A Three Week OAT Adventure around Morocco in January-February 2016.

The trip began with a pleasant Air France flight from Los Angeles to Casablanca with a brief stop at the Paris airport.   After one night in Casablanca, in the morning we visited the world’s largest mosque, and drove by Rick’s Café to say hi to Humphrey Bogart, then traveled by bus via Rabat, the capitol, and inland to Chefchaouen.   They grow a lot of good vegetables for consumption and export to Europe.  Huge amounts of agriculture and no machinery apparent to work it ??  Just a few donkeys hauling solitary farmer to the fields or dragging a stick in the ground.   There are also miles of elevated aqueducts, our guide says circa 1940, for irrigation.  Chefchaouen is the “Blue City” with many buildings and especially doorways painted blue in the old medina.  Here we visited the 1^st of many medinas to come on our visit to Morocco.  These are old cities built somewhere in the 700 to 1400s, very compact with all buildings attached or even integrated and streets, passages just wide enough for goods transport by donkey.   The ground level is just infinite markets that go on forever.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medina_quarter .   Buildings are two to four stories where upper levels are residences, storage, offices, etc.  Seeing one is enough, but we are destined to see them over and over in many Moroccan cities.  Next day we visited another in Tetuán, in addition to one of the King’s outlying palaces, and drove to a seaside restaurant on the Mediterranean.   Lodging in Chefchaouen is in a riad, Nassar Casa, perhaps the Arab current word for B&B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moroccan_riad .  Like the medinas, these too were built long ago.   They are composed of a central courtyard, recently covered over with a translucent roof, surrounded by three to four stories of rooms.    Being of solid masonry, it was no mean feat to retrofit with electricity and plumbing, so these services are functional but minimal.   The rooms have minimal electric heaters and lots of insulation on the bed, but cold masonry floors, and the reception, dining etc. areas are characterized by cold marble, tile, and the like and in this 50ᵒF weather the help is frequently seen in ski parkas.   I am dealing with a moderate cold, so the temperature is not pleasant.

After two nights we proceeded to the north coast for a day of touring and one night stay in Tangier.    Spanish is commonly spoken in much of northern Morocco and two cities, Ceuta and Melilla are more or less still claimed by Spain and predominantly inhabited by Spanish.   Figuratively speaking, nobody owns Tangier and it is headquarters for the underworld of drug traffic, money laundering, arms traffic, slave traffic and all things exciting and bad.   In the afternoon we toured the ‘famous’ Tangier Kasbah.  This has the centuries old buildings also, but since not a market, just tourists and residents walking the very plane passages and walkways.  We are told that the residences interior are very elegant and well appointed.  One of which, at the sea side of the kasbah, Barbara Hutton lived in for years – with her many husbands? 

Following a comfortable night in the Golden Tulip we went south along the Atlantic to Rabat.  Going out of Tangier we seemed to pass through the section housing the wealthy of the world, and stopped to tour the Caves of Hebrides.   Around the world are these places, including Hebrides, Khajuraho, Machu Picchu, Victoria Falls that nobody has known about for centuries, but were recently discovered by some European or American explorer.   I suspect that these were always known, but recently discovered by someone to carry the information around the world while transportation has evolved so the world, including me, can come and see.  Rabat is the current capitol.   Main attractions here are the main palace of the King and a park preserving a Roman ruin.  Storks stand out everywhere perched on their 2 – 3 foot diameter nests.   Our guide guided us to a rare place to get a bottle of wine for the anticipated coming cold nights in the desert.

Morocco is a constitutional Monarchy with current King of Morocco, Mohammed VI ascending in 1999.   There are two houses of Parliament, legislators and advisors.  Morocco appears very stable and politically settled.   As our guide tell is the current King put his ear to ground to listen to the common people and implemented changes in the constitution to satisfy them, two main points were to declare the King a “respected” being rather than the previous “divine” being, and to make the Berber language official in parallel with Arabic.  The country is populated by large fractions of Berber, Arabs, and Jews.   The former two are largely Muslin, but there are a significant number of Christians our guide claimed.  Our guide feels the King precluded Morocco’s participation in the Arab Spring with his action.  Actually Google thinks there are only 2500 Jews, and only of order 1% Christians.  Other religions are infidels and not tolerated?

Next we traveled to Fez (Fes to the Arabs), maybe the oldest city – both Fes and Marrakesh have at times been capitol of Morocco.  In Fes we were abused with the largest medina, and treated to dinner one evening in the home of a typical middle class family.  A day trip from Fes went to Meknes.  This too was capitol under the reign of Moulay Ismail (1672 -1727).  The walled city has magnificent entry gates and an overwhelmingly large system of granaries built by a megalomaniac ruler to allow the city to stand in siege for years.  In Fes we stayed in Riad Dar Dmana on the edge of the medina.  The riads are generally of the style found in the medina, but on the very edge as there is no suitable way to get tourist luggage etc. to the interior of the medina.  

After Fes, we proceeded southeast toward the “sahara” part of Morocco stopping the night at Chergui (east wind) Kasbah near the town of Erfoud.   Though this kasba(h) seemed recently built for tourist hotel purposes, the kasba is another common structure, perhaps think of it as the medieval castle of north Africa.  Next day we visited a “fossilized marble” processing facility and sales store, where I found a small table attractive, but extensive negotiation did not conclude in a deal.  Any OAT trip will have two or three visits to a vender of high quality but expensive artisan products – in Fes it was a quality leather shop.   A day or two later we passed by a place in the desert where the wind exposed the focalized marble on the surface rock.  This day we abandoned the comfortable 30 passenger bus (for us 12), and got in 4x4s heading for the desert.   Mid-afternoon found us at Bivoac Chergui Sahara, (3ᵒ 56.9’W; 31ᵒ 6.12’N according to my Galaxy S III) for two nights camping in the Sahara.  After some solitary hiking among the dunes we got in the 4x4s and drove to visit a Berber nomad in a tent a few miles east.  She served us tea and told us of her life through our guide’s interpretation.  Not much to tell.  Sells textiles made by spinning wool and camel hair in a primitive way, without even a spinning wheel, into yarn, then knitting or crocheting!

Next day another 4x4 drive into the desert to our couple hour camel trek where I learned two things.  Arabian camels (dromedary) have only one hump, and you don’t ride them like a horse.  Though someone can ride, someone has to walk and lead the front camel in the caravan.  The India camels I rode a few years ago had two humps and I rode between.  We also explored an oasis or two and passed by a place on the edge of the desert where the fossilized marble is exposed on the surface.

Next day we are headed west again to Quarzazate.  But our guide, ben, suspected there was a deal to be made at the marble shop ay Erfoud and that’s where we had to give up the 4x4s for the bus anyway.  He was correct, and I got my marble cocktail table (which arrived satisfactorily in Redondo Beach 6 weeks later).  Quarzazate is the Hollywood of Morocco.   In this area was filmed Lawrence of Arabia and perhaps numerous other movies with a Sahara setting and the city has several luxury hotels suitable for a parade of movie stars.  Not too much here but we did visit a rather primitive country village where we watched the harvest of alfalfa and helped make couscous.  Alfalfa here is only about 6 inches high when harvested with a primitive sickle for the animals.  This is a much smaller sickle than we used on the Pennsylvania farm to do minor trimming around the garden etc.  And the cutting is a two-handed operation, grasping the alfalfa and lifting it with one hand and swinging the sickle with the other.  Now to couscous.   This is made from semolina which is the ‘flour’ from wheat, barley, rice or corn too fine for anything but baking.  By a hand labor intensive process well described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couscous the flour is made back into a semi-soft granular consistency.  Also in Q we visited a nice French restaurant.  French language and culture are common in the south, residual of the French colonization or Morocco in earlier times.

From here we proceeded west toward the southern Atlas Mountains to Marrakesh.  The Moroccans appear to have extensive irrigation.  In addition to the aqueducts in the north, in the east and south along much of the highway there are small concrete bunkers with “terminals” where a farmer might connect to draw water.  These are about every quarter mile for hundreds of miles, up and down hills and even in more arid areas where no evidence of agriculture nearby.  Despite raising the subject, I could not get our guide to discuss these seriously.  How do they get the water there? Pumps?  Everything is below the reservoir?  They have an elaborate siphon system?  Atlas Mountains do have picturesque winding steep roads and deep canyons with small villages and primitive agriculture terraced on the side stepping down to the streams.  The highest peak is above 13,000 ft. but I don’t think we were above 8 – 9 thousand.  Interesting to see some large herds of sheep on a cliff side apparently eating stones.

Everywhere in Morocco, excluding the Sahara and the flat lands of the north are olive trees.  They are everywhere within view on the hillsides and the valleys between.  And the soil between and under the trees at this winter season is freshly tilled for planting of barley or another grain crop.  So if weather and rainfall is favorable they have barley, if not, at least olives.  Olives, which by the way are inedible, are predominant at every meal and in the shops in the medinas.

Marrakesh is a busy large ‘warm’ southern city where we had a very nice riad and maybe the largest medina of all.   On one occasion our guide took us deep in the medina to a quality rug shop --- I though very 3^rd rate compared to the rugs of India.  We had a nice dinner at a place with a belly dancer – dinner was good, dancer was for tourists.  Our guide found a place where we could get a beer with dinner on an earlier night, but prices were high and food was poor.  Perhaps understandable since nowhere but in exceptional places, perhaps only for tourists, is liquor served.   Shops selling argan oil products and hammam baths seemed to be of interest to the women in our group – snake oil and dances to make you live forever – the romance of Marrakesh.

Much of Morocco is reminiscent of Mexico where I have spent a lot of time on many visits.  The countries are about the same latitude, Marrakesh and Ensenada at 36.6ᵒ, and comparable economic development with Morocco overwhelmingly Muslin and Mexico similarly Catholic.

A couple hours bus ride brought us back to Casablanca for a final night and early morning flight out to Paris and Los Angeles.