Marrakesh Express!   

Date of visit = 2000

Pilot: = mani

e-mail = mani@mcmail.com

our departure was delayed by about 90 mins due to late running of inbound easyjet flight from scotland. due to the slightly late arrival (2 hours by that time) our checkout in malaga was postponed. our instructor that was doing the checkout took us over to the airplane, as he wanted to get some video footage of the airplane for the club's web site; i'm now a movie star (apparently).

The ramp at Malaga

1 11 00:
checkout day for us both. i received a real grilling, marek only did 2 tg's as time was pressing for the instructor, he had to get back for an photo shoot which he was flying. malaga to cordoba for the checkout. cordoba was self announce radio. a large airport but not very busy at all, almost a ghost airport! we passed the checkout, but on return to malaga aircraft went tech; the low volt indicator staying on, and the gyro kept spinning... even with the master switched off. we guessed a sticky relay. i always thought the master was *guaranteed* to switch off the electrics. seems not in this case.

we called out mariam and her husband paco from their holiday to get the airplane fixed, but luckily enough marek fiddled with switch again and got the airplane working! there was talk of replacing the 172rg with a 172, and us coming back in a couple of days to pick up the rg when it was fixed, but marek and i agreed to take the risk and fly it, so, off to seville we flew.

we arrived at seville ga terminal and refused a lift in the crew bus to the terminal building, which gave us time to fill out logbooks whilst sitting on the edge of the concrete ga ramp. we took 1 hour to complete the records, and felt the binoculars of atc personnel watching the crazy english. walked to the ga terminal, and fixed my now floppy sandals (the sole had failed on the right sandal) with sellotape (at time of writing they are held together with the plastic of a beer 6-pack). we were met by the police in the terminal who looked confused, where did they come from? they cheered up a bit when we advised aviacion general in pure spanish (franglais :)) accent.

cleared the terminal after changing ukp's into pasetas (marek had been paying for most things up until then).

waited 1-1/2 hours for a bus into seville centro (today was a spanish fiesta day), then walked non-stop for a further 1-1/2 hours to find a hostel, but the town was so picturesque in the evening light, the sore feet were worth it. hostel toledo in santa theresa 15 in seville behind the cathedral and bishops palace had a room for us. later we found hostel picasso close by

(at pasetas 4900 a night for a twin room) which was decorated by a painter on lsd. really fantastic. it would have been preferable, but we werent about to complain at the deal we already had. ate tapas of tuna, pork, chicken, anchovies, potato salad covered in mayo and lots of local beer. walked around the cathedral and small squares with beautifully decorated courtyards. much of the architecture is lit up, a la touristo, but it only added to the beauty of the place.

the electricity bill to the local council was worth it, of that i'm sure :) the beauty of the surroundings were indescribable, the colours, the form, the smells... yes, seville is very much a beautiful city.

later we found a 24hr internet shop and sent a few emails to friends for 100 pasetas. not the best deal i've come across, but hey, we were on holiday :)

thursday 2 11 00:
started out for the airfield at about 10am, walked around the corner to a tapas bar and took breakfast of cerano ham on tostadas sprinkled with olive oil. met a lady called barbara hertzig sitting next to us at the bar, and got chatting. she could not believe her ears when I invited her to come with us to portimao in portugal. "what do you mean" she asked, and marek produced his airplane drivers licence... i advised barbara that i was marek's engineer, and i was the one that had to refuel the airplane, oil the engine, kick the tyres, he just came along and flew it. i'm really not sure what she believed :) she had other business, so had to decline our kind and generous offer, but seemed very tempted and amused all the same... i think it was her first offer of that kind . we arrived at the airport using the public bus service, which turned out to be a plush coach (20 mins ride for ukp1.50) but found tafs of both faro and seville to be well below what we wanted to accept. hired a car from avis (with the first upgrade ive had in years) and drove to bahia de cadiz on the west coast. we had a quick meal, and a walk around, but the atmosphere was not same as seville. it was more of a harbour town.

journied back to seville in thick drizzle. took 3 hours of searching for car park and hostel to sleep for the night (3 hostels were full) and walked for about 4 miles up n down the beautiful seville streets. i'm writing this at 2am in the hostal bed just having found vacancy whilst marek smokes a ciggy in the courtyard to chill out to. agreed to get up early (0915) tomorrow to enable some flying to be done, possibly portimao in portugal, as weather has now cleared to a starry sky. need to return to malaga (friday) evening to meet up with reuben who was due in at about midnight. saw harveys bristol cream and domecq distilleries in jerez, but jerez certainly wasn't the town we expected, not seeing any older parts to it after driving around for quite a while. we came to the conclusion that jerez was a 'dump' and planned a return to taste the producione at some later date. popped into superstore carrefour to buy sandals and backpack but they surprisingly didnt have what i wanted, but had almost everything else ! the size of the store was immense, and it became obvious that the spanish eat a lot better quality fresh food than we do. pictures that follow will tell a story all in themselves.

fri 3 11 00:
take off from seville today in good wx but gear horn kept sounding... tried 5 times to cycle the gear and clear the problem at the northern reporting point of the airport, but the gear horn would not stop - the circuit breaker cannot easily be popped out either, or so we found out later, so called the tower and requested a non-emergency return to the field for a checkout. so circuiting around we requested a low fly by the tower for an inspection, first with wheels up for a check and then with wheels down on the 2nd pass... seeing wheels up on first pass seemed to get the controller to leap to the red crash alarm button, and we were asked to make the next pass and landing next to the 2nd turnoff from the runway, where the fire trucks were waiting for us to have our accident. the touchdown was the slowest i've ever made in a c172, kissy soft, and of course the gear held without problems. the touchdown was a non event - it seems the problem was only a wayward microswitch.

after discussing the problems with the local staff, we called the aero club at malaga, and agreed that the airplane was safe to fly back to malaga with the horn fuse pulled out, just to be sure our speeds were correct, as the stall warner would be disabled also. i was very careful to ensure the airplane owner was ok'ing this flight, but i'm not sure as to it's legality. if the warner is fitted, i'd guess it should work ? anyway....

whilst at malaga we filed our flightplan for tomorrows flight to morocco, awaited reuben's arrival, and started to program the gps units with the many waypoints necessary to route to marrakesh. there are about 15 vfr waypoints that the moroccans want us to follow, and it was a tedious task of about 2 hours work to program them, and check them. 24hours notice of intention of flight is required into moroccan airspace, so juan-ma got busy and faxed a flight plan for us, whilst we busied ourselves studying maps, entering a gps route into our handheld garmin pilot III's, and drinking coffee...

i'm writing this whilst waiting for reuben's arrival whilst marek tries to get some sleep in the car parked outside the aero club as he's very tired (we both are shattered in fact) (just as i type this in walks marek - unable to sleep in the car due to the noise of partying spaniards in the local club). we are both concerned that reuben has not shown yet, and its already 45mins past his arrival time. phoned reuben on mobile. he's here! ok, plan-2 :)

sat 4 11 00:
what can go wrong today? we are running a little short of time after setting off at a rushed pace... breakfast and fuel for the car, marek rushes off to return car, i try to get fuel and nacional (not local) police to attend to check us out of the country, but i was told wait, only 20 minutes delay hehehe... first new set of batteries in the anr headset this holiday, only because i forgot to switch off for a day. at time of writing only 50 mins before fpl departure time for marrakesh. we checked with a commercial chap, and he reminded us that we could leave up to one hour late before having to refile, and 30 minutes on an ifr departure. that eased the pressure a little bit.

met up with reuben. he got himself checked out pretty quickly but as always its the nitty gritty things that delay. i.e. the fuel, the police, the baggage xrays, etc. we filed for an 1130 departure, but managed to leave at a little before an hour late. the departure from malaga (marek flying) was uneventful, and we soon lost sight of reuben in his 172. passed by "the rock" (gibraltar) still under control of casa approach, not being handed off by them. reuben heard us being referred to as an unidentified aircraft by rock approach whilst talking to a c130 military plane that we saw circling around us quite closely...

tangier controllers were bloody awful making us read back the same info many times although they had it perfectly. as expected, we were asked to give position reports every 15 minutes or so, and without a gps i'd have had trouble keeping my sense of humour. the flight down the western coast of morocco was uninspiring, coming across the odd town dotted here and there, in fact it was quite boring. eventually we spotted marrakesh airport in the distance, and joined left for the runway. again it was a large runway suitable for mid sized passenger jets, so we had no worries getting in. the condition of the runway was excellent.

we were met by an airport policeman in uniform and an official in 2piece suit (it was hot, why wear a suit ?).

we refuelled, and then were rushed through arrival procedures with the minimum of fuss, being taken to the front of the queue for passport control, in front of approx. 200 pax from a commercial boeing jobbie. ga pilots get special treatment out here ! soon after arrival we were squabbling with the taxi driver who we'd asked to take us into town. we managed to reduce the taxi fare from a high tourist rate to an average tourist rate, so the ride was comfortable in many ways. marrakesh proves itself to be one of the worst vehicle polluted cities ive visited, within minutes of starting the taxi drive, we were all gagging at the fumes, which were heavy and sulfuric. we were taken to hotel ali in marrakesh town, where we found a dormitory to stay in (no rooms free). the dorm , shower, evening meal and breakfast the following morning cost us about 80dhirams, so nothing to complain about there. as expected marek managed to take us on a 4 mile hike through the souks (bazaar) aided by an erstwhile guide called mohammed, who once realising we werent going to part with buckets of money made his excuses of needing to go to the temple, put his hand out for money, and was never seen again. we proceeded alone, turning hither and thither through the tiny maze like streets which make up the old market. contrary to popular belief we were actually v.safe, and the locals seemed to be trustworthy souls that didn't have the theft habit we were worried about. we walked for at least 4 miles on pitted streets, my sandals falling apart (prev being repaired with sellotape in malaga and seville). i never did find a replacement pair that i liked in the soukh, but marek found a really nice pair of shoes, in moroccan style, and eventually found a pair that fitted ! (moroccans are much shorter than the average western european). i think we actually did get lost in the soukh, and decided that a taxi ride back to hostel ali would be a good idea, as (at least) my feet were getting really sore. we were *miles* away, so luck we decided to get the taxi after all.

we went out later in the evening to walk around the main square, where it seemed that the whole male population of the city had turned out to party. a big attraction for me was the tens of stalls selling freshly grilled and barbecued foodstuffs, but unfortunately i had already eaten, so passed them by. i purchased lots of burber music from a stall, very ethnic ! marek was pleasantly surprised at how relaxed he could be, and on a few occasions remarked how "ok" he felt about mixing with the locals. we returned to hostel ali for our pre-paid dinner, which i'd thought would be pretty rubbish due to it's low cost and high user volume, but just the opposite proved to be the case. the dinner was plentiful (come back for as much as you like) and included meat, vegetables, lentils, cuscus, coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice etc etc... although it was a simple meal, it was very tasty, especially the meatballs in sauce ! perhaps me being mainly veggie improved the taste, but marek didn't complain about the quality of food, so i guess it was actually quite ok !

a good night's sleep was had in the dorm. reuben had to leave marrakesh early to return to work for monday, i think he walked out of hotel ali at about 6.30am, possibly for a departure to malaga of about 7.45 if all went well (aircraft were fuelled on arrival and paid for by fuel credit card issued to us by the malaga aero club).

im writing this immy after breakfast in hotel ali just before hailing a taxi to depart for the airport. marek just told me he walked to the square and had his picture taken with a couple of cobras (called mohammed and pedro) (i presume they were snakes and not helicopters!!!). ...more to follow soon. it's my turn to fly as p1 today. oh yes. i wont be asking for a vfr arrival like marek did yesterday whilst mimicking the commercial boys hehehe... what is your dme he was asked. errrrr, hold on, ill check the gps :))

i flew back to jerez from marrakesh. the houses below were spread out on a sheet of sandpaper. hot and unwelcoming in the summer i'm sure. the poverty began to hit home. some houses were simple tin shacks. we returned to jerez from morocco quite uneventfully...

we took a sightseeing trip around jerez instead of flight to portimao due to weather. we leaned heavily on the staff at jerez asking for tafs and metars then long tafs of many surrounding airfields, but were not lucky with the meteo. we simply couldn't get out from jerez even if we wanted to.

jerez town proved to be a lot nicer than we previously thought. we'd been unlucky enough to miss the historic town centre when we previously toured around by car. we sat down to a 10,000 paseta dinner which was the most expensive dinner we have treated ourselves to so far. the dinner consisted of tapas as usual, but the quality was super extraordinary. i've been eating meat quite a lot lately, and meat was the central theme to today's food, not to mention the alcohol. i had a heavenly sherry with my meal, and finished the meal with a fino brandy at ukp10 a glass, as did marek. the dinner wasn't exactly the best money could buy, but i'm sure it was close. marek complained for at least 10 hours about the cost of a single glass of spanish brandy (the 10ukp quality) :) - it was from local wine stock, and was recommended by customers of the restaurant. certainly worth the extra money taken from the overall budget. tapas at the restaurant included a beautiful carne dish, with herbs and spices to die for, and at only ukp2 a plate too! sounds like spanish tourist board advert ? ...its fast becoming just that. gourmets and gourmands should visit at least once !

monday 6 11 00:
all plans of going to portugal seem to be cursed with bad weather. we are here in a jerez hotel watching low cloud pass by clipping the rooftops by about 100ft clearance, and suffering drizzling rain coming down in sheets. we discussed the unavailability of long range tafs in marrakesh and how we'd have stayed in morocco if we knew the full story of the fronts coming in to spain today. i guess that is a recommendation that all pilots find a way to get taf meteo largo (long taf) before they "jump". so my way of looking at today is that we are staying in a great spanish town, mixing well with the locals, tasting the local fare, and having a great time sightseeing. perhaps mareks view is a little different (i stopped him from committing suicide this morning due to the bad weather, he looked really grey). flying plans are on hold at time of writing.

recommendation: fly to jerez, go to pescaderia viejea and eat in "la ina" restaurant in the old town centre - its nestled amongst floodlit fountains, wide ramblas, and beautiful architecture. it receives a mani rating of 8/10 for food quality and ambiance. go try it !

met robin in jerez airport (we returned here at about 1200 to update our wx brief) who is a commercial pilot, who seems to be stuck-fast in jerez with a battery failure on his beechcraft king air, and 6 golfing/holidaying pax who are getting quite impatient with the idea of a wait in jerez airport. i gave robin a tip about cafe la-ina in the old town in case they get stuck here for a long time...! i dont think that amused his pax too much .

we flew out later in the afternoon to portimao in portugal. . (this made the 3 countries in our trip).

although the spanish coast is nice, the scenery much improved as we approached the algarve coast near portimao. we landed in lppm and shortly after took a taxi into the old town. prices were great. exchange rate of about 330escudos equalling ukp1, we paid 4000 for a single room, which means ukp12 for a wonderful room with sea view balcony and cable tv, victorian wooden furniture and a clean and gleamy en suite. were we lucky, or were all rooms like this ? aero club prices for a c152 are approx ukp50 per wet hour, and i'm sure discounts could be negotiated for block bookings. i didn't see even one movement there, so at the right time of year i'm sure their c152 could be hired out for days at a time by prior arrangement. they also have a c172 on the field which isnt owned by the aero club, but can be hired at quite high rates which are inflated due to tax being charged to commercial entities, no tax on clubs ya see... a skydiving club makes jumps from the airfield if anyone is interested.

portimao: a small fishing village grown big but keeping that small homely feel. we walked through the town and found a cosy little restaurant called villa velha restaurante close to alvor church (lit up and on top of the hill). the restaurant's tel is 458 217. the presentation is of a home meal which is generous yet simple. we ate red snapper fish which was prepared and served in a fish stock with an extremely good taste. the decor of the house is simple, with the lobster tank being a focal point.. the local beer is called sagres (pron sag-gresh) which to my taste wasn't very inspiring (spanish cruzcampo being my favoured beer so far, which marek just could not understand, his fave is sagres). earlier in the evening we had sampled draft sagres beer in bar mourisco, where the service is lively and good humoured and offered up by two cheerful (brit?) chaps. the drinks always seemed to be accompanied by a free dish of finger food such as popcorn or peanuts. the bar is a must-go-to kind of experience, even if only to sample the decor and music - tracey chapman and music of that genre, with tasteful and relaxing decor. if you drink alcohol, there's no better place to chill out during a lazy sunday afternoon, but i did frown at some of the cocktail names, such as ''sex on the beach'' and ''orgasm''. we met a couple of expat brits at the bar who were now living in portimao with their son, the originally came from the stanstead area, but seemed to be enjoying their lives very much indeed ! the bar is definitely recommended for a visit.

tue 7 11 00:
the last day . awoke a little early due to good mattress and desire of marek to have seperate room for last evening due to my chanting and ringing finger-cymbals for a couple of hours each night, that for some inexplicable reason seemed to keep him awake. how weird. how could anyone object to that??? we took a rushed taxi ride to portimao airport, and prepared the c172rg cutlass-II (ec-fek) (lovingly called eckfeck) for a departure before the fronts came in... tafs and metars have to be requested from faro and faxed back, so they took a little while to arrive. i was really pushing to try to get out, as i remembered the american flying experience where clouds would at little or no notice roll in over the mountains, and sock us in... no need to have panicked, as the weather behaved itself this time around ! this was the first time we paid cash for fuel, and every escudos felt like it was a tooth being extracted, so we had 6000 teeth ! ouuuuch !

it was my turn to fly out, and a quick departure on 29 and a left turn out over alvor to the sea shore, and a departure east towards faro. faro approach controllers were very professional, and simply reminded us we were in controlled airspace and should request any level changes. the route took us directly over faro airport itself - i thought about the landing fees of about ukp40 if we wanted to take a look and thought "no thanks" at that price. we routed further east keeping the costas on our port side, then north of jerez airport took a 90-degree right turn down to jerez airspace, and were handed off to their controllers. the lady routed me via the W vrp as they had 3 signets practicing instrument approaches. at about this time i handed over p1 to marek as we'd agreed to split the flight time 50/50. routing down to the southern most vor, we recognised many of the features from a previous flight. marek then called gibraltar approach, and was issued yet another squawk, but this time from a very military sounding controller, who seemed to be in a very cheerful mood, advising "flight information service". hearing that phrase so far away from home put a smile on my face. later cheeky marek requested an overflight of the airfield, the controller checked his departure schedule for us, and regretfully declined due to 2 departures about to leave. at least we tried, and the controller sounded genuinely sorry not to allow us our jolly over his airfield. soon after passing gibraltar i spotted a frigate in dark grey colours towing a red-and-white chequered target about a kilometer behind it. a reminder of what the gib rock is all about ! the approach to malaga was delayed a little to allow one heavy to come in, and then a further delay to allow a hospital flight to arrive. we were only held for about 10 minutes. a standard approach to malaga was made, but a non standard landing. i think we were caught by a gust of wind just before the wheels touched down and thrown about a little, the wheels touched on and we bounced back up again. a go around was called for which is exactly what happened. the wheels came up, around we went, and the 2nd landing went a lot better. we taxied to the ga parking area, and both felt a little saddened that this was the last flight, and the last arrival of our great great holiday with so much packed into so few days.

in summary the aero club in malaga is well worth hiring from. my thanks go out to juan-ma the co-owner, to mariam for organising us so well, and to roman del moral for his laid back checkouts and his most excellent sense of humour. what an excellent chap, he is a good judge of character because he wrote ''piloto loco'' on my checkout sheet :-)) all of spain, portugal and morocco are easily reached from malaga, and the aero club personnel really are willing to make the stay as smooth as possible.