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Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

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Modern/ancient Larache, Morocco, Thursday, 18 December 2008 5:51pm

This is a town about to be resorted. The signs are everywhere. The main plaza is being re-cobbled. There are high rise buildings that look suspiciously like hotels going up left and right. There's rebar and fresh cement sticking out of the 16th century Portuguese fortress. I wandered around the waterfront a bit, saw the zoco (Spanish market square), tried to figure out if the building under all of that scaffolding was the 17th century Spanish kasbah, and then hopped a taxi for somewhere a little more remote.

There was practically nobody at the Roman ruins of Lixus. Two guys were exhorting each other to do pushups at the bottom of the hill, and a Moroccan couple people walking out as I was walking in who gave me a perfect English "Roight!" when they figured out which language I spoke (response: "Cheerio!"). A few birds. Signs that there have been goats or sheep, but no actual goats or sheep.

The ruins themselves are fragmentary, at best. Lots of scattered stone, but not much still standing, apart from the remains of an amphitheatre. Beautiful views, in a very peaceful setting, though.