After over 24 hours of travel, I finally arrived in Casablanca, tired but anxious with anticipation to see two of my closest friends, Janet and Tiina. We were all converging upon Morocco, invited by our friend, Antoine, who was working on the film set of Blackhawk Down, a new film directed by Ridley Scott. Antoine arranged for someone to pick me up at the airport, and there he was with a sign with "Blackhawk Down" written on it. I chatted with the driver on the way to Antoine's house in French, while observing the landscape and people that drifted by. One very noticeable difference between America and Morocco was that it's not unusual at all to have livestock, tractors, mule-drawn carts and such things to be sharing the road with the cars. It makes driving rather hazardous, and add to that the fact that it's legal to drive less than 20/km without lights at night, and it can get really scary. Or, as Antoine put it, "driving in Morocco is sort of like a 'shoot em up video game.'"
Well, I made it there in one piece and I greeted Tiina and Janet, after so long, and it was a happy reunion. It was the first time Tiina and Janet met, but soon after we all saw that we're three of a kind….a kind of….'lunatic at play' attitude that affects all three of us! We're all a bit nuts and like to have lots of fun….silly creatures that we are. We made great travel companions too, with all three of us devouring photography like mad. So we understand, of course, the need to stop, and take time for photos!
Antoine met us later in the evening for our first dinner together. We stayed with him for the weekend, going to the film set on Saturday and relaxing on Sunday and going horseback riding on the beach for two hours, being that Sunday is his only day off. We then departed for our adventure on Monday morning, boarding a bus for Essaouria.
Now, a bus ride in Morocco is an experience in itself. This one was an 8-hour one too. I'm glad I experienced it, but to put in plainly, once was enough. The bus was full and we were sitting in the front. There were several people sitting on a platform in the front because there weren't any seats left. There's a doorman who 'operates' the door and when the bus starts to leave, the door is open and he runs to jump on through the open door. The bus will stop anytime someone on the street is there, flagging it down and you can pay the doorman for your ticket. At each scheduled stop, people get on the bus, trying to sell things like mint, candy, cookies, bread, musical cassettes….anything… Some people got on and made speeches or sang…some people came on and just begged. The bus doesn't stop very long so it's impossible to get off and use the restroom. At least for the first 5 hours or so, there were no rest stops. Finally we stopped and I went to the restroom. It was in a café and was one of those 'squat toilets' - not very appealing. To make matters worse, when I tried to leave, I discovered I was locked in - I couldn't get out! Stuck in a revolting toilet! I tried the lock several times and banged on the door. Nothing. The top was open, so I climbed out over the top and jumped down. What a relief. After that I was always cautious about the locks on the restrooms. Didn't want to repeat that experience.
So after 8 hours, we finally arrived in Essaouria. This is a lovely little town on the coast - white buildings with bright blue doors….and very WINDY! It was rather chilly there and I'm glad I had my fleece pullover with me. Our hotel there was a little, well…weird. It was okay, but the bathroom was a little odd. We discovered that the walls in the bathroom didn't reach to the ceiling, but only about 2 feet above our heads. I climbed onto the toilet and looked over the wall and saw another bathroom. Our bathroom was open to another room's bathroom! Of course, this room was only about $22/night for three people (and our most expensive room during our trip), but we still found this a bit strange. We never heard our neighbors, except once…..we heard a noise and then Janet yelled out 'hello neighbor', only to hear some guy moaning! What he was doing with himself….or at least what it sounded like he was doing….i'll leave to your imagination. Boy did we have a laugh about that one!
The first night in Essaouria we went to a traditional Moroccan restaurant with live Berber music for entertainment. This was quite a treat and we'll always remember the singer, playing a berber violin and singing and dancing like a puppet for us. He is forever immortalized on my video too! Yes, the video was an added joy for our trip. Each evening, after the day's activities, we would gather around my little camera and watch the daily video footage - it became a ritual.
We settled down for a night of rest and lo and behold there came a horrid noise in the morning - the blasting sound of awful and cheesy music coming from just below our window. Janet lifted her head and yelled "what is this, the wake-up call for the whole town?!" We had gotten used to the calls and singing from the minarets every morning at 4am, but this was something else. So loud and so abnoxious. It was, after all, May 1, and there was some festival going on below, and that was the reason for this horrible noise. So much for sleeping in. So we spent the day walking around the medina, taking photos and shopping. Let me tell you, that it's necessary to haggle for your merchandise. The shopkeepers will first give you a ridiculously high price. You should first offer about one-third of that and barter back and forth. The seller will give you a look like 'how can you possibly offer me so little?' - but don't pay attention to that - it's BS. Raise your price slowly and keep in mind your limit. If you bargain well, you can get a good price.
We left the next morning for Marrakesh. We had planned to take a bus, but decided to ask for the price of a grand taxi (taxis that go from town to town). We had heard that it wasn't that much more than a price for a bus, if you just bought a 'seat' in a grand taxi. These taxis are old mercedes and they take 6 people. After being inside one, I can't imagine more than 4 people fitting in there comfortably. I saw some other full ones and they squeeze 4 people in the back and two in the front (although there's really only one seat - someone sits between the seats. Crazy. Anyway, the taxi driver said it would be quarante-cinq which is 45 dirhams. I said for all three of us and he said, yes and I repeated the price to him again in French to be sure. The bus was 30 dirhams, so we decided to take the taxi. Well, we arrived at his taxi and he threw out the 4 people in there already (they were Moroccans). We found this odd, but thought that 45 dirhams was cheap to us (around $4), so maybe he charged us more than Moroccans, but that was okay. Well, he left with just the three of us in the taxi. He drove for about ½ hour and stopped at a gas station. He then asked for some money. Janet said, 'you mean we have to pay for your gasoline too?!" Well we discussed this and he said he wanted to be paid now. I gave him 50 dirham and said we'd give the rest when we arrived in marrakesh. Well, he looked at that bill like it was something strange and bizarre and said, 'no, c'est quatre cent.' Which is 400 dirham! Okay, now we were confused and we argued for a bit. We realized he wanted 400 dirhams, not 45 each. 400 was a ridiculous price for only a two hour drive, so we tried to get the price down. He refused and said he'd take us back to Essaouria for 200 dirham. Of course we didn't want that either, so finally we agreed to pay 400. We learned our lesson from that experience that we should always get the price in writing, just to make sure. I think this was a scam of his, to drive for ½ hour and then change the price. This was the last time we took a grand taxi anyway.
One good thing about taking that taxi is that we arrived sooner than we would have with the bus, so we were able to get a room in the popular Hotel Ali, just a block away from the infamous djemaa el-fna plaza.
Hotel Ali is run by a wonderful woman, Illam, who speaks several languages fluently, and seems to be able to do several different things at one time and still keep her calm - all while being 9 months pregnant. She was incredible, and very helpful to us. This was our nicest room - we had a room at the top, near the roof terrace, with a balcony and for only $15/night! Hotel Ali arranges various tours from 1 day to 4 days and we signed up for a 4-day one. Our two days in Marrakesh was spent mostly walking though the medina and the souks (markets) and exploring the city in a horse carriage. At night we'd go the djemaa el-fna and take in the merriment and sometimes eat there. The djemaa el-fna is quite unusual. There are jugglers, dancers, acrobats, snake charmers, henna artists, watermen, storytellers, orange juice venders, nut venders, and restaurants in the open. These people live off tourism alone and can be quite aggressive in trying to extract money from you, asking exorbitant fees for taking a photo of them.
After two days in Marrakesh we took our 4-day trip. This was in a mini-bus with 9 people total. The others came from various countries, including england, scotland and germany. Our driver, Lausan, looked like Tom Selleck and was named 'magnum' by a previous group of tourists. Lausan provided us with an endless (or not quite) supply of berber music to accompany our trip. The first day took us through the beautiful High Atlas mountains and berber villages, to the Ait Bennadou, a famous kasbah (used for several films), and through the Draa Valley when the landscapes turn to oases towns, desert with lush palmeries in between. We ended up in Zagora where we embarked on a camel ride for 1.5 hours through the desert to a berber tent where we camped for the evening. The desert is rocky, but near the tent, small dunes began. We sat in the berber tent, eating and listening to our guides play berber music with drums, flutes and singing - all by candle light. I let Janet talk me into sleeping outside with her instead of in the tent with the others. It's true that it was calm and beautiful outside, with a mystical starry sky above….but soon the temperature plummeted (it was freezing) and the wind picked up. I spent the night curled up in a ball, totally underneath my blanket. I know I could have gotten up and moved into the tent, but with the wind and cold, I just didn't want to move. Well, we survived it and were treated to a beautiful and peaceful sunrise. How amazing the desert is - how silent, how contemplative. One of the few times you can actually 'hear' silence. After breakfast, we rode back to the town and met our bus again and were on our way to our second adventurous evening in another desert. We drove through a wasteland with the appearance of having no life around whatsoever. Desolate, grey and dry - it was rather uninviting. Then we finally approached Erfoud and later, Merzouga, where the large dunes of the Sahara begin. Wow - incredible, it was. These dunes were amazingly beautiful - sculpted by the wind into a sweeping vista of sand hills, rising and falling, always changing. This camel ride was softer due to the sand dunes, while our previous one was much more 'bouncy' and caused a little bit of pain for us on the return ride. So, we were dreading another camel ride, but this one didn't hurt at all. It was shorter too, about one hour. Can't be much longer than that or we'd end up in Algeria, which is definitely NOT a place to be right now. This experience was similar to the previous evening, with music and dinner and waking up at dawn the next day. This time I slept in the tent, but it was much warmer anyway. We rode back to the hotel by the dunes where we left Lausan and returned to the road. This day took us through the Todra Gorge (kind of disappointing if you ask me) and to the village Tinnehar, where we visited a kasbah and a carpet factory. They gave us the hard sell and I ended up buying a small, red berber carpet. At the end of our trip, all three of us ended up with carpets!
We then proceeded to the Dades Gorge, and wow, is this place beautiful. It was one of the most incredible landscapes I saw in Morocco. Rocky cliffs with perched villages, green, lush valleys, bordering on paradise. We stayed in a hotel that night, and had a much-needed shower. We left the next morning for our return to Marrakesh, stopping in Ouarzazate on the way to visit a kasbah and serpentinely wound through the High Atlas mountains once more - my favorite part. We were planning on leaving for Fes that evening with a night train, but found out from our German friends, Anne and Andreas that there was a one-day trip to the Cascades d'Ouzoud. These are beautiful waterfalls about 167km from Marrakesh. Tiina had really wanted to see these, so we thought, why not, and stayed another night at Hotel Ali. We went for one day to the falls, and it was quite worth it. They were amazingly beautiful and we enjoyed our day there, hiking around the falls and having a picnic beside them.
So we returned once more to Marrakesh and left for Fes. I was under the impression that there was a couchette on the night train to Fes. Oh, but no, there wasn't. But at least there was only 4 of us in the car, so we could get some sleep (or sort of sleep).
Fes was the most ambivalent time of our trip. I had been to Morocco three years ago and Fes was the first place I visited. I was amazed by it, the medina particularly, it seemed like a medieval village - a place lost in time. That was my first impression. My second impression was that I actually preferred the medina in Marrakesh this time around, and that Fes didn't seem so special after all, in comparison to other places we'd been. Worse of all, the guides hassling you in Fes, were unbelievably irritating. It practically ruined our experience there and even set us at odds against one another! The "faux" guides (meaning they're not official guides) in the medina, offer their services to you, but even if you say 'no', they don't go away but continue following you. After Janet and Tiina, continually telling him to leave, he started becoming abusive and we only got rid of him by finally hiring another faux guide who was little less aggressive and nicer. We arranged for him to guide us again the next day, but after only about one hour this ended, as we got in an argument with him for taking us to the wrong tannery. This was when we all became angry and were even upset with each other. At the time, I just felt like returning the hotel and sitting on the terrace and reading in peace. I had enough of that BS. Well, slowly we calmed down and by asking directions found ourselves heading toward the big tannery we had wanted to see in the first place. We ran into a young girl (10 years old) who said she'd take us to the tannery. She met a friend a little later and then we had two young girl guides. After this experience, I wish we always had girl guides. They were much easier to deal with than their male counterparts (although other boy children were fairly easy to deal with as guides too). One of the girls invited us to her home and we visited there, having tea with her family. They showed us photos of their family and were quite welcoming.
Our Fes hotel didn't have a shower in the room (only down the hall), so we thought it an opportune moment to try out a hamman (public bath). You can also pay extra for a massage, and we definitely needed one of those after our long travels. Janet and I decided to go to one nearby the hotel. (Tiina decided not to go, having visited a hamman in Turkey before.) Well, what an experience that was! After disrobing, except for the bottom of a bathing suit, we were taken to a big, steamy room where many women were bathing in front of big buckets. Some wore panties and others were nude. There was an area where the hot water was, and this was brought by buckets to the smaller buckets for each small group of people. Boy, did Janet and I feel like aliens there, not knowing what to do. But the other women were friendly and helpful to us. The head of the hamman was an aggressive woman who also was in charge of giving us a massage. First she scrubs your skin with a scratchy cloth (that we brought with us), sloughing off dead skin (you can see it!) and then she massaged us, ending with her pushing us, making us slide across the slippery floor. We also washed ourselves on our own, including our hair (you need to bring all your own soap, shampoo and wash clothes). She additionally rinsed and combed our hair for us. This is where we met Nora. A young student who befriended us in the hamman. She invited us to visit her in her home the next evening and we accepted, thinking what an opportunity to get to know a Moroccan woman. You see, up to then, we had only met men. It's the men who work in hotels, (except for Illam in the Hotel Ali, but she certainly didn't have any time to hang out with us) restaurants, shops, and are employed as guides (except for the young girls in Fes). So we were anxious to get to know a Moroccan woman. The next day we bought some fruit to offer her family when we visited. She took us to a home in the medina (although the day before, I could have sworn she told me that she lived in the ville nouvelle). Anyway, she took us to a building where she said she lived with her uncle. We didn't go to that apartment but instead to her neighbors (but she indicated by pointing to the door to her uncle's home). We met her neighbor's family and they gave us some coca cola to drink and soup to eat (with some pastries for desert). Oddly enough, no one else ate anything, they just served us. This home was very sparsely furnished - rather large, but almost without furniture or decorations at all. The previous home we visited (our guide's home) was very small (tiny, in fact, for a whole family), but it was warm and cozy, with photos, and belongings adorning the room. So there were some odd things going on. Nora told us that she was ill (I think with anemia) and that her uncle always demands money from her and mistreated her, saying horrible things to her and basically told her to leave his home that same day. We never went to her uncle's home, but his children came the house we were in and keep asking for money from Nora. Of course, we started feeling sorry for Nora and wanted to help her. Among ourselves we decided to leave her 100 dirhams when we left to try and help her out. She had told us that she had needed to sell her bracelet for money to buy medicine and also needed to buy some more medicine for her uncle's wife and she had no more money because her uncle took it all. We enjoyed our time with her and danced to Egyptian music with the girls. When we decided to leave, Nora said she needed to go to the pharmacy, then she asked us if we could help her buy medicine. Well, we had already planned to help her, but I asked her how much she needed for medicine. Well, she said about 50 dirham, so I said okay. We went to the pharmacy with her and she got some supplies of medicines and the pharmacist presented me with the calculator which said 29,100 dirham! I though, what is that? Crazy? That's almost $290. Then Nora said, it's 500 dirham. Then the price was 291 dirham. We discussed this among ourselves and decided to give her the 100 dirham we had decided to give her in the first place. The pharmacist took all the medicine away except one. Nora picked up one other box and looked at me questioningly. It was 55 dirham. Finally, I added another 50 myself and she was able to get one of each (all the medicines seemed like they were a supply of two different things). She thanked us and took us back to our hotel.
We really wondered afterward if this whole thing was a big scam. See how much you can get from the tourists…we'll never know I guess. But we did enjoy meeting her and her neighbors and had a good time talking with them and dancing - so that's not so bad, even if there was a scam involved. I really think that part of the story was indeed true, but how much, I'm not sure. I just hope that at least we paid for someone's medicine that really needed it. I also wonder if that was the sole reason she invited us to her home (or rather her neighbor's home). Additionally, when we left, the door to the uncle's home was open and we could see inside. It was rather nice in there, with attractive decorations and furniture. So I wonder if the reason we were in the other place was to make it look like they were 'poorer' so we'd feel bad and want to give them money. Who knows…..I do know that many people in Morocco are poor, but I also know that many people try to scam money out of foreigners, viewing them as naïve and stupid and having lots of money to give away. It's actually illegal in Fes (and maybe all cities of Morocco) to be seen with tourists because of past problems involving scams.
The worse thing about Morocco is that you start to feel that everyone looks at you as a walking wallet - a $ sign on your forehead - "press here for cash." You start to distrust people and that's a shame, as there are nice people there - we met some. But you just have to be wary that you can tell them apart from the ones who befriend you to take advantage of you. But in the end, it's all an experience, and you learn from your mistakes.
After Fes, we returned to Rabat to visit Antoine once more before our return to our respective homes, USA, Scotland and Finland. Tiina left after one day and Janet the next. We were able to go to the film set two more days and then only I was left on Sunday. I relaxed and went horse riding again with Antoine and some other friends of his on the beach, and then to dinner.
And so, the trip comes to an end. I still have warm memories of the trip…..sweet, hot mint tea, so famous in Morocco, the eerie stillness and silence of the desert, the sweeping, majestic high atlas mountains, the paradise that was the cascades d'ouzoud and the dades gorge, the lovely people we met in many different places (I'll try and forget the scam artists and awful, aggressive guides). Some of the nice people to remember include Hassan on the film set; Mohammed, the owner of a jewelery shop in Essaouria and his infamous phrase on our video "Email? What means email?"; the two guys in the shop who didn't mind that we tried on a bunch of jellabas and scarves and filmed the whole thing (although Janet did buy two scarves), and they even invited us to lunch in their shop to share a fish tajine; Mustafa, whom we met in Ait Benhaddou who loved to be photographed (and is very photogenic, I must add) and gave us a tour of a local Berber woman's house, a woman who posed for us in front of her ornate wooden door and warmly said goodbye to me, shaking my hand; the guides of both our desert camel rides, playing music long into the quiet of the desert night; and our third and last Mohammed (sure is a popular name there), our favorite waiter and friend in Fes; Anne and Andreas, two Germans we met on the Hotel Ali trip; and last but not least, our friend, Antoine...if not for him, we wouldn't have even been there! I'll also always remember the intriguing berber music playing as the minibus rocked along the twisting roads, through the mountains, the oasis valleys, the gorges, the desert…..I still have that music too, forever imbedded in my memories and on my video of our adventure! And…thanks to "Magnum" Lausan, who gave us the name of the berber bands, we also have a CD of this music to forever remind us of our trip into the land of the berbers!
May 2001 Kristin Piljay
