The Roman ruins of Lixus are on the outskirts of Larache on the Atlantic coast. They are overgrown and largely unexcavated which is no bad thing when you compare Lixus with the 1950's amateur ground-scraping diggings in Voloubilis. Nevertheless, many buildings are instantly recognisable, such as the theatre above.
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(Lixus is on the tree lined hilltop in the distance)
Further down the river estuary I came across some archeologists excavating what I'm told was one of the three necropoleis of Lixus. The guy under the umbrella in the photo above was carefully exposing a skeleton but didn't want me to take a close-up photo.
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(Larache in the distance)
Growing in the mud flats of the river was a plant I recognised--several acres of it growing along the river. When I was a child growing up in Peterborough my mother used to buy 'poor man's asparagus' on the weekly market. It came from the Norfolk salt flats and is called Marsh Samphire. Clean it, boil in water and serve with butter and pepper--no need for salt as it's been growing in a salt flat! You drag the flesh from the harder core with your teeth. Yummy.
So I boiled some up in my portable JetBoil stove. Quite obviously I didn't have butter, so I used 'La Vache Qui Rit' (Laughing Cow) cheese.
Tim




