Day 34 Ceuta

We arrive early in Ceuta (the small Spanish town / enclave on the Moroccan coast), after passing through the exhaustive frontier check. It's like suddenly being catapulted into mainland Spain. It's even raining sharply as we park, and we feel like we are in another world. After eating a full spanish lunch menu (no ramadan daytime eating problems here!) and taking a well needed siesta, we meet with the guys from "Ceuta Hiphop Culture", a youth hip hop organisation with a super positive vibe who are up for doing something.

As we only have from 5pm till sundown, it's really quite a mission to get them to write 5 verses, memorise them, find a location, and record all 5 rappers. They step up to the challenge and come up with some interesting rhymes and pull off some decent performances, despite not having much time to memorise the words and having to do it all on camera! The wind and fading light at the viewpoint over the city where we decide to shoot also add to the pressure... Only once we are back in Barcelona and can watch the footage will we know for sure what stuff came out but hopefully we have some good material. Anyway thanks guys for all your efforts!

After dropping the gang off, we take a moment to make some production notes about mistakes made and lessons learned for next time, and decide to head straight on towards Tangiers as we have a full day ahead of us there too. Right before leaving, we catch a quick drink with Yomi and he tells us that the rhythms of the track we have been working on remind him of Nigerian rhythms he learned when he was young, and so we spontaneously record a vocal performance of Nigerian "talking drum rhythm" styles to add to the mix.







Many thanks to Cielo Club, Pablo Petrus, Yomi and the guys.

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DAY 33 - RIF MOUNTAINS AND CHEFCHAOUEN

We realise that we have a lot of images of "old" morocco (the amazing markets and medinas that every visitor is enchanted by) but not so much of "modern" Moroccan life, so we start amending this by pass through Fes to record footage of the modern "Ville Nouvelle", also recording some haunting footage in the cities old cemetary as in the twilight it looks amazing. We then head north on the road to Chefchauoen.

We stop near the road for the night, and the next day are greeted by bemused locals who are filling their tanks with water from a roadside public tap and taking it away by donkey. These amazing animals are still the backbone of much of rural Moroccan life...

Heading into the stunning Rif mountains, we arrive at Chefchauoen, which is a very pretty village, a beautiful mixture of pale blue and white streets. We spend a lovely day shopping for bits and pieces, wandering around the streets and enjoying the drop in temperature as we are heading north. The people are really quite relaxed and happy, and it makes a change from the more hectic medinas of Fes, Meknes and Marrakesh. (Maybe it has something to do with all the Marajuana grown round in the region??). Simon gets a shopping mania and gets the pants charmed off him by a particularly clever salesman who spots him a mile away. You certainly learn something about the art of negotiation in Morocco!

We head north towards Ceuta, and even though we could cross over the border right away, we decide it might be more interesting to cross during the day, especially if we can get some footage of the vibe on the border.

We camp right on the water's edge in a very upmarket Marina with expensive looking boats that reminds us of the south of Spain. The local guard cheerily allows us to stay the night, which is a nice surprise.

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