Frosty Galway!

From sun, beaches, and warm temps in north Africa, to a nation paralyzed by snow, ice and sub-zero temperatures. (some slippy streets and -5 closed schools for a week!)

The street in front of our house.

Benbaun (729m)

We arrived back home from Morocco to find Ireland covered in frost, ice, and a little snow. Fergal, Alex and I decided to check out the hiking conditions in Connemara.

The frozen ground make for great walking through areas where you'd be usually sinking into bog.

True. Mountain. Warriors.

This is how real mountaineers battle the elements. Jeans, rugby socks, lunch stuffed in jacket.

Fergal with the sure-footedness of a Nepalese mountain goat.

Alex looking for hand holds.

Leaving the rain in Spain, we flew to Morocco for the second part of our Christmas holidays. Of course it was beautiful and sunny the morning we left Spain.

We flew into Marrakesh, grabbed our transfer to the medina, and were promptly faced with tackling the maze.

Homeopathy pharmacies were you could find a cure for anything.

Kelly above the craziness of Djemaa el Fna, the main square in the medina. An amazing spectacle of snake-charmers, acrobats, story-tellers and dancers. In the right background you can see them setting up the food stalls for dinner.

The best restaurant in town.

Seriously! The street vendors were a great place to eat. Their skewers were delicious, you could see all of the ingredients layed out in front of you, and you know that it would be fully cooked, and it was cheap!

Our Riad (traditional Moroccan house with internal garden) was in the medina, a maze of streets, lanes, and tiny pathways brought us to a true sanctuary away from the chaos.

Our rooftop terrace where we could unwind with a glass of wine after wandering the bazaars. It was always a little bit of relief to find the riad at the end of the day.

Kelly drawing a map to get us back to the riad. Most necessary!!

You could wander and watch the artisans at their work.

Caution needed to be used as most people were extremely aversive to getting their photo taken.

We had a nice visit with this woodworker.

I couldn't get enough of the delicious street food.

We spent an afternoon at a fairly posh hammam. We both got mudded, scrubbed, cleaned, and massaged. Very nice indeed!

We also spent some quality time with the carpet sellers. We found an antique Berber carpet that we bartered very successfully for! (Not one of the ones in the photo)

After a few days we left Marrakech to head to the mountains with intentions to ski for a few days.

Villages in the hills on our way up to Oukaimeden, the "ski resort".

The base of the chairlift. Notice the absence of snow...

Which made me quite sour.

Riding the chairlift (in running shoes and capris) all Kelly and I wanted was a few hundred meters of snow that we could do some laps on.

Again, notice the absence of snow...

But we found our 200 meters (plus about another 200m)!!

She really is a fast skier.

Killer boots man!

A Moroccan ski lesson.

Kelly and the ski technician/rental shop manager

Since there was no snow, we were the only people in town, our crappy little hotel was extremely expensive and the owner treated us like garbage we decided to move on after a night (2 days earlier than planned). In the morning we quickly packed up the car, paid our bill (to the second in charge) and got out of town before we had to face the witch owner.

We headed to another town that was considered the hub for trekkers heading into the Atlas mountains. The drive through rural Morocco was really nice!

When we arrived our town of Asni we found a great guesthouse about 800m from town, up a steep hill. They were so friendly and even offered to take our bags up.

We had the house (and it's enormous terrace) all to ourselves. It was great for enjoying the sunshine, wine and views. The guesthouse had a great hammam that we could have a soak and scrub it.

A women's cooperative where they were making oil, soap, and other cosmetics.

Here we had the opportunity to get out for some hiking. We took the trail up towards the highest mountain in Morocco, Jebel Toubkal (4167m). The conditions were too icy for us to consider an ascent, full ice climbing gear would have been necessary.

The infrastructure for trekking in Morocco is quite extensive; lots of trails, refuges, and guides available to explore the Atlas Range.

A great place for an orange pop!

A refuge near the top of the pass.

From Asni, the road across the high passes to southern Morocco was pretty hairy. Tons of elevation gain/loss with no shoulder, just drop offs.

But on the other side of the pass we saw "GOATS IN TREES!!!!" (as Kelly screamed)

The Shepard.

We made our way a few hundred kilometers south of Agadir to spend our last few days on the beach.

Kelly and Dogs

We took a random road down to the coast and found hese women picking sea snails

Kelly and Octopuses

They were using rocks to smash the shell and putting the snails in a bucket to rinse off. I bent down to try my hand at it; when I had gotten the snail out the woman popped it into her mouth and ate it. She then shelled one for me...not very delicious...(Kelly had just warned me about eating shellfish in Morocco and that was racing through my head but couldn't turn her offer down) It was pretty gross.

The sun setting on our final day in North Africa.