Cities of Morocco: Not a Single Camel

From the natural surroundings of Chefchaouen, we dove straight into the cities of Morocco. We began the major city tour in Fes (sometimes spelled Fez). Cities have numerous interesting sites and history, though many also come with the unwelcome harassment of people who follow you and then demand money for getting you to where you were already walking. This means that when a kind person offers help (which is frequent in Morocco), you curse at them and walk away quickly. In any case, here are some city pictures.

In Fes, hotels are more expensive. The hotel pricing schemes in Morocco are worthy of an economics PhD. They vary dramatically by city, with no obvious link to supply and demand and not necessarily to quality. In Fes, we saw rooms that we wouldn't keep a pet in for the same price as the place we stayed, which was the poshest place we have stayed yet.
We went to visit the Medersa Al-Attarine, which is an Islamic school in Fes. The main courtyard that is open to the public is beautiful and ornate. While work has obviously been done over the years to maintain it, it is essentially original, unlike most of the heavily restored work we have seen.

This is a close-up of the mosaic work. You can generally tell how important a place is in Morocco by the quality of the mosaic. The bus stations, for instance, are also all mosaic, but it looks like they brought in a class full of first graders for the day to do the work. This one looks more like they paid someone to do the work.Mules and donkeys are very common in the streets of Fes and many other medinas (the walled part of a city that mostly has small walkways to keep it cool). This is because they are cheaper than cars and they are able to get through the small alleyways of the medinas where cars cannot go.

Fes has the largest tannery in Morocco. They start the tanning process by soaking the hide (sheep or cow mostly) in a solution of water, salt, and pigeon poop. That's right--pigeon poop. The ammonia causes the hair to fall out, which is then washed and used for stuffing. The hide is then washed before being dyed it the pits to the right below. They do different colors in different weeks, with red and brown being the colors the week we were there. The hides are then dried in the sun.

While it doesn't seem very smart to us, the method of dying is to have a guy jump around in a pool of dye with the leather. They say that the dyes are all-natural and they told us what creates the colors (red is from poppy and brown from henna), but this still wouldn't be my job of choice. Workers at the factory get paid a whopping $5.00 per day.

It isn't just the hides that need dyed. So does the yarn that they make from wool. This job looks just about as safe as jumping up and down in the pool of dye, though these guys at least wear gloves.

The streets are filled with mosques that we can't enter because we are not Muslims. You can often tell how religious someone is by the shoes that they wear. Because you must remove your shoes to enter the mosque, a religious person that goes to mosque every day will invariably have shoes that are easy to slip on and off.

After Fes, we headed to Meknes. Meknes is another of the four imperial cities, meaning that the king has a palace there. This is Bab al-Mansour, considered one of the fanciest-pants gates in all of Morocco. Behind it a ways is the king's private golf course surrounded by 30 foot walls so that no one can see it...

In Islam, it is considered rude to have a big, ornate tomb. So, they are all like this one with a simple marker. However, if you are special, it is apparently perfectly appropriate to have a palace and/or mosque built around your simple marker.

A popular carnival game, often played on the main squares, is to try to loop a round hoop at the end of a fishing line over the top of a bottle of soda. You get a couple minutes of trying for a few cents. If you are successful (which we saw only once), you win the bottle of soda. The lines for these games were always so long that we did not partake.

In Rabat, the city is separated by a "river" (more of a large creek) from Sale, a smaller town on the other side. One bridge connects them, but it is far more fun to pay people to row you across (25 cents each). Here is Tara enjoying her time in the rowboat.

One of the nicest parts of Sale is that it allows you to look back at Rabat. Rabat has a couple of very nice attactions, one being the Kasbah, or fortress of the city. The Rabat Kasbah is one of the few that has a large population living inside. It also happens to sit on a cliff.

The other main attraction in Rabat is the Hassan Tower. In the 1100s, some ruler decided that he was going to build the biggest minaret in the world. It was an ambitious project since it would still be one of the largest had it been completed. Sadly, he died and the new administration had better things to waste money on, so they stopped it at the height it was. Hundreds of columns are next to it from an old mosque. The last couple kinds have been buried in the same park.

On to Casablanca. But first, a special thanks to Hamid in Rabat, who was an amazing host for the couple of days we visited. He showed us some of the best the city has to offer. Now, back to Casablanca. We searched in vain for a half day for the Jewish Museum, which only the tourist office had heard of, but didn't know the location of. They suggested taking a taxi, but about 20 taxi drivers later, we gave up. So, off to the Hassan II mosque. Hassan II was the king of Morocco until 1999 and this mosque is his legacy.

Built between 1987 and 1993, it is the third largest mosque in the world and has the largest minaret. It can hold 20,000 men and 5,000 women (who have to go to special balconies). This is the bottom of one of the women's balconies, which are all ornately carved.The cost of the mosque is a secret, but is estimated at around a billion dollars, maybe two. Surprisingly, the architect is not Muslim, but was a friend of the king, so the king paid him some insane amount to design this mosque right on the ocean. It is also the largest mosque that can be entered by non-Muslims. Here is the main chamber:

Underneath the mosque, they built a hammam, or bath. They have never opened it to the public, however, because it is too popular as a tourist destination. This is the main pool of the baths.

Here Tara and I are outside the Hassan II mosque. As our tour guide said, "Before this mosque, tourists had no reason at all to come to Casablanca. Now they have to stop to see the mosque." That sums up Casablanca perfectly. For all the romantics out there and lovers of the movie, I suggest not getting your hopes to high for the city if you decide to visit.

After Casablanca, it was on to Marrakech (sometimes also spelled Marrakesh). The main attraction of the city is the night life around the main square, the Djemaa El-Fna. Dozens of full scale restaurants are set up in the middle each night and taken down by morning. Hundreds of nearly identical stalls sell dates, nuts, apricots, and figs at usurious prices to unsuspecting tourists. Here is one such stall:
The walls of the kasbah in Marrakech are home to many storks. The walls are in a state of disrepair, which along with the fact that the city seems to be about 50 percent European tourists at any moment, makes me think that if you want to invade a major Moroccan city, Marrakech is probably your best bet.

From Marrakech, you can see the lovely Atlas Mountains, still covered in snow at this time of year. Marrakech would go up to about 80 during the day and then fall to the high 50s at night while we were there. Not a single camel anywhere.

When in Marrakech, we found the Jewish cemetary. The caretaker was very nice once Tara said she was Jewish. He let us in to look around and told us that there are now only a couple hundred Jews left in Marrakech. Apparently, a lot of them went to Israel after it was formed. Some of the graves date back 1500 years.

In the early 1900s, they discovered the Saadian Tombs from a royal family in the 1600s. How you suddenly discover such an ornate set of tombs in the middle of your city after 300 years, I don't really know. It's like losing the Empire State Building, only to discover 300 years later that there is a quarter mile high building in your city. In any case, you can read about the tombs here if you like.

At the tombs lived a cute tortoise who moved with lightning speed (for a tortoise). I believe he would have easily defeated the hare in a race. Tara took approximately 150 pictures of him (or her--sexing turtles is notoriously difficult).

Well, that about does it for the cities of Morocco. Next we head to the coast and down to the desert. Deserts always remind me of dessert, and so I think the trip to the desert should be really great.

Special post: Poop in the hole!

I posted on Facebook recently that upon my arrival to Morocco, I had the pleasure of pooping in a hole. This comment seemed to create a bit of hubub, so I thought that I would expand upon the experience here.

In Morocco, about half the toilets we have encountered are regular, Western-style toilets. They have seats and some method of flushing, whether it's a button or a cord you pull or whatever. The other half are squat toilets, which look like this:

In other words, a hole in the ground that you squat over if you're a lady, or if you're a man doing his #2. (Aim carefully!) As you can see from the picture above, there are two raised, ridged areas for your feet, to keep you from slipping in. There's also always a bucket and a faucet nearby--when you've done your business, you fill the bucket with water and pour it down the hole to "flush." Away goes your pee, poo, and paper down the drain.

I should mention that the squat toilet pictured above is a very nice one--it's the one in our current hotel in Marrakech (which also has a Western-style toilet in the other shared bathroom). In public bathrooms, you only get squat toilets, and they're usually not quite as clean, though all public bathrooms here have a cleaning lady (or maybe man, for the mens'?) on permanent duty, so things don't get unbearably grotty. And you are expected to tip this lady upon your entrance or exit to/from the bathroom, or risk very dirty looks. (Don't expect amenities like toilet paper or soap for your money, though.)

In all of our travels in Latin America, I only encountered a squat toilet once, at a "rest stop" (I use that term very loosely) in rural Bolivia. Everywhere else used Western toilets, though in some of the poorer countries, they were often lacking a seat (I got pretty good at perching on the rim). I've also seen them in the past in France, where they cost less than Western toilets at pay pubilc toilet areas, and in Malaysia I think we used them once or twice. But I've never seen them with the frequency that we've found them so far in Morocco. We expect them to be an African theme.

One more note--I think I read somewhere that the motion of squatting all the way down to use such toilets (or go in nature) helps move things along your digestive tract and actually makes it easier to poop. Like, that's actually the natural position we are supposed to poop in. Well, I'll just say now that, based on experience, I can't disagree!

OK, more real updates from Morocco soon.

Rock the Kasbah

How can I even start to write about Morocco? It is so different from any place I've ever been before...and so far, it's shaping up to be one of my favorites.

I guess I'll start with the journey over. We broached Africa by sea, on a ferry boat (much as we entered South America eight months ago, for those keeping track of strange parallels). The boat was big, but the ride was surprisingly choppy, and our fellow passengers were throwing up all around us. Also, the ride took two hours rather than the advertised one, so there was a bonus 60 minutes of barfing for a lot of people. Amazingly, I was not among the vomiters this time around!

We arrived in Tangiers, the large port city on Morocco's northern coast, and luckily were befriended by a very nice Moroccan woman who currently lives in Europe on our way off the boat. She guided us through the clutch of hustlers offering hotels, taxi rides, etc. and walked across town with us to the bus/shared taxi station. She then negotiated our fares in a shared taxi and saw us off to our first destination, Tetouan.

I'll pause here and mention that all of this negotiating was done in Arabic. I had read and heard that French and Spanish are widely spoken in Morocco, so for some reason, I guess I hadn't thought about exactly how much Arabic we would encounter there. Well, we quickly learned that while many signs are in Arabic and French, and in the north a lot of people speak some Spanish, daily life is definitely conducted in Arabic here. (Luckily we have some podcasts, and Andy has done a great job of teaching himself the Arabic alphabet, so we are slowly progressing in our ability to communicate...or at least say please and thank you in Arabic.)

So we took this "sept-place," or "seven-seater" shared taxi (three in the front, four in the back) a couple of hours to Tetouan. Turns out our guidebook has no map for Tetouan, so when the taxi dropped us off, we had no idea where we were. We wandered for a while, and I talked to some ladies in French, and finally we found the main drag.
That was Mohammad V street. Mohammad V is a former king of Morocco--Mohammad VI is the current king. Yes, Morocco is a straight-up kingdom. And just our luck, the king happened to be in residence in his vacation palace in Tetouan when we visited! This meant that the main square in front of his palace was cordoned off, and that a lot of hotels were full. We finally found a room not far from the center, but it had no sheets, no hot water, and a hole in the ground to do your business in. $12 a night for this luxury.

Still, Tetouan was a cool place to start our journey because it's not the most touristed city. It has a famous medina, or old city, which dates back to medeival times and is full of narrow alleys, tiny shops, and mosques. That night, we were able to peek into one of the big mosques for a quick picture after evening prayers.

We had our first couscous dinner that night, and it was delicious, but I'll leave those details for the food post. The next morning, I was woken up bright and early by the Muslim alarm clock--the 5:30AM call to prayer.

We explored the medina more that morning, got totally lost, then found our way again, and finally took off for our next destination, a small village in the Rif mountains called Chefchouen. We stayed there for two days that were pretty much perfect...except that just about everyone we met there offered to sell us pot. It's a huge marijuana-growing area (the word "reefer" comes from the "Rif" mountains), and I guess that a fair number of tourists partake. We did not, of course, but if that's your thing, Chefchouen may be paradise on earth for you, because we found pretty much every other aspect of it perfect.

Dominating the main square of the medina is the Kasbah, which is kind of like a castle or fort. As soon as you lay eyes on it, that 80s song "Rock the Kasbah" gets stuck in your head for days.

I should mention here that in both Tetouan and Chefchouan, Andy and I found ourselves being led around by local guys who first started by helping us find a hotel, then wanted to give us tours of the medina, which invariably ended up with us being deposited inside a "Berber artisan collective," aka a carpet showroom where persistent salesmen try to get you to buy a carpet. We thought we were savvy enough to avoid this kind of thing, but apparently not. Now that we are in Fez, we seem to have finally gotten the hang of avoiding getting sucked into "tours" by these hustlers.

Anyway, in Chefchouen, the cool thing about the carpet emporium was that they had a guy doing weaving right there, so we could kind of see how a carpet is made. Still didn't buy any, though.
Anyway, in Chefchouan we also paid $12 for a hotel room, but our bed had sheets, and right next door, real toilets with seats and a shower (well, a faucet halfway up the wall) with hot (well, warm enough) water! I tell you, it felt like absolute luxury. We stayed two nights.

On our first night, we explored the medina, tried tasty snacks, and enjoyed cheap cous cous and tagine at a cafe on the square. And on our second day, it was time for...drumroll...our first hike in Africa!

I know I don't usually get too psyched about hikes, but this one was pretty awesome. Mostly because of the amazing views of the Rif mountains, the surrounding hills that are as green as Ireland, the gorgeous blue sky, and the lovely views of Chefchouan's famous blue-painted houses.

Check out that scenery. Seriously one of the most beautiful places I've been in my life.

The hike was fun for other reasons, too. We started off on a signposted trail in a national park, but somehow lost the trail after an hour or so and ended up climbing through random fields of grass and flowers, waving hello and occasionally being directed (and, um, offered pot) by Berber shepherds.

It had rained a lot recently, so there were waterfalls flowing at full force and some rivers and streams where they usually are not. At one point,we jumped across a river on stones and saw two young women coming from the opposite direction with enormous bales of hay on their backs. One girl made it across the river but the other one didn't seem sure she could make it. Andy offered a hand, but she shook her finger at him to say no--we aren't sure if this was because Andy was a strange man, or because he offered her his left hand, which is traditionally unclean in Islam and some other cultures (it's the butt-wiping hand). But anyway, a lot of laughing ensued on all sides and she finally made it across the river, and we all waved goodbye. Not a word of a common language was exchanged, but it was a very friendly encounter, as were all of our encounters that day.

So, we eventually found the marked path again, and after hiking for about three hours we found ourselves in a village. We ate our sandwiches there, then were directed by some local teens in Spanish that we should take the main road back to Cheefchouen, because the mountain road was "bad" thanks to the recent rain. Oops, no one told us before we came that way! So we walked back on the main road, where we saw many horses and goats and sheep and even a couple of cars.

On our final morning in Chefchouen, we visited the inside of the Kasbah. It had a very nice courtyard garden filled with calla lillies and orange trees.

And the Kasbah tower had nice views of Chefchouen and the surrounding hills, too.

One last shot from Chefchouan--here is a man in traditional attire (not sure if this is a Berber thing or a Muslim thing--we've seen it in other cities, but not as often as in Chefchouan). Andy is fascinated by the unfortunate resemblence the peaked hood has to Klan fashions...

More soon from Fes and further! Must hurry back to my hotel now to eat the dates I bought in the market today.

Eating like Europeans

The foods of Europe may not be as foreign as some of the places that we go, but we think they are still worth a mention. Even if the foods themselves are known to us Americans, they are often served differently than we are used to. Here is our food week in Europe.

Our culinary adventures began on the plane to Belgium. We took Jet Airways, a rather nice Indian airline. As an added bonus of riding an Indian airline, we got Indian food. Here is dinner--some rice with dal and sag paneer (I had to pick out the cheese and give it to Tara), yogurt (also went to Tara), salad (I got Tara's), chappati bread, and very tasty rice pudding.

What trip to Belgium would be complete without Belgian fries? We had quite a few of them in our single sitting. We choose to eat them with the classic mayonaise, plus a spicy mayo that they call "samurai" sauce.
When we arrived in Madrid, our guests were kind enough to prepare dinner. Serge made this, which looks like a restaurant dish. The bottom is a blended fish and cream, with eggplant in a sauce, topped with scallops. I, unfortunately, don't eat seafood, but Tara still mentions about once a day how much she loved it.

More my style is donuts. This was a donut we found in Madrid, which was a cake donut topped with sugar, and which had some almond extract in it. I am normally not a fan of almond extract, but this one was mellow enough that it was good.

While in Belgium, we bought a couple of fun chocolate bars in the grocery store that we later ate in Madrid. This one is an Indian masala chocolate with some curry, coriander, and spice. The other was a Moroccan green tea and jasmine one. Both were really interesting and good. I love jasmine, so that one wins by a nose.

Regular readers are aware that Tara loves churros. Madrid also has churros, though they do not normally have sugar on them, and they are always served with a glass of hot chocolate. The chocolate seems to be like super thick, super strong Hershey's chocolate syrup. Way too strong for my taste, but Tara loved it.One nice discovery is that almost all drinks in Spain come with free tapas. This is the chorizo that came with Tara's wine at one tapas bar. I generally find tapas too small, but they were reasonably large in a couple of places that we went.

While walking through one of the markets, we discovered this enormous asparagus. Nothing special about asparagus, but I have never seen anything like this at my local supermarket. We barely got away before it attacked us.

While running from the asparagus, we ran straight into this guy, who came straight out of that Animal Planet fishing show where the guy tries to capture killer fish. You can see part of a fisherman still sticking out of his mouth.

At our second tapas restaurant of the evening, we ordered pork loin in a curry apple sauce. It was very good, though a bit small. It may not yet be clear, but they really like pork in Spain. In 1492, they threw out all the Jews and Muslims. Apparently, as a way to really stick it to those groups, they have only eaten pork ever since. Or so I'm guessing.

The small glass of beer is call a cana, and is very popular in Spain. It is also accompanied by a small tapas, which seems to be random. Sometimes you like the tapas, sometimes not.

When we went to Toledo, Tara was able to get marzipan. The one below is in the shape of a ham. Like I said, they really like pork. The middle is apricot jam, which does improve the taste of the less tasty marzipan. Tara ate a lot of it for breakfast.

In an effort to keep lunch cheap in touristy Toledo, we went to a little market. Tara bought some yogurt while I was happy to find peach nectar after its long absence from my life. Sadly, they prefer healthier drinks in Spain than in South America, so the peach nectar did not contain extra sugar. Therefore, it was not worth buying. I am happy that we are now in Morocco, where they seem to have a finer appreciation for sugar.

To warm up for Morocco (and just to warm up in general) our wonderful host in Granada took us to a Moroccan tea house with some friends. Here you can see the tea assortment. I got jasmine and Tara got 1001 Nights. I knew what to expect and Tara did not, but both were so strong that even Tara added copious amounts of sugar. I added whatever twice copious is.

Here we are together with our tea. I know, you aren't reading a food post to see us together, but you can see the cute glasses in which they serve tea in Morocco. This is convenient since I regularly say that I would like a glass of tea and Tara tells me that no one serves tea in glasses. As it turns out, she is wrong.

In many cities in Spain, the streets are lined with orange trees. The oranges are beautiful, but they seem to call your name to eat them. This is a cruel trick. If in Spain, resist the urge to jump up and grab one, climb a wall to reach one, or make your wife squat down so that you can stand on her to get one (no, I didn't do that, but thought about it). As it turns out, these oranges are gross. Incredibly bitter. It would take at least one pound of sugar per orange to border on edible. Afterwards, I had to eat an entire liter of ice cream to get the taste out of my mouth. Spain likes what are called bocadillos, or little sandwiches. Pictured here are a calamari one (probably the best known bocadillo) and a ham one (or course) from a famous place called Brilliante in Madrid. Tara thought the calamari was excellent. I thought the ham one tasted like ham.

Also at the Moroccan tea house, we had these nice pastries filled with hazelnut something. Now that we are in Morocco, similar pastries cost about one-sixth the price.

That's all we have for Europe. We hope to bring you more exotic foods soon. In the meantime, have some ham for Spain!