The roads weren’t exactly highways:

Compare to the baggage carts in Bangladesh:

When we got up to our hotel, the Kasbah du Toubkal (the filming site for parts of Kundun) we were just astounded by the natural beauty of the place. The days we were there were filled with hiking, eating delicious food, and meeting all kinds of interesting guests, including the hotel’s co-owner.

I’m glad we didn’t have to drive the Atos on this road:

A Berber village:

Chris, John, and Robbie on the trail:

After our hikes we would have lunch, rest up, and then meet on top of Jill and John’s rooftop balcony for a happy hour before dinner.

While Jill and John enjoyed their room in the tower, the five of us got a much better deal, we slept outside under the stars.

On every hike we’ve gone on for the past twenty-two years, John has always been telling us about the snack shop that’s going to be there at the top of the mountain for us. Of course, after years of hiking in the Appalachians, he’s never come through on that promise.
Well, it might have been the biggest shock of our lives when we got to the top of the pass on one of our hikes and found this:

Can John ever deliver on this promise again? Well, he did the next day as well, when three little kids were selling cokes at the top of the pass. But 2 in a row is probably as lucky as he’s going to get.

The Kasbah:

The decision to go to Marrakesh was already one of the toughest points of contention in our itinerary. It’s one of those places that you just feel like you have to see. The attraction point is the old city and the huge square in the middle. John had wanted to see Marrakesh since the early nineteen-sixties. Jill knew it was going to be unbearably hot. Robbie wasn’t looking forward to the stress of the city and wanted to keep relaxing at the beach. Chris and Anna were ready to get away from the beach. I figured Marrakesh would be neat for a little while, but certainly wasn’t enthralled about driving through it. The guidebooks said “Don’t drive in Marrakesh.” The couple we met at our apartment in Essouaria (from Asheville, NC, small world) told us to avoid it alltogether. And the apartment representative assured us that driving there would be “easier than in Tokyo”. We figured we’d give it a shot, spend 2 nights there and then head on to the mountains.

We were supposed to meet our landlord at the McDonald’s on which was right off Ave. Mohammed the fifth as you enter town. (Note to those who travel to Morocco: Every town, city, village, or hamlet you enter, you will be entering on Ave. Mohammed V.) Well, we were, in our typical fashion, quite late, and our guy seemed eager to go. He told us to follow him. He jumped on his vespa scooter and jetted off like Mario Andretti. Driving in Marrakesh isn’t fun. Following this guy at least turned it into a game…

We got to the apartment, and there seemed to be something in the air:

We set off for the city center, our group of seven an easy target for faux guides. But we managed to make it down to the center without incident.

One of the greatest things about Morocco might have been the fresh orange juice. Everywhere we went, delicious orange juice better than any I’ve ever had, even fresh squeezed, in the US. And a whole lot cheaper than a jug of Tropicana. We got some of the fresh stuff at the market in Marrakesh:

The remarkable part about the square is the way it comes alive at night, with rows and rows of stalls selling grilled Moroccan dishes.

The first night we opted for the Moroccan-Thai fusion restaurant. It turned out that it was only “fusion” cuisine in so far as that there was Moroccan and Thai stuff on the menu. But that suited us just fine, since we’d had our fair share of Tagines up to that point.

The next day we ended up back at the square. Here’s a view during the day:

We walked around a bit, saw some spice markets. This is why you come to Marrakesh.

Just remember that the same exact spices can be bought in the grocery store for many times less… I guess that’s not very much fun though.

We then continued on the the Bahia Palace.

John in the courtyard:

We then headed on to the Madrasa, an old Islamic school. Interestingly, Morocco has closed virtually all of its Mosques and religious sites to foreigners. This is in contrast to Egypt, for example, which has many Mosques from different time periods which are simultaneously open to tourists and in regular daily use for prayers. This school is one of the few in the country that are open to tourists.

Robbie out front:

John and Laura walking in the courtyard:

Robbie, used to sitting in the corners at school?

At that point, Jill, John, Robbie and Laura had felt like they’d had enough of the hustle and bustle, so they headed back to the apartment. Chris, Anna, and I wanted to see a bit more of the city, and wanted to try a Vegan restaurant their friend had recommended (I was desperate to try a pumpkin couscous, a local delicacy).

We found the non-tourist part of Marrakesh, which was refreshing. Active markets and bustling streets, but with people going about their own business and not hollering at us to buy some dumb junk.

We eventually did find Chris’s restaurant. But sadly it closed at 5pm.
The amount of lean in that wall made me pretty uncomfortable though…

So the three of us returned to the square to get food from the stands. It was a pretty neat experience. We took three loops around, each vendor shouting at us reasons why his was the best, even though they all looked identical. One was particularly obnoxious, some were offensive. We first sat down for some soup at a place that only Moroccans were eating at. We figured that was a good sign. Had a great lentil soup, and a chickpea soup. Then we walked around again until we found a vendor who’s salespitch appealed to us. This guy appreciated that we spoke/were learning Arabic and wasn’t pushy. So we sat down and had some brochettes.

Then we walked to meet the rest of our group who were having dinner on the other side of town. We had ice cream at Haagen Dasz, then headed back to the apartment.

This is my attempt to take a picture of the moon in front of a tree. Not much I could do without a tripod or place to set the camera. I thought it was a particularly Middle Eastern picture that would look pretty cool. It really just looked more like this.

I give up trying to correctly spell the name of this place. I mean, transliteration is tough enough as it is; even worse trying to transliterate it all into French. I’ll have to wait till I get back to see what Hans says. As best as this tells me, it should, in English, be aṣ-ṣūwairah, but that’s assuming I’ve put the shaddas and the tashkil in the right places and interpreted the dipthongs correctly… I give up. No more about this city.

Here are some pictures:
The city at night:

When we woke up the next morning, we saw the view from our balcony.
Just in case we got attacked:

We walked down to the beach. This one wasn’t as crowded, but it was still fairly active. The water was pretty cold, but it was refreshing.

We walked back through the city, found the alcohol shop to buy a few beers and bottles of wine for the apartment. On the way back, as we snaked through the old city, we saw a Mexican restaurant. This was a big deal for Chris, who after a year in Mauritania is longing for a burrito from the cosmic cantina.

Before we went to dinner, we decided to walk down by the docks. It’s pretty interesting and remarkable that an amazing city like Essauoaria is still an active fishing port and hasn’t been completely overrun by tourists. The fishing boats lined up made for a good picture. So good, in fact, that I decided I’d try to get down closer for a better look. There was a ramp down to the water’s edge, so I took it. At the bottom, years of algae, seaweed, and fishguts had combined to make a pretty slippery paste. I started sliding down, but figured it was only a few more feet until it leveled out and I’d be fine. Well, just then my feet slip out from under me and I go cascading down the ramp. I had managed to fall on the arm that wasn’t holding the camera, which was lucky (though the case did get really dirty). I went ahead and snapped the picture, then tried to figure out exactly how I was going to get back up the ramp. I guess it was a combination of bouldering and sheer luck that I managed to get up and find the Pauls so I could get a room key. If walking through a foreign city covered in fishguts isn’t a solution to embarrassment, I don’t know what is. I got back to the apartment and used probably an entire cornfield worth of ethanol to disinfect the cuts and scrapes I got when I fell.
The picture that cost me so dearly:

That night we had dinner in the old Jewish quarter at a great restaurant where we got our own private dining room on the courtyard.

The next morning, John, Robbie, Chris and I took a drive down the coast to see if we could find any good surfing spots. Apparently, the entire year is great for surfing in Morocco… except July. We did see a wind farm and found a sufers cafe. The wait was epic, but the food was great. We saw a sign for a beach, only 12km away. We got on the single track rocky road, and realized that it would take us an hour to get there. We turned around and headed back.

Chris wanted to eat at the Mexican place we had seen. We wound our way through the city trying to find it… and of course it was closed. We ended up eating at a restaurant that it’s promoter insisted had “democratic prices.” I don’t know what that means. But the food wasn’t great.

On Tuesday we set off for Essouaira (As-Sawirah, As-Suweyrah… who knows how to transliterate it. Either way. Formerly, and perhaps more easily, it was known as Mogador). This town, about 350 miles or so from Rabat, has been the filming location of movies including Othello and Kingdom of Heaven.
The coastal road promised to be beautiful.
Of course, to do this drive, we had to rent some cars. We ended up getting two Hyundai Atoses. The first thing we had to do, since the cars were handed over bone-dry, was to get gas. Well, apparently when you say “fill it up” that’s exactly what they do:

No need for auto-shutoff here; they brought us over to verify that you could see the gas in the tank…

We set off on the highway south. When we got near Casablanca, we came up to a toll plaza. There were policemen watching the place, and it seemed like they were directing traffic. One started waving in my direction, I couldn’t really tell whether he was waving to me or the guy behind me, or if he was just telling me which toll booth to go to. Well, apparently he really did want me to pull over. He radioed his team on the other side of the toll booths. Once I pulled through, this Royal Gendarme made sure I pulled over. After checking my papers and my license, he asked my why I hadn’t stopped. After telling him I didn’t speak French and switching over to Arabic, I pulled my most pathetic confused foreigner look. After chewing me out for about 5 minutes in a barrage of Morrocan Dialect, he let me go on my way. My heart was racing for the rest of the drive, and I was on edge all the way to our lunch stop, an hour away in Al-Jadida.

Jill, the Portuguese Citadel, and our giganormous Atos:

The route was filled with great sights and views, like these:

We stopped again in Walidiyah,

Then we really had to start hauling, because we were already sort of late to check in to our hotel in Essouaira.

But we still had time for a quick sunset stop in Safi:

We finally got to Essouaira after 12 hours in the car. Call it 2 hours of stops, it still took us about 10 hours to drive a distance equivalent to Washington-Greensboro, which on I-95 and I-85 might take 5. The city was impressive even in the dark. Our apartment was absolutely stunning: a riyadh on the edge of the city, with a view of the ocean from the balcony.

We took a quick look around, walked down to the docks, and then tried to find somewhere to eat. Everything was closed, so we grabbed some pizzas to go and ate them back at the apartment.

Here’s a picture I took in Stockholm:

The harbor with a battleship. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Turns out it was the USS Cole.

My journey to Morocco started on Friday night at about 1am. To get to the airport, I had to take a bus to the subway, the subway to the central station, and then the bus to the airport. To top that off, I had a 7 hour layover in Frankfurt, which I spent reading and sleeping on a bench until I was kindly asked to leave. I finally arrived in Fez at 6:35, the last train for Rabat left at 6:45. I took a bus into town and tried to get a bed at the hostel. It was full, but the guy at the desk pointed me towards a few other hotels. I ended up getting a room and heading to the internet cafe to find out where the hotel in Rabat was and what time I was going to be arriving.
Found out quickly that the hotel was right next to a Mosque. That was at 4:20 when the call to prayer sounded. I got up and had some coffee, then walked to the train station.

I was really expecting the worst when arriving in Morocco. After my experiences in India, I thought I was going to be endlessly hasseled and I was overeager to get to Rabat where at least I’d be with six other people. But Fez was amazing. No one bothered me. No one was shouting out to me. One kid came up and asked if I needed a hotel, I told him I didn’t and that was the end of it. The same was true in Rabat. I got out of the train station and asked for directions to the hotel, no one seemed to know, but one guy pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number I had written down and got directions. I was utterly impressed with how friendly and helpful everyone was.

Train station in Fez:

When I got to the hotel, I asked if the Pauls had come back yet. Their English got me nowhere, and neither did my French. Fortunately I had my modern standard arabic, which at least meant they could understand me, even if I had only a tenuous grasp of their responses in Moroccan. Turns out Robbie had taken a taxi all the way to the airport to surprise Jill and John, who were getting in late. Unfortunately, he woke up late and ended up missing them. We figure they were probably all at the airport at the same time, but just didn’t run into each other.

Once they got in an settled, we walked down through the old city and to the beach. I’ve never seen so many people in one place in all my life. Robbie got some great pictures, unfortunately I don’t have any with me here. I’ll try to post a copy at some point though. We bought some fresh cooked potato chips from a guy on the ramp up from the beach, then walked back through the crowded markets. We had dinner at the hotel, and Robbie and I made plans to meet Chris, Anna, and Laura. Their budget flight out of Paris was delayed (they even had to switch from Paris-Orly to Charles DeGaulle) and didn’t get in until about 5am. Robbie and I were waiting for them at a cafe, we had some coffee and orange juice together and then went back to wake Jill and John.

The cast of characters:

Chris, Jill, Laura, Anna, Me, John, Robbie.

After a quick rest, we walked to Chellah, the site of some Roman ruins and later a Mosque.

The most surprising part might have been the sheer number of Marabou Stork nests, even on top of the Minaret!

Then we showed the new arrivals the sights we had seen the day before. We watched the sunset over the Atlantic Ocean.

After that we had dinner at a great Moroccan restaurant. I’d say over the course of our trip, perhaps the biggest language stumbling block was the Menus. Of course all were in French. If we were lucky, there might be English translations. Even if we asked for an Arabic translation, my Moroccan dialect food vocabulary isn’t particularly extensive. So, it was a good thing we didn’t order the baby deer on the menu that night. Or what we guessed to be baby deer. (Cervelle) We later found out that means brains. Not that it woudn’t have been good, but that’s the thing you would like to be expecting before the waiter removes the cover, I think.