MARRAKESH
"Take the train to Casablanca going south. Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my my my my mouth." We actually took a bus going west, and the 13 hour ride in from the desert was nothing like express. But it was still exciting to see Marrakesh, a newer, bustling modern-city version of Fez.
The Djemma el-Fna square is wide and irregularly shaped and sloping. In the mornings, there are orange juicers, selling fresh-squeezed juice from wheeled carts with high piles of the bright fruit. We were warned to specify NO added tap water, otherwise you'll be sick. In the afternoons stop by the square to buy dried dates and figs, which come squished into flat disks and strung onto twine.
We spent our time in Marrakesh waiting out the bouts of rain we encountered, and meandering through the bazaar-like souqs. Even though I bargained down a leather and antique-carpet bag from 50 to about 35 euro, Sayeed, the manager at our riad, still made me feel I was ripped off. He redeemed himself, though, when he told us his sister would take us to the hammam (see upcoming post).
Bargaining in the souqs was amazing. We went up and down the busy aisles, pouring over dusty shelves in cramped antique stores, searching for good kohl powder to buy for eyeshadow, finding real dried saffron for super cheap, and stopping to admire goods that caught our fancy. We asked a million different vendors for leather bags with antique carpets, and had a great time bargaining for them to see how low they would go. None of the bags were very nice, but I got a feel for the Moroccan technique:
You offer a third of the price. They act mock offended. They come down a bit. You don't budge. They act offended. You smile. They tell you smilingly that you have offered an offensive "Berber price". You joke and come down a bit, or hold your position. They toss up their hands. You stick. They say no. You leave. They say okay. They beg you to stay. You say, truthfully, "Well, actually, I don't have any cash on me," and leave. They say, "Mademoiselle! Please!" and drop their price. "No, really," you say, "I don't have any cash on me." They calm their voice and lean in closer and say, "Okay, okay, okay." And come down even further. Now you are well below the price you asked for originally. Well done. Now you just have to find a cash machine.
We
bargained for my leather bag, we bargained for babouche slippers, we bargained for handmade leather boots for Alice. We bargained for silver earrings, for a turquoise pendant and silver pillbox, for rosebud and rosemary tea, which they told me was "viagara for women." Oh well! Heck, we even bargained for the rough exfoliating mitts we wanted to bring home for a whopping 25 cents a piece. (they started out at .50). Now, fifty cents is not much to pay, but the idea that they will jack up the price 100% just because they can spurns that competitive desire in me to get a good deal.
ESSAOUIRA
I don't have any pictures from Essaouira because my camera was full by that point. Instead, here are 1,000 words. Essaouira was different, and not just because it's name is un-pronounceable--wide esplanade-like walkways around white painted smaller buildings with bright blue trim, and a total beach atmosphere permeated the seaside town.
We met up with friend-of-a-friend Ron, an American expat who teaches surfing half the year in Jersey and then surf surfs the rest of the year in Essaouira. (You actually say it like Ess-ah-wee-rah if you're anglophone, or Swear-ahh if you're rocking the Arabic thing.)
We stayed in a nice hotel which treated us like crap until they saw on our Guest Information sheet that we work at the Herald Tribune. Then it was smiles all around.
Ron treated us to a tour of the main place/downtown area, which took about two seconds. He pointed out the oldest cafe in town, we had fish on a restaurant on the docks, and then we scoped where we would head the next morning for good coffee.
Cafe culture in Morocco does not involve women sitting at tables (as Mohamad the guide told us, "Women don't sit in cafes because they should be at home cooking.") but we didn't let that stop us. Essaouira has a much more laid back feel to it, so it wasn't uncomfortable to be a woman in a cafe there. After sleeping in, we went to the cafe and sat in the sun, reading Le Monde and the International Herald Tribune, criticizing everything because we had the advantage of not being there putting together the paper. (Too many typos! Bad skyboxes! What kind of page one layout is this?) Then lazily made our way to a hammam we'd read about that does good massages, and booked afternoon massages and a morning pedicure. Then off to the beach for lounging on chairs.
I felt a little uncomfortable in a bikini on the beach in an Arab country, but no one really seemed to mind, especially the 70-year old topless European woman sunning herself nearby. Back into town for a salad and the utterly relaxing massages with argan oil (Moroccan specialty, made from the crushed seeds of the argan tree, which are found, undigested in goat dung, and then pressed. Seriously.), and then we met up with Ron again, who took us on an expedition to the small island off the coast.
Ron, a surfer, knew the tide schedules, and told us it would be an unusually low tide early this
evening. So we put on waterproof shoes, rolled up our jeans and clambered down the big rocks near the shore, hopping and jumping around the tide pools, and making our way across the land bridge normally under water at this time, to the three nearby islands off the coast. No one else was around, and it made me nervous. I was thinking, this is exactly the kind of thing my parents would NOT want me to be doing. Alice was hesitant as well, but we continued, putting our trust in Ron, asking questions along the way such as, "How many times have you done this?" and "When will the tide start to come back in?" "What was it you said about that German tourist getting swept out to sea doing this?" and "We're going further?"
Ron told us he talked to all the locals about whether or not they'd come out to explore the islands, one of which houses an old stone watchtower that was taken over in World War II. "None of them had ever come out here! Isn't that wicked?" he said excitedly. Alice and I gave each other a glance. Much to our comfort, we did discover a handful of local fisherman, who were the only other people out there. they wore hooded rain coats that covered the tiny shorts we think they were wearing on their hairless, lean legs. They had spears, and plastic sacs. We approached one to ask what he was hunting in French. He didn't speak French but turned his ac inside out to reveal its contents, splayed now before us on the tide pools--a pulsating grayish purple octopus, tentacles clenching and releasing as it tried to make sense of its fate. We oohed and ahhed and thanked the man, "shokran" and listened as Ron led us further along, telling us about how once he came out here, put his hand in a tide pool to grab onto a rock and an octopus came out of nowhere and tried to eat his hand. More comforting stories.
The island was cool, and relatively untouched; serene and remote and provided a great view of the city. We got back with no problems and feeling rejuvenated by our adventure, grabbed a cool beer and some shwarma. Ron wanted to show us his apartment and so we went for a look, on our way passing through the Mellah, the old Jewish quarter, which all our guide books had told us to avoid at night. The black sky and lack of street lights was a big comfort, as was Ron's ambiguous comments about the Mellah being extremely dangerous. Was he kidding? We laughed nervously and followed him into a walled park-like area of razed land with Arabic-speaking voices coming from shadows near the alleys, stumbling over empty glass bottles and dodging groups of unsavory types. I suddenly realized exactly what the guidebooks had been talking about. The unlit enclosed mellah, full of blind spots, is not exactly a tourist's paradise.
We made it out unscathed, though, and up to Ron's apartment, where, while feeling my way up the unlit stairway, I put my hand on a hole in the wall and received a heart-stopping throb of electricity. After the jolt, and a brief bout of hyperventilation and an adrenalin rush, trying to make sense of having just been electrocuted, I was comforted by Ron's "Whoaaa, dude, I don't even know what that was...." Even the unique half-sphere copper tub in the bathroom and the ability to look down through his kitchen to the wide courtyard below and see the people living on the ground floor couldn't charm me once I'd been electrocuted in this building. The finger-sized cockroach scampering around the kitchen didn't help, either.
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