Marrakech- people+traffic+souks+trading=insanity
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2008
1
46
52
Trip End
Nov 13, 2008
Marrakech,
Morocco
Friday, October 31, 2008
We made our way out of the hotel and headed to one of the major roads, Mohammed V, one of the two main roads connecting old and new Marrakech (the other is Mohammed VI). The road bristles with traffic including cars, trucks, busses, bicycles, powered bicycles, scooters, horse/donkey drawn and people drawn carts, and pedestrians. Quite insane really! In fact witnessing all of this, when combined with our experience of getting from the airport via petit-taxi last night convinces me that Marrakech and Moscow are similar in their road etiquette; their are road guidelines not rules! To an outsider like me it seems incredibly hectic; however traffic flows and there are no accidents, meaning it is a great example of a self-ordering system, quite magical actually!Crossing such traffic streets requires you to simply choose an appropriate path, preferably one where one lane is obeying a traffic instruction, and then heading off; trusting that the vehicles will work around you should you be in the middle of the road when they get there! It took us a while to master this, although we did start to either follow a local, or have them between us and the on-coming traffic where possible :)The sides of the street are lined with hotels, restaurants and vendors who have set-up temporary stalls. There are also numerous beggars looking for spare change, locals providing ``unofficial'' guide services, and men wearing high-visability vests near taxi ranks working to convince you to take a taxi to save perhaps 5 min walk for the bargin price of 10dh (1 euro).The first location we visited on our walk was the Cyber-Parc - so named for the installation of several public access all-weather internet terminals within a large expanse of well-kept parkland. There was also several ``sit-down'' internet terminals available at a cost of 5dh per hour; a bargain when compared to the prices in Europe (2 euro for 15 min in Nice). It was amazing how simply stepping into a garden 15 mtrs removed you from the hectic place which was Mohammed V. The Cyber-Parc is located within the walls of the Marrakech Medina; Marrakech's old town. The walls are several meters thick, rendered with the red-oxide soil common to this area, with spaces left for the pigeons (well that is what it looked like to me).We continued through the park and existed near La Koutoubia; Marrakech's most revered mosque. Like almost all mosque's in Morocco, non-muslims are forbidden access; although you can get rather close to the mosque and have access to the wonderful rose garden adjacent to the mosque. It must be said the areas here were very clean, the gardens cared for with great care. We witnessed gardeners and cleaners constantly at work, cleaning up the mess tourists were leaving behind perhaps.After exploring the Cyber-Parc and the mosque area he made our way towards DJemaa el-Fna; the large market square within the Medina, the Souks located to the North. The Souks are amazing. The Souks are gathered into areas of expertise, for example, the Leather Souks are together, as to are the fresh food, the fabric, the ceramics, etc. I do not have many photos of the souks because many people didn't wish to be in a photo (which I respect), or wanted payment (which I was not going to do).After exploring the Souks we found ourselves near Ali ben Youssef Mosque and Medersa, a renowned scholarly location; the Ali ben Youssef Mosque founded in the 12th century.After getting lost in the Souks (again) we made our way back to DJemaa el-Fna in order to head towards Palais el-Badi and Palais de la Bahia. We learnt at this point that a more detailed map would have been useful; as in attempting to circumnavigate Palais el-Badi we learnt we could not and found ourselves buried in the middle of an area with no idea how to get out.At this stage a ``particularly helpful'' Burba man tried to strike up a conversation with us, repeating to us many times his help would be at no charge, leading us steadily deeper into unknown territory. Shellie's ``spider senses'' came alive, and after the fifth attempt to politely leave we did so, not before he questioned whether we were racist! Just goes to show there can be some use in knowing the local language version of ``thanks but no thanks'' (which in Arabic is La Shakurun by the way). We eventually made our way back to a known location, following at a distance a tour-group of Westerners which seemed to have a local (paid) guide.After this little episode we decided to calm down we would head again for a garden and headed down Avenue de la Medina. The southern side of Avenue de la Medina is dominated by one of the biggest olive groves I have ever seen. The olive trees here are huge, some are over 100 years old. By way of scale, this park is about 1km wide and 2km long. At the end of the avenue was another large olive plantation, called Jardin de la Medina. This one was complete with a large square water reservoir containing some large fish. Aside from the occasional tourist this location seemed to be the local teenage hangout.Aside from Olives, Orange trees are everywhere. They commonly line the roads, are in the parks - pretty much anywhere there is green space there will be a few orange trees. Marrakech has the most parks of any of the large cities in Morocco, so we seemed to have hit the jackpot on that measure.Returning from Jardin de al Medina we decided to walk up Mohammed VI. This boulevard has a large pedestrian walkway within the centre; making it a safer place to walk on than Mohammed V, and was previously named Avenue de France, a name which still appears on some of the local tourist maps. In the afternoon breeze the large Moroccan flags were dominating the skyline.After reaching our hotel and having a brief rest we made our way back to Djemaa el-Fna to find dinner and experience the marketplace at night; and what a difference. During the day we saw snake charmers and people leading monkeys around on collars; but at night we heard various musical groups trying to out-noise each other in order to get that valuable tourist dollar; street food stalls where men brandished menus and tried to almost man-handle you into their venue, the steam from their cooking stalls washing over the crowd; the street filled with parked horse-drawn carriages; scooters flying across the space weaving their way amongst the crowd, beeping horns to warn, all of this taking place under the dim lighting coming from the cooking stands, the stalls, or the lamps of the street vendors; quite insane really!While we had already decided upon where we were going to be having dinner we decided to brave a path through the food stalls; running the gauntlet of menus. They speak to you to try and catch your eye, hitting you French, Arabic, English, Spanish, German etc anything to try and get your eye, to hook you. Again, if you try and be polite and say no, you acknowledge them, giving them a way in; so we moved on through, ignoring them. It feels quite rude; but if you want to not have them ambush you if felt like the only way to get through!After surviving the menus we made our way to the restaurant; getting a seat on the third floor with an excellent view over the market at night and the mosque across the road where we heard the last prayer call for the day before starting to eat. For dinner we had Moroccan salad (bit of a cross between a greek salad and tabouli); Shellie had a Tagine with Vegetable, I had a Tagine with chicken, onion, raisins and almonds, and we both had mint-tea (a very very nice local speciality). Dinner was fantastic, afterwards making our way back up Mohammed V to our hotel. Tomorrow we are on a tour to Asni in the Atlas moutains, with a view of the highest mountain in the range at 4,138m.
