Tetouan, Morocco

We are on our way to Morocco and when we drove to the port in Algeciras and got into line to wait to board the ferry, we quickly realised that there was a strong affinity between Russian drivers and Moroccan drivers!

We had arrived in plenty of time and, once we had collected our tickets and had a cup of coffee, we got into the Troopy and got into the queue. At this stage, there were about 15 cars waiting and it was about one hour before boarding time. During the next 60 minutes, as more Moroccan-registered vehicles arrived, the waiting queue changed from an orderly queue where we were all patiently waiting, to a schemozzle! As the new cars arrived, they didn’t want to get onto the end of the existing queue, so they would just drive up until they could push their way into the existing queue or they would start a new queue. At one stage, we had four queues waiting to go through one gate! And then when we started moving… well, we almost lost our side mirror because one 4WD believed that his wait of 5 minutes was longer than our wait of 60 minutes and therefore he should go first! And then, to add insult to injury, when he got to the gate, he didn’t have his documents ready and so we had to sit (humpfing and fuming) until he got stamped through! This was not a good start to our time in Morocco!

The ferry crossing from Algeciras to Tanger Med is only about 90 minutes and you can spend nearly the entire time in the Moroccan Immigration line. And apparently, unlike the Immigration procedures in other countries, the whole family didn’t have to wait – only the man with all the passports. So Nick tried that – I went to the kiosk to get Nick something to eat and about 2 nano-seconds before I was served (eventually), he turns up saying that the Immigration people insisted on seeing me! So down to the other end of the boat we went, said “Hallo” to the Immigration guy and then back to the kiosk to get back at the end of the line. Nick was lucky to get anything to eat!!

Anyway, we FINALLY arrived in Morocco and we got into the car and disembarked. Now, we have to admit that we had a few qualms about the acceptability of our new Registration certificate. When the new Certificate arrived at our home address in Brisbane, we asked for it to be scanned and emailed to us before it was posted to an address in the Netherlands. Well, the scanned copy arrived, but it wasn’t a great copy – in that, you could see that it was a copy, and the original never arrived! Nor was it returned to Brisbane! It was well and truly lost. So, with fingers crossed, we got into the line for “Other Registered Vehicles” and waited, and waited, and waited. After seeing vehicles being cleared, Nick went up to the window and asked what was happening. We were a little bit sneaky because Nick went up on his own and he doesn’t speak any French (or Arabic) and so the poor Customs guy passed him on to the Supervisor who spoke some English and was more interested in the fact that we had driven from Russia, across Mongolia and Europe in a vehicle from Australia. In fact, he didn’t even ask to see the Registration Certificate! Phew! We were in Morocco!

The arrival terrors didn’t end with disembarking from the ship. As I said, we arrived in Tanger Med and had to drive right into the middle of Tangier. Now, because Morocco isn’t in Europe (who knew that!), our GPS with her European & Russian maps wouldn’t work. So basically we drove from the port to Tangier not knowing where the duck we were going! Somehow we ended up on the Motorway and Nick wanted to head towards Rabat – “No! We’ve got to go towards Tangier.” With no maps (the paper map of Morocco we had bought in Spain was useless as it didn’t even show Tanger-Med), we had to resort to a pathetic, non-interactive set of maps on Nick’s iPad and managed to locate the street where our hotel was. But now I had to navigate verbally – “Turn right at the next intersection, oh! It’s one-way, ok so try the next street”. Finally, after adding a good handful of grey hairs to my head, we reached our hotel.

We managed to find a park on the street out the front and went inside to ask about the hotel’s parking, which they advertise as having. “Je regrette,…..”, in other words, they don’t have it any more. But we were directed up the road (by up, we mean uphill!) to a guarded parking area.

So up the hill we drove until we found the parking area and drove in. Now a man came up to us and starting talking about parking and we thought that he was the parking man, but it turned out that he was a self-appointed person who would “help” us. After negotiating with the parking man – have we mentioned that Moroccans either speak Arabic or French? – we parked our car and walked back down to the hotel. All the time, the self-appointed guy was walking and talking. When we got to the hotel, he indicated that he wanted some form of payment. So, I checked my wallet and gave him a 1 Dirham coin. “Mother,” he wailed! And I closed my ears and walked into the hotel. Thankfully, he couldn’t follow us into the hotel, but I have since learned that the accepted tip is 10 Dirhams. I guess the guide book I read was a little bit out of date!

After the experiences of the day, we were absolutely wrung out so we decided to crash in our room and have a “Moroccan Feast” in the hotel’s “authentic” restaurant.

Day Two in Tangier – it was now time to dive into the Medina and have our first taste of the Moroccan madness (I mean apart from cars & drivers, touts & beggars). I know that the Moorish culture is a very old one and there some wonderful examples of their architecture, but I don’t think that the Medina in Tangier falls into that class. Nick tells me that I was just out of my comfort zone.

I have to admit that one of the things I dislike about this culture is the “touts”. You know, the guy who stands outside a shop and, if you stop to have a look at something that catches your eye, tries to get you to come inside to look at everything and buy something. In our wanderings, we walked past a doorway with no touts out the front and a variety of carpets and leathergoods displayed around the doorway. This was the shop we went into! A salesman came up to us and started telling us of the wonders on display on any of the 3 floors upstairs, but I just wanted to walk about and look and marvel at what was for sale. No, I wasn’t going upstairs, despite his pleas to see more carpets, more caftans, more tajines… After a while, I whispered to Nick that I wanted to leave and so he said, “Let’s go!”, just like that! But then when I was outside, I said that there were some nice leather poufs that I would like to have a look at, so back inside we went. We told the salesman that I wanted to look at some leather poufs and I was overwhelmed with choices – size, colour, patterns. I finally picked what I liked and then I set Nick to negotiating a price. In Morocco, haggling is almost compulsory and luckily, I’m married to a Master Haggler, so Nick started work. I just zoned out and left Nick to do his thing. Finally, Nick agreed to a price and also managed to score a very nice pair of Moroccan slippers for himself and we were all happy with our first experience of shopping in Morocco.

Next stop on the itinerary was Casablanca. Here I have to admit that this place was chosen purely because of the movie “Casablanca”. After Tangier, I admit to feeling slightly disappointed with Casablanca. It is modern and dirty. We walked through the Medina there and it was nowhere near as interesting as the one in Tangier. We visited the Hassan II Mosque, which I would have to describe as an oasis of beauty and calm in a busy city (and no beggars are allowed). We were in search of Rick’s Café! Yes, even though the movie Casablanca was made totally in Hollywood and there was no such place as “Rick’s Café”, apparently, an American has renovated an old building and decorated it in the style from the movie. There is even a piano player! We got there in the afternoon to find that it had just closed (mutter, mutter) and made a booking to go back there for dinner that night. Which we did and had a great meal. Would I go back to Casablanca, if I came back to Morocco? No! Once is enough – I’ve been there, I’ve been to Rick’s and I’ve done some shopping. Next location please!

And that was Marrakech! I think that Marrakech is one of those place names that inspires your imagination. And we were really looking forward to exploring the Medina. Can I just say how difficult it was to find campgrounds in Morocco, but we managed to locate one in Marrakech. Maybe “in Marrakech” isn’t the right description, the campground was located at the 10Km marker on the road out of Marrakech. In fact, that was the address! Google Maps had a lot of trouble finding that address, I can tell you! But find it we did and it was time to set up camp. Now, as we are staying in a tent, we kind of look for ground that we can hammer our tent pegs into. Over the past 7 months, we have encountered some pretty hard ground and bent nearly all of our tentpegs, but the ground at Marrakech was the prize. In the end, Nick had to use a hammer and a cold chisel to break the ground so he could then get the tent peg into place. But after much effort, and two sore fingers because he hit them with the hammer, we got the tent up. Phew, now it was time to go for a swim and cool down, as it was a really hot day. However, we have now learnt that the air temperature has absolutely nothing to do with the water temperature. It can be 30-something degrees outside and about 10 degrees in the water!

As we only had one complete day to explore Marrakech (yes, I know – not enough time), we decided to treat ourselves to a taxi and guide. So our taxi picked us up and we headed into Marrakech. First stop for the intrepid explorers was the Jardin Marjorelle. It is a plot of land that was owned by the son of a French furniture maker who moved to Marrakech to concentrate on being a painter. He spent 10 year having an amazing garden built and it was opened to the public in 1947 but by the time he died, it was abandoned and fell into disrepair. In 1980 the garden was discovered by Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Berge who bought it and saved it from being turned into a hotel complex. They decided to restore the garden as a memorial to Jacques Marjorelle. It is now the most amazing selection of Cacti and plants, as well as a Berber Museum. One of the glorious features of the garden is the colour blue or Marjorelle Blue as it is called, and there is lots of it! Everything is painted blue with white and dark yellow used as feature colours.

Next stop on our day of exploration was the Medina where we met our guide. Getting a guide to show you a place can have many risks – will his/her English be good enough? will s/he show us what we want to see? will s/he take us into places for the hard sell? will s/he be pleasant company? When you book a guide, you don’t know that answers to these questions. When we met our guide, we were quickly assured that his Engish would be fine and we would be able to understand everything he had to tell us. Sadly, despite telling him about the specifics we wanted to see, our guide did the full tour, which included the Koranic School, the Marrakech Museum and taking us into a huge shop that had so many wonderful things for sale. The Koranic School was exquisite but we felt a tad let down because our guide just pointed up in the direction and left us to explore. We noticed other groups had their guide with them as they explored the school. It would have been good to get the low-down as we walked around. Our guide certainly knew his information but he would deliver it as one big lump of facts and dates. I have to say that we did enjoy what we saw but we would have liked to spend more time looking at the workshops, especially the metalworkers and wool dyers. Maybe the fact that our tour was happening on a Friday, which is the Islamic holy day, had some impact on what we could see. We noticed that there were quite a few shops shut because it was the weekly holy day, but I’m glad to there were less touts and also less crowds! Once again, we were thankful that we were visiting in October, which is a quiet month.

In the evening, after a shower and a rest, we returned to the Medina to experience the Marketplace, Jemaa El’Fnaa. In the afternoon, we saw the Snake Charmers but in the evening, we came back for dinner and to see the rest of the song & dance. Tips for choosing a stall to eat – pick one with lots of clients because that indicates a pretty quick turnover. You will be faced with a tout every two steps, who all want you to come back to their stall, so when you have down one aisle, go up the second aisle and choose somewhere in that aisle, so the previous touts don’t know that you have gone elsewhere. We enjoyed a really nice tajine (meat for Nick & vegies for me) and treated ourselves to a selection of Moroccan cakes – 23 different sorts for 30 Dirhams, which is about $A3.75.

Meknes was raised to the level of an imperial city by Moulay Ismael, who then went on an extreme building project. But we weren’t in Meknes to see his building works. No, we were off to see something that predated him by about 1000 year – Volubilis. Volubilis was a city that was first developed by the Phoenocians and then when it came under Roman rule in the 1^st Century AD, it was raised to the level of a “Metropolis”. Today, the ruins are the city are there for you to explore for the princely sum of 10 Dirhams each (that’s about $A1.25). You can stand in the Forum, look at a range of mosaics that were inside various houses, walk through the rooms of these old houses, walk through the Triumphant Arch and also the Decamus Maximum (that’s Roman for High Street) to the Tangier Arch. We spend about 4 hours there and had a wonderful time. I would strongly recommend anyone who visits Morocco to go there. This place is REAL history!

Our final stopover was Fes where we were booked in for a cooking class. I’ve enjoyed North African flavours for a while and decided that I would like to learn to cook more than just Tagines – though there is nothing wrong with a nice Tagine. So we spent a day at the Clock Café where we planned our menu, went shopping for the fresh ingredients and then returned to make 4 different dishes which we ate for lunch. On the menu was Harira soup, Beetroot salad, Chicken B’stilla and Macaroons. Firstly, we felt very fat after eating our lunch and we had REALLY fresh chicken – we saw it get killed & plucked and you can’t get much fresher than that! I’m sure that at some stage in the future, many of our friends will be treated to a Moroccan feast! Luckily, I kept the recipes from the day!

When we were shopping for the cooking ingredients, we realised just how big the Medina in Fes was, and we discovered that it is apparently the largest Medina in Morocco. So, we decided to get a guide to help us to explore the Medina on our second day in Fes. Achmed, called me “Hamed”, was our guide and right at the start, we make it very clear about what we wanted to see: the metalworkers and the tanneries. Hamed also took us up to see the 13^th Century tombs (the Merenid Tombs) which are sadly very dilapidated but you get a great view of Fes from up on the hill. We saw the metalworkers and got to visit the tanneries, where you get a sprig of mint as you walk in the front door. But when we got up to the rooftop, I understood why you got the mint. In a word – tanneries stink! But it was amazing to watch them take the hides fresh from the slaughterhouse, and go through the various processes, to end up as dyed leather ready for crafting into a jacket or bag or belt. We mainly saw sheep hides being converted into leather because the previous week, there had been a festival where every family, tribe, village or town slaughtered a sheep (Eid al-Adha or Feast of the Sacrifice), so there was an over-abundance of hides.

Another first for us on this trip was a Hamman. This is the Turkish bath where you are washed and scrubbed in all your nooks and crannies and then massaged with oil. We have seen and heard Michael Palin talking about his experience of a Hammam, so we thought we would try one too. We’ve never been so clean nor so relaxed. First step is a sauna and then you move into a steam room – I can now understand that Specsavers ad on TV where the guy thinks he goes into a steam room but he has gone into Gordon Ramsey’s kitchen, do you know the ad I mean? Anyway, after the steam room, someone comes in to wash you with soap and then uses a scourer glove before rinsing you down and escorting you to a Massage room for a full-body massage (and I mean a full-body massage) with Argan Oil.

Now it is time to head back towards Tangier-Med so that we could catch the ferry back into Spain. Gosh, we hope that there won’t be any problems with our car registration paperwork. From Fes to Tetouan we took the rural route and saw some amazing scenery and a plethora of police checkpoints, where they put spikes on the road to stop you! Happily, we weren’t stopped once! One more night was spent in the city of Tetouan which is a modern (-ish) city that is very dirty and noisy – can anyone explain what possible reason there could be to drive through a commercial part of the town at 3am in the morning, and toot the horn of your car continuously! This happened several times, so quite frankly we were happy to get out of Tetuoan and head to the ferry. Thankfully, we had a nice smooth crossing and … More to come in our next Blog entry!