Listen for the thud

NEW YORK. DECEMBER 2

How did that happen? All of a sudden we’re staring down the barrel of the end of our adventures. In five months we’ve packed in 14 countries, god knows how many miles and a lifetime of experiences. As much as we’ve loved this journey we both agree it’s time for home.

We washed up in NY last week, for an unscheduled but welcome detour to visit my brother who had major and sudden heart surgery two weeks ago. A fit young thing and relentless over-achiever, he had a quintuple bypass out of the blue. Not ones to do things by halves, Mark and his husband James also threw in a full house move from Manhattan to Shelter Island this week. We never need an excuse to visit NY, so we’ve loved being here on soup, banter and unpacking duties. It’s a long road back, but the patient is staging a remarkable recovery. He’s getting stronger and wittier each day, the signs are good.

As luck would have it we were here on Shelter Island for Thanksgiving and this year feels like there’s much to be thankful for.  With no great appetite for turkey and pumpkin pie, Roger and I put our freshly-acquired skills to work and created a Moroccan tagine with the help of our new friend and adopted son, Mohammed. More on Mo in a mo…

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With the missionary work here almost done and we’re off to London tomorrow for one last bite of winter before plunging back into Summer. But not before an impromptu press conference on 5th Ave….

MOROCCO

Oh Morocco, where to start. It’s been on our bucket list and we’re so glad we took the advice of friends Rob and Dave and booked a week with the amazing local guide Moha. From day one we realised this was going to be more like a week-long roadie with our long-lost Moroccan son. The opportunity to spend endless hours in the car talking (more truthfully interrogating Mo) and deeply understanding what makes Morocco tick was such a privilege. His story is inspiring. Born in the desert to nomadic parents he spent the first part of his life living in a tent in the Sahara. Understandably registering his birth wasn’t a priority so he thinks he’s either 31 or 32 and was born in a January. Minor detail. Fast forward a few decades and he now has a degree in English Literature, speaks four languages and runs a thriving tourism business. 

The visuals of Morocco are so powerful and beautiful. The pics speak for themselves…

Once Mo realised we had ruin overload and short attention spans the itinerary went out the window. We experienced Mo’s Morocco. We ate local street food – every day a tagine for lunch and a minimum four courses every night. We stayed in a family riad in a remote gorge. We ran errands for his friends all over Morocco and and Mo generously introduced us to his family.

EXCLAMATION MARKS VS COMMAS

Since we left home we’ve had so many once in a lifetime experiences. Big and memorable exclamation marks. As it turns out, the quiet and unexpected moments where we’ve connected with special people or places, are some of our greatest memories. One of these was a day that started out at Mo’s local village market on the edge of the Sahara. Very local. We’re talking a bustling goat market (Mo helpfully shared what to look for when buying a goat), and instead of a carpark, a pen where you park your donkey and shop for everything from dates and live chickens to second hand bikes for the kids. We were clearly the only tourists, conspicuous with our hair standing out like a couple of silver domes. Wandering around here and seeing the produce freshly-dug and all organic explained why these Moroccans are so healthy and live forever.  

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From there Mo took us to his family’s home for lunch. As the first son it’s his job to provide for his parents and five siblings. The day the first son starts working is the day the father stops. Bad news for the Gwynnes.  Apart for the incredible food (eaten directly from the same bowl by all) the family were warm, generous and funny. The parents didn’t speak of word of English but with a few charades and facial expressions we figured out we liked each other a lot. Apparently it’s the tradition to henna the hands of female guests so Mo’s sister spent a good hour on an intricate and beautiful design which transformed these gnarly old paws. 
Roger was a hit with Mo’s dad of course and he showed his appreciation by giving Rog his own  jillaba. That’s the traditional Berber get-up with the pointy hoods below. As we’ve both happily eaten ourselves into a  tagine shape, expect the jillaba to be hiding a few sins at Opito this summer. 
 A very humbling experience and one of the most incredible days for us both.

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SUNDAYS IN A CASABLANCA POLICE STATION

Our stay in Morocco got off to a pretty shaky start, with me accidentally booking us into a riad an hour or so away from our target destination of Casablanca. As the taxi wove its way through darker and darker backstreets late at night, I quietly thought it was a pretty dodgy area – and was surprised at how small and underwhelming Casablanca was. We’ve learnt on this trip to expect the unexpected so no conclusions jumped to. It wasn’t until we’d unpacked and Googled ‘Casablanca restaurants near me’ that the penny dropped. The nearest restaurant of any note was 95 kms away.  

 No worries, we had a great night and relocated to the actual Casablanca the next morning. In retrospect we should have stayed put. 

After dumping our bags we raced out to explore the medina and within minutes, a deft motorcyclist had snatched the phone right out of my hands. If I wasn’t so outraged, I’d have been in awe of his precision, timing and gall.  Clearly a pro, he pulled it off with such skill and speed. Well you’d think it was the first phone ever to be stolen in Casablanca – or the whole of Morocco. Locals swarmed around us offering advice and help and apologies. The concierge at the hotel escorted us around the neighbourhood visiting backstreet iPhone shops looking for a replacement. Once he realised we were looking for an ‘original’  the brief got tougher and he packed us off to a shopping mall. Eventual success and it seems I snaffled the last iPhone 11 in Casablancan-captivity. Phew. 

Now the tricky part, getting a police report for insurance purposes. We decided to park that one until we met up with our guide Mohammed the next morning, figuring his local knowledge and language would come in handy. 

As you can imagine Sunday morning in a Moroccan police station is quite an eyeopener. No uniforms, not a lot of urgency and big guns slung casually over shoulders. And smoking. Lots of smoking. While we provided every last detail of the theft (and curiously, the names of my long-gone parents and our children) a couple of dodgy-looking guys were handcuffed together on a bench behind us – and STILL managing to chain-smoke. Lawyers came and went, the paddywagon pulled in with a load of kids rounded up for all the usual Saturday night Muslim crimes. Moha had warned us to look serious and aggrieved so we did our very best as the world’s slowest typist typed the report on the world’s oldest typewriter. IN ARABIC. AA Insurance we thought, won’t be buying this. We needn’t have worried as, just as we were about to walk out with the report in our hot little hands he started all over again IN FRENCH! A couple of hours later we hit the road with our first Moroccan adventure under our belt.  

THE CARRIE BRADSHAW MOMENT

No visit to Morocco is complete without riding a camel into the Sahara. It’s a truly breathtaking experience and the images of camel silhouettes, Sex in the City doppelgangers and desert sunsets will stay with us forever. It really felt like riding through a postcard. We camped out in the desert and were cosy in one of the few camps with heating and plumbing – and the knowledge that snakes stay underground in the cold.

GOOD NEWS FOR HARRIET

In our case, we had the added bonus of being led into the desert by a young nomad called Abrahim. A real character, he was curious about NZ and especially our daughters. We showed him photos and explained Ali and Maddy were spoken for. He really fell for Harriet and quickly offered us a lifetime of free camel rides as a trade. We’re still considering the logistics of a Sahara wedding and rounding up the goats for a dowrie. Tempting.

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Morrocco has been vast, vibrant, moving and overwhelming at times. We couldn’t have ended our adventures in a better way.

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ITALY

Before Morocco we landed on our feet in a wonderful trullo a few kms out of a small Puglian village called Ceglie Messapica. These trullo (or trulli when there’s a bunch of them) are everywhere in the Puglia region and look bizarre, much like a film set. Like our cave experiences in Turkey, they’re wonderfully cool in the summer, are endlessly Instagram-able – but come winter, they hold the moisture and get cold and damp, fast. Oh for the sunny slopes of Mt Eden!

One of the bonuses of this trip has been spending so much time with our London kids. Ali had a few days leave up her sleeve so jumped on a plane and spent long weekend with us in Ceglie. The trullo were set in a small organic olive farm and with the olives ripe and ready for picking, the place felt and smelt amazing.

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ANOTHER COMMA

Unfortunately the olive harvesters arrived the day after Ali left, but we were so grateful to have been there.

Like our experience in Morocco, Ceglie turned out to deliver another unexpected highlight. Our Air BnB host Antonella and her husband Sevario invited us to the (very) local pressing plant to watch their olives turned into glorious, green extra virgin olive oil. Apparently, to produce the ultimate EVOO, olives need to be picked and pressed within the day. Theirs broke all the records, with the olives picked, pressed, bottled and tasted all within a couple of hours. The anticipation and excitement by the local growers as they watch their harvest arrive, get weighed, processed and then getting a first taste is like the birth of a first child. It’s a major ritual in the Italian countryside and we were so fortunate to be part of such a special and authentic moment.

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The taste is just unbelievable – so much so we were looking for civilised ways use as much as possible, but ended up relenting and just drinking it neat! 

A GUILTY LITTLE SECRET

Speaking of food – and when are we not – Antonella is a real foodie (show me an Italian that isn’t) and recommended a local restaurant called Cibus. A very swish place in a cave (of course) we were surprised to see so much horse on the menu. That is, until we spotted the braised donkey. Hoping it was a case of ‘lost in translation’ we asked the young waiter whether it was really ‘donkey’ donkey. He looked a little sheepish and assured us that not only was it donkey-donkey, but also his standout favourite dish. Turns out it’s not really PC to eat donkey,  but anybody we asked about it shamefully but enthusiastically agreed it was out of this world!

Antonella’s family – and the average Italian household – will easily get through 60 litres of oil a year. Apparently there’s not a lot you CAN’T do with it.  We were lucky enough to be given a bottle of the spoils and nursed it across thousands of miles through Morocco then onto New York. We may be leaving a dribble or two behind, although I suspect we’ll be down to the dregs. We can’t thank Antonella enough for our crash course in life-in-small-town-Italy and what makes the Italians and their love of food and family so special. 

Our biggest learning: Nobody gets out of Italy without a doggie bag and a spare tyre! 

A few of our new friends and adventures in Italy

Touring through Italy and Croatia in November we felt a bit like ghost tourists. Most businesses close up in early November which on the upside, helps to narrow down the options and bring down the prices. Other positives are that we’ve been the only ones on a guided cycle tour. We’ve had a day of cooking classes with a spectacular and charismatic teacher Gianna, all to ourselves. More than a few times, have had a whole restaurant to ourselves for the night and at the Trullo, we were the only guests for the week. The downside is that with guests few and far between, the remaining open hotels shut down their in-room heating/AC system. As we found out too late, you have to ask for it to be turned on. As great as it is to beat the crowds, Italy just doesn’t taste and feel the same without all the racket and mayhem.

So as we head back to London for the third and last time, we’re looking forward to getting a taste of Christmas in the cold where the snow and lights make more sense. We’ll corral all our worldly belongings into a couple of suitcases and in a week, head homewards. Our shorts and jandals are ready to burst back out the suitcase and we’re looking forward to settling into a Summer in Godzone.

If you hear an almighty thud in a week or so, that’ll be us coming back down to earth. Can’t wait to see you all!

Beware the slideshow! XX