11-01/04-07 Morocco

To start off my Moroccan adventure, which was a Thursday-Sunday deal, I stayed out all night Wednesday, grabbed my stuff, and got on the bus to Tarifa. Our final destination was Fez, Morocco, the religious center of Morocco and one of two main cultural centers along with Marrakesh. Eight of us went, eight of fortunately returned.

Getting there: Bus to Tarifa at 6:45, 9:00 ferry to Tangiers, 11:00 train to Fez, 4:00 taxis to riad.
How getting there went: All tired and still drunk we get on the bus, we get to Tarifa a little later than expected and sprint to the ferry that ends up leaving late anyways, take the fast ferry that gets us to Africa in 35 min, almost get charged two euros too much for a taxi but wisely go to the official taxi stand, get to the train station and buy second class tickets that are supposed to be pretty crappy and end up being pretty comfortable, meet an argentine couple as well as a man that works in the Fez tourism office, get to Fez many hours later where a guide the man from the tourism office hooked us up with meets us, we take two ridiculously expensive taxis to the Medina (200 Dirham as apposed to 45 Dirham), are led through the Medina to our fantastic riad.

The Argentine couple we met were great people. I talked to them for a while and found out that they lived in Spain, though they could be living in the US. Their reason was a little different than what I’ve heard. The woman didn’t like American life and therefore didn’t want to live there. Cataluña, the most industrialized and progressive area of Spain, she also didn’t like to live in because she felt that it was like the America of Spain. The man, a computer scientist, gave up getting a very good job in the US to be an internet analyst in Spain where he works 9 hours a day and gets paid much much less. The other guy we met, Mohamed the tourism office guy, gave us all the run down on Fez and was super nice. He even called the house we were staying at to get our taxis set up. He also hooked us up with a guide (which we at the time thought was really awesome)…Idriss, our amiable, multilingual guide seemed like all good times from the very beginning. Even though he was a great guy, he definitely had alternate interests when leading us around.

A riad, such as the one we stayed in, is a traditional Moroccan home. Many have been restored and turned into to hostels/hotels. The one we were in was a small one, it only had 5 bedrooms, a kitchen, a central open area that extends up to the roof, a rooftop terrace with it’s own kitchen and a dinning table where we ate dinner. It had cushions and sofas everywhere, the beds were big and comfortable, and we lived it large. We had the whole house all to ourselves. The place cost a little more than a normal European hostel but it was worth it.

Thursday evening we did some medina walking. A medina is an old imperial city/market place. The one in Fez is the oldest and largest in the world with over 9000 small streets and the largest old mosque in Morocco (there is a newer mosque in Casablanca that is enormous). Fez and Marrakesh, along with a city who’s name I don’t remember were imperial cities of Morocco before the current one, Rebat. Surprise surprise Morocco is a constitutional monarchy. The whole Medina in Fez is a fantastic experience. There are a million little stores selling a million things. The food all looked super tasty and we were constantly tempted to buy up the plethora of fake Nikes and Pumas we passed. We were shown the doors to the big mosque which is tucked into the Medina and has 14 different doors for people to enter from. After some exploring we had dinner at a restaurant that, for the record, was not the one that our friend Mohamed had asked Idriss to take us. Aside from the lamb kebabas that were great, it wasn’t too fantastic of food. My couscous was pretty bland. Since John, Jocelyn, Jonathan, and I had been going since 8 AM the previous day’s morning we decided to head home after wards and sleeeeept.

Friday = Tiny bit of history, Shopping.

The day started with visits to the former Koranic school of Fez, the most holy Islamis site outside of Mecca (called the poor man’s Mecca since many poor people that cannot make it to Mecca come there to fulfill their Hajj), and to a former grand riad that was converted into a very pricey restaurant.

Then, we went straight off to hit up every government owned merchandise coop that we could. We started with rugs. The riad where the business was, was a “medium” sized riad and was huge. I can’t even imagine what a big one would be like. They took us to see a woman who was knotting a carpet. The loom and system in general looked really complicated and I was really impressed at the quality of the pattern that the woman could maintain. These rugs, which were all certified as the highest quality, had about 480,000 knots in a square meter. There were really durable and looked good on both sides. They are certified stain proof and easily cleaned without deterioration. After they showed us a million and one rugs and planted the idea of buying a rug to sell for profit in the US, we bought some rugs. John and I went in together on a medium rug to sell, Jonathan and Jocelyn did the same, and then Jonathan and I each got a smaller one for ourselves. It cost a lot, but it’ll hopefully turn out to be a big profit and pay for a lot of my European gallivanting. Also, if we pull it off it’s a good skill to have so that in my future travels I can do the same. Next we hit up the tannery of Fez which is very well known. Morocco itself is known for it’s high quality leather. The process of making leather is very time consuming and smelly. They gave us all some mint to smell while we looked over the actual tannery. There were many circular containers with chemicals and dyes in them where the skin was put to by conditioned and colored. There were many people taking sheep pelts and pulling off the wool. That wool is called dead wool and is used to make the lower quality carpets. Ours are all made with live wool. They make leather using sheep, goat, and camel skin. Of course, after seeing the leather making process, we were led to the buying areas! I held back there since the prices my “friend” (as every shop owner quickly became, I have NO idea why…) was giving me ridiculous prices.

After some weighty purchasing we were all decently hungry and had some kebab sandwiches. They were super tasty though Stephanie had a mental block towards it because of the sketchiness of roadside Moroccan food. Here, again, Idriss had us spending too much money. We all paid 25 Dirham and the next day Jonathan found that the normal price for what we had was 10. After lunch we went shopping for Berber Blankets. Also handmaid and beautiful. We haggled and got them down to a third of their price though still felt a little ripped off in the end. It was hard going to all these government stores. They were not a bargainable and Idriss wasn’t offering us other places to go. Can anyone say “commission”? After that we went to my favorite place, the spice shop!!

The walls were laden with spices and herbs for all sorts of uses. The man that owned the shop started to go through the most popular things. I got myself some lemon cumin, hot chili, all-spice, 5-spice, jiggy jiggy root (natural Viagra BUT also good for concentration, I’m going to dominata my finals next quarter). Others got magic lipstick (it’s green and turns red), henna, saffron lip balm, and saffron (most expensive spice in the world, made from a flower’s stamen). It was awesome, I bought tons and felt bad about none of it. Our last stop was a clothing place where they clothed us all in traditional Moroccan outfits but none of us caved in there.

The whole day of buying was deceptively expensive. A Euro is about 10 Dirham which isn’t too big of a difference. Yet, after Spain living and prices in another currency everything seemed so cheap and I wanted to buy it all!

That night we wanted to get some wine to share so Idriss was a great pal and took 3 of us in a car to a supermarket to buy us some alcohol. First though, Idriss took us to his house to have some tea, a snack, and pick up his wife. He really changed our perception about Morocco or at least Fez. It is not s Islamic conservative as you might think. It is pretty modern when it comes to tolerance and human rights. There were not many Burkahs and Idriss and his wife were very equal. The supermarket he took us to was HUGE. It was reverse culture shock to see that in Morocco after all the non-modernity we had experienced. Unfortunately, since alcohol isn’t too popular to the non-drinking Muslims it was all pretty pricy. We spent the night hanging out together, having a fantastic time together. I got lucky and went with some great people.

The next day Idriss took us on a half day excursion to see the ceramics workshop and buy some gorgeous mosaic ceramics. We then went to the king’s palace in Fez. Pretty damn impressive. It was great the Idriss was with us since the Medina is a huge maze and we would have lost ourselves a million times. Now that we’ve been there once we would be able to find our own way around next time, but having a guide at first was essential and it was nice to have him do some explaining of the city. He could have maybe gotten us some better prices on our purchases, but eh, what ya gonna do!

After saying goodbye to Idriss, John, Josh, and I went fake shoe shopping. Later that day we did probably the most new (for us) and cultural thing Morocco had to offer us. We went to the hammams which are turkish baths. With us we brought shampoo, soap, towels, and a Moroccan that was the manager of the riad we were staying in. When we arrived we stripped to our underwear and were given a large stack of buckets. The place had three subsequent rooms, each one hotter and steamier. The water was in the last room. There we filled each bucket with some hot water and some cold. The cold water is straight from the ground. The hot is heated by cedar fires which are far from the actial water but carries heat in the form of steam forced through pipes to the hammam. We proceeded to be massaged (more like stretched and thrown around), exfoliated, and scrubbed down by two Moroccan men. I can’t say that it was incredible but it wasn’t half bad and my skin certainly felt good after! The skin that flaked off us all was copious and revolting. We were all pretty dead-skinny due to the Spanish tans we had before the Moroccans stole them!

That evening Josh, John, and I went on some independent adventuring and ended up seeing some great views and getting back to the supermarket with some hand signals since none of us had any French knowledge and the taxi drivers didn’t know any English. We made pasta, mmmm.

The next day we headed home, and it was not as nice of a trip as the way there. The train trip took longer since the train we took required a transfer and it also was ridiculously slow. The return ferry also wasn’t as nice. There were some huge waves that got a lot of our stomachs churning. To top it all off, the bus to Cadiz (the last of the night) almost didn’t have enough room for us. We took exactly the last 8 seats on the bus. It was pretty stressful, but in the end we made it (though considerably poorer)!