Sandy Sights and Imperial Lights

Me and Jaym checkin out the sights
see all photos »

First glimpse of Morocco, from the plane, sand dunes everywhere. Quite a sight for a westerner, as deserts come few and far between. It was pretty neat. Too bad we never quite made it to those dunes…no camel treks for us on the cold winter days of December. Ok ok, so cold is a relative term (as it was not comparatively) but, we still didn’t quite make it into the Sahara desert this time around. Oh well.

Well, first things first, now that I am writing this so late from when we actually left the country, you know we made it out alive (some may have been worried after those bombings in Algiers…I wasn’t. Some call is naive; some call it glass half-full). Anyway, our plane landed and we trekked out onto the runway in our winter coats, which soon came off. The temp hung out around maybe 65F the entire time we were there, and not a drop of rain even though it was the expected beginning of the wet season. How do I always manage to travel during a country’s rainy season and then have a drought the whole time? Might be this thing we call global warming…but that’s another blog entirely!

The part of the medina where we stayed, trying to get out of the mazes!
see all photos »

We managed to make it through the mazes to our hostel, thanks to the taxi driver (who dropped us off outside the medina walls) and his buddies who walked us directly to the door of the place we stayed. Thank goodness for this normalcy, because I have a feeling we would have been meandering til dark trying to find it amongst the medina mazes.

Let’s see if I can try to explain this to someone who has never been within medina walls. First of all, imagine yourself in an alley in New York City, now take away the chaos, the people, the sounds of cars and people talking (in English), remove all windows in sight, make the buildings out of sand, add a few strange smells (think hints of raw fish, hyde, and donkey droppings). When you look into the sky above, you will in fact see blue. Brilliant blue, until you go outside the medina walls where the cars are again plentiful and it seems at times as if you are in Europe. Within the medina walls, however, you will feel as though you are hiding somewhere in the middle of Biblical times. Even the outfits are conservative, long, thick and flowy. Not as ornamented as some of the Indian saris, but definitely something along the lines of full body coverage, even for the men. Just imagine a robe that falls to your feet from being slipped over your head with a KKK hood. This is about as close to the imagination as I can provide you. The one thing I did notice, despite the crazy cover ups, is that the colors are not nearly as brilliant as the Indians. Indians make the dirt work with their contrasting fabrics of color, but the Moroccans try to blend right in with what may appear to be dirty fading colors and browns and grays.

The stalls at night. Serving fruit or nuts...your choice!
see all photos »

Now that I have completely generalized the whole country, I will go against what I have told you and explain to you the ridiculousness of which they call Djemma el Fna. This is a large open market of wonder which acts as the center of Marrakech. Surrounded by numerous cafes, by day it is unmarked roads for those traveling to work, and a pedestrian attack of souks (little stores that sell local goodies, anything from shoes to ceramics). You cannot get by without a swiping from a horse or an offer for a bargain (which you can of course make better). By night, this open air market opens up into outdoor restaurants, fruit and nut stands, and what one might call an enchanted playground. You can find a story tellers if you wish or snake charmers if you dare risk being that close. Men will be doing acrobats while movies are playing in the background. But one thing is for certain, nothing is for free. This is the local way to make money. We managed to get by without an attack of henna. How? I’m not sure. One girl came up to me and told me I had nice eyes. She then followed us for a while and said, since you have such nice eyes, I will give you some henna for free, a small flower. James then turns around not knowing what is happening and sees this girl with a large henna dispenser (which looks at first glance like a giant syringe) and then jumps at her and pushes her away. “Oh my god!” the girl says as I tell him she was only going to draw a flower. It was slightly humorous to me. I don’t think James thought so. My favorite offer was the women standing in the middle of the road with a tray of cookies and her children by her side. Who knows how long she has been there (since we had seen her in the AM and in the evening) but she stands there holding out the tray motioning for us to take one as we walk by. No thank you.

Shoes in the souks. thought there would be more in fez so i didnt get any =(
see all photos »

In the evenings, we tended to stick to the outer rim of cafes for the first few days for fear that we wouldn’t make it to the next day without a few trips to the bathroom if we ate at the outdoor markets serving cooked on the spot chicken and sheep’s brain. All of the cafes have outdoor seats set above to overlook the square, so it was quite fantastic views, and the prices weren’t that bad either. We had the local cuisine, tagine, which is named after the really neat clay dish that it is served in (looks a bit like a tipi for food). The meal is half a chicken, potatoes, olives, lemons, and some ridiculously good yellow spiced saucy stuff cooked in the oven just like that, ceramic dish and all. It comes to you usually boiling (and you take this opportunity to put your fork under all the goodies and clean that bad boy up, just to be sure…) It is absolutely an amaxing dish and I highly recommend you all find a Moroccan restaurant and try it! Or…on second thought…go to Morocco! Ill come =)

Man getting his feet wet, to say the least, in the lovely juices at the tannery.
see all photos »

My favorite part about dinner is that you will never ever eat alone in this city. First of all, you are surrounded by this remarkable chaos of a square (but not too chaotic, just hustle and bustle, but quite peaceful) and for some reason there always seem to be a beautiful yet hungry cat who would like to join you at the table. And if you aren’t satisfying him, he will visit the table next to you, most likely to return when they have given him all the scraps they have! Its humorous. I have never seen quite so many cats with character. They will walk right up, put their face in your lap, and meow meow meow meow (just like those commercials). You cant help but love and hate them all at the same time. Needless to say, Jenny and I fed them all the time. No wonder they kept coming back. But I didn’t mind the company! I liked it even better when one would leave, and the next would stroll right up looking for anything left behind from his friend’s visit! Ha. And I used to be afraid of cats…

laid out to dry
see all photos »

As for meandering around the medinas during the day, if we did brave it alone, there was always someone who was MORE than willing to take hours out of their time to bring you down their streets to to their friends shops where you will meet their people and spend YOUR money. Oh fantastic. These people really know how to work the foreigner. And again…nothing is for free! If you even happen to meander down the same alley as the guy in front of you, he will expect money! Oh man. But one man did take us quite a hike (that we would have never been able to navigate on our own) to the tanneries. Now the tanneries…oh the tanneries. Man oh man were they smelly. Upon arrival, we were handed bustles of mind to put near our noses. Oddly enough, I found this made it worse because you never got used to the smell around you, and every time the mint was lowered, it was all over….again and again. Lovely thought huh? But the tanneries are something to see….you can watch as the men strip the skin of the fur, beat the hyde down, stretch it out, dye it, shape it, etc. And then of course they take you into their friends shop where you can spend money!! Of course I did! Got myself some shoooooes. James got a nice ottoman type structure from cow skin. And yes, you can tell the difference. Some skins are much softer, and some much more…grainy almost. I was picking out all the expensive ones…for some reason the bigger animals have softer skin and it costs more. Odd to me because they have so much more of it to use!

inside of hostel where we stayed
see all photos »

We did do a day trip to Ouarzazate while we were in Marrakech, and it was quite nice. Still wish we could have squeezed in the camel trek, but this was nice as well. Unfortunately, we were stuck in a car for a few hours there and back, but the two hours or so we spent in the town was cool. While we were there, we actually got to see the desert bits! All the buildings were an orangy red color, which made it desert like to start with, and then there was the whole area which is sometimes (in rainy season, but not yet) filled with water, and without the water its just this crazy sand patch. I thought it was pretty cool, and made the country actually feel like it was in Africa.   We ended up finding a man in the street who was keen to talk to us (to practice his English) so we let him give us a tour of the city. Its neat because it is basically their version of Hollywood, but completely quite and settled, no chaos and craziness. They actually filmed Blood Diamond here, and we got to see where the actors stayed and the fake add-on plaster of some of the buildings. Why they needed to make Morocco look more like Morocco, I have no idea….

my traveling crew
see all photos »

As for the man who drove us the entire way…he was entertaining in himself! He hummed and talked to himself, which is somewhat expected from a man who celebrates a religion that prays five times a day (dawn, noon, 1pm, dusk, 1 hour after dusk), but then he would burst out with these moments of blaring song. It was really strange…especially sitting next to him in a minivan full of people! Even though I got the best view (for pics of course! Even tho it was like being stuck driving on a 1 lane highway on the edge of a cliff stuck behind a sloooow driver for four hours! Except much cooler.) there were moments I wanted to be nestled in the back napping without his burst of songs scaring the crap out of me. Not to mention his KKK hood….

tagines! well the dishes anyway...
see all photos »

On the last night in Marrakech, we dared the outdoor markets! And am I ever glad we did! Well….ok, my meal wasn’t the best I had ever had, but the experience was awesome. And they had this tomato-y dipping sauce for the bread, I was in heaven. The chicken was cheap and huge, which was good, but it had absolutely no flavor at all. I was dipping that in the tomato sauce too! The most interesting part to me, though was the end. Throughout the meal there were these kids that were coming around begging for change and the like, and when we got up to leave, within SECONDS, and by that I mean more like half a second, the kids grabbed the bottles of coke (which I was about to pick up and take another sip of as I stood), the chicken bones (yes the bones, any scrap they can get) and all the bread that was left on the table. The workers came to “shoo” them away, but they had gotten what they swooped in for. It really was like hawks coming in to take the last bit of bread at a picnic. Just crazy. If I had known they were that hungry and that’s what they wanted, I would have bought a whole other $3 chicken (or something ridiculously cheap like that in the outdoor markets) and intentionally left it on the table for them to have. Kind of ruined the moment. Too bad it was the last night and we couldn’t do it again. BUT, on the brighter side, we made it out of those markets and kept everything down. Rock on!

Djemma el Fna at night...aint she a beauty?
see all photos »

Quote of the week:

JAMES what is the name of our street?

JUSTIN small a$$ alley

Cool fact: French is the proper language of Morocco, but most speak Arabic at all times.

the outdoor markets we ate at the last night! looks like a giant cookout.
see all photos »

Words I learned thus far:      shakira = thank you

ahala = ‘oh my gosh’

Shahala – God willing