Somehow with both a whimper and a bang

 I hadn’t been feeling great for the past day or so, a stomach upset with all the accoutrements. We arrived in Marrakech, our last destination mid-afternoon and after switching rooms, because the one they gave us was on 2 levels with the bedroom and bathroom on the upper level, I went out to look for an ATM because we wanted to give our guide and driver a good tip when we were finished.

The street that our hotel was on led to a big square with a famous tower in the middle. It was very crowded and there were a couple of people sleeping on the sidewalk and it wasn’t very pleasant. So rather than venture further I decided to cross the street and circle around back. I stood by a crosswalk until the car that was coming stopped and waved me across. As I walked past his car I was about to look up to see if anyone was coming when “Wham!,” someone on a motor scooter crashed into me and knocked me to the pavement. 

Aside from a large but not deep scrape on my leg, I seemed to be fine. No blood, didn’t hit my head. After I completed the requisite cursing, I walked to the sidewalk and the young guy who hit me asked me repeatedly if I was okay and did he want me to have him take me to the hospital. Aside from the fact that I wasn’t hurt that badly, I was thinking there is no way in hell that I was going to get on the back of a scooter with a guy who just hit me. Nothing personal- I just didn’t want to be part of the next person he hit. As it turned out, a policeman had seen it  and was giving the guy a ticket. He also asked me if I was okay. I said I was and made my way back to the hotel, only crossing at traffic lights, which was about 90%, though definitely not 100% safer.

I walked into the hotel and the people at the front desk looked horrified. They ran into the office and came back with antibiotic spray and ointment and gauze, after which they worked on me for a good 10 minutes. Then I walked up the stairs to the room (no elevators), recognizing that aside from the scrape I was bruised enough that the stairs were not fun. I pretty much stayed in bed the rest of the day. Our guide brought us to a nearby restaurant for dinner, which involved circling around a music festival blocking off several streets. We did a different kind of circle on the way back (a “long cut” our guide said) and the driver brought us back to the hotel.

That night, I slept very badly. It felt as if I was about to get a fever. I never did, but I still did the usual going from too cold to too hot, and even though this room was on one level, the bed was up one step from the rest of the room, which made going to the bathroom tricky when it was dark. The hotel was very nice but man oh man did it have a lot of little steps and thresholds. Eventually we got up and I forced down a little breakfast and then spent pretty much the entire day in bed, aside from a couple of hours when we went down and lounged by the pool. The one good thing was that the TV had Netflix, so we actually got to decide what to watch (David Letterman interviewing John Mulaney the first night and the Met Gala the next).

People kept asking me if I wanted a doctor and eventually I said yes. He came, examined me for a few minutes and then prescribed 3 different drugs to take. I then called my doctor at home, who said to not take any of them. At that point it was very late, but we decided to leave early. We thought we were going to have to fly coach (8 hours plus) but were able to get into business class for a (not) nominal payment. It was, of course, even later at that point and we went to bed.

This morning our driver and guid picked us up, stopped at the ATM I couldn’t get to the day before, and then drove to the airport in Casablanca. We got there very early and passed through the half dozen levels of security (they took our coffee and almost took our fossil rocks at different points) until we got on the plane, which is where I am not, because after an hour we had to turn around because of an ill passenger (not me). So now instead of getting home around 9 it will be more like 11 or 12, which will feel like 4 or 5 AM, so yay!

I guess I’ll have more to report later. Supposedly we will be on the ground for an hour or a little less.

Overall impressions

I like Morocco. As we leave our latest town of Ourzazate, I have feelings. We haven’t done a lot of trips like this recently, where we are moving from place to place and have things planned for us every day. On one hand it makes things easier, because one of the things that can be exhausting about travel is the sheer number of decisions you need to make on a near-constant basis. What should we do today?  What should we do next? Should we do that given the weather? Do you want to go in there? Left, right, straight ahead or turn around? Where do we eat or get coffee? Where’s a bathroom? And so on. Because this is a planned, guided tour we do not need to make a lot of these decisions; our day to day activities are mostly planned and the guides know where to get coffee, lunch, bathroom, etc. At least in part because of that, we probably end up doing more than if we were self-guided.

All of this is a long way of saying we are hitting a wall at this point. It’s been 10 days, we’ve seen a lot of really interesting things and learned a lot about the country, but it’s very foreign. Yes, that was one of the reasons I wanted to come here, because it would be different than Europe, where we’ve done much of our international travel. But that makes it challenging at times if you want to get something done or find, for instance, a shop that might be able to fix my camera or sell us a can of air to try to blow the sand out myself. 

But just like a marathoner who hits the wall around the 20-mile mark, we’re not done yet and we will keep going and that’s okay. It’s not like we’re so exhausted that we can barely get out of bed.

But yes, I like Morocco. It has a rich, complex history of people movements and political structures and ruling dynasties. Now it seems kind of calm. I’m sure we’re not seeing any resentment that could be bubbling beneath the surface, but it all seems pretty functional. The roads are generally good; many of them were built with French leadership. The people, at least those who aren’t trying to sell you something, seem friendly. The landscape and cities are incredibly varied, I mean, just comparing Casablanca, which seems like a mostly 20th century affair, to Fes, where the so-called New Fes was built in the 14th century, 500 years or so after Old Fes, and there is also a modern Fes as well that we did not visit. The towns seem busy for the most part. And unlike Greece you can flush toilet paper.

So I have no regrets about coming here. One of the effects of all of the above is that I have no real sense of how rich or poor the place is. I’m guessing there’s a wealthy upper class and there are clearly some very poor people, but it at least feels like there’s a good-sized middle class. They seem to value education. I guess the one downside to being guided all the time is that were we to come back here we probably wouldn’t have a full sense of how to navigate the place. But that’s okay, all things considered

Waking up in the Sahara

Waking up in the desert is simultaneously simple and impossible to describe. I came out of the tent and there was sand everywhere, with patches of rocks scattered here and there. And aside from our camp, nothing else. There are other camps in the general area, and I occasionally would hear a car or ATV, but mostly it was silent. More difficult to explain is how it somehow felt cold and hot at the same time, and what the emotional effect might be. I found it moving and I don’t think it was sand that made my eyes tear up a bit. 

Muhammed brought me a cup of coffee up on the dune where I was sitting and pointed at where the sun was just starting to peek over the mountains. It wasn’t one of those multicolored sunrises, the sun just came up. You can just see it right over the hill in the center of the photo.

As the sun rose, it created cool shadows on the dunes. These were my favorites:

From that point, we had a nice breakfast and then it was a travel day, once again, six hours from the Sahara to Ouarzazate, an unpronounceable town that was a significant stronghold back in the day (I don't remember which day, but back in the days of the Pashas. It's on the Road of 1000 Kasbahs, though we didn't see quite than many. Along the way, we spent some time walking through the Todra Gorge, which was pretty spectacular

We then stopped in Kalaat M’Gouna in the Valley of Roses, where the annual Rose Festival was in full bloom (sorry). We went into a shop selling a crazy large number of rose products, then stepped out the back door to see women sitting and picking through rose petals, we were guessing a step. in the process of making rose water, rose oil, and whatever else one makes out of roses.

We drove through winding valley roads until we got to Ouarzazate. The hotel there was lovely, and we rested and then had dinner (pizza!), then wrestled with the TV a bit, but the room is set up strangely for TV watching.

So we went to bed. It's getting to be a lot of driving, though there really isn't a good alternative.

Finally time for desert

Thursday was busy- we had breakfast at our private hotel. That was just so weird and formal. The food was fine and the people were nice and the bed was comfortable. It was just a strange vibe. We didn't really understand how the day would go but we left our luggage at the hotel and drove toward a village called Rissani. A busy, scruffy little village. Apparently, the whole area was part of the ocean 500 million years ago, so there are fossils everywhere. We went to one place where they were trying to sell coffee table-sized slabs with fossils all over it. Then we went to a small museum where we got a better idea of what it was all about. 

From there we went to a weekly market that was just amazing. People and donkeys and bicycles making their way through crowded aisles of produce and meat. The noises and the smells were intense and invigorating. 

We also visited a small, pretty mausoleum and then went back to the hotel, where we had a rest and then lunch and then we switched into a 4-wheel drive vehicle (a Range Rover- I was expecting something more like a Jeep) and drove on a seemingly endless straight 2-lane road and then turned left somewhere and next thing you know, we were entering the desert. Haj, our driver, seemed to sometimes use the usual tracks and sometimes would veer off to try to find something smoother. It reminded us of when we were in Costa Rica and our driver almost completely ignored the lanes of the potholed road and drove on the dirt on the side.

Eventually, we stopped and were loaded (I’m not sure there’s a better word) onto camels for the last 200 yards or so. This was sort of fun but we were happy to dismount. 

The camels dropped us at the campsite and then the guy who is leading them, offered me a bunch of merchandise for sale. I was going to give him a tip anyway, so I bought a little bottle to keep some Sahara sand in. We got a tour of our Tent, which included a little bathroom and I guess you can call it a shower and a toilet. If there had been extra time, I would have tried the shower out, but the day just didn't work like that.

We then got on the camels again and went up to a dune to take in the sunset. At some point, some sand got in the mechanism that opens my camera lens, so from then on it was phone camera only, which is fine for snaps.

It was quite beautiful and Ronnie took pictures and I took pictures and I took pictures of Ronnie taking pictures and we had a nice time.

By the time we went back, we were no longer enjoying the camel ride, which I'm guessing anybody who's ridden the camel can relate to. Our host, Mohammed, then led us up to the top of a small dune to have a glass of wine and just watch the sky and the sand and the changes in color and shadows. 

We came back to the campsite and had some musical entertainment by five men from the village, all with percussion instruments and singing, and at one point, of course, getting us up to dance. We were a little concerned that they were going to have a group of entertainers just for us and that it would feel weird, but it turned out to be low-key enough that it wasn't embarrassing. They played some things that sounded more like chants than songs, but they were still rhythmic and interesting. They had percussion instruments and one of them played a kind of lute. Our guide said the music was kind of cross-cultural African. 

After that, it was time for dinner. Dinner was a tagine, which is typical for Morocco and ubiquitous in tourist restaurants. Easily 2/3 of my non-breakfast meals have been tagine or chicken brochette. They're both fine, and this one was pretty nice. It had lamb shanks I think with prunes and some couscous and vegetables. I honestly don't remember the details. I was happy that we had good food and wine.

We hung out at the table while our Guide told us a bit of his story. He talks a lot, and I asked him how he became a tour guide, which I'm sure to him sounded like I was offering him an opportunity to give us his life history, so that's pretty much what he did. It was interesting; he's an interesting guy. He has done enough different things that he said no matter what happened, he'd be able to find a job. He's an academic, having translated books into classical Arabic. I think he said he sold real estate for a while. He said he has a facility with languages and speak several, with English, probably being his worst. And his English is fine

We retired to the tent. We had been misinformed about the temperature in that place. We had been told all along that it gets cold at night in the desert. We brought jackets and such, but it never got anything that approached cold, and the tent was kind of warm and they were heavy blankets. We managed to get a little bit of sleep once it cooled down slightly and it was unbelievably quiet. 

From Fes to the desert

 We set out for the desert after breakfast, definitely ready to leave Fes. It was cool up to a point but we had already reached that point. We climbed into the Middle Atlas Mountains, which were green and beautiful. We stopped in Ifrane, a town that’s known as the Switzerland of Morocco. Bet you didn’t know there was a Switzerland of Morocco. Well there is and we went there and it’s very cute. And chilly.

It was a school holiday and there were a bunch of people in character costumes, who were mostly loitering with their costume heads off.

There was a carving of an atlas lion. which aside from being the excellent name of the national soccer team, is a real animal, unfortunately no longer living in the wild. 

We then stopped to see some monkeys on the roadside. Some were just chilling, a couple were tending to a baby and a couple were playing in a tree. They were happy to have peanuts tossed to them.

Then it was a couple of hours of driving into and through the mountains up to the edge of the High Atlas Mountains, which were snow-covered. Then we followed a river and adjacent oasis for a long time. Oases do not look like the ones in cartoons, like a little island with a single palm tree, someplace to get water, and perhaps a comely maiden. They look like strips of green running through what seems like an endless expanse of brown. 

After some time, we arrived in Arfoud (or Erfoud), where we were dropped at our hotel. This hotel was kind of in the middle of nothing except for a couple of other hotels. Those were larger and apparently cater to groups. Our hotel was small and the grounds are a work in progress- piles of paving stones everywhere. It became clear pretty quickly that we were the only guests there, so for example, dinner felt very formal with two people who had nothing to do except tend to us. 

There certainly wasn’t anything to do there, so we hung out in the room and wrestled with the TV for a little while before resorting to streaming Parks and Rec again, which worked okay until there was a minute left in the episode and then it would go no further, so eventually we went to bed. Touring the area and then off to the desert tomorrow.

Last day in Fes

 Very little of our last day in Fes was spent in Fes, which was fine. Not that there isn't anything else to see here, but it's pretty inaccessible and you really can't get anywhere at all from our hotel without a car. I've mentioned the hotel here and there, but let me tell you about it. Palais Faraj may be the nicest hotel in Fes, but of course I'm no expert on Fes hotel. It is clearly a former palace of some sort. It sprawls about, with a large courtyard by a nice looking, but empty pool. There are tables and chairs with umbrellas and more places to sit under cover. There is apparently a spa somewhere, possibly in the basement, but I never saw it. The ground floor has a reception area and a sitting area nearby, then you can walk across the courtyard to the back of the hotel where there's the Salon de Thé, then a library, then another sitting room, then a large room with a grand piano, and then the so-called gym. I think there are bathrooms back there was well. There are staircases and elevators in the front and the back of the hotel. Guest rooms are mostly on the 1st and 2nd floor. On the 3rd floor there is a restaurant with two seating areas, one narrow one that I was never in, and a big bright (during the day anyway) area where they serve breakfast. On the other end is a large bar. 

The room we had was lovely in many ways. It was a suite with a bedroom and living room, both beautifully decorated, a large closet and a good sized, well equipped bathroom. The bed was very comfortable. There is almost no lighting in either bedroom or the living room, which is odd because the living room as an overhead fixture, but the room seems to get darker when you turn it on.

So we got picked up and headed to Volubilis, a large Roman outpost that's pretty well preserved. Some incredible mosaics are left in situ and they picture things like the labors of Hercules in pretty easy to recognize detail.

We've seen ruins like this before, most recently on Delos, though those were mostly Greek. There are many similarities but none of them are quite the same, so it's always interesting to explore.

We then drove Meknes, which is has a walled in area including a palace and related places like stables. Unfortunately, Meknes is being renovated right now (it's a UNESCO site) and we couldn't enter that part of the city. We got to see one of the gates though!

Then we drove back, stopping at a boulangerie for a fresh baguette (30 cents today) and then hung out at the hotel again. This time, we were able to watch The Departed, one of those sprawling Scorcese movies with an all-star cast. It was good and kept us diverted until bedtime.

Second day in Fes- enough authenticity already!

 Our second day in Fes was the same and then different. We spent the morning walking through another part of the Medina, with a similar collection of merchandise for sale, though we went through an area with fancy clothes for weddings and such. No meat market or chicken vendors holding up live (for the moment) chickens. Along the way we stopped at two schools, known either as madersa's or madrassa's. More spectacular tile, wood and plasterwork- they both had exquisite central courtyards . In one of them were were able to look around and see the students' tiny rooms looking out onto the courtyards. At the larger one the guide said there could be 400 students there. We did not see a gym or school store or dining commons or athletic fields, though they may have just been off limits to visitors. I don't want to make assumptions.

Eventually, we kind of realized we had done all of it and the day was only halfway through. We crammed too much into the first day. I didn't even write about the large hammam we visited, with hot, warm and cold rooms and areas for me and for women to socialize. According to the guide this was generally the way women had opportunities to talk, since they generally were not out in public, and so they would spend hours and hours there. Perhaps the modern practice of groups of girls going to the rest room together began this way. 

We left the Medina and then tried to visit a public garden, which looked beautiful but was closed for cleanup after an event. The guide and driver then conferred and took us to a couple of nice overlooks, one of which had ruins of a fortress on top. The views were great- the weather has been cool and sometimes cloudy but the air has been clear. At the top there was one of the many cell towers "disguised" as palm trees, which is just as effective as the ones in the US.

At this point we were hungry and nobody seemed to have any idea of what to do, so we suggested that we go to a mall that we'd passed on the way into town and have lunch in the food court. They dropped us off and suddenly we were in the local version of a shopping and teen hangout mecca, if you'll excuse the word selection. We felt very much at home. We had a coffee and then some frozen yogurt, then walked through the mall to the supermarket. 

We did this for two reasons. First, I have always enjoyed supermarket shopping in general, and I particularly like going in supermarkets in other countries to see what's the same and what's different, what's cheaper and more expensive, what is hard to find (hair spray, it turns out) and what is an overabundance, like bread and cereal in the US and apparently tinned fish here. The second reason is that on trips longer than a few days, we get very tired of eating in restaurants, so we buy some charcuterie and bread and eat in the room. Eventually, we finished at the supermarket (actually, a hypermarket), finally found hair spray and then went back to the car. 

We decided to try out the Salon de Thé. We didn't want tea but they had coffee as well so we ordered coffee and some little sweets. I don't want to make any generalizations, because we've only been to the two hotels, but the service here is just off. It's slow, but there are societies where getting your food and drink at a leisurely pace is standard. Here though, it gives the distinct impression that they don't know what they're doing. Any request can be met with apprehension, like "uh-oh, I have to do that?" All the coffee we've had so far had some from multifunction Nespresso machines, and a this place, Palais Faraj it's called, it's been nearly impossible to get coffee that's actually hot.

So they serve us lukewarm coffee and then we wait for the food, and wait, and wait. There were two young men working there, only one of whom actually did anything. Eventually, one of them left and came back with the food. It was 20 minutes after we got our coffee, which was now completely cold. When I said something, they got fresh coffee for both of us. Not the smoothest.

Eventually we went back to the room, had some wine, which we'd bought in a crowded, chaotic liquor store by the hypermarket, along with cheeses and salamis and fresh bread. I should note here that a supermarket baguette costs 1.2 dirham, which is 12 cents. At a nice boulangerie it's 30 cents. Things here are pretty inexpensive in general, but that was surprising. Anyway, he had our wine and food and tried to find something to watch on TV. There were 5 channels in English, and they all had terrible things on. The news was the worst, but the choices were John Wick 2 and then 3, I don't remember what was on one channel, and the our selection was called Den of Thieves, which somehow rated 7/10 on IMDB. It had Gerard Butler and a bunch of people who looked vaguely familiar. I'm not sure whether Butler and Keanu displayed less variety of facial expression. It was some crime caper and the acting was almost laughably bad, but it was in English and we watched it until the bitter, ambiguous end. We then watched an episode of Parks and Rec featuring Ron and Tammy on my laptop, which was a nice way to end the day.