{"id":676,"date":"2013-12-29T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-29T09:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/?p=676"},"modified":"2014-01-02T05:28:36","modified_gmt":"2014-01-01T18:58:36","slug":"escape-from-marrakech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/?p=676","title":{"rendered":"Escape from Marrakesh"},"content":{"rendered":"

As much as we loved Marrakesh – and there really is nothing like it – we were pretty excited to get out of the city and get some peace and fresh air in the High Atlas Mountains. Our plan to get there seemed fairly straightforward… get a taxi to the bus station to buy our tickets to a destination later in the trip, then taxi to the place where the grand (shared) taxis leave from and we’re on our way. Step one was easy: predictably, we got hunted down by taxi drivers from 500m away, argued about the price of the ride for a while, pretended to walk off, then got in the taxi when they agreed to our (more than reasonable) offer.<\/p>\n

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We got our Tafroute bus tickets with no problems, repeated the argue and pretend walk off taxi dance again, and got dropped at the grand taxi station.<\/p>\n

There were definitely a lot of taxis there, and dozens of eager grand taxi drivers swarming around us….but it turns out it was the wrong grand taxi station for where we were going. Thanks to the helpful young local guy who helped us figure that out and a sarcastic thanks to our hostel owner who sent us there (we should have trusted the lonely planet). We then found a petit taxi driver to argue with, although the pretend walk off was less effective when we were in the absolute middle of nowhere with no idea where to stride off to.<\/p>\n

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We then got dropped at the correct grand taxi station which was basically an empty car park with two taxis in it and a few hopeful men. It was at a completely different place to the map, so Josh had a big stand off with them about taking us to the wrong place (and any argument in Morocco always seems to involve anyone within walking distance). It turns out that the station had moved and we were not actually being scammed.<\/p>\n

So we hung around waiting hopefully for more tourists to arrive to fill up our grand taxi, and a half full taxi arrived a few minutes later. The mysterious Moroccan taxi driver network had produced some tourists already on their way to Imlil so we both squeezed in the back seat with another couple, while the taxi driver’s wife sat comfortably in the front seat. By the way, the “grand” part doesn’t actually refer to the size of the taxi – they are very tiny. Therefore, we were squashily punished for our tightarse ways for the whole hour and a half trip.<\/p>\n

Our guesthouse was slightly further out of town than indicated by their directions on hostelworld but it was worth the hike up the steep mountain with all our gear on. The bathroom has a door instead of a curtain and we’ve got amazing views out to the mountains.<\/p>\n

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We did a three hour loop through another small village, starting up high with views over the whole valley and ending up down low along the river.<\/p>\n

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We took a small 20 minute detour…an easy mistake to make. Josh actually has an excellent sense of direction (and I do not) but he can never admit when it’s extremely likely that we’re lost. If he ever uses the phrase “my gut instinct tells me it’s just up there”, it generally means we missed the turn 2km ago. Anyway, we turned up back at our hostel well before dark and agreed to get a guide for our serious hike the next day (to avoid our frozen skeletons being found weeks later).<\/p>\n

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As much as we loved Marrakesh – and there really is nothing like it – we were pretty excited to get out of the city and get some peace and fresh air in the High Atlas Mountains. Our plan to get there seemed fairly straightforward… get a taxi to the bus station to buy our…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.pennyandjosh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}