And then there were two...

There had been a vital component missing to our trip the last couple of days. Kate. She has returned to Blighty where I hear the sun is shining for once and left Ellie and I to fend for ourselves. What with my very basic French, our inability to make decisions swiftly and diminishing funds confidence was high. We were going to be just fine.

Thankfully we had a great city within which to start our journey Kate-less. Fes is by far the best that Morocco has to offer. The hassle is low and everyone is very chilled out. It is a city that does not have to prove anything to anyone and is everything Marrakech isn't. It is the largest car-free area on the planet and so all you really have to watch out for are the donkeys, which Ellie often did for me because I was so engrossed in the amazing sights, smells and people of Fes to pay any notice to the cries of "Attencion!" To top it all off we were unable to get the Aladdin soundtrack out of our head for the first few days, something we welcomed.

The Fez medina is notorious around the world for getting lost in, it is far more confusing that the Marrakech souks and seems impossible to map. It was time to put the Lonely Planet down. And so, we got lost. Not just a "I think it's this way" lost but a "I dont have a clue" lost, in the mid day heat, with our old friends the sweat tashes. That's just the way we roll.

Thankfully Ellie has an incredible inner GPS system that hunts out ginger English men. And so we met Mike (a cross between Will Young and Griff Rys Jones - we liked him immediately) and he pointed us in the right direction home via his business Cafe Clock where we stopped for an iced coffee and waited for our upper lips to dry off. What a haven. It served non-Morrocon food i.e. not tagine and was the centre for Fes' artists. It was here we met Abdul and Omar, photographers and all round good guys. But more on that later.

The next day was possibly one of the most important of the trip so far. Fes is world renowned for its leather and tanneries and we were going to buy the dream leather bag and haggle like we had never haggled before. The good cop "Oh, I really like it" bad cop "but it's way too much let's go" routine was well rehearsed and we had picked up a few tips from various people. The leather merchants, alongside the carpet sellers, are notorious for their haggling skills and it was a battle. Ellie's was discovered quickly but we haggled for over an hour and had to leave and come back five times before they settled on a price. Then, ofcourse, they were our best friends. My dream bag was far more elusive and wasn't found until late in the afternoon in this old man's shop where he sewed them himself. Now I am a sucker for old people so Ellie i.e. bad cop really had to be on her game here because I would have paid anything. But we managed to get a good price for it and walked home to the sounds of "beautiful leather bags for beautiful ladies". Quite right.

The next day Abdul invited us round to his for tea. He lives in the Jewish quarter and has 14th century holy books and so it was too good an opportunity to miss. We had a wonderful afternoon with him and Omar drinking tea and learning classical guitar. They told us about how difficult it is to travel if you are Moroccan, how much they longed to see different parts of the world and their various run ins with corrupt police officers. The night before Abdul had his laptop/mobile phone etc. stolen at knife point. We realised their was a lot more to Fes outside of the medina's rose tinted walls, away from the tourist's gaze.

We organised to meet them at Cafe Clock later that evening but unfortunately it turned. Let me explain. Most men who seem completely harmless and refreshingly unpervy in Morocco always end up becoming, frustratingly, creepy. Ellie got some wierd texts from Abdul and we decided we shouldnt meet them. Maybe what he was saying was lost in translation or maybe our friendliness was misunderstood in a country where boys and girls generally arent just friends. Either way we feigned sickness and retired to our hostel where we met a Mancunian photographer called Simon and spent the evening being classically British over some beers and chocolate pancakes. It always turns in the end.

Never cry wolf. That night we fell ill, seriously ill. We had eaten a sandwich from a street stall that day and it poisoned us. I woke up in a delirious state not really knowing where I was and ended up on the floor of the bathroom (in a cheap hostel where men cant aim) cursing the meat butty. Ellie joined me after a few minutes. Lowpoint.

The next morning we awoke and decided to gamble on our guts and get the bus to ChefChouen. Thankfully we made it and it's is a beautiful blue city flanked by the Rif mountains. The best place to take a breather, recover and think how best to spend our last week in Morocco.