Snakes, Monkeys and Souks...Marrakech

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  Marrakech, Morocco
Sunday, June 15, 2008

So, after three pretty uneventful flights from Boston to Philly to Madrid to Morocco, we arrived safe and sound outside the walls of the old city in Marrakech Saturday afternoon around 1pm.  The old part of the city, where we are staying, does not allow cars so we walk about a mile to our "Riad" and settle down for a quick nap before hitting the streets of Marrakech.  A riad is an house that has been turned into a B and B.  There are four floors including a roofdeck and the place is awesome, very cool detail and architecture although it looks totally normal from the street entrance.  Thank God we have a guide because the streets could be used in a pretty sick game of hide and seek, or labrynth. We can easily tell we are in a Muslim country because five times a day, you can hear the call to prayer from anywhere in the city, and practicing Muslims stop what they are doing to kneel and pray to Mecca.  The main square in Marrakech by day is full of moroccans, tourists and Souks (shops)... by night, it turns into absolute mayhem (more on this later).  Since we already stick out like sore thumbs, we figure we mind as well partake in the tourist traps... Andy holds a monkey and a cobra snake (at the same time), we stare at the tiny little donkeys carrying  5 times their weight in goods, almost get run over by mopeds about every 20 feet, take tons of pictures of spices and accidentally spend four times as much for freshly squeezed OJ - Andy thought the cost of the juice was 18 Dirham (about 2 bucks) but it was actually the guy's cart number so now we know why the guy was about to close up shop for a week... it should've only been about 70 cents.  I'm sure this will not be the first time we screw up pricing.

After wandering around for a couple hours, we head back to our Riad for dinner - having no idea what to expect - and we're starving.  It's tricky to communicate with the staff, but we are served some plates of vegetables that look pretty good and eat as much as we can because we have no idea if anything else will appear from the kitchen... and it's way to early in the trip to brave the street meat.  We fill up on tomatoes, peppers, green beans, carrots, something that looked like a mix between eggplant and zucchini and 'pain' (bread) and sit back feeling pretty full.  Then we realize the second large plate was not decoration and a huge pot of beef, potatoes, peas and curry appears - so we muscle through it and the cook seems pleased we're enjoying it.  After dinner we head back to the square - this 'Bazaar' puts Faneuil Hall to shame.  I think we heard that it's the first or second largest "Market" in the world.  There are thousands of people, hundreds of carts selling everything you could imagine, circles of people watching people play the most random games - including one I get roped into playing where you try and drop a ring hanging from a stick onto a coke bottle... needless to say, I didn't accomplish the task.  Then we stumble upon hundreds more carts of food vendors and, no joke, anyone who found out we were from the states started to chant "KFC, KFC, KFC" riiiight, I guess we know what the Moroccans' impression of the US is.  We end the night at a rooftop cafe with a bottle of water and a coke... since Muslims don't drink, most places do not even offer any alcohol. 

This morning we get up around 8 for breakfast (another great meal at our Riad) again, we have no idea what to expect, but it was amazing spread of fruits, jams, bread and crepe-looking things.  We meet our guide, Latif, and hit the town again for some history and culture... we go to the Saadian Tombs, Menara Garden, Koutoubid Mosque, Bahia Palace and walk through the shops so Latif can explain some of the traditions... including a stop at a "medicine" man's shop where we get coaxed into buying some ginger roots.  We stop to get some Mint tea with Latif and then head back to the Riad for lunch... same experience as before.

It is a little tough to capture everything that is going on right now, but our pictures will help once we figure out how  to upload them.  Back into the medina for us now, then off to dinner somewhere. It is unlikely we will find the celtics game anywhere, given the time (it will be 2am here) and no one here cares about basketball. Tomorrow we are off on our trip towards the Sahara, so hopefully we will have some interesting stories to share.

Things of note so far:
1. It's hot, really hot (wait, that's not really a surprise).
2. Locals pick out a live chicken and can either watch it be killed on spot, or walk home with it flailing around.
3. The keys on this keyboard are all switched around like a bad prank and you have to hit shift to get certain characters.
4. Moroccans still view America as living the dream.
5. Everything here seems to be made the very old fashioned way, by hand in the storefront.

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