trying to get home and trying to get better!

.....i made it back home by monday night, 36 hours later than planned!

and with a stomach that was turning over 10 to a dozen and i was working hard to keep things inside if you know what i mean, this was an uncomfortable journey....

after 4 hours sleep i was up at 0345 on sunday morning to catch our early morning flight to casablanca. at 0530 we were told that our 0515 flight was not going to arrive until 0630 and at 0630 we were told that the flight had been canceled!

royal air maroc kindly put us up in 'the best hotel' in ouarzazate, but i had still missed my connecting flight back to london and there was no other until the following day.

patsy, chris, vince and hugh had decided to risk a taxi all the way to casablanca to reach their connecting flight to barcelona so as  not to miss 'patsy's pyrenees party'!!

immodium was not working, water made me feel sick and anything i ate went straight through me, so coke (cola that is!) was the only item on the menu....and when i wasn't on the loo i was in bed.

at 1200 we were told that the flight would be at 1530 and at 1630 we actually took off with myslef kevin, perry, andrew onboard; sean had bought a ticket to paris, he'd given up on connecting flights!

arriving in casablanca 25 mins later we hit rush hour, two planes from saudi had just landed, so it was absolute chaos, fights and arguments over the lack of trolleys to carry their string wrapped bags of.....clothes, fruit....somehow andrew and i found our bags amongst mountains of luggage that were already piling up. kevin and perry meanwhile were struggling with moroccan officials as their bags were on the way to barcelona, even though neither of them were able to get on the connecting flight??? it was the other way round at the beginning of the week!

next we had to find the royal air maroc office to collect a receipt to the hotel they were putting us up in. although i had mine stamped in good time, by the time andrew got through, the official had taken off and it was an hour before the next person turned up!!

finally arriving at the hotel at about 1930,  our rooms were on a first come first serve basis and currently the stack of receipts was a foot high; they at least put on some food for us.....probably been wheeled out for the 5th time that day, but it was something.....i chose plain pasta and plain rice, exciting!

2030 i was in my dirty stinking room, but at least i could empty my bowls with a shower on hand if things became messy..... fox movies carried me through until the early hours, although killing mosquitos passed some of the time; i had the window fully open as the room stank.

0945 the next day i was standing outside the bus waiting to get back to the airport and so the day continued, queue, wait, queue, wait, queue.....but at 1245 our plane took off and i only had 2hrs 45mins to go, thank the lord....

so, its wednesday night, i haven't been into work as i haven't been too far from the loo, although the heavy duty immodium tablets i picked up yesterday, together with the dioralyte and rennies have slowed things down considerably. i dropped off my 'samples' to the chelsea and westminster today, the doc wanted to make sure that the 'dysentery' i was suffering from was not going to reappear.....i was pretty keen too!

on a very positive note though, my cousin ben and nanu, who are living in frisco have just had their second child, a wee girl called neve, massive congratulations and love!!

and finally, i have uploaded a new blog which captured the haute route conquest back in spring 2007, see the 'blog link' opposite - photos will follow!