Marhabaan al’usrat wal’asdiqa/Bonjour famille et amis!
We entered Morocco on March 7, a country where the key languages are Arabic and French. We had been led to believe, from all we had read, that it would be a complex morning, getting to the border from our Ceuta hotel by taxi, dealing with the Moroccan officials and finding transportation to our first destination, Chefchaouen (henceforth to be called simply Chef, also known as the Blue City). Instead, it was anything but complex! After our taxi driver dropped us off at the border, we had a quarter mile walk inside a 3’ wide, thick metal fenced enclosure, which had the feel of a death row march. There were only a handful of people ahead of us, so entry processing went quickly. Then, with a middleman guiding us to a Grand Taxi, we were on our way directly to Chef (no changing of taxis at Tetouan as Trip Advisor had indicated was the process). The total time from Ceuta to the Grand Taxi, only 30 minutes!! Even better, the cost for all four of us, only 50 Euros to travel the 101 kilometers (KM) to our destination.
On this drive, we were treated to Marilyn’s translating our Spanish-speaking driver’s discourse, pointing out one of King Mohammed VI’s vacation digs, a fortress-like venue with military personnel abounding, which was a major contrast to the boxy, brilliantly white stucco/concrete domiciles for the general population. There were many Saudi construction projects pointed out and more sharing about the King’s movements about the country, spending only a week or two at a time in any one place. Mar-a-Lago came to mind. Countryside views included dromedaries (one-humped member of the genus Camelus that inhabit Morocco, versus camels, which are two-humped members) wandering about without visible handlers and huge stork nest sightings, these 5’-7’ wing-spanned snowy white birds migrating back and forth between Africa and Europe, southern Spain being where we first saw them. At 1900’ elevation in the Rif Mountains, 43 KM outside of Chef, we drove by old aqueducts, beautiful views of the lush valleys below (much like the Stubai Valley in Austria, with small pastoral communities nestled against the hillsides) and a pristine, aquamarine-colored lake. We came upon an area that had been severely damaged by a recent flooding with the river, washing away housing foundations and evidence of rebuilding visibly underway. These communities are very poor, living at a subsistence level with sparse education provided by traveling professors on a sporadic basis until the children are high school age.
We arrived early afternoon in Chef, a city of 23,000-43,000 depending upon whether you attend to your guide or Wikipedia, with the central Medina housing 7,000, where our new home for the next 3 nights would be at Casa Sabila, a 250 year old structure, residing at 2,100’ elevation. We were next door to a mosque, with the loud, but sonorous, call-to-prayer piercing our sleep at 5:XX a.m. each morning. The Blue City certainly deserves its name, as evidenced by the blue wash on nearly all structures, provided by the bags of paint powder we would see around town and the eerily delightful effect at night. Being in a Muslim country, there are a lot of things non-religious that have mosque shapes, like the wooden door to our room, the door to our bathroom, the scalloped white plaster molding against our ceiling, etc.
Breakfasts here were taken on the 3rd floor outdoor terrace, sunning ourselves as we dined on soft whipped fresh cheese, eggs, yogurt, Moroccan pan cakes, crepes, baguettes, jams, marmalade, honey, café au lait, fresh-squeezed orange juice (best we’ve ever had anywhere in the world), and olives. This seemed to be the breakfasts of choice for all our Riads. Everywhere we went, olives were served, even just ordering a Coke! (We discovered that neither olives nor their oil are exported as they are much in demand in-country). Other meals here were in movie-set atmospheres, sitting on cushions, food brought to a low table, tea poured from several feet above into our small glasses, dining on Moroccan salads, lentil soups, couscous and tajine (the earthenware pots with conical tops, used to cook and serve traditional Berber succulent stews. We wore out the path from our Riad to the main square, which sported small shops 6’ wide and 12’ deep, selling all things every tourist would ever want, a lot of competition as several shops in a row would be selling the exact same items. At night, a 30’ high Norfolk tree was lit up with strings of white lights (certainly not emblematic of Christmas here in this Muslim country), people gathering at the outdoor dining venues, a small group of young people jamming at a table with Flamenco-style guitar playing and singing, haunting and mournful. The Moroccan men were robed to their ankles, some with pointed hoods, affecting the Obi-Wan Kenobi (Star Wars) look, schlepping around with backless babouche slippers. We happened to be having a café au lait in the square one afternoon and watched a queue of 40 men parading by with a green wooden coffin, chanting on their way to a mosque, as part of a ‘jinaza’ (funeral) our waiter related to us. Apparently, once the march commences, anyone joins in along the way whether they knew the deceased or not!
Having espied the now defunct Spanish mosque on the hill visible from our room, we hiked for 20 minutes, climbing 300’ in elevation on the cobblestoned-turned-to-rocks-and-dirt path to this place to watch the sun set over the Rif Mountains. We were joined by about 3 dozen other fellow travelers, shadows being casted upon the Blue City. It was a magical moment, coupled with the piercingly blue sky cradling a two-thirds moon. As we were readying to depart back down the hill, we amused ourselves watching an elderly goat herder trying to round up her errant wards, dressed in her colorful “tribal” garb. One day, to get away from all the medina activities, we managed a 45 minute Grand Taxi ride to the Cascades d’ Akchour for some longer and steeper hiking, past cascading waters, across rickety wood “bridges” in the Rif Mountains. Maggie and I walked further up by ourselves, meeting “Miki”, a young man who sold us tea as we sat above the cascading falls into pools of cool green waters, by his makeshift restaurant. Maggie had witnessed some surreptitious activity between Miki and 3 men who had hiked to this point, and determined that a hashish deal was going down, validating this when Miki disappeared over the hillside to his stash in the rocks below, but above the flood line, Maggie peeking over the edge to verify our suspicions!
A 4 hour bus ride began our next leg of exposure to Morocco, moving southward to Fes, a city of 1.1 million and the former capital of Morocco until 1925 (Rabat is the current capital) and home to the oldest University in the world, Al-Karaouine, 859 A.D. We rode in on a palm tree-lined roadway, the snow-capped Atlas Mountains to the East, picked up at the bus station by Mohammed (who we would spend a day with later on) and dropped at Riad Andalib, located just outside the largest medina, Fes el Bali, which we were to come to know very well over the 4 night stay. Our access to the medina began at Bab Bou Jeloud (aka, the Blue Gate), which we reached in two separate taxis (rule is only 3 passengers per cab). Maggie and I had to exit our taxi quickly after our driver hit an old man pushing a 2-wheeled cart and a crowd started forming. We were barely able to pay due to the haste and our driver’s wish for ‘witnesses’ to disappear before being questioned.
Our foray into the medina began on an 8’ wide winding cut sloping down toward the predominantly underground river, walking on pavers, with food shops on both sides for quite a way, spices in an amalgam of textures and smells, vegetables and fruits in colorful arrays, meats being cut and a dromedary head denoting a stall where ‘camel’ meat was available. The activity here was electric, the frenzy of shopkeepers yelling across the pathway at each other, conversationally, being low key in their approach to us, merely saying “Welcome, Welcome”, donkeys carrying huge jugs of bottled water and other heavy commerce down the center of this narrow pathway, forcing pedestrians to hug the sides and edges of the stalls. Warren-like offshoots from the main corridor revealed dark recesses leading to dead ends and who-knows-what, as well as some historic presentations, e.g. the Nejjarine Complex (a museum displaying traditional tools and artifacts associated with wooden arts and crafts) and Bou Inania Madrasa, a former Koranic school and Mosque (circa 1350) with exceptionally beautiful tiled architecture. Further down in the market, we stumbled across a coppersmith enclave in Seffarine Square, plying their trade, shaping pots, noisily banging away with their hammers below us, the din of this activity wafting upward and permeating our lunch at a second story bistro.
On the hunt for leather goods, in particular looking for belts, we entered a tannery stall, climbing the steps to the outdoor terrace, on one side overlooking the area below where the fur of animals (goats and camels are the most expensive skins) are removed in vats comprised of limestone, pigeon poop, urine, sulfuric acid and other delights making for a powerful assault on the senses. On the other side of the terrace, witnessing scores of ponds containing tannins, which are of different colors (yellow from saffron, red from poppies, orange from henna, blue from indigo).
We took a 120 mile day trip loop out of Fes with Mohammed to visit the countryside and the 3rd century Berber/Roman ruins at Volubilis, which we walked around for an hour or so, admiring the large floor mosaics that have survived the long-eroded rooms they decorated in this complex, one mosaic which depicted a short story of Hercules. In Meknes, we had a history lesson on Ismail Ibn Sharif, a 17th century Pasha who had, according to Mohammed, 500+ wives, 1,300+ children (you do the math) and owned 12,000 horses, We’re just reporting what we were told. Tales seem to grow ever larger in the telling over the centuries and wouldn’t want to have Wikipedia tell me anything different.
During this drive, we saw hundreds of families setting up picnics, for this was a Sunday, parking their cars next to olive trees which would provide them shade, spreading out their blankets, children playing futbol. Donkeys were everywhere, alongside the road, their owners riding side saddle, with bags strung over the backs with goods, while other donkeys brayed loudly in open fields, untended, others were working the small fields, pulling plows and the next field over, tractors were being used to for the same. Donkeys are used in Morocco as regular beasts of burden, hauling produce, goods or, in this case, garbage/recyclables.
Our next destination, which will end this dispatch, was Marrakech, south of Fes by 500+ KM, and, where Chef is known as the Blue City, Marrakesh is known as the Red City. We had paid for 1st class tickets, but they didn’t fit our idea of 1st class! In the bathroom, one looked into the toilet bowl and saw the rails we were traveling over (how’s that for a visual?). 1st class also meant that we were not able to take photos of the scenery due to dirty and scratched windows, however the landscape was similar to what we had seen in the north, green lushness, great expanses of agricultural plots, becoming more arid as we got further south, the soils becoming Tucson red, and the Atlas Mountains again on the left side of the train.
After an 8 hour train ride via Rabat and Casablanca on the coast, we found ourselves in the late afternoon in Place Jemaa el Fna’s (henceforth to simply be called Fna) medina, which was wild with activity when we arrived...the sounds of snake charmers tootling quintessential cobra-rising horns, diapered monkeys on leashes wearing absurd outfits and sitting on tourist’s heads, touts trying to shoo you in to various places of business, tall African guys hawking watches and smart phones which looked very suspect as to their authenticity. All in all, a real carnival atmosphere! We called Riad Khadija Spa to get help finding our way to them and were eventually found by Yves, taking us deep into the bowels of the medina, being led through what turned out to be a maze of tunnel-like turns for 15 minutes, memorizing key points (green shed, Mosque, spice area, signs pointing to Musee Boucharoite) to be able to navigate this on our own. Street signs weren’t of much use since most were in Arabic, looking like squiggles to us.
We would only be here for 2 nights which was good because our quarters were small, having to stoop down to gain entry to the Riad through a mosque-shaped door and all our rooms to avoid hitting our heads. So we made use of our time wisely and walked the medina. However, we had to be very careful here, as it was not pedestrian-friendly as the Fes medina. Here, motor bikes and scooters were permitted, hearing them come up from behind you in the narrow passageways which would allow you to move to one side or the other. On the other hand, the silent killers were the bicycles, since you would not know they were there. Our only full day found us walking in the heart of Marrakech, away from the medina, stopping at a bistro for café au lait and Moroccan sweets, which were also desired by the bees. We toured Yves Saint Laurent’s gift to Marrakesh, Jardin Majorelle, a beautiful and cooling oasis, replete with cacti from around the world and a vast assortment of palm trees. Crossing streets at the large roundabouts was a challenge, even with marked crosswalks, so we adopted our Vietnam style of crossing…walk without changing pace or direction and let the traffic avoid you!
We did finally accomplish a couple of very touristy things. We hired a carriage drawn by two bay-colored horses, which ended up taking us from the main streets, into the narrow passages of the souks/medina, where we felt very regal in this bright green chariot. The second thing was being accosted in the Fna square, inadvertently being draped with a snake around our necks for the quintessential photo op, something we had sworn we would not do. Our fondest memories will be of the colorful displays of produce, the myriad corridors through the medinas, some with locals minding their daily business, and the nighttime mysterious passageways leading us through a maze of dead ends and habitats.
Our final dispatch will find us at the seashore city of Essaouira and the east side of the High Atlas Mountains, tent camping in the Sahara Desert. Until then,
“MUCH TRAVEL IS NEEDED BEFORE A RAW MAN IS RIPENED” (Arab Proverb)
Cheers, Stan & Maggie