We have just bought another piece of land. This is a small piece in a little village on a hill about 15 minutes from Agadir. The idea is that we can build a little house and live in it till things sort themselves out in Taroudant (land registration, title, development of University etc etc). The piece of land is called Place of Stones in a village called Wikaren (which is Berber for the place of Karen - I think Karen must have been someone's name (not as in the Scottish girl's name)). We are in the process of selling one of the trucks to finance the house building and I have more or less finalised the house plan. The land was very cheap (I bought it with part of my oDesk earnings!) and it is a great spot at the top of the village - the photo on this post is from Google earth and our plot is right at the top just to the left of the middle. The photo on this page is the view north-ish. The drawback is that there is no mains water. OK that sounds pretty bad but the water is being put in along the road and should get to the village in a couple of years and in the meantime we will buy a tank and get it filled periodically.
In the paperwork the land is described as bounded on the West by the road - which I find quite funny as the road to the west is a sort of stony sheep or goat track. You can see it on this photo on the left of the thorn boundary hedge. We have bought just 200m sq of this ground.
We have the necessary paperwork to register the land as ours so we should get that done this week (though we are playing it safe till we get the house built and just doing it in Mohamed's name so the Tourist card isn't played). We should get started clearing the ground and building the platform (as opposed to digging foundations!) pretty soon. Well I need to remember this is Morocco but I feel that it is the light at the end of the tunnel!
I had the idea of doing this because I thought it would be good spot to use as a holiday rental when we finally build our house here. It will be close enough to Agadir to tempt people who would like a bit of both worlds, it is also close (but not too close) to the new Agadir-Marakesh autoroute and of course Taroudant and the Atlas mountains.
Being closer to Agadir will be good for lots of other things as well, I think Mohamed is thinking that finding work there will be easier than in Taroudant. He has done some translation work on line but it is not really very steady.
I have finally got a writing job! I will be writing a blog about living in Morocco...... I will have to make it a bit more interesting and informative than "This week I have mainly been eating couscous.." or whatever. The blog is for a Danish lady property developer currently in the UK but planning to move out to Morocco. She already has a house in Marakesh and a property development business and wants to include a blog about what life is like here. I will let you all know when the blog goes live.
A smaller purchase but very appreciated was a water filter jug - the water here is very very hard and my coffee machine gets very chalked up. What a difference using the filtered water makes to the taste of the coffee. But if anyone is thinking of coming out can they bring me one of those metal fur collecting thingies that you put in kettles.... thank you!
What else... well Honey has a bit of a bladder/kidney infection so we are taking her to the Vet this afternoon. There is a new vet in Taroudant with a cat drawn on his advertising - so hopefully he will know one end from the other. In the meantime poor Honey is desperately trying to find the right place to pee - but wherever she tries she still cannot relieve herself, poor girl.
Ooh and last time but one that I was at the land (in Ouled Said) depositing the compost vegetables and watering Little Grey (she has lemons!) I spotted a critter crossing the road in front and diving into the bamboo bushes. When I got home I looked it up and it was a Mongoose! Just as well since it has been reported (by nervous sister in law) that there are snakes in our land!
We also had our own domestic wildlife adventures. The cats were very interested in the tiny space underneath my desk the other night and on investigation we finally found quite a large lizard hiding in the tubular metal of the desk leg! I was a bit worried it might have been a scorpion................... if I ever get cut off in mid blog you will know what has happened to me! Anyway the lizard, without part of it's tail which I had found earlier in the week, was released to the wild (much to the digust of all the cats) and I will be looking for some rubber stoppers to fit over the ends of the leg posts.
I think that just about covers it for now.
