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