20231109-20231110 Marrakech – Skoura: This comprises two days for what will be obvious below. So, I have Covid as stated in my last log. Thursday, I spent most of the day in my room. Went down for breakfast, lunch, and supper. Otherwise, in the room. Now, let’s talk about the room. There is no chair to sit on. Not sure how a person needing to sit and do makeup would handle this. For me, it meant sitting on the bed to do any computer work. And the nearest 220V receptacle was partially hanging off the wall. Could not use that, for sure. And I had a dandy view of the swimming pool rather than anything outside the hotel. The sink splashed water and the sink drain didn’t work. The bathtub had a hand shower head but it didn’t reach the latch in the wall to you could put it over your head. And there was neither a curtain nor any barrier to keep water from getting on the bathroom floor. I endured this last night, but as you will see, even that was not an option today.
When I returned from supper, the whole bathroom and out into the room’s hallway was covered with water. It was coming from the base of the toilet. One of my several calls to the front desk brought a maid who tried to get the water off the floor with just a rag and a bucket. Nowhere in this evening of trauma did anyone use a mop! So, water kept coming out. The in-house night maintenance person tried tinkering with stuff somewhere on a lower floor (I could hear clunks and clanks). Time passed and finally two plumbers showed up carrying a long snake. The pulled the toilet and inserted the snake to no avail. It seems this was a hotel system problem that had manifest in my room and, I think, no others. The water stayed and stayed. I kept trying to get updates. I went to the lobby floor to use restroom there a few times. At one point, I thought they were going to change my room. But no. Hotel full with no empty rooms. The water stayed and stayed. Finally, at 2AM the night accountant came up to tell me it was fixed. I left my room’s door ajar, took off my shoes, climbed into bed otherwise fully dressed. I am not sure when they came to remove the accumulated pond, but I could see around 3AM that my room’s door was closed.
Friday, I got up at 6:45, did minimal stuff in the bathroom. No chance to bathe or shave. Went down for breakfast, rolled my luggage outside the room for the porters to get around 8:15, and sat in the lobby, masked, away from others, until be boarded our bus near 9:00.
Today was a long drive to Skoura and our lovely hotel, KASBAH KEBBABA, SKOURA,in the high desert. The drive today was into to High Atlas Mountains. Saw some of the earthquake damage, but we were really at the edge of where it had been. Beautiful scenery. Emerged onto the high desert, flat, stone and sand. There are several movie/TV studios up here. The natural light and the flat scenery seem good for that. And there are lots of “for rent” apartments in the area for the hundreds and thousands that come up to work when a movie being made. Also could see the glow from light collectors in the middle of vast solar arrays.
The hotel is really nice. Such a change from the last two night, for sure. In the Asfalou room. Put things away and went to dinner at 7:00, and sat at a separate table. Then back to the room and had a staff member show me how to turn on the heat. When the Sun goes down, it gets cold fast. Looking forward to a long soak in the shower!
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