Tuesday, 26th August
I had a close encounter of the toad kind last night. We were having a nightcap, as usual, on our front terrace, when Troy spotted a large frog. Being partial to frogs, and not just grilled with sauce, and decided to pick up our little green visitor. Clearly alarmed by being lifted four foot in the air, my warty friend sprayed all over us, out of which orifice I wouldn’t like to speculate. My favourite holiday DVF, covered in frog juice. Who’d have thought that a single amphibian, even a large one, could contain so much fluid. Taking the hint, I set him down to let him hop away into the night.
We left the vast airy spaces of Jnane Tamsna, and took the hot dusty road to Caravan Serai. The location of this hotel is so obscure, even the taxi driver got lost repeatedly. This hotel is also beautiful, but in a totally different way. While the buildings are far more traditional, there is more of an emphasis on creature comforts. Our suite consists of: a dressing room, bathroom, loo, front sitting area, bedroom, rear living room, oh, and our own private pool. Here there is convenient WiFi, stereo, TV, and music in the bar, not to mention a proper wine list.
We were serenaded over supper with traditional Gnawa music, and the cat who says ‘Ow’ tried, in vain, to cadge a bit of tagine. We encouraged it to say ‘Miaow,’ but it stuck with the simpler ‘Ow.’ There are several cats, at least three tortoises, and many brightly coloured tiny birds. I tried to feed one prehistoric tortoise with a tempting blade of grass, but it just got pissed off and chased me around the garden.
Wednesday, 27th August
Do you want the good news, or the bad news? Let’s get the bad news out of the way, we found out that my father is going to need a pretty major operation, sooner rather than later, which is all I’m prepared to say for the time being.
Needless to say, the good news doesn’t really make up for it, but here we go. When we were here in February, Xanthe and I went into one of the Prix Fixe jewellery shops. The items in these shops cost a premium, but are of certifiable quality, and the best part is, no haggling. Like Brian, in the eponymous Life Of, I hate haggling. I suppose it’s because I’m impatient. In this shop we found a gorgeous necklace, made of facetted tourmaline beads, strung in several rows. It was graduated from green to brown, and back to green, and would have matched my colouring perfectly. For some reason, trapped in the obscurity of time, I failed to whip out my credit card, and have been regretting it ever since.
Today we returned to the Medina, purely to search the souk for ‘my’ necklace. After some searching, we found the shop in question. Disaster! The necklace had apparently been sold during the intervening six months. In its place was a complex, tourmaline twisty jobbie, without the subtle colour gradations, and costing half as much again. I consoled myself with a chunky red resin and silver piece of ethnoeco, and we went to find a cab. Exiting from the south-west corner of the souk, we found one last prix fixe. I was bursting from the heat at this point, so I wanted to explore the interior to get the benefit of the air conditioning, as much as anything else. And there it was… I whipped out the plastic faster than you can say credit crunch, and now it is mine, all mine.
We had supper at the hotel again, and retired to our pool for a drink. Troy pointed out a drowning rat, no, not me struggling to get out of the water, but a genuine, bona fide, drowning, wild, black rat. In a humanitarian effort worthy of the UN, I attempted to rescue it. It showed its gratitude for being lifted from the murky depths by sinking its incisors into my right index finger. A pure cartoon moment was had, as the rodent was suspended in space, hanging onto my finger, while I screamed for Africa. Quick-thinking Troy got me to plunge my hand back into the water, to make Roland let go. He then used my Tory Burch flip-flop to bat it back into the centre of the pool, where it eventually drowned. Nice.
So now my honeymoon has left me at risk of rat-bite fever and rabies. Any more diseases starting with ‘R,’ anyone?
Thursday, 28th August
After last night’s episode I am quite jumpy, and scream like a girl when one of the tortoises unexpectedly nudges me in the garden. The manager has kindly offered a free manicure, pedicure and reflexology, to make up for the curious incident of the rat in the night. However, giving a manicure, even if it’s free, to someone with a cut and swollen finger, perhaps wasn’t the best of ideas.
This afternoon Troy and I both had massages, from the local specialist Kabir. He had an extraordinary knack of silent circling, like a shark. Troy declared his, ‘Mental,’ while I preferred the term ‘Challenging.’
Put it this way, it’s the only time that I’ve had a massage, and been grateful that I’d thought to have a bikini wax last week.
Caravan Serai
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