The Snug

Well we recently had a holiday in Morocco. I say holiday, it turned out to be more of a feat of endurance. Should have realised that from the start really. It's always an ominous sign when the tour leader claps her hands together on the coach from the airport and says, "You will all get the runs and throw up, don't worry about it, it WILL happen." with a big grin on her face. Grrr.

And it went downhill from there. The hotel we stayed at the first night didn't actually have a window to the outside, so we were stuck sweltering in an unairconditioned room all night.

Still, the first few days were pretty good- we got to see Casablanca, Rabat, Fes and a couple of other places I can't remember and couldn't spell if I did.

And then, on day five, disaster struck!

After a dramatic piece of punctuation, mostly for effect, our story continues with our idiot tour guide ("I've only been in the country three weeks and my French isn't great.") taking us round an exposed Roman village on a hillside in the midday sun as temperatures crept up to 45 degrees centigrade. Or should that be celsius? Whichever, it was darn hot.

What made matters worse was the fact that we had been pootling around a sheltered mountain village all morning. It wouldn't take a genius to have swapped the itinery around but it would seem our leader was not from genius stock (more of this later). The coach drive to Fes that evening saw some poorly people- I was delirious and several others felt sick from the heat. One poor chap felt like he had a heart flutter (hope he's okay).

On reaching the hotel I passed out only to wake up three hours later with uncontrollable shivers- crazy given how hot it was but such is the nature of heat stroke. Apparently seven other people in our group were being violently sick that night too. Well the heat stroke eventually subsided (or at least the shivering did). Unfortunately it turned out the heat stroke had been masking something a little more sinister...

Looking back I should have realised that going to a tour guide picked restaurant where there were NO OTHER PEOPLE WHATSOEVER was probably a bad idea. Something was keeping the locals and other tourists away and I'm sure it wasn't the McDonalds just round the corner.

The evil squits started at about 1am and were still going strong 17 hours later. They got progressively worse too, at one point (around loo roll four I think), I remember complaining to Claire that my poo shouldn't be clearer and more odourless than my wee.

Faced with a seven hour coach ride into the mountains and the desert, we decided to call an end on the trip. I wasn't just worried about my runny bottom, I was genuinely scared about the heat and our tour guides inability to schedule stuff properly so that we were protected from the worst of it.

Of course that didn't mean an end to the hassle - our tour guide gave almost no help in arranging our trip back. She gave us two phone numbers (one of them incorrect) for airlines and told us we would have to sort out our own return tickets. Likewise, she pointed us at the wrong taxis to get to Fes airport (but for the kind help of a local lad who spoke English we would probably still be there at the taxi rank now!)

How I made it back without filling my pants will be a mystery to me until the day I die. But we did get back and let me tell you, Heathrow on a Friday lunchtime in the pouring rain seemed like the most beautiful place on earth.

I continued "running" over the weekend and popped to the doctor first thing on Monday. A stool sample was given (somebody at the hospital has a very perverse sense of humour - the bin to put the samples in is in front of about 40 chairs in the blood test area and has a sign on it saying "no samples to be placed in this bin until cleared with reception." 38 people now know I was giving a poo sample) and two days later I had a phone call saying I had contracted Shigella, a form of bacterial dysentery.

And thus ends my epic trip to Morocco. But not the pooing. That wont clear itself up fully for another 2 or three weeks.