Rock the Casbah - Morocco

Preface:  A couple of paragraphs may require a rating of PG-13 so for any parents who let their kids read this, God help you.  If you are reading this at work, please read it out loud.  Also, I have uploaded many more photos for Morocco at the link on the right.

It's amazing how two points of land separated by a sliver of water can be worlds apart, yet this is what happens while on the ferry crossing the Straight of Gibraltar.  To the north lies Spain where, aside from speaking Spanish with a severe lisp and bulls occasionally chasing you through the streets, most things seem normal to the Western eye.  To the south lies Tangier, Morocco's northern most city and the gateway to North Africa where the cities are composed of labyrinth like medinas filled with artisans, tribesmen, shopkeepers, and lost tourists all surrounded by the grand Atlas Mountains which are in turn  surrounded by the vast Sahara Desert.  These are my favorite places, where civilizations collide, and I was looking forward to getting off the ferry and stepping foot on the African continent.

Below is the route I traveled through Morocco, starting as mentioned in the northern most city of Tangier, then headed south to Fes, then to the desert outside of Merzouga, then through Marrakesh before ending up in Casablanca.

Journey through Morocco:  Tangiers, Fes, Merzouga, Marrakesh, and Casablanca.

Tangiers is undoubtedly the most touristy city in Morocco due to its proximity and ease of access to Europe allowing many day trippers to take the short ferry ride across the Straight and be back before sunset.  Tangier is a beautiful seaside town with camels lazing on the beach hoping no one wants to go for a ride while women covered in head-to-toe black burkas go swimming in the ocean and once submerged immediately turn into something resembling a huge black jellyfish.  The white-washed walls of the city rise from the beach protecting the homes and medina inside and extend upwards to the old casbah or fort that safeguarded the city in days gone by but still stands as one its main attractions.

Morning view from my hotel roof top as the sun begins to bathe the city.

Tourists consider if they want a ride and camels consider if they want to give one.

Locals enjoy the evening view from the battlements left in place on the casbah with Spain in the distance.

Being that there are many tourists means that there are equally as many touts trying to sell you anything you could possibly imagine and many things you don't want to imagine.  Most of the time you almost expect them to pay you for taking this crap off their hands.  As a 35 year old male, I am just not in the market for a pinwheel that lights up or a spinning top that makes a very annoying noise no matter how many times you shove it in front of my face.  On the other hand, my cousin's child has a birthday coming up.  I'll take the annoying noise making spinning top.  Do you gift wrap and ship?

To say the least, eyeing up their customers is not their specialty.  They go for quantity not quality.  However there was one gentleman who must have taken a 2 week online business course because either he could tell by my posture and jaw line that I was a sucker for subtle humor or because I was the only obvious foreigner gathered in a crowd to watch a local children's acrobat performance.  He approached quickly with a monkey in tow and got right to the point, "My monkey likes penis."  Well I appreciate the valuable insight and will make sure to avoid you in the future but monkeys aren't really my thing.  I am more into quality than quantity my friend.  "You pay for penis."  At this point I was unsure of whose penis we were now talking about but was still pretty adamant about not paying for any type of transaction involving this man and his monkey.  Being unsatisfied with my unyielding answer of "No, please go away.  We are at a children's performance and this seems quite inappropriate", he then stuck his hand in his pants.  I thought if this was happening back home I am pretty sure myself, this man, and Bobo Jenkins the monkey would end up sharing a small cell but luckily here, the nearest police were bickering over which way was up on a fallen stop sign.  Luckily also when the man pulled his hand out of his pants he had a handful of peanuts.  A big smile appeared on my face which my friend assumed was just because I was happy to see peanuts but also because, due to my esteemed colleague's accent probably since he was taught English by the British, I now understood that he pronounced peanuts like penis.  Well in that case, how many can I buy.  I'll even help you find more tourists as long as you keep the peanuts hidden and say 'penis' to them until they are about to hit you.  Let's go.

These are the young acrobats.  I thought it better not to show a photo of the tout, his monkey, and the 'penis'.

Shark:  the other white meat.

Tangiers is a great introduction to Morocco.  The medina is just large enough not to get too lost in and it is always easy to find your way since the sea is right beside you as your guide.  Also, the Moroccan seafood is fantastic.  One evening I made my way to a recommended local spot that is somewhat hidden but well known for its seafood.  There wasn't really a menu.  You were just told to sit down and a 5 course meal started showing up consisting of  whatever they had caught and prepared that day which at least meant it was fresh.  Everything from the seafood soup, to the spicy shark, to the whole fish kebabs, to the strawberries and almonds covered in honey for dessert was delicious.  After eating most of the seafood that was available in town I decided it was a good time to head out and take the 6 hour train ride south to Fez.

Fez is one of the oldest trading cities in the world and its medina is world renown packed with homes, hotels, shops, restaurants, butchers, tanneries, bath houses, and everything else that is needed to make a city tick.  New comers who want to explore the shops, or souks, become lost after just a few turns as there are no signs and small corridors lead to large passage-ways to small single-file alleys to old wooden doors to main thoroughfares.  Touts are posted up like vultures to immediately prey on those who are obviously lost and charge them a small fee to lead them out but the entire point of going to Fez is to get lost in the medina and as long as you keep heading in one direction you will come out somewhere.  

Just a portion of the vast medina that is Fez.

My luxurious riad and enthusiastic bellboy.

As usual, I adhered to my strict practice of waiting to think about accommodations until I am enroute to my next destination.  I met a fellow on the train who assured me of the most luxurious accommodations at his friend's new hotel in Fez for a fair price.  After the 'fair price' was negotiated and my train arrived in Fez, I was led through a maze of alleyways before surprisingly ending up at an extremely nice riad, or hotel.  The manager wasn't too happy with the price his friend agreed upon and I wasn't too happy with trying to remember where my hotel was located but after a couple days I had my route to the hotel down and figured the best way to explain it is by video.  After watching this myself it is apparent I am not cut out for making documentaries and will stick to photography but it gets the point across none the less:

Getting up the next morning and seeing my 'friend' from the train in the lobby I knew there was more to it than helping me find nice accommodations.  He told me he was going to buy some carpets to send to his other home in Switzerland and I could come along if I wanted to at least have breakfast there.  Sure breakfast at a carpet shop sounds fantastic.  Of course I knew what I was getting into but I did want to see a carpet shop since they are supposedly some of the best in the world plus it would be entertaining to see how good these guys are.

On the way through the medina to the shop, my 'friend' is telling me that the annual art expo just finished up and now all the artisens, including carpet makers, are selling everything that didn't sell at extremely cheap prices.  That is why he is here and I should feel lucky.  Lucky indeed.  I sent out a Tweet as soon as I could.  We walked into the carpet shop and before my eyes could adjust from the bright sun to the shaded interior I was lead to a comfortable side room where a full breakfast was laid out and told to just relax and enjoy the food.  After breakfast, the pleasantries were over, the gloves came off, and it was time for business.  Here is the cliff note version of how things went:

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Salesman:  Which one do you like?

Me:  Well they are all very beautiful and it is difficult to decide.

SM:  That is ok you can buy many.

Me:  Actually I don't want to buy any.  I just wanted to have a look.

SM:  Which color do you like?

Me:  I guess the blue-green is really nice.

-The salesman claps his hands and barks a few commands at 4 old seemingly crippled men who painstakingly unroll 6 more rugs in front of me.-  

SM:  Which one of these do you like?

Me:  They are all nice but I am really not going to buy any.  And I understand you are using these old men to make me feel sorry for them so please stop asking them to unroll your entire inventory of carpets for me.

SM:  Ok, well just take off your shoes and walk on this.  They are double sided.  This side is for the summer and this side is for the winter.  

Me:  Well I am from Texas and we don't really have winter.  Do you have a side for really hot and really humid?

SM:  Look at the stitching on this one.  Three women went blind while making it.  If you buy it you will support them and their families for 6 months.

Me:  That is unfortunate.  Can I just donate some money to them.  I can't fit a 12 ft x 6 ft rug in backpack.

SM:  That is no problem we can ship it very cheaply.

Me:  More importantly I just do not want to buy one and have no need for it.

SM:  So you can't use it.

Me:  Exactly.  Hence I don't want one.

SM:  Well perfect.  You can sell it when you get back to America and pay for your trip with the profit.  Look at this book signed by previous customers.  Daren and Kate from Australia wrote, "We bought 8 carpets and sold them when we got back home.  It paid for our entire trip and we also had enough extra money to pay off our student loans, buy the Outback Steakhouse franchise, start a koala/kangaroo breeding foundation (how cute would their babies be), fund a new Australian Space Agency, buy our own airplane to fly back, buy more carpets, and sign this book to tell everyone about this amazing deal.”

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I will say being able to start my own space agency and breed kangoalas was intriguing but I had had enough and was ready to leave.  Plus after refusing to buy a carpet so many times, I got kicked out and never saw my 'friend' again. 

Elbow-to-elbow traffic in the Fez medina.

After getting kicked out, I was left to roam the crowded medina on my own and in no time had another tout at my hip.  This one wanted to show me a leather shop/tannery.  Sure why not.  It's still the morning and I was hoping to get kicked out of three shops by midday.

Once inside the shop, I was handed over to the proprietor who seemed more perturbed that I interrupted  his black and white soap opera re-run of 'Esek, the Donkey that Always Sleeps' than interested in making a sale.  He haphazardly lead me through four stories of hand crafted leather goods which were all actually very nice but out of walls and walls of women's brightly colored slippers, they didn't have any in my size and if I couldn't get the slippers, why would I buy a matching handbag.

After we finished the fourth floor he asked if I would like to see the terrace and before I could answer he handed me two small mint leaves and began leading the way.  As soon as we stepped foot on the terrace there was a foul odor in the air.  He looked back and could see the disapproving look on my face and the mint leaves still in my hand as I was unsure what they were for.  He motioned to roll them up and place them in my nose to help mask the stench.  I wished I would have had these when I was strolling through the meat market.

We walked to the edge of the roof top and below at ground level to my surprise was a vast open area of small pits filled with different colored water with some men running back and forth carefully between them.

The old-fashioned tanneries of Fez.

This was a sight I had seen before in travel magazines and on tv but never thought I would stumble upon it here in Fez.  These are the oldest tanneries in the world and they have been operating in the same way for centuries turning animal hide into workable leather using techniques founded during the medieval period.  I immediately had to get down there although once in the tannery it was quickly apparent that flip flops weren't ideal foot apparel for the ground level tour with buckets of lye, vats of pigeon dung, and all states of animal hide spread about.  I gingerly made my way through.

The process:
They bring in stacks of animal pelt on the backs of donkeys through the narrow and packed alleyways of the medina.  Once unloaded, lye is applied to help remove any of the fur or hair left after shearing.  Then the hides are put in pits of water and pigeon dung where the workers stand waste deep and work on the hides like grape crushers at a vineyard to soften them up.  They are left to soak for a few days, then taken out and washed in a gigantic manual tumbler before being dyed and set out to dry.  It is quite an amazing process to behold and every chemical they use is natural from the lye to the pigeon dung to the dyes:  saffron for yellow, henna or madder root for red, indigo for blue, cutch from the acacia tree for brown.

Esek the donkey ready for his rest.

Applying lye with a smile.

Vats for dye.

The large wooden tumbler to wash the leather.

Yellow leather soaked in saffron set out to dry on the roof tops.

The final product - shoes to decorate your shop walls.

This was a live falcon.
Didn't ask what it cured.

After the rug shop and the tannery I was done with guides and spent the next couple days just getting lost and finding something interesting around every corner.  The local Berber pharmacies were always a favorite and interesting to walk into never knowing what you would find.  They had a plethora of different mostly dead animals to choose from and shelves of twisted twigs and roots soaking in some type of odorous fluid.  While doing a bit of online research on Fez I came across one man's comments on a pharmacy item:  "Don't eat the seed-pod like things the proprietor offers you. Although he's eating them also, they are very high in estrogen and can cause a man's nipples to be sore for several days afterwards."
(Note to self :  Next time at the pharmacy, find medicine for sore nipples.)

This is what they wanted me to wear.
I stuck with my own traditional garb.

Fez is remarkable but after so many days exploring the medina It gets a bit suffocating.  Luckily the Sahara Desert is just down the street.  I took a 12 hour bus ride over the Atlas Mountains to the ends of the earth in Merzouga for a camel trip into the desert.  It wasn’t really high season so I was the only participant in the camel caravan.  My guide walked in front of me sometimes talking on his cell phone but after 15 minutes we were past the first dune and surrounded by endless desert.  We rode about 2.5 hours to a site of Berber camps and a little oasis tucked below a mountainous sand dune.  It was definitely peaceful and relaxing sleeping in the open on a mat with just the stars overhead.  My guide told me next time I came I should come with him to where he is from.  It is only 5 days more by camel into the desert.  I told him that just after 2 hours on that camel my ass was pretty sore but I knew a monkey in Tangiers that might make a good travel companion.

A one-camel caravan.

My Berber guide pretending to sooth his camel.  They are one of the most ornery creatures I have ever met.
I guess I would be in a foul mood as well if I was the beast of choice to carry people
and their belongings through the desert.

Our camp for the night.  I slept in the middle on a very nice carpet with just the stars overhead.

After this I headed back into the thick of things to Marrakesh.  If Fez is the heart of Morocco then Marrakesh is its cultural capital.  Home to the busiest square in all of Africa, Jemaa el-Fnaa, which means 'Assembly of Trespassers'.  It is still filled every night as it has been for years with snake charmers, fortune tellers, Berber musicians, magicians, baboons, and all those that come to witness the spectacle.  The only thing that probably hasn't been here for centuries is the 'ring around the coke bottle' game:

Locals can't get enough of trying to put a ring around a bottle of coke.

Snake charmers aren't that charming.

Lights at night in Jemaa el-Fnaa Square.

What's for dinner - the entire sheep's head or just the brain?  Kids eat free.

Aside from Jemaa el-Fnaa, Marrakesh is filled with the grandest palaces, tombs, gardens, medinas, and people watching Morocco has to offer.  The main medina in Marrakesh isn't as lived in as the one in Fez and is set up more for tourist shopping resembling something akin to Aladdin's Cave when you enter.

There are plenty of restauranteurs vying for your appetite and money as you walk the streets especially around Jemaa el-Fnaa but it offers the best people watching.  One day during a lunch time stroll a friendly lad presented me with an overly adequate menu so I decided to have  a seat and watch the crowd meander by.  After taking some time to finally decide what I wanted from the exhaustive choices, I called the waiter over and pointed to my first pick.  The waiter then told me they were out of that.  I pointed to my second item.  That is not good.  I pointed to my third item.  We don't make that any more.  Ok, just tell me what I can get.  Kebab.  Ok give me that.  So the waiter went and pulled a few kebabs out of the warmer that were probably made yesterday and I gnawed at them for a while at least enjoying the parade of people passing by.  Luckily there was a cheap ice cream place just next door.  The ice cream was delicious but as a piece of advice make sure to have it finished before the sand storm roles in or it gets a bit gritty.

After my travels through Morocco with just one more short stop to go before leaving the country I decided to indulge myself and relax in a hamam or traditional bath house.  There are separate hamams for men and women of course and it's basically a sauna/bath/massage place where you can get bathed and massaged by a full grown man for a small fee.  Who could pass that up?  The description calls it a relaxing massage and bath but it seems more akin to some practices during the Salem witch trials with the amount of contortions they put you in and scrubbing they do.  I definitely admitted I was a witch more than once but that didn't seem to be enough to make it stop.  I will say that they thoroughly scrub every inch of whatever is exposed.  I had on my swimming trunks but the local attire seemed to be a just a pair of tighty whities. You might think it a bad idea to go into a hot bath house in a town that is situated in the desert however it is so hot inside that the 100 F degree temps outside seem relatively cool afterwards.

Once I was thoroughly satisfied with my time in Marrakesh, I left one day for Casablanca before I flew out.  For all it's fame and lore, there really isn't much to see in Casablanca even though it is Morocco's largest city and is home to the largest mosque in North Africa.  Even the famed Rick's Cafe was just recently built a few years ago to satisfy tourists.  Of course I went.   

Rick's Cafe - Best meal I had eaten in a long time accompanied with Casablanca Beer.

The inner courtyard of the massive Hassan II Mosque.
Third largest mosque in the world.  Tallest minarets in the world.
Capacity of 25,000 worshippers inside, 80,000 outside.

I know that was a long read and if you made it this far, thanks.
Hope everyone is doing well and always great to hear from everyone or anyone.
Only one more entry until I am caught up to my current location.  Five points for anyone who knows where I am now.

Cheers,

JB

Self-portrait:  Here's lookin' at me.

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Unpaid Advertisement:

I have no idea what it tightens but he guaranteed results.

My buddy with the monkey from Tangier asked me to advertise some of his other products and in return he would give me a cut in any new sales.  So the next time you are in Tangier please stop in at his shop and make sure to mention my name;)