Tiznit

Wed 17th Dec

As promised the gasman arrived, complete with red, British cylinder the correct size. The price is good and we happily tell him to keep our old cylinder and give him the Turkish one as well. All parties are well satisfied with this transaction.

Happy to move on from somewhere akin to Toromolinos, we reach to town of Tiznit. It is famous for the 5k mud and sand wall which surrounds it. It is impressive and must require almost constant maintenance. Inside is the kasbah. We find the campsite we had earlier read about, which is alongside the wall. It's location is good but again it's facilities leave more than a little to be desired. It is a little less packed than the Agadir site. We are starting to think that Morocco is actually a suburb of France! I am still at a loss to know why people long term on sites like these?

It was the wall we wanted to see though, so a night here will do. There are some other Brits here, they were caught in the floods, cut off at Sidi Ifni for a while until the road could be repaired. They tell us that as far as they know the road to the Foreign Legion Fort we were hoping to camp at, is still impassable.

We walk along the wall and into the kasbah. Tiznit is also famous for its silverware. Earlier on in the day, we thought it wise to fill Fay right up with diesel in case there were shortages further on. This we did, in a modern filling station which accepts Visa card. The only problem was that having filled right up and presented the card, the attendant then discovered that the line connection was still down! Consequently, our fill up cleaned us out of nearly all the cash we had on us. Since we were not intending spending more today, this shouldn't have been a problem and indeed it wouldn't have were it not for a certain very pretty sliver, filigree bracelet! The bargaining for this, over a cup of mint tea, concluded in us leaving the shop with only one dirham between us and Richard minus his wallet! The trader had taken a liking to Richard's Animal branded wallet, so once emptied, took this in part exchange for my handcrafted piece of prettiness. Whatever the actual value of the bracelet maybe, it now has sentimental value attached!