A totally different world - Arabic Africa!
Trip Start
Dec 06, 2005
1
53
80
Trip End
Jun 17, 2006
Marrakesh,
Morocco
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Met some nice people on the ferry - a few Brasilians (Frederico aka Freddy, Fernando and Bianca) and an Englishman (Min), and we hung out for our time in Morocco together with them. On advice from many sources, we got the hell out of the sleazy border town of Tangier and headed on an overnight train to Marrakesh. Marrakesh is one of the bigger cities in Morocco, and has culture from Arabs, Berbers, and Jews ingrained in its soul, which makes for a superb place for our 3 day African detour.
The main square is called Djamaa el-Fna, and is a huge open space surrounded by rooftop restaurants. We ate our first Moroccan meal at a place on the square - some couscous and some tajines (delicious meat and vegie stews) and we were definitely glad to be here!
We proceeded to then see the sights of Marrakesh - Muslim theological colleges, huge palace-like buildings, markets (souqs) full of awesome stuff but also full of hard sellers pushing you to "buy now", and even a tannery. In the souqs there were some amazingly colourful and delicious-looking spices, plenty of nuts and dried fruits, loads of woodwork and aladdin-style lamps, leather clothes, musical instruments and heaps heaps more.
01 Typical scene
Cam bought a really tough black leather jacket which looks great. I bought a belt. The brasilians bought a drum.The tanneries were crap. We were shown there by a local kid, who introduced us to a "tour guide". This guide basically walked us around the stuff for 5 minutes and complained about the size of our tip at the end. One interesting thing I did learn was that "pigeon shit" is used to soften the leather! Who would have thought.
After invigorating ourselves with a nap, we headed out to the main square just after dusk. This is when the place comes alive, with apparently one of the biggest daily open-air spectacles in the world. In the centre are about 100 places to eat, where they serve everything under the sun - we enjoyed some delicious shish kebab skewers amongst other fine food including a weird and very strong ginger cake.
Outside the food stalls are tons of weird stuff. Snake "charmers" who were pretty unimpressive and want everyone to give them money for playing an instrument badly and having a non-moving snake in front of them. Some charmers even paid guys to run up to tourists, such as Brooksy and Min, and throw a snake around their neck from behind, scaring the daylight out of them. Interesting marketing tactic. There were also: raving lunatics running around and making weird noises, tarot card readers, spice mixers, astrologers, musicians (one with a chicken on his head), storytellers, witch doctors, beggars and pickpockets. Lots of locals and tourists enjoying the variety, it was great fun.
Marrakesh really was an assault on the senses - for the most part it smelt bad, but some of the spices were awesome, the whole city seems to have been painted an ochre red colour, the food was pretty tasty and different to everywhere else, and every few hours is the traditional muslim call to prayer coming out of speakers all over the city. Trying to get by with our minimal Arabic and French was interesting, it really was out of my comfort zone after the relative ease of latin america, england and spain. Enjoyed it thoroughly and would love to visit more of Morocco again someday, but it´s back to expensive Europe for the moment.
Comments
Fortune teller?
Hey Rev - did you get your fortune told, and if so what did it say? Don´t bother with expensive Europe - come back to South America. I just love this place - and all the women are 8´s, 9´s or 10´s - doesn´t get any better than this!