We found ourselves spending Christmas by the sea at Oualidia (sounds a bit like wah-LID-ia). The place was seafood heaven; there were stalls selling fresh fish and vendors on bicycles offering fresh fish and locally grown fruit and vegetables – and, bizarrely, sellers of windscreen wiper blades who were doing a roaring trade. We bought oysters the size of tea plates from a nearby stall, they were delicious.
We stayed for two nights in a paved parking area adjacent to the fresh fish stalls and a row of outdoor restaurants. It cost £4 a night, no electricity but there were toilets. There were thirty or so other camper vans parked there – Portuguese, German, French, Swiss and Italian and one other British van. No-one wished us a happy Christmas unless we said it first – they were a dour lot.
Avoiding the restaurant shacks, we had lunch on Christmas Day at the local hotel where the dining room overlooked the bay. We enjoyed spider crab, lobster, squid and various fried fishes washed down with a bottle of rosé wine. The weather was warm enough to sit outside for a couple of hours in the afternoon – but the rain clouds were never far away.
Hoping to dodge the wet weather, we continued heading south to Marrakesh. We stayed at Ourika Camping from where, in November 2017, I posted one of my first blogs. On this current visit it rained so heavily that we couldn’t leave the truck without getting soaked. It wasn’t cold, but it was pretty miserable.
It didn’t stop raining for the two whole days we were at Ourika. We had dinner in the restaurant, purely as a change of scenery from the cosy inside of our truck – chicken tagine, cooked with lemon and olives, a Moroccan salad, bread, French fries and a dessert made with crèpes, the whole meal cost £16. They didn’t serve wine but didn’t mind that we brought our own. It was still raining when we left the following morning.
