Rating:
 (4.8) (123 votes)
Marrakech, Morocco
July 10th, 2004
Pros :
Wonderful and cheap food
Cons : Touts
The border crossing from Melilla, a Spanish enclave, into Morocco
was like being on the "Oz" set during a prison break scene.
It was complete and utter chaos, kind of if the apocalypse smelled
a lot like cat pee and had some really really old men in gnome suits
hanging around. That was our introduction to Morocco. Although immediately
after the bizarre visa formality (standing in line for two hours
and getting a stamp of 8 numbers on the very last page of our passports,
with no actual identifying country stamp), we were hailed by a couple
in an SUV (side note: SUVs are relatively rare outside of the States)
who offered us a ride into the nearest Moroccan town, Nador. Ioanni's
a Greek geologist based in Melilla with an office on the Moroccan
side and Esme's his South African-born wife. They gave us some good
practical traveling-in-Morocco advice (including a suggestion to
skip Casablanca but to definitely see Marrakesh; MUCH appreciated),
a ride all the way to the bus station, and a contact number in case
we "needed help" (this sounded ominous coming from two
people who have lived and traveled in Morocco; hmmm...). We thanked
them and ran into the bus station, then turned around and ran back
out after realizing we had no Moroccan money, hoping we wouldn't
run into our free-taxi-friends and look like totally unprepared
idiots. No such embarrassing reunion happened, and we returned to
the bus station, fistfuls of dirham in hand. We got hustled onto
a bus that was already pulling out of the parking lot, which didn't
give us a lot of time to inspect our first Moroccan chariot.
No air conditioning, which was a shame in the sweaty heat of the
bus, and the leg room was less "Harlem Globetrotter" than
"cast of Willow". However, the really unique aspect was
the partially shattered windshield, which was holding together remarkably
well, considering there were two significant chunks of glass missing,
and the rest was held together by a nearly complete spiderweb. We
rationalized that at least the broken part wasn't the driver's side,
which became more of an important issue when the remaining glass
began bowing into the bus from the force of the wind. Not willing
to get behind schedule, the bus assistant (wearing a hot pink tank
top reading something in grammatically unique English, featuring
the word SWILTY) attempted to patch the hole with some tape, then
the plastic board stating our destination, then a couple of pieces
of wood, all without the driver having to slow down. As temporary
fixes, they were pretty creative, but about 40 km shy of Fes, a
huge swath of tape studded with glass shards flew off the window
and hit the guy sitting directly in front of me in the head, causing
a nice little 5th row bloodbath, causing some anxiety in the 6th
row. I offered up a minute sterile gauze pad which the bus assistant
used to vigorously rub any remaining glass shards further into the
guy's skull, apparently from the "ground glass helps wounds
heal faster" school of first aid. This was serious enough to
warrant actually stopping the bus, and a sturdier fix of plastic
sheeting was employed. We arrived in Fes without any further delays,
and decided we'd earned a taxi ride to our hotel in the ville nouvelle.
The medina (old town) of Fes is famous for being more authentic
than most other Moroccan cities, which have seen much of their original
architecture remodeled. On the other hand, we had been warned that
the touts in Fes, who earn money by "guiding" tourists
around the labyrinthal medina and getting commission from bringing
people intostores, are especially persistent. No one mentioned that
they were also criminally insane. We walked from the new town to
the medina entrance, and were approached by a man who introduced
himself as "Mohammed Couscous". I put my left hand up
to indicate that he was much much too close, since another few inches
and he would actually be sitting in my pocket. This made him extremely
irrationally angry, and he started shouting,"Don't talk with
your hands! I'll break your f---ing eyes! F--- you!" I was
willing to write this off as a miscommunication, maybe his accent
prevented me from ascertaining his REAL meaning, until he shoved
his finger into my back. This is very very inappropriate in any
culture, but in Muslim countries, where married couples don't even
touch each other in public, for a man to touch me is considered
assaultive. This made me more angry than I think he was expecting,
because I turned on him so that we were face-to-face (almost), close
enough for him to realize that I was at least 3 inches taller and
probably 15 pounds heavier, and said, "Don't you threaten me
or I'm going to kill you, you evil little man!" In retrospect,
I wish I'd been a little wittier, maybe insulted him in a casually
clever manner, but I was really really pissed off. He backed off
instantly to a safe distance, maybe because he thought I might actually
kill him, or that Phil, who was close on the left, might do it for
me. As we walked away, he screamed variations on the "F---
you!" theme, but the confrontation was over. Phil said later
he was worried that I would have shivved the guy if I'd had the
Swiss Army knife, but I don't think so because blood is SO hard
to clean off the blade. Ummm...I mean, so I've been told... We headed
into the medina, but the whole episode had left me feeling really
raw and angry, and the building Phil wanted to see, the Bou Inania
medersa (theological school) was closed for repairs, so we only
ventured a short way in and returned to the wide, treed, hassle-free
streets of the new town. (I do want to add that this is absolutely
the only time we ever experienced this in Morocco; the vast number
of people we met were exceptionally friendly and generous and went
out of their way to help us. This man is obviously dealing with
some inadequacy issues for which he could benefit from professional
counseling. No evaluation of Morocco should be based on this guy;
imagine if the reputation of the US rested solely on one person,
like Carrot Top or David Hasselhoff or, God forbid, Dick Cheney?)
The next day we took the (BORING BORING HOT BORING!) train to Marrakesh,
and all residual bad feeling was forgiven. Marrakesh is amazing.
There is a huge square in the medina, the Djemaa El Fna, which is
an enormous, virtually empty open space until dusk, when it gets
absolutely packed with food stalls and fresh orange juice sellers
and storytellers and musicians and snake charmers and tons of Moroccans.
We ate a platterful of olives and chicken shish kebabs (Phil) and
vegetable couscous (me) and plate sized loaves of baguette-y bread
washed down with mint tea and it was all less than $5 (insert sigh
of contentment). We rolled our bloated selves through the crowds
of belt salesmen and monkey handlers towards our hotel where we
collapsed into deep food comas.
Next morning, we ventured into the winding streets of the medina
and did some combination sight-seeing/souvenir purchasing. We visited
the Saadian tombs, which are really old and historically important,
and which I dutifully read about in our Lonely Planet guidebook
"History of Morocco" and, like most informative historical
tracts that I have read in my life, promptly forgot. You aren't
really interested anyway, or I would go look some facts up. I'm
doing you a favor so you don't have to read the boring stuff. Kind
of like a "Cliff Notes" travelog. That night we returned
for another food orgy in the main square, and topped it off with
a paying-for-the-atmosphere mint tea on a roof-top restaurant overlooking
the action. Phil and I both agreed that Marrakesh has bumped our
previous favorite cities (his was Hanoi, mine was Istanbul) out
of their top spots.
Bellies full of fresh-squeezed orange juice and honey crepes, we
got
back on the (BORING BORING HOT BORING) north-bound train to Meknes.
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