Magical Morocco?

When speaking with some friends about their recent trip to Morocco, they used the word magical to describe it.  \Let’s just say that’s not the word I would have chosen. It’s funny to me how we all experience things in such different ways. f I was to ever visit Morocco again, I would do it differently. 5-star instead of 1.5, but I might not have seen all that I saw.

Airline Madness

First off I have to make a small mention of Royal Air Maroc. It was never without incident and given all that’s happened lately, I’m not sure I would fly with them again (and I have flown my fair share of discount second-hand airlines).  At midnight in Casablanca, on our way to Marrakech, we were unexpectedly told to change planes and were directed to a massive, overrun transit office where they handed out boarding passes, in a random-seeming fashion, to the hundreds of displaced passengers from various planes, none of which had listed times or gates. Surprisingly we somehow ended up in Marrakech at 2A.M.  

Myself and two others from my tour group were the only ones whose airport transfers had left, so we navigated the greed of cab drivers at 2am excited to negotiate a good price. This was the first instance where I was really happy to be mostly fluent in French, and it proved to be a great negotiation tactic in the markets!

Trekking with a Tear in my Knee

The tour started the next morning at 8A.M. When I booked this tour, I really just booked based on the timing. I had another plan for this part of the trip, but it sort of fell apart, and the dates of the tour fit perfectly into the five-day chunk of time that I had.

What I didn’t really register at the time was that it was a four-day mountain trek. Meaning climbing up and down mountains. Now as you may remember if you read my last post – I had just cut my knee to the bone and had a suture and a lot of bruising. So this made for a somewhat interesting and mildly scary prospect.

Our tour group of 8 was awesome and hailed from Columbia to Ireland. Our tour guide was born and raised in a Berber village and knew the mountains and the Berber culture inside and out.  Each day we hiked for a few hours with the most beautiful, dusty backdrop. I with a walking stick generously provided by one of my tourmates, Carlos.

I found the trek hard not just because it hurt, but because I just couldn’t keep up most of the time. Now those of you who know me well can imagine that I’m normally the one at the front or ahead of the pack in situations like this. But I was forced to just slow down and do what my body could do. As I said, the mountains were beautiful, but not always up close as they served as a clothes dryer, orchards, grazing territory (watch your step), and of course, a garbage dump.

Every day we would stop at high heat and picnic for about three hours. First, the chefs (who themselves could not eat or drink as we were travelling during Ramadan) would bring us a lovely picnic of bread, pasta, salad, some kind of canned fish, tea and fruit for dessert. Then we would just lounge on pretty pillows for the remainder of the three hours. 

This took some getting used to for me as I don’t often relax enough to Siesta. While everyone else slept sardine-style on the mats, I escaped with my book for some alone time. On the first day we stopped in an open orchard area. The second in a forest of sorts. I was sitting reading and thinking how lucky I was to be be chilling out in the warm sun in Morocco on a school day when a herd of goats appeared almost out of nowhere and trampled past me. I sat stock still as they walked past, giving me only minor skeptical sideways glances. I felt like I was in a movie and having a really meaningful moment as the herder approached me. I thought he was going to smile, maybe shake my hand and be on his way, but instead, he motioned at me to give him money. Spell broken!

At night we stayed in Berber homes set up as guesthouses in the mountain villages of Imin Tala, Ait Ahmed and Ait Zitoun, each with similar houses (dirt or simple cement walls, unfinished roofs made for sitting and watching the sunset, ornate doors and simple rooms with narrow, colourful mattresses and very hard pillows).  

We relaxed with some tea and freshly baked donuts, toured the towns (which took about 5 minutes a piece), showered in cold water or a hot hammam, and then planted ourselves on the rooftops with a cold Fanta bought from the one local store (which often just had a dozen or so items to buy) to read or to watch the villages in action (real-life reality TV). This was followed by dinner and then a little stargazing on the roof before an early bed.

At the end of each day, we were all desperate for a drink to celebrate, relax and bond over the long evenings sitting in the Berber homes. I mean this is what people do when travelling on these types of tours (I was with Top Deck).

We were however travelling during Ramadan, so no one would sell us alcohol (even though many Moroccans do drink). Travelling in a mostly Muslim country during Ramadan is incredible: watching families sit on their rooftops waiting for sundown and then all heading in at the precise moment of sunset to eat their first meal of the day; hearing the call to prayer echo through the mountains and off of other villages with similar calls to prayers. The world awoke at sunset, especially in Marrakech where each evening was filled with an air of celebration.  Our tour guide and chefs made the ultimate sacrifice, hiking through the hot mountains and watching us eat and drink while they had none.

So while this tour was not five-star and made a bit more difficult on account of my silly suture, it was quite the experience.  

Now I don’t want to sound like a western idiot, talking about how I am so shocked by the poverty in the rest of the world. But it’s one thing to donate to the cause or read about it and quite another to live within it. This is not my first time and it always amazes me how different lives can be around the world. I always think that there’s no way I would ever survive that kind of life, but my tour guide waxed philosophical one night about wanting more.  

“You have more, you want more. You have that and you want everything.” 

I can safely tell you that over these four days I wanted more. I wanted to be closer to a western hospital for my knee in case something went wrong. I wanted more garbages so that I didn’t have to dodge dirty diapers as I hiked through the mountains. I would have liked a hot shower. But after a day or two you just don’t care anymore and you miss it all a lot less. And suddenly a simple cold bottle of Fanta becomes the greatest caviar money can buy. There’s something so simply satisfying about that.

The highlight of the hike, just above glimpsing shooting stars, was watching the World 
Cup game where Germany scored five goals IN A BLOODY ROW against host Brazil. We watched it in a small room filled with a pool table, about 20 cans of propane, a small TV and almost every just-fed man from the village we were in that was in shouting distance. Quite the moment.

On the last night, we had a traditional Hammam spa (mountain-style) where two local girls, topless, scrubbed each one of us down (the females) in a steam room till we were clean and raw.

Men and Markets in Marrakech

After the mountains, we headed back to Marrakech where we stayed in a small Riad which felt like a Four Seasons in comparison. A small cooling-down pool in the lobby, beautiful mosaics and stunning rooms with clean sheets and warm showers. Heaven.

We headed out for dinner, and some drinks at a very touristy bar where we caught another world cup game, and did lots of shopping in the markets which continued throughout the next day. I must mention the BEST part of Marrakech. If you can ignore the vendors, the market was beautiful and the food was a full-on hit no matter where we ate. Tangines and Couscous for $4 a shot.  

 

And speaking of those vendors in the market, they could be mean. They harassed, grabbed your arm, got mad at you for wasting their time if you chose not to buy, and called you names.  And while sticks and stones do break your bones (and give you deep welts in your knee when tripped on) names might not hurt you, but they are not really a fun time either. Some fun names and some not so fun that we were called: bitch, vampires, Shakira, Lady Gaga. My favourite was when one of the vendors looked me in the eye and pointed, saying in French “You are the problem." 

Me and one of the girls in our group got lost in the souk (the narrow connecting streets of markets) and we were harassed and followed for over an hour before we located our Riad. It was not a relaxing shopping experience, to say the least, certainly not in 45-degree weather. 

 

After I’d said goodbye to my tour group on the last day, I decided to spend the morning before my flight at a nice spa, Les Bains de Marrakech. This gave me a hint of what an alternate trip could look like.  It was one of the more beautiful spas I have seen for half the price of spas at home. I could have spent every day there with the 5-star pool, restroom filled with flickering lanterns and tea and biscuits served like clockwork.  

By the time I got on the plane,  my knee was somehow more swollen and now infected and I had a heat rash creeping around my neck. I was exhausted from all of the bargaining and name-calling and therefore was really ready to head to England.

We were on a direct flight this time, but just as we entered European airspace there was an announcement saying that there was a technical problem that needed to be fixed before we completed the flight. We turned around and landed in Casablanca where two men boarded the plane, did something in the cockpit, and then excited, leaving us free to go on our way. I was not impressed. England was nothing but paradise after this. Which I’ll tell you about in my next post.