Amal Kabli

This is one of THE most incredible travel experiences of my short life!!! (ok not that short anymore!)

Sara & I were in the beginning of a 3 month stay in her uncle's "villa" in sunny Andalucia. We soon got bored with lounging around and decided to go to Portugal. Because we had no money, we decided to hitch-hike there.

After a cold February night in '90 sleeping on a beach (remember we had no money to spare for a room somewhere.) in Southern Spain, Sara and I started hitch-hiking again on the main road.

Soon two cars stopped. We hopped on the one with the two Spaniards; the other car had four Moroccans in it. What we didn't realized is that they were all together, on their way to a business meeting in Cadiz. One of them was Amal Kabli, a millionaire who owned a big fishing company. He invited us to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. After some hesitations and doubts, we went.

We had our own hotel room, 300 meters from the beach. After work, him and his bodyguard Zazi would pick us up at the hotel for dinner at a nice restaurant of our choice. Sometimes we'd finished the evening at the local disco or an outdoor cafe. Whatever we'd do we would always have a good laugh together.

Getting bored fast, we took 3-4 days to hitch-hike around the island. After three weeks, we being restless, he sadly put us on a two day cruise ship back to mainland Spain. Amal was a kind, generous, workaholic and laid back man. Zazi, his bodyguard was kind and humorous. In the end we never made it to Portugal but it was the most incredible three weeks we've had so far.

Because we returned to "our" villa (appartement in English) with more money than when we had started 3 weeks earlier, we decided to go to Morocco!

After 7 days of incredible adventures in Morocco, we returned to mainland Spain completely broke. We were planning to hitch our way back to England but still needed some money for food, so we called Amal to the rescue. He sent us some money for our return to London.

This is a drawing I made of Amal while lounging on the closest beach to our hotel room.