November 11 - December 4, 2010
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The motivation for this trip was simple: spend Thanksgiving weekend with Patty’s daughter Jennifer and her family in Bamako, Mali, West Africa. Jennifer works there at the U.S. Embassy. (Actually, her husband, Louay, does as well.) Her tour of duty at this remote post will last only until June 2011. So, our special incentive to visit Mali was soon to disappear.
Since this trip would take us to Africa already, we reasoned, why not add a tour of nearby Morocco, a country which has long intrigued us? As it turned out, Insight Vacations had a “10 Day” tour called “Best of Morocco” with dates convenient to our intended Thanksgiving visit. We signed up, aware that there would be only seven days of guided touring, with travel subtracted.
In retrospect, now that we are safely home, it is clear that this Insight tour of Morocco exceeded our expectations. We traveled on a modern, comfortable coach with a capacity of 40 passengers but only 32 aboard. Consequently, we had lots of elbow and leg room and fine visibility. The hotels were very good and the tour director excellent. Abdelouahab has worked for Insight for 26 years and has many friends along our tour route. A genuine “people-person”, he was helpful, knowledgeable, caring and fun. Sometimes, his accent made him a bit difficult to understand but his other qualities more than compensated.
The makeup of our 32-person tour group was surprisingly varied with a wide age range. About half of us were born in the USA while the other half originated in Australia, Singapore, South Africa, Russia or Tunisia. The mix was dynamic and pleasant.
A tour of seven days in Morocco and a visit of eight days in Mali hardly qualify us as experts on these countries. It would take an American far longer to develop a deep understanding of life and culture in this part of the world, so different from our own. If we had had more time, how might we have expanded our experience? In Morocco, we would have definitely included a visit to the Roman ruins at Volubilis, a stay in the coastal town of Essaouira and an overnighter surrounded by Saharan sands at Merzouga (depicted in the Home Page’s Internet photo). More time in Mali would have made an overnight trip to Timbuktu feasible. We badly underestimated the difficulty of making travel arrangements internally in Mali. Use of the Internet to make reservations there is still in its infancy.
The map below clarifies where Morocco and Mali are located. Morocco is south of Spain and Mali is south of Morocco:
The Tropic of Cancer passes through northern Mali.
An interesting fact about Morocco is that it was the first nation to recognize the infant United States (in 1777). It remains one of America’s oldest and closest allies in the Middle East and North Africa.
Both countries were once occupied by France. That is probably why Air France flies to both countries today from Paris. All of our flights were with that airline, principally because of the evening arrival and departure times for Bamako. (Other airlines arrive and depart in the middle of the night.)
The “ravenous wildlife” that concerned us most were mosquitoes in Mali. Even though we had had mandatory, yellow-fever innoculations before the trip and were taking anti-malaria medicine, these little biters have the potential to mess up your life. Would you believe, neither of us sustained even one bite! In addition to our watchful prudence, we attribute that partly to our use of Deet, and partly to good fortune. We encountered mosquitoes even inside Bamako International Airport and single-handedly slew several there! It is worth noting that only some mosquitoes carry diseases. However, we never did learn to distinguish those from the others.