14 February 2025

West Africa


The journey from Alicante in Spain to Fes in Morocco was pretty standard and uneventful. The plane left on time and there was no hassle or inconvenience. The journey was quite short, about the same distance from Dublin to London. I had a brief nap and, before I knew where I was, we had landed.

Everything was quite speedy and efficient and I was through immigration in five minutes or so. I got to the luggage carousel and my bags arrived almost immediately. I popped these on a trolley and went out to the public arrivals concourse. I was expecting to be mobbed by hordes of people who want to sell me things but this did not happen. I had booked a cab when I booked my flight and sure enough there was a guy with my name on a piece of paper standing just outside the arrivals gate. A brief taxi ride later and I ended up in my hotel for the night. It actually is a bungalow with a little kitchen and a real bath. Not bad and only €20 a night.

Once I has settled in, I rambled down to find my fellow travellers. As expected, they were a very varied bunch of people around the middle to upper age range. I met a few of them and had a chat but it was getting late and they were all beginning to ramble off to their tents. I met the Madventure staff and concluded some admin work with them. They were very friendly and helpful.

Really interesting being back in Africa again. The journey from the airport to the hotel was through landscape I recognized from my journeys through Central Asia, Africa and Arabia. One of the things that always strikes me about warm countries is where everything is lived on the street. There was also the old endearing African and Arabian ramshackleness and untidiness. Maybe they’re efficiently tidy while we in the West are overefficiently tidy. Mind you, walking around some of the streets in inner city Dublin, you’d feel right at home here in Africa.

I decided to get an early night as I was knackered from the journey. I read for a bit and then turned the light off. Almost immediately, I heard a demonic buzz. Aha, feckin’ mozzies, I’d forgotten about them. I turned the lights on and sprayed myself with DEET 50% and went back to sleep again.

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