Grand Adventures in Morocco

So to make things a little less overwhelming, I've decided to break down my catch-up blogging into sections and post them over the next few days. See, it's just so hot in Bologna right now that I can't bear the thought of sitting in front of my computer when I could be reading my newest book in a cool corner somewhere, preferably on or near an ice pack. It's amazing - since I finished classes and exams, I have had time to rediscover reading. It's ironic that all that reading kept me from reading. Anyway I read A Clockwork Orange which I've always wanted to read and then transitioned straight into Little Women. In retrospect I probably could have chosen a smoother transition! On a whim, I just bought Madame Bovary... I don't know too much about it but it keeps popping up in my crossword puzzles so my curiosity was peaked. (Joy and I managed to completely finish a book of 106 crosswords during our beach vacation!!) Ooh, I also just returned a textbook I never used so I have 20 euro of store credit to spend on summer reading!

Back on track - Morocco. It's been a long time so I may have forgotten a few things, but I'll start at the beginning and hopefully it'll all come back to me.

Kat and I left for our first destination, Fez in kind of a daze. We'd only been in Bologna for 3 days after coming back from Puglia and I had barely finished unpacking. We also had to catch an early morning train We arrived safely in Fez, though and met up with our couchsurfing host, Hassan. Everyone thought we were crazy for couchsurfing in Morocco but I thought it would be the best way to really experience the Moroccan culture which, as we found out, is a very different thing from a tourist's perspective. Also, Hassan had a lot of positive references and lives at home with his parents and siblings so we figured it would be pretty safe.

One of the first things we did was Hassan was take a taxi to his village. This doesn't sound like it would be a particularly interesting or exciting experience, but taxis in Morocco are very different from taxis in the US. Basically, you pay for whatever space you occupy in the taxi. So, in order to pay the least amount of money possible, you have to cram as many people into the car as possible! The backseat counts as 4 spaces and the front seat counts as 2, which I believe is actually illegal in the United States... it was definitely a hot, crowded and smelly ride!

Hassan is from a small village called Bhalil, and I think that its only tourists are the various travelers that he hosts through Couchsurfing. Since he hosts pretty frequently, people didn't necessarily seem surprised to see us there, but they were definitely interested in our every move. Children pointed and laughed a lot - did wonders for the self-esteem! It's a beautiful village, though, still very traditional and practically untouched by tourism.

Walking into Hassan's house (and I use the term loosely) was an experience that I'll never forget. I didn't actually realize that's what we were walking into, since the entrance was just a small door covered by a curtain. When I walked in, I realized that his house was actually a cave.

It was a very homey, cozy cave but definitely a cave - divided into three rooms. There was a living room which doubled as a bedroom for the several siblings, kitchen and "bathroom" which was actually just a small area with a hole in the ground and a candle for lighting. On my first bathroom trip I managed to burn myself which was a little embarassing - apparently I can't manage to pee in Morocco without getting injured. Excellent. There was also a back area of the cave which I was too afraid to go into as it was the darkest and most cave-like. I think it was used for storage. Then there was a small loft, where the parents slept. I don't think I know many people who would be thrilled at the idea of giving up their houses and moving into a cave but it really was a beautiful little home. Inside was dark and cool , providing relief from the heat outside. There were colorful cushions everywhere and even a tiny little tv. I was actually amazed at how much time the family spent watching television, but days must get pretty long in the hot summer and it definitely passes time.

When we entered the living room, Hassan's mother and sisters were waiting for us - his Mom had prepared an amazing lunch of Tajin, which we devoured without thinking of the many food-related warnings we'd received before leaving for Morocco. It was delicious, a kind of slow-cooked potato and tomato stew with grilled fish on top. Aside from the taste, I also loved the way we ate it. Hassan explained that this is how most Moroccan families eat their meals - everyone gathers around the low table, with a large dish of food in the middle and plenty of tasty flatbread to go around. Then you just dig in, using the bread and your first two fingers to scoop up food right out of the main dish. Scraps are left on the table, and are swept into the trash at the end of the meal. There was lots of lip-smacking and "mmmm"-ing, laughing and talking about the day (not in English, unfortunately but it sounded like a good day from all the giggles). To eat the fish, we just picked up an entire fish and ripped off all the meat with our fingers. I've always thought food was especially tasty when there's no silverware getting in the way! Anyway, eating in Moroccan homes is a very communal experience - maybe when I get home to Berkeley I'll host some Moroccan dinner parties and we can all get our hands dirty!

Hassan turned out to be a great guide and showed us around his village as well as all of the nearby towns. My favorite was probably Fes, a bustling city which is one of the biggest in Morocco. In the Medina (or Old Town), there are no cars but the roads are still packed with pedestrians, mopeds, carts pulled by donkeys or horses or even goats, and all sorts of vendors selling colorful rugs, silk, leather, silver, clothing and shoes, and food. The Arabic architecture is beautiful!The city was filled with the smell of herbs, spices, perfumes and sometimes not-so-pleasant odors as well (that's what happens when you have a city filled with goats). The whole town was a sensory overload, with the many smells, shouting vendors, colorful trinkets and delicious goodies to taste. We stopped a few times for fresh-squeezed orange juice, mint tea or Moroccan coffee, all delicious. Morocco is famous for its orange juice and of course the mint tea is incredible - I'd never heard anything about the coffee but it's amazing as well. Sometimes I couldn't decide which I wanted so I would get two options, then stop again after an hour or so for the third!

At one point in the trip, Hassan took us to his friend's leather shop. He showed us the factory where they dye all the leather, using only natural ingredients. Red comes from poppies, yellow from saffron, etc. Kat and I took the opportunity to show off our awesome straw hats that we bought to keep the sun out of our faces (and look awesomely cool while we do it)!

The most interesting experience that we had during our time with Hassan was definitely our trip to the local Hammam (or Turkish Bath) in Bhalil. I've heard lots of stories about Hammams, and I imagined kind of a spa, going from hot water to cold water baths, massage, sauna. As I realized, that kind of Hammam does exist - in the most touristy cities of Morocco. Bhalil, as I said before, is definitely not a touristy city of Morocco. Since they don't feel the need to impress any tourists, their idea of a Hammam is a very basic one - a large, public bathing room. We went with Hassan's younger sister and kind of followed her lead. Now, as I said before, the villagers of Bhalil were interested in our every move, and by this time I'd gotten used to the constant staring. Since we were now naked, it was a little more intimidating. The main room of the Hammam was filled with women, sitting on the ground with buckets of hot, warm and cold water in front of the, All of these women were staring at us, most pointing and giggling at us because we didn't know the right order of hot/cold/warm water bathing, or because we weren't using the traditional scrubbing gloves, or because we were about 10 shades whiter than anyone they'd ever seen before. For these and about a million other reasons, we stuck out like two sore, very naked thumbs. At one point, Hassan's sister motioned to me that she wanted me to scrub her back for her - but apparently I didn't know how to do it correctly because another woman snatched the glove away and took over. I later found out that since these women only go to the Hammam about once a week, they have to make each time count. This involves scrubbing off several layers of skin, as I painfully realized when Hassan's sister scrubbed my back. Owwww.

It was definitely an interesting, humbling and somewhat embarassing experience but I do love the idea of the Hammam. Just like a Moroccan meal, bathing becomes a very communal experience. It's the one time of the day when the women don't have any domestic tasks to perform, so they stay in there as long as possible, laughing, gossiping and scraping off layers of each other's skin. It's quite the bonding experience and I enjoyed it, despite the slight humiliation of being naked and laughed at by about 50 people.

Obviously, I have no pictures of the hammam.

After spending a few days in Bhalil and the neighboring cities, we headed out to the Erg Chebbi, which is a large section of the Sahara desert in southeast Morocco. Hassan has friends who work in a desert resort there.
We spent the day lounging in the shade under beautiful, colorful tents and roaming through a nearby Berber village. Berbers are indigenous people in North Africa who live a very nomadic lifestyle, scattered in tiny desert villages. These villages are sometimes composed of tents, and sometimes of small sand huts. Hassan's friend took us to visit his sister in one of the villages where we joined her family for tea. I didn't feel comfortable taking photos inside her home (she was nice enough to welcome us into her home, I didn't want to turn her into a tourist attraction) but it was a very simple house, with dirt floors and walls, no glass in the windows and the essential tiny television in the corner. After tea, we visited a tiny Berber school house (and later ran from a stampede of Berber schoolchildren during recess!).

During the hottest part of the day, we stayed in the hotel, napped under the tents and even enjoyed an impromptu drum circle with some of the guys from the hotel.

As soon as it was a little bit cooler, the guys rounded up the camels and we headed into the desert to sleep in a Berber camp about 2 hours from the hotel.

Now there are a few things that you have to remember when riding a camel into the desert. First, the quality of your ride depends greatly on the camel that you choose. For example, on the way into the desert I chose a very polite camel who walked around slowly and didn't bounce around too much. On the way out of the desert, I chose a psychopathic camel who made it his life's goal to destroy me. I'm not sure what I did to deserve this, but apparently I did something that this camel really did not approve of. All the pictures you see are from the first ride, when I wasn't holding on for dear life.


The second thing you have to remember when riding a camel into the desert is that camels travel in caravans - so if you happen to be a clumsy American and drop something (for example, a traditional Moroccan hat, a traditional American flip-flop sandal or a lens cap), the entire caravan has to stop while you retrieve it. This was fine the first two times, but my lens cap is now buried somewhere in the Sahara. RIP.

Oh, funny story about camels. Kat and I were taking a lot of pictures of what she thought were "cooooool man, camels and rocks."

Those aren't rocks. They're camel droppings. Kat was very disappointed.

Despite the abundance of camel poo, the desert is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Sitting on a dune, watching the sunset, I realized that it was also one of the quietest moments of my life. There was wind, of course but it was just wind over sand. There were no trees, nothing for the wind to move. Just sand, sand and more sand for miles in any direction. The tracks left by the camels were almost immediately smoothed over by wind, so the dunes always seem perfect and untouched. Even looking behind us during the camel ride, where I knew we'd just been, there was no evidence of human presence. It's an incredible place.

After our night in the desert, Kat and I parted ways with Hassan and headed to Marrakech. The bus was supposed to leave at 10AM, and it was supposed to be a 9-hour bus ride, so we were supposed to arrive in Marrakech at around 7PM and go straight to our couchsurfing house in a nearby village. The bus actually left at noon and it was actually a 13-hour bus ride, so we actually arrived in Marrakech at 1AM. Since it was too late to find our way to our host's village, we found ourselves stranded at a Moroccan bus station in the middle of the night, trying to ward off two extremely "helpful" boys. We checked into the first hotel we saw, and the next day found a cheap but beautiful hostel in the Medina.

We were a little nervous about not having a guide since couchsurfing had fallen through, but it ended up being a good couple of days. Marrakech is much more touristy than Fes and as a result, much easier to navigate. We had a beautiful hostel and spend most of our time wandering around admiring the city's palaces and squares filled with artists, musicians, snake charmers and of course, orange juice vendors!

Marrakech was a great city and I wish we'd had the chance to see more of it but as I said in the reader's digest version, we weren't in the best physical condition so we spent most of our time resting in the hostel. We really should've listened to all the warnings about food... during our three days in Marrakech we survived on a diet of rice cakes, granola cookies and corn flakes. We had an incredibly funny experience when Kat accidentally asked the guy who worked at our hostel for hash, which he then delivered and was confused as to why she didn't want it after she'd "ordered it"! I was also cursed by a snake charmer for refusing to pay him 200 dirhams (20 dollars!) for taking a photo. I gave him 20 dirhams instead, which I still thought was way too much to pay for taking a picture, so he touched my face with a snake and said something which sounded very angry and mystical. I was afraid all my hair would fall off or my skin would turn purple or something. I was very relieved when we left Morocco that neither of these things had happened - I had already been stared at enough and didn't want to be "that bald purple girl" walking around Barcelona... which I will tell you all about in my next blog! :)