Marrakesh

Souks
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We left Ouarzazate in the rain and headed over the (in?)famous Tizi-n-Tichka pass towards Marrakesh. The pass winds up to 2260m and it wasn’t long before the rain turned to snow. While the snow was falling quite heavily it was only settling in a few places, and only then at the sides of the road so the drive was quite easy. Unfortunately (or fortunately from Claire’s perspective!) we did not see the famous views from the pass :-(

We arrived to an extremely wet and muddy campsite in Marrakesh. As it rains so little here they don’t bother too much with drainage so when there is a downpour it has nowhere to go. No complaining though as this was our first rain in about 2 weeks!

it wasn’t long before the rain turned to snow.

Place Jemaa el Fna
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We had been really looking forward to Marrakesh as the highlight of our trip so we gritted our teeth and caught a minibus into the centre of town. It was, shall we say, persistently raining when we made it to the world famous Place Jemaa el Fna. This is the centre of town and usually buzzing in the late afternoon – and even in these conditions there were still quite a few people about.

We quickly ducked into the nearby souks which we had been told were undercover – they are except for the holes in the roofs! The souks were quite narrow and literally had rivers of water running down them and in no time we are all soaked and surprisingly pretty cold. We managed a fresh orange juice and some figs on the square before we called it a night.

Sunset with Mosque in the background
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Next day was mostly sunny and surprisingly the centre of town was mostly dry (although our campsite was not). Serious shopping in the souks commenced and we swapped Dhirhams for spices, lamps, chandeliers, slippers. If we hadn’t run out of time we would have had leather ‘poofs’, belts, handbags, bongo drums and much more…

We also squeezed in a quick look around the main mosque (outside only) but didn’t fit in a trip to the gardens or museums, or a ride on the horse and carts :-( One and a half days is definitely not enough!

Jemaa el Fna was alive in the late afternoon complete with food stalls, snake charmers (who insisted on thrusting snakes at you), tarot readers, shoeshines, dentists, dancers, drummers etc etc. The whole place has an amazing vibe and was remarkably hassle free thanks to the invisible, but ever present, tourist police.

We returned to our campsite with our pleasant minicab driver Mohammed Shumacher – driving in Marrakech is not recommended for the faint hearted!

Dave.