Morocco 26 Apr to 20 May

Lydia Padilla
May 14
9 min read

Updated: May 19

Marrakech -> Agadir -> Essaouira -> Fes -> Chefchaouen -> Marrakech -> Atlas Mountains/Sahara Desert (Pics to come later)

Marrakech:

Of cats and spice...

Agadir

Essaouira

Fes

Chefchouen - The Blue City

Atlas Mountains, Merzouga and The Western Sahara

Random tidbits and incomplete thoughts...

What is Morocco like...

Without trying to be too poetic, Marrakech is like a crazy frenetic dance (melee???) with 1 million different participants, all going different directions at the same time. The Medina is exactly like you would think, an old old city with streets just wide enough to get a van through, but the Moroccans can fit two vans. All of the cars have scraped up windows and mirrors and quarter panels and bumpers. I haven’t seen anyone get run over yet, but I’m sure it happens. ***Scratch that, we finally saw a taxi back into an orange juice vendor’s cart. He got out, inspected the car and then drove off. No damage, though. And no reaction from the juice vendor either. No yelling...no wildly gesticulating arms...nothing...just another day in the life happening.

We make our way to a small square to wait for a cooking class to lead us away and it looks like a plane just landed, as there is a nonstop line of vans and taxis dropping off families and putting all their luggage, including the children, into oversized wheelbarrows. The wheelbarrows take the families through the even tinier Medina alleys so they can get to their riyadhs (houses made into hotels, like BnB's but way better). As we travel through the Medina alleys we have to constantly watch out for those wheelbarrows and scooters and donkeys or else they’ll clip your calf. Or your ass. When the wheelbarrel drivers scream "balak" (translated to "lookout") you best move your ass out of the way. However, they actually have amazing control and agility, they must have learned that skill from the cats.

The medina has every kind of vendor you can think of...deoderant, spice, perfume (lots of perfume!), handmade designer shoe knock-off's, food, juices, appliances, coffee shops, tea shops, carpet shops, restaurants that take you to the top floor patio away from the maelstrom of people, soccer jersey shops, cell phone shops, chicken stores, turtle stores, tinsmiths, potters, you name it...and everyone has a "good price for you" to try and lure you in. Sensory overload but wonderful and interesting and scary all at once. This is where I need to go to get out of my comfort zone and I love it! And all of the vendors are yelling/teasing/hugging the other vendors and screaming across the alley when Barcelona scores a goal - every vendor has the same soccer game on their phone. It's an ADHD dream (or nightmare). And we're lucky in that we CAN'T buy stuff because if we do, we have to carry it for the next year. On our backs. So we get off easy and don't get lured in.

The bus

We’re on a modern (except the wi-fi doesn’t work) coach, on the road from Marrakech to Agedir on the coast. It’s Like Mexico, oddly. It’s miles of barren land hopscotched by miles of fertile crop fields, including the most olive groves I’ve ever seen. I’m surprised that there are enough consumers for all of the olives grown here - I see miles after miles after miles of olives.

I occasionally see a big, modern adobe Riyadh (house) surrounded by walls, both for privacy and livestock, it appears. We pass a modern tollbooth as we enter an equally modern new highway to the coast and I see a toll worker on the side of the road, kneeling on his mat, praying in the desert sun. There is a line of laundry drying in the sun, attached to two palm trees on either end. There is a new pretty modern minaret (mosque tower) next to a tiny little town of adobe homes. Next to the town sits a completely flat, dirt soccer field with Moroccan flags on each corner post. There are frequent dirt or adobe walls, some ancient and crumbling and some new and modern. In a field I just saw a line of workers harvesting something I couldn’t make out, but sure looked like the same harvest process I saw in California last year…all manual laborers moving together row by row. Surprisingly, we see grape fields…lots of them, covered with netting. I wondered where they grew the grapes for the surprisingly good Moroccan wine we’ve lucked into a couple of days this week.That was a surprise, as was finding some pretty tasty local micro-brews.

In the far-off distance, I see the towering line of the High Atlas mountain range, with quite a few snow dotted peaks. The girl next to us is softly speaking Arabic into her cellphone, careful to not speak too loud. We just passed a completely modern European looking gas station, with a convenience store and a couple of fast food restaurants - they are actually quite similar to US or European stations, with the same brands and same products (M&M's/ Snicker's/ etc) except the packages have Arabic writing on them. Ant the potato chips come in different flavors, like Ketchup or garlic chicken.

After seeing the quality of the roads I’m much more comfortable renting a car during the trip.

I see an ancient, deserted and partially fallen Riyadh. The walls were crumbling but you could clearly see the numerous holes in the walls that once acted as their air-conditioning system. The winds, combined with the thick adobe walls and high ceilings, helped to keep the temp inside cool in the summer heat.

From my window seat we were jut passed by a sedan with a Koran in the back window - same car as in the states, but different driver, different book. We're all the same, aren't we?

I wonder how many decades, hundreds or even thousands of years these same fields have been harvesting these same crops? It seems the only difference might be the machinery and the solar panels peppered throughout the miles.

The Riyadh

Riyadhs are basically BnB's in the Medina. A large old house, often luxuriously redone to house guests. WAY better than hotels and mostly, a lot cheaper. If ever you have a choice, stay in one rather than a hotel.

Picture tile. Lots of tile. Everywhere. In beautiful mosaics and crazy mismatched patterns that look like they were done in in a carnival funhouse to mess with your eyes. You can get lost looking at the patterns, squinting to the left and then to the right to see where they hid the picture of the zebra or if it's one of those facebook tests for color blindness. The intricate patterns are intense and it appears that many of the tiny little pieces were cut by hand, as they're not always matching. As many patterns as there are in one room, it looks like it was designed by a professional interior decorator, because it works together. Until you've had a few glasses of wine, though, and then it just messes with your depth perception. The tile goes up the wall about four feet and above that is an even more intricate group of carved tiles and plaster and wood work, going up to the ceiling. See the pics as it's tough to descibe how much work went into a single room. Patterns inside of patterns inside of patterns, from the 12 foot doors to the floors, walls and ceilings. Mesmerizing is the only fitting word.

The Cats

I think you can tell a lot about a people in how they treat stray animals. Here, there are a LOT of cats. They're everywhere. Outside one of our Riyadhs there was a little family of five, with four tiny little kittens that must have been no older than four to five weeks. There are cats on sandwich-board signs for restaurants. Cats on mopeds. Kittens curled up on carpets and blankets for sale. Cats prowling around on the Riyadh parapets. Cats sunning on roofs and in the middle of a busy medina walkway. And they are (mostly) surprisingly healthy. There are little bowls of water in the alleys and every block or so someone had placed a clump of cat food randomly on the ground. In the restaurants they will get vocal with you and hope for a little goody cast their way (we're guilty of feeding a few these past few days), but I learned a lesson in Roatan..don't feed the cat too much fish or it will wander over to the next table and throw up ALL over their table. ooops.

Moroccans

I think as westerners/Americans, we’re conditioned to be fearful of Muslims. Maybe not fearful but leery? Not sure if it’s a “they’re different than us” or a 9/11 thing, but I suspect it’s based on the former and then bolstered by the latter. They pray to a different god, they eat different foods, they abstain from wine, they wear different clothes…I’ve travelled a little bit and have said this before - if you take god and politics and national identity off the table, we are all really the same. And we want the same thing - to be with those we love and enjoy, to share good food, drink good tea/coffee/wine and laugh a lot. And bitch about the refs.

It's a welcoming environment here. Morocco was home to one of the largest Jewish communities and treated each faith as brothers/sisters. They traded with Jews and Christians and are much more open to non-Muslims here. On the street, you'll see a woman wearing a full burka walking with a woman wearing a halter top. Men will almost frequently say "You're welcome" and ask where you're from when meeting you - to help welcome you to their country. The hospitality here is wonderful - definitely what I'd hope to offer to someone coming to my home/country.

And everywhere you go, you see silver tea platters. Afternoon tea is a ritual. In the medinas, you'll see some of the busiest vendors shut down, turn on their little gas flames and heat their water, mixing some tea with a few mint leaves and a TON of suger. They then proceed to pour it from height multiple times, which serves to mix it properly and add the required froth of bubbles to the top. It's both funny and heartening to watch, as the little old men sit on a rickety plastic milk crate and share their tea. Do not, under any circumstance, drink their tea like they do. Ask for just a LITTLE sugar. It's like going to Thailand and accepting their level of spicy - don't do it...you'll just hurt later.

There was a gentleman that worked at the hotel in Marrakech, Abdelrouef. I think we’re about the same age but to be honest I couldn’t tell and didn’t really think about it to ask. We talked everyday and everyday he smiled and treated me like I was his old friend. We talked about the weather, the tourist sites in Marrakech, the crazy Medina, the food and most importantly, if I was rooting for Real or Barca. He was a Real fan but I still liked him. He asked me daily how Lyd and I were doing and how we felt (we each got sick on successive days) and seemed genuinely concerned for our wellbeing. I told him of our adventures and a little of our life in the states and about our crazy trip. It struck me, as it frequently does, how things might have been different had I been born in a different bed. In a different country. Would I have been able to go to school or would I have been herding sheep over a hill in Morocco. Or born into poverty in Cuba. Or even in East St. Louis.

What does it matter, I guess, but it does. A lot. Every street beggar and every stray cat I pass breaks my heart, just a little bit. I want to give a little coin to the lady in the full burka, towing a child, for a packet of tissue that she is selling and that I don’t need. But if I give something to EVERY person in need then I will be there among them soon. And I’m not sure what it will actually help. I know life isn’t fair but it really reinforces the cruelty and unfortunate circumstances when I think that because Cookie and Gay had me, where they did, that I had so many benefits that someone like Abdel didn’t. It also makes me hate borders. National security aside, borders don’t just serve to keep people out but also to keep us in. For Abdel, it meant that his options were limited from the start. Maybe he got a good education or maybe he can’t even read, I don’t know. But he speaks four languages and I can barely speak one. I know his job was to be nice to me and I’m glad he was there…it made my day better whenever I got to talk to him. And when we checked out, I tried to shake his hands but he pulled me in for a big hug. I love people.

The Recombobulaters

Morocco 26 Apr to 20 May

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