts and water outside a closed gate where a small retaining wall in the shade beckoned, a man suddenly opened the gate to peer out at us. We had no language in common, but he agreed we could sit for a while in his shade and brought me the seat off an old broken chair to make the sitting more comfortable.]
We may not have taken the "Marrakech Express", but we are here!