Tag: Morocco

Onward To Essaouira

We were to leave Agadir for Essaouira today – after just a one night stay (as opposed to our usual two nights in most of the towns we stayed at). We were scheduled for a later than usual start for our travels for the day.  There was time for a walk along the beach in the morning. It was a clear, cloudless, sky. The surfers were out there.Some others were exercising or taking walks.There were what looked like fishing boats in the ocean.

Some magpies had landed up close to us as we were hanging out next to the beach. I don’t think we have ever had them come this close to us in the past. The blue color behind the eyes was striking.

Breakfast in the hotel was a disappointment after the experience in Marrakech. I tried the fresh fried crueller – did not like it very much.

After checking out and boarding the bus, we were surprised to hear that we would not be leaving town just yet. We were to be dropped off at the entrance to the marina, the place we had walked to the day before,and would be given relaxation time for an hour, to hang out on the promenade. This was somewhat disappointing since we had already walked to that point the previous day. We had to occupy ourselves some other way.

We started out walking within the marina itself.The kasbah on the mountain is located very near the marina.We had previously inquired with Youssef about climbing up to the top of the mountain. He must have thought us crazy – perhaps he had never heard such a request before. We were dissuaded from that attempt without any hesitation.

After the visit to the marina, we walked on the promenade along the beach to the other end of the road beside the promenade.This is a picture of our tour group.

And then we were on our way to Essaouira. We were stopping at an argon oil processing place on the way. This part of Morocco is the only place in the world where the argan tree can grow freely. They have tried to cultivate it in other places without success. Half of the argan oil produced is shipped to Israel.

We were told that Essaouria is recognized for its seafood. The sardine dishes are supposed to be well known. We were given a warning about some of the seafood restaurants in the city. Apparently they show you the fresh fish that they say they will cook for you, but they then swap it out before cooking your meal.

It was a long drive up the beautiful Atlantic coast. There were a few people on the beaches. Also, a few surfers. Little coves appeared along the way.



The road occasionally meandered away from coastline where the remnants of the High Atlas mountains approached the waters of the ocean.Eventually we we got back to the coastline.

Sometimes we were in the mountains for extended distances, still not too far from the shoreline. The soil is light brown and looks very dry. The vegetation is sparse, mainly argan trees.

We are on the lookout for goats on trees!

We had a long lunch stop, evidence still of how relaxed the pace of the trip had become at this point. The place we stopped at was not prepared to handle the numbers of us when we landed up – in spite of Youssef having called them up ahead of time with specifics of some of the orders that could take a longer time to prepare. Youssef had to also fill in as waiter and server – services which he did with good cheer! He tried to keep things moving along, somehow managing to keep his wits about him without appearing flustered.. Some people had ordered goat or lamb tajines. It looked like a helluva lot of food, but also mouthwatering! I had to survive on my mixed grill plate.

As we left the restaurant, Youssef mentioned that places like the one we had just eaten at had suffered because of the COVID pandemic. They were having difficulty restaffing.

We continued our journey at a relaxed pace after lunch.

There was much excitement when we saw goats on a tree and managed to pull over to the side of the road to observe them more closely. The goatherd who was shepherding his flock to a safe area beside the road was really nice about a bunch of us strangers, random tourists from some distant land behaving in strange ways, being there and distracting his goats.We were able to get pictures while Youssef conversed with him.Note that this is not the classic picture of goats on a tree in Morocco that one finds on the Internet. Those pictures are usually taken from a distance from the tree, and show the whole tree full of goats. Sometimes, unfortunately, this kind of setup may be created just for the entertainment of the naive tourists.

The relaxed drive continued – with the dry land, the argan trees, the goats, and the donkeys relaxing under the shade of the argan trees along the way.

The next stop was at an argan oil cooperative operated by women. It was on the outskirts of the city of Essaouira itself.

After showing us how the argan oil was extracted, we were taken to a showroom where the focus was more on the beauty products that the cooperative made using the argan oil. There was some joking around about how young the argan oil products could make you look!

We drove on to the hotel. It happened to be next to the beach.

We had the rest of the today to ourselves before it was time for all of us to go out to dinner together. We will do a walking tour of Essaouria with a local guide in the morning tomorrow.

The hotel room itself looked small but nice, but closer examination revealed that the good looks could have been covering up some issues, including the possible presence of vermin, one sample of which I proceeded to squash under my foot and dispose outside the room.

The sun was setting as we set out for dinner.

The restaurant we were going to was next to the beach and close to the hotel. We walked to it.

I felt compelled to have the fish for dinner. It was sardine!

I was surprised with the presentation of a birthday cake at the end of dinner!Youssef had been planning this for a while, and the celebration had to be delayed from my actual birthday because we had not had the chance to meet as a full group for dinner earlier. The cake was beautiful and tasty. It was made by a friend of Youssef’s. We were stuffed because we had also gotten dessert with our meal.

With some prompting from across the table, we started singing When I’m 64 (even though it was not my 64th birthday). It was unofficially a party! I found out at that moment that one of our fellow-travelers was also in a barbershop chorus. We ended up trying to sing some barbershop standards with two voice parts (instead of the standard four). The electronic pitch pipe on a smartphone is handy in such a situation! It turned out that the gentleman I was singing with was somewhat new to the craft. The effort was a lot of fun nevertheless.

I found out the next day that one of our newfound friends from Missouri had been a barbershopper earlier in life, singing in a chorus with the Sweet Adelines. She said that she was going to try to join a barbershop chorus once again!

How about that! Barbershoppers are not that rare a breed!

Next morning, our local guide, Rashida, walked with us from the hotel to the area we were visiting that day.
Youssef had deliberately picked a female guide for us – just so we would have a different kind of experience.

We walked through the area of the port first.  The fishing boats were all blue. We were told that it is the Jewish color. The fish you see in one of the pictures below is sardine. There were cats and seagulls around attracted by the smell of fish.

We had a group picture taken before we left the port area.

Our next stop was a big square next to the port, on the way to the fort and medina.We took a short break over there.

We heard about Gnaoua, the music of this part of Morocco. (The name is spelt in many different ways, it seems!) They have an musical festival in the square every year, including international participation. I could use my imagination about how the square would have felt with the crowds and the live music. You can also find videos on the Internet.

We next visited the fort. We walked up the ramparts – on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

We then proceeded to the medina. Here are some pictures:

We walked through the fish and spice section of the medina, the location of the “buy your own fish” restaurants, some of which we had been warned about earlier.

Along the way we were pointed to a few other recommended restaurants. We ended up having dinner at the restaurant seen in the picture below, and ending up sitting in the very area of the restaurant where the camera has been pointed to in this picture.

There are apparently three Jewish areas within the medina. We were told that at one point there were more Jewish people in Morocco than Muslims. There are 4 synagogues in town, two still operational. This is the entrance to one of them in the medina.Our last stop before lunch was at a jewelry store featuring silver filigree work done by people with physical challenges.

The area around the store was colorful.

We had lunch with friends at an outdoor restaurant next to the big square. We had crepes. I ended up eating too much!

We went back to the medina for a dinner at Il Mare restaurant overlooking the ramparts of the fort and the Atlantic Ocean.We were seated with our friends on the terrace.We watched the sunset while having our drinksand food.Entertainment was provided by a local artist and his apprentice who danced while spinning a tarboosh on his head. Gnaoua music was being played. The beat is percussive and gets you into a groove. The music is in fact hypnotic and can apparently cause the musician to go into a trance!

The apprentice approached us during a dance, and, while I was not looking, placed his tarboosh on my head. I was supposed to make the tassel rotate with the movement of my head. It was a complete failure. Teresa, on the other hand, was pretty good at it. She kept it going for a short while.I have been listening to some Gwana music at home. Here is an example. This is a video from the Internet of some performers dancing to the music in a restaurant. Read the section on Gnawa music in this article if you are more curious about it. The three-string camel skin bass instrument is called the hajhouj. You can see the use of the heavy castanets, called krakebs, in one of the pictures I posted above.

The musicians continued their entertainment well past the sunset as we enjoyed the food and the drink – and the moment. We were seated in what well might have been the best place to experience and soak in this experience of Essaouria – including the new friendships, the beauty of nature on the seashore at sunset, and a new musical encounter! And it was a unique component of my own personal adventure of life. It was the highlight of the day for me, and a moment in time from this trip, and my life, that I hope will stay with me in my memories till the end.

We walked back to our hotel after dinner, first through the medina, still open for business,and then through the empty streets next to the beach.

It had been another full day in Morocco. We have only one more day of touring left to do in the country!

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

On To Agadir

This was the day we departed Marrakech and headed out ot Agadir, a resort town on the Atlantic Ocean (according to Youssef, known for its surf). The tone of the tour was changing. We were going to be hanging out by the beach rather than spending time exploring the culture of the country.

This was the scene outside our hotel in Marrakech as we boarded the bus for departure. The person who had been selling pictures the day before was back.Our bags were also being checked to make sure that nothing was left behind. We usually stopped for one day (two nights) in towns along the way. Instead, we had had an extended stay of two full days in Marrakech because of the nature of the city. And we were about to limit our stay in Agadir to one night.

It was all quiet on the bus during the first part of the drive. People are chilled out after the many days of traveling. Eyes were closed as people snoozed.

The countryside that we were initially driving through was dry and almost featureless.Hazy mountains began to appear in the distance as we continued our travel to the west.

We eventually entered the area of the High Atlas mountains. We were now driving through a region of mountain ridges and deep canyons, with dry river beds below us.There was evidence of layering of rocks of different colors.
Then we were on the plateau. Cream colored rock had long changed to a reddish tinge.

The speed limit was 75 mph on the limited-access highway (with tolls) that we were on! The road was marked as the A3. I suspect that this section of the highway has been finished only recently.

I also noticed that it was quite cold and windy in the mountains. We had to drive through a long tunnel (called the Zaouiat Ait Mellal Tunnel) in a section of the highway.

In certain sections we could see the regular National Route 8 Highway (N8) running close to us. (The map in the Wikipedia page for N8, at the time of posting of this blog, is problematic even though the description is probably correct!)

We descended out of the mountains as we got closer to our destination.
This was the first time we began to see argan trees in large numbers. They only grow in this part of the world. We were going to hear more about the trees and their use the next day.

We saw goats on a argan tree, a phenomenon that is apparently unique to this part of the world – but I could not get a picture from the moving bus. Youssef had promised that if we did not get to experience this phenomenon, he would climb a tree himself, along with our driver Youssef and helper Rashid.

We arrived at Agadir early in the day. We were given an introduction to the place as we approached the town:

Although there had been settlements in the area much earlier, the town was officially created by Portuguese in the early 1500s. The locals ousted the Portuguese soon after that. The Sousi people went on to form the Saadian dynasty that ruled Morocco as a country soon after. The Saadians and Alawites have ruled Morocco starting in the 1500s.

Agadir used to be major port for exploration by the Portuguese. These days it is being developed for tourism. It is the largest resort town in Morocco. We noticed that most of the tourists from abroad were from Europe.

The city of Agadir is the home of the Sousi Amazigh. The Amazigh still form the majority population of the place. Agadir is now known nowadays for their canned sardines. An earthquake destroyed city in 1960. It destroyed the medina. It was not rebuilt.

We were supposed to go to our hotel after arrival in the city, but since there was time, and Youssef had some concern about the weather later, he made the decision to take us directly up to the kasbah on a mountain top nearby.

(I have talked about the nature of the inscription on the mountainside in a previous blog.)

From pictures that I have seen on the Internet, it appears that the kasbah has undergone an extensive renovation recently. The walls used to be of a different color.

We could not enter the kasbah, but we got nice views of the city and commercial port from there. You can see the beach that Agadir is known for in the picture below. You can also see the Agadir marina to the right of the same picture.
There is a another port to the right of the one above. I only got a picture of this second one as we were descending from the mountain. The port in the picture below is also used by the Moroccan navy.

A cable car ride has been opened up recently from the bottom of the hill to the kasbah as a new tourist attraction.

We headed out to our hotel after taking in the views from the mountain.

We checked into our room at the hotel only after lunch. For the sake of convenience, we had signed up to get all our meals while staying in Agadir from the hotel. We ate in a cafeteria, with food stations and dining tables spread out all over the room. The place was quite busy with other tourists when we entered. The food was OK, nothing to write home about. The one beer that they had came out of a tap from a dispenser for the drinks. It was awful!

It was an adventure finding our room in the sprawling complex.

We had made the mistake of picking our luggage up from the lobby rather than having it delivered to the room. We wandered around with our luggage looking at the signs outside the building at the entrances that indicated what rooms that entrance gave access to. We had an interesting but confusing interaction with an older gentleman in a corridor along the way. He wanted to help us with our luggage. He only spoke french, which we did not. He even offered to carry one of our bags, even though it was not clear whether he knew where our room was. We declined his help. We did eventually find our room on our own.

The room was OK – probably a typical setup for a beach resort town. Before we settled in, the maids had to rearrange the beds into the configuration that we had signed up for. There were some minor communication issues in this interaction that were overcome.

I took a nap in the afternoon. We went for 5 mile walk along the promenade later in the day. We walked all the way to the entrance to the marina. We enjoyed the leisurely walk. We had all the time in the world.

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After we returned to the hotel, we retired to the lounge to have some drinks. Many of the drinks were covered by the bulk payment we had made up front for our meals – but not all. I gladly parted with a few extra dirham to imbibe a Scotch Whisky – the first time I had had the opportunity to do so during the whole trip. We chilled in the open area near the bar as others in the group joined us. For the first time during the tour, we had Youssef sit with us for a little while.We listened to some music being played at one end of the room.It turned out that the gentleman playing his guitar had some music playing in the background for accompaniment that felt rather significant to the overall sound. How could one gauge his actual skill in this situation? It felt a little like cheating in the end. (This was not the last time we experienced “live” music in this manner in Morocco.)

We watched the sun setting from the space just outside the the lounge.After that, we retired to the cafeteria with our friends from Arizona for the buffet dinner. I ate lightly. Long gone are the days when one felt a sense of obligation to try out as much of the foods offered at a buffet as possible just because of the concern about not getting what one paid for.

It had turned into a wonderful and relaxing evening. As we were lounging about in the open area of the hotel, hotel staff approached us a couple of times to inform us about an entertainment program that was about to start at 9:00 pm. I suppose that this was part of the resort experience. We decided to retire to our room instead.

As you can see, we spent a minimal part of the day with organized tour activity. As I noted in an earlier blog, the pace of the tour was slowing down. The cultural aspect of the visit was definitely not the major theme that day. We were here to have a beach resort experience!

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

The Ourika Valley and Dinner in Marrakech

I did not realize it at that time, but this was about the time that the pace of the tour started to slow down – bit by little bit.

The second day in Marrakesh was a “free” day for those who chose to hang out in the city on our own. Others of us signed up for a tour of the Ourika Valley.

This is a picture of the front of our hotel as we were preparing to leave for Ourika valley. Without realizing it, I had managed to capture the image of a security officer in the frame. I have a feeling he deliberately took action to hide his face.

There was a person selling pictures that he had taken of us the previous day. He had set himself up next to the bus we were boarding. It was not uncommon to have vendors come up to our bus as we were getting off or boarding to sell us things.

Our first stop in the valley was to visit a Berber home. We were told that the home over over 130 years old. 6 people live here. Two women were helping to take care of the tour groups wandering around their home. We had access to all areas of the home except the bedrooms.

There was a tea ceremony in the main room of the house at the end of the tour, its timing having been adjusted so that the family living in the house could manage the multiple tour groups moving through their home.

Tea ceremonies are used for occasions like meetings of tribes or meeting of families for match making. Sometimes, the outcomes of the meetings can be signaled via the process of the tea ceremony itself, for example, by the use of sugar in the tea.

This is a picture of the royal family in the area where we had the tea ceremony. A picture of the king is apparently a common sight in homes in Morocco. The picture above turns out to be a somewhat ironic commentary on the state of relationships in the royal family. Breaking with tradition, King Mohammed VI had married a commoner, Lalla Salma (top left of picture). They had met in a social setting when they were young. The princess consort turned out to be popular. She has served as a representative for the country at different international gatherings. She has also championed progressive projects in the country over the years. However, since those times, there has apparently been a falling out in the family. She has not been seen in any public role for years. The pictures still remain!

We drove to the end of the road along the Ourika river and valley, with a stop along the way for enjoying the scenery. I thought the view at that particular spot was not as spectacular as those we had already experienced. There were locals selling merchandise along the roadside.
There were a few camels in the area where we stopped, probably to give rides to the tourists. One of them had two of its legs tied together loosely with rope, perhaps to prevent it from trying to walk away. It had some difficulty moving and seemed uncomfortable. I did not enjoy seeing that.

The valley was actually quite pretty in many other locations. I took pictures from the moving bus.

We reached the end of the road where the bus had to turn around. There was a restaurant, empty at that time, on the other side of the Ourika river, with bridges across the river allow customers to reach it. The restaurant actually stretched out for a long distance along the side of the river. This is a view of one particular section.

In general, the road itself did not seem to be designed for use by tourist buses like the one we were on. It was narrow in places, with occasional overhangs where the branches of trees would scrape against the bus.

We stopped on the way back to town at a restaurant for use of the restrooms and for relaxation. I was feeling a little nervous about my innards at that point and stayed away from food and drink. Fortunately, everything turned out OK.

Here is a view from the rest area.These are other views during the ride.

The next stop on our way back was at the botanical gardens for a tour. This place specialized in herbs.
After the tour, we had a relaxed barbecue lunch of chicken and ground beef with cooked Moroccan salad, all prepared on the outdoor grill.  We ate outdoors in the company of the noisy birds and the one cat begging for food.

This was the end of the tours for the day. We were going to be on our own the rest of the day. We had had a lovely and relaxed time so far. We walked back to the main road to get on the bus to head back to the hotel.

We were able to relax in our hotel room in the afternoon.

We took a walk into town in the evening. We first walked to the train station. It was located on the Boulevard Mohammed VI, the road that the hotel was close to.The opera house is next to the train station, on the other side of the traffic circle.We then walked the streets to the Jemma el-Fna square.

It was late in the evening by the time we got to the square.
We walked around looking for a place where we could eat with a good view overlooking the square. We encountered some other members of our tour group enjoying the evening from one of the cafes beside the square during our wanderings. We chatted with them and moved on.

We ended up at Zeitoun restaurant, seen in this picture taken the morning of the previous day. (The restaurant is to the right side of the picture.)

We headed up to the terrace of the restaurant. (The sides of the terrace are covered by transparent plastic sheets in the picture above, but the sheets had all been moved out of the way be the time we arrived in the evening.) We were greeted by our waiter to be, Aadnane. He was a very friendly chap who appeared to be completely at ease in dealing with tourists like us. (For some reason, I was thinking that he must have been exposed to cultures outside of his country.) The restaurant seemed to be somewhat full. We first parked ourselves on a low sofa seat next to the railing overlooking the square – facing the bright setting sun. It was a little uncomfortable. We got a promise from Aadnane that we would be seated at a more comfortable table next to the railing as soon as the couple that was currently seated in that location departed. Aadnane also passed on this message to his compatriot serving customers on the terrace. It was a promise that was kept.

I sensed that all of the customers on the terrace were tourists. Some folks were there just to chill out, having some snacks and drinks (non-alcoholic, apparently due to the proximity to a few mosques), waiting for the sun to set. (I tried the non-alcoholic beer. I should have known ahead of time that this would not be satisfying.)
One couple seated close to us just started playing cards at their table – with a promise to the waiter that they would order dinner later. The staff did not seem to mind. Consider that these were the prime seats in the restaurant, with the best view of the square and the sunset. There was no push to try to get us out of the way and maximize their income. Nobody rushed us while we were there. I was impressed.

A unique and unforgettable scene unfolded below and around us as the sun set.

The place was completely alive! The lights were being turned on for the evening for the shops that had been set up on the square. The tourists were wandering around in droves. There was another restaurant like ours on the other side of the square where tourists were also enjoying the scene. There was the one vendor of toys walking around shooting off some lighted toy high into the sky above the crowds, letting it slowly drift back down to earth, and retrieving it every time it landed on the ground. I kept looking at what he was doing, drawn to the lit-up object going up and down in the sky – in the midst of all the other random activity going on the square below it. The whole environment was completely mesmerizing.

Aadnane kept up his good spirits when serving our food, playing a joke on me when he brought out it out, leading me to believe for an instant that there was some kind of a problem with the order when there was not. The food was tasty, but there was too much of it! Between the food and the activity in the square, we were truly transported to a different place and kind of experience. What a superb and unique way to celebrate my birthday! We paid our bill downstairs, on our way out of the restaurant, after dinner. Aadnane accompanied us downstairs, offering us rosewater to clean our hands. He was, hopefully, happy with the tip that we left him!

As we started on our way back to the hotel, we passed just opened food stalls that were packed into the center of the square.Hustlers were stopping the passers-by inviting them for a meal.(We had been warned earlier by Youssef about eating at these kinds of places.)

We passed the now lit up juice stalls we had seen during the day.

These are shots taken as we departed the square.
After leaving the area we continued to walk through streets far away from the square that were still busy with activity even though it was late in the evening. We then got on some quieter streets with very few people around – trying to not look like tourists! We were alert even though the streets did seem to be safe in that part of town. The median on Mohammed VI Boulevard was a notable landmark as we neared our destination.

Soon we were back in our hotel room reliving the events of another wonderful day in Morocco!

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

The First Day In Marrakech

The breakfast spread at the hotel we were staying at in Marrakech was superlative even by the high standards we had gotten used to so far in our trip, and the service was also excellent. We arrived at the restaurant early enough that morning that the omelette stand was still not opened. The server had to summon the responsible person from the back room. The omelettes that were delivered to our table were incredibly fluffy. The variety of the food available was astounding. There was also a massive assortment of wonderful pastries to try for breakfast. There we plenty of fruit. It was all too much for a single morning. I ended up trying different pastries each day. Of course, the chocolate croissant was the constant every day. They had a bank of really fancy industrial strength coffee machines lined up in another section. It was easy to experiment with different kinds of coffee, and I did just that. You could also order freshly made orange juice from another location.

We had a surprise when we gathered outside the hotel for the tours of the day. Youssef, our tour manager, was not to be seen. Instead, we were met by our local tour guide (whose name I have sadly forgotten!), and we were taken on the bus to our first destination of the day.I had visions of Youssef having been pulled away to handle some kind of crisis or the other. He always seemed to be busy.

We got a further introduction to the history and culture of this area of North Africa on our way to the central mosque of the city. The whole of North Africa used to be populated by the Amazighs, or the Berbers as they came to be called. It was noted that the borders between countries in North Africa were created by colonists. Our guide claimed that the Berber language originated in Egypt. (Here is an interesting video about the Amazighs today.)

Marrakech itself is the southern center for religion in Morocco, Fez being the other one. The city was founded in the 11th century.

We encountered the people seen in the picture below as we were walking to our first destination. I happened to snap this picture. It turns out that they were dressed in the attire of traditional water-carriers, also called “guerrab“. Unfortunately for them, their business has dried up since the advent of plastic water bottles.

One of the guys approached me as we were leaving asking for money. He had noticed me taking their picture. I parted with a few dirhams. In keeping with what we had been told earlier on in the trip, I had expected this kind of an expense to be taken care of by the tour guide, but Youssef was missing, and our local guide was probably not fully informed!

The first place we visited was the central mosque, called Koutoubia. The Jemma el-Fna square and Koutoubia are both central to Marrakesh. Koutoubia means library. The mosque is claimed to be the oldest one in Morocco. It has a capacity of 2000 worshipers. It was designed for expansion. You can see the stubs for the pillars that were planned for this expansion in the picture below.

The next stop was the Saadian Tombs. They are named after the royal family that built them. In keeping we the nature of place we were visiting, we were informed about a few of the burial customs. Bodies have to be buried within 24 hours. They are buried on their right side facing east. The wife wears white during the mourning period when her husband dies. After four months and 10 days (to make sure she’s not pregnant, for inheritance reasons) she can then take another husband. Men have to only wait 40 days before they are allowed to remarry!

It is a custom among the locals visit tombs every Friday to pray for their family members, after which they go to the mosque for prayer.

Here are some pictures from the visit:

There were many tour groups of  foreigners (with guides) in the space. The picture above is of the actual entrance today to the complex of the tombs. The entrance is very narrow!

Youssef made his appearance at around this time, I cannot now remember exactly when. I was relieved to see him. It seems that he had been missing only because he had overslept! There was some joking around, including mention of him being on Moroccan time that day. We could not begrudge him some additional sleep. The man was working very hard to take care of us!

We walked to our next destination via the square of the Jewish section, or mellah, of the town. We were told that caravans used to arrive at this location and that there used to be Caravanserai in the area. The synagogue still remains. We had learnt earlier that many of the the Jewish people emigrated to Israel after the formation of that country in 1948.

We continued onward to the Bahia Palace on the busy streets. The smell of urine mingled with the smell of perfume.

Building of the sprawling complex of the Bahia Palace started only in the 19th century,i.e., it is relatively new by historical standards. It was named after the favorite wife of Si Moussa (also spelt Si Musa), grand vizir of the sultan, the person who built the place. It was a gift to her. The area of the palace was developed over many generations.

I did not do a good job keeping track of where we were within the complex itself. I only noted a few of the spaces that we walked through.

Based on my notes, I believe this was the open air patio of the guest house.

We saw the dining room and family rooms of the pasha of Marrakesh. The pasha had religious and political authority. (Vizier was only a political position.) The french apparently stole furniture when they left the Protectorate.

Our guide talked about the application of polygamy in Morocco. We were told that men had many wives in earlier times because there were less men than women around in times past due to the deaths during wars. It was supposed to be a way to support the women. (Hah!)

The buildings in the palace had roofs with detailed and exquisite designs.

The picture below shows the ablution area at the entrance to a classroom. Our guide spoke to us about the cleaning ritual before going into a mosque, something that was apparently followed by the students entering the classroom.

The picture below shows the amplification room in the classroom for the teacher. Anybody speaking from this space could be easily heard all over the room.There were a few gardens in the palace and a couple of courtyards. The picture below is of the smaller courtyard.

We gathered as a group after the visit to the palace to walk to our next stop.

At the culinary museum, we got to sit down and rest for a while before starting the tour again. We were served tea and cookiesin the atrium.

We then walked to the famous Jemma el-Fna square through the souk. I enjoyed the experience. It was more comfortable than the medina in Fez. The spaces were wider, but we still had to dodge motorbikes, bikes, carts, etc.. Vendors were trying to sell their wares along the way but they were not overly aggressive.

And then we were entering the hustle and bustle of Jemma el-Fnaa square.  Since it was still only morning time, it was perhaps not as busy as it could have been, but I loved the atmosphere and the sensations anyway!

Some of the places for dining in and around the square were pointed out to us. We would have two more evenings in Marrakesh when we would be on our own for dinner.

I would be remiss if I did not talk about the snake charmer experience in the square. It is one of the things that is mentioned in the context of the Jemma el-Fna square experience. Although it was interesting, the experience did not live up to the hype. The snakes might have been drugged and the poisonous ones perhaps even defanged. The snake charmers were in it obviously to extract money from the tourists. The cobras may even have been bored and disinterested in the proceedings.

There is the general atmosphere of a carnival, or a fair, in the square and things actually got more exciting later in the day after the sun set. I noticed a monkey that had gotten lose from its owner and was scurrying about amongst the visitors creating its little bit of excitement. It must have belonged to a person providing some form of entertainment for the visitors. There was a person walking around on stilts. Later on in the evening, there was entertainment being provided by musicians in an open area of the square. The square was meant to be a fun place for the tourists.

The guided program for the day ended at the square. We were going to be on our for the rest of the day, including lunch and dinner.

We joined up with a couple of our new friends from the tour and walked out of the square onto Princes Street for lunch. This area had been pointed out to us a having restaurants with grilled (or was it barbecued?) food. We walked over to a restaurant that had an open area on the upper floor overlooking the street. The place was not crowded and we could sit back for a relaxed lunch, experiencing the action in the streets.

It was a very chilled out atmosphere while having our lunch. It is somewhat challenging to put into words what I was feeling. We were visitors in an exotic land, basically soaking in the ambiance and atmosphere of a somewhat alien place, but ultimately we were being absorbed into this space and becoming one with it. We were immersed in the Marrakech experience! We belonged to the space!

One of the aspects of this restaurant experience that I appreciated was the fact that we did not feel rushed at any time while we were there. There was no waiter hovering over us and asking us questions constantly, there was no sense that we were expected to leave after eating within a certain period of time, and the waiter was quite relaxed and friendly in his interactions. No pressures, no worries! We could basically completely chill out. What we experienced that day at lunch was not an isolated episode in Morocco. We had the same feeling the next day, in a different place, under different circumstances, when it was actually quite crowded and busy in the restaurant. It was a very different feeling from what I am used to in and around town in our neck of the woods. It was clear that attitudes as far as the dining experience is concerned can be very different in different places.

We walked back to the hotel after lunch.

The organized activities of the day were over early, and we had the rest of the day to ourselves. We were tired since the morning had been very hectic. This was a our opportunity to relax after all the busyness of the trip so far.

We even stayed in our room for dinner that evening, trying to finish off some of the food that we had bought in Tangier (for the lunch in Chefchaouen!).

I have to add that it was a thoroughly enjoyable day.  In fact, the whole trip has been amazing so far – and we have a few more days to go!

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

To Ait Ben Haddou

I took a picture of the sink in our hotel room in Erfoud before we set out on the road to Ait Ben Haddou (also called Ait Benhaddou). As one can see, there are a few fossils embedded in the granite. Considering that all of the rooms in the hotel had sinks, and a few other items of decoration, of the same nature, it is an indication of the prevalence of fossils in products from this part of the world. I would never have guessed!

We started our journey for the day early, as usual. We turned west as we left the hotel premises and headed back towards the middle sections of the country, away from the desert.

The adobe structures along the roadside were familiar by now.

So were the fields of alfalfa and the date trees.

We drove past a system of water wells called Ketthara (use Google Translate to read the English translation of the link!) just outside of Erfoud. Even though we were close to the edge of the desert, there used to be a system for underground water distribution in this area. A series of underground connections is used to carry the water to these wells. The ketthara is not in use today.

I got a fleeting glimpse of the flag of the Amazighs as we were driving past it, but I could not get a good picture of it. This is what it looks like in its fullness. You can read about the symbolism in this flag here. The flag is relatively new, first having been proposed in the 1970s, and then becoming official in 1997. If you also consider the fact that the language of the Amazighs was made an official language of the country of Morocco only very recently, one gets the impression that the recognition of these native peoples of North Africa is on the upswing in recent years.

We passed wild Barbary Sheep. They are reddish, the color of the rocks. Fortunately, these animals have not gone the way of the Barbary Lions. I could not get a picture of these animals.

We drove through a number of towns like the one in the pictures below.This particular town had a few colorful compounds.

We saw many school kids that day. It appears that they have classes on Saturday!

We saw this writing in many places on the mountainsides in the countryside. It reads “God, country and king”.

In yet another town, I took this picture of a sign at a gas station. The price of gas (petrol) indicated here translates to roughly 6 dollars a gallon. The current prime minister of Morocco, who also happens to own one of the companies importing oil and gas into the country, apparently has a role in setting these prices. There is unhappiness in the general population over the steep increase in the cost of gas recently. Tthe prime minister has been accused of corruption in this regard.

After reaching the town of Tinghir (on the highway N10), we turned right off the highway to continue our drive through the town – to head into the Todra valley close by.

This is a picture taken as we were heading out of town. You can see the traditional clothing of the women of this particular town. The nature of the clothing worn by the the locals can actually change from town to town.

The picture below shows a valley we had to cross on our way to Todra gorge. The green of the valley from the fields of date trees and alfalfa is striking. We had to drive over a dry stream bed at the bottom of the valley to get to the other side. We eventually ascended up the other side of this valley. You can see the road that we took in the picture.

Todra (also called Todgha) gorge was stunning. I took a walk on the other side of the waters of the Todra river, inadvertently getting one of my sandals wet in the river on my way across. It dried up nicely as I made my way further upstream.

Black long haired goats with pointy horns, and donkeys, hung out closer to the building seen in the above picture.
It was a busy place. It was a place for locals to visit during the weekend. The weather was also nice.

There were vendors selling their goods,and families picnicking on the other side of the river. There also were panhandlers.

I got closer to the building that I had taken a picture of earlier. This used to be a hotel. It was destroyed in a flooding incident a few years ago and never reopened.

We retraced our path back to Tinghir for lunch. Tinghir turned out to be a big city. We had a nice lunch at the restaurant whose entrance is pictured below.

Moroccan dishes included tajine couscous and vermicelli. Almost all lunches and dinners that we were served in Morocco during the trip included fruit for dessert. Sliced melons and grapes were the most common fruits.  We were also offered many local specialties.

The next landmark that we reached was the Dades Valley (also called the Valley of the Roses). We drove on a section of a road called The Road Of A Thousand Kasbahs. I struggled to identify specific Kasbahs. This is one that I managed to take a picture of as we approached Ouarzazate.

Roses were introduced in Morocco by the French. They have a rose Festival in this part of the world that lasts a week. We were told that the Jewish people initially populated this area of Morocco.

This is a picture of one of the towns we drove through in the Dades valley. You can see the bus station for the town in the picture below. It is on the same side of valley as we were.

Views like the one captured below opened up to us as we got closer to Quarzazate.

Ouarzazate used to be a movie studio town. It is now a tourist destination. The castle for Game of Thrones was set up here. Some well known movies were made in these parts over the years. The two studios associated with the town are The Atlas Corporation Studios, and CLA Studios.

The picture below shows a set that has been constructed in the desert for filming purposes only. It is not a regularly occupied structure.

Our drive took us not too far from the Quarzazate solar power station. It is the world’s largest concentrated solar power plant. It is mostly a thermal solar power plant, with a small section generating power from photovoltaic cells. From the distance you can only see the tower in which the molten salt is formed from the focused radiated energy of the field of solar reflectors.

We were staying in the Riad Ksar Ighnda Kasbah in Ait Ben Haddou that night. A few miles after we left Ouarzazate, we took a turn off highway N9 onto one of the local roads, and we continued our drive west beside the Ounila river for the last few miles to reach our destination. We were told that that the Ounila was a salty river because of the minerals in the mountains. The road to Ait Ben Haddou that we were taking used to be the route of the caravans traveling along the Ounila Valley to Marakkesh in times past.

Our hotel turned out to be a unique and impressive establishment. Our room, in a building separated from the main Kasbah, was at the highest level of the building and adjacent to a terrace. It might have been one of the better rooms in the hotel. We could get a good view of our surroundings from the terrace, including a distant view of the Ksar Ait Ben Haddou itself.The picture below offers a zoomed in view of the hill at Ksar Ait Ben Haddou – with its agadir, or granary, on top. It appears as a dot in the picture above!

We stayed in at the hotel for dinner, and for breakfast the next day. The meals were all very sumptuous – as usual. Of note was the small fried fish (which I suspect were sardines) that tasted remarkably like the fried fish we used to eat as children growing up in India. Enjoyed it all!

This is a picture of our hotel taken from our hotel room later in the night.
This was a view from our room early the next morning.

We stayed only one night at Ait Ben Haddou. We would be climbing up the hill at Ksar Ait Ben Haddou after checking out of the hotel the next morning. We would then depart for Marrakech.

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

At The Edge Of The Sahara Desert

I took a walk early in the morning to get an idea of the lay of the land around Kasbah Xaluca Maadid. The hotel was set in an isolated location along the highway. There was evidence of this hotel being stop for a road rally that was going on. The only other creature that I found awake at that time was the local camel. It must have been wondering what was going on.


After breakfast, we started out the day with a drive to the town of Rissani. It is considered the home of the Alawites. We were informed that it was fortified village (a Ksar) and used to be a resting place for caravans.

A security van started following the bus as we approached the town. The Youssefs and Rashid do not show any signs of concern. It finally departed after we were parked at the first location we were visiting. It was a little disconcerting – some indication of perhaps concern for the safely of the tourists, or maybe even a way of checking on the bus. Later on, when looking at a map, I realized that we were not too far from the border with Algeria, a country with whom relations are strained.

We first stopped to take pictures at the edge of the ruins of a Sijilmassa, an ancient Moroccan city along the Ziz river. It used to be a center for trade. There was not much to see from this viewpoint except for a few gravestones,but the Internet reveals that there is much more that could have been explored within the ruins itself if we had time. According the the Wikipedia article, Sijilmassa was the northern terminus of the Western Trans-Saharan trade route.

After meeting up with our local guide, we proceeded into the town of Rissani to embark on a walking tour of the city. The guide’s name was Eshan. Eshan is a Berber. (The original name for these people of North Africa is Amazigh, and Amazigh is the way they prefer to be referred to these days. I shall endeavor to follow this preference in the blogs going forward.) Eshan is more specifically a tuareg. The taureg are also called the blue men because their skin turns blue from the Indigo dye in the clothes they wear. The tuareg were tradesmen. Eshan was wearing a boubou.His turban is called the Shesh. The cloth used for the shesh is very long. He demonstrated to us how it was wrapped around his head.If needed, the end of the shesh could be wrapped around his nose and mouth also in a manner that protected him from the desert wind and sand.

It turned out that Eshan was a guide in training. Youssef did the talking for the initial part of the visit.

We had arrived on Friday, the day of worship. Youssef gave us a talk on the weekly routine during this day of worship. People do go to the mosque, where the imam gives lecture, which is then followed by prayer.

The first stop was at the bakery that was open – to taste and learn about the local bread called medfouna.

We continued our walk. We were informed that over 200 multi-generational families live in the ksar of Rissani. Most of the houses were built of adobe. Adobe homes are claimed to be all natural. They have a foundation of granite. The sides are made of mud. In general the roof is made of the palm tree, while rich folks use cedar wood. Goats and sheep are kept on the roof.

We visited the local souk, or marketplace. It was quiet on account of it being the day of worship.

In one of the pictures above, Youssef is holding up the support for the seat that sits on a camel’s back. As we found out later in the day, it was very important to hold on to the handle of this seat with hands stretched froward and muscles stiffened when getting on or off the camel.

The final stop in town was at the Mausoleum of Moulay Ali Cherif.Eshan took over the duties of explaining things to us. This was part of his training in order to become a fully capable guide.

We walked to a central square where the mosque for the mausoleum was located.

Our next stop was a a place where products were being made from rocks containing fossils. Frankly speaking, I was skeptical about the whole concept. First of all, I was not aware the there were fossils on a large scale in Morocco. Secondly, I could not imagine commercialization of the use of fossils. I thought that fossils were only dug up for scientific purposes, and were to be examined and put away. I was wrong on both counts!

Fossils were found in in this area in 1960 in a local quarry. There are fossils from the Devonian period, about 360 million years old.We did see a fossil that was about 500 million years old. The place we were visiting had been business for 17 years. The fossils are easier to see when the rock is wet. Here is a slab that was brought from the quarry. It was minimally processed at that point. Water has been poured over it.The rock in the picture below has undergone a little more processing in order to highlight the fossils.They had a store with a couple of roomfuls of household items that they were selling, including big items like tables. The items below would probably belong in a display cabinet in a home.

The evening was spent in the Sahara desert. We visited a family of Amazighs, riding in a group of 4*4 vehicles, traveling over the desert sandsto get to the place where they lived. We were invited to a tent that was set up to welcome visitors.We sat around on the ground and enjoyed the welcoming mint tea. The matriarch of the family spoke to us about their lives.I learnt that he kids did go to school, but it seemed that it was not taken seriously. The picture below shows all the structures belonging to the family. One of them is the actual home.The above picture was taken from the location of another small structure far away from the rest, where the animals were kept.

The next stop was at a location where there were rocks with fossils embedded in them. We went searching.
Indeed, it was easy to spot the fossils – without even having to pour water on the rocks!

We stopped next to a sandy cliff to take pictures of the desert. There were some women selling trinkets there. My eyes were drawn to this girl, sitting on the side.For some reason, I feel a certain sadness when I see this picture. I wonder what is going through her mind when she looks at one of the well off tourists. Is her presence acknowledged?

The next stop was at a rest area set up in the desert! It was obviously set up for the tourists.

The next event in the desert was camel ride up the dunes to see the sunset. The dunes are called the Erg Chebbi.

After the camel ride, we walked over to a restaurant that was nearby. There were people seated outside the restaurant near the fire pit.

It was a sumptuous feast that we partook of for dinner. It included medfouna and some welcome libations.

There was some live entertainment going on outside the restaurant as we prepared to return to our 4*4s.We sat outside for a short while to soak in the atmosphere.

And then it was time to head back to the hotel. During the quiet drive through the darkness of the night, we had time to sit back and reflect on the eventful day that we were just completing. We were back to the hotel only by 10pm, a late night relative to the experiences of the previous days.

It was an awesome day all in all.  The days just keep getting better and better.

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

The Drive To Erfoud

Today’s journey takes us to Erfoud, on the edge of the Sahara desert, via Ifrane. We are crossing the Middle Atlas mountains and the High Atlas Mountains into the desert.

In order to be fair to all travelers in the tour group, seat assignments on the bus for the long distances that we travel between towns are rotated for each such day of travel. Today we have the benefit of being able to sit in the second row of the bus, offering us a open view of the road ahead of us. This picture was taken on our way out of town.

As we were leaving town, Youssef started giving us a little bit of background about the nature of Moroccan society. He said that the Berber society was matriarchal. (I should note that I have not found any article that actually confirms this.) He talked about the topic of the treatment of women in Morocco. He said that there were a few issues of interpretation and implementation of Islamic law which have resulted in the treatment of women as second class citizens in some Arab countries. A couple of the specific issues in this regard relate to 1) the fact that polygamy is allowed in Islamic law, and 2) how divorce is handled in islamic law. Morocco has apparently been on a path of reform in this regard for a while, the efforts in the more recent past being championed by King Mohammed VI. Here is an article with excerpts from a speech he gave in 2003 in this regard.  I also found this interesting article written in 2013 that covers a broad range of subjects regarding Moroccan society. There is a specific section on the status of women. We were told that women participate in all aspects of the economy. We did encounter women policemen on a few occasions, dressed as professionally as their male counterparts, and without any additional head coverings.

The first mountain range we entered were the Middle Altas mountains. Ceder, pine and oak grow here. The major towns in this section of the drive were developed by the Europeans, more than likely the french, and the architecture reflects this.

We encountered a few checkpoints along the way during the drive that day. I took this picture at one of the stops later in the day.In general, you find checkpoints like this throughout the country. They are apparently meant to thwart attempts to carry weapons that could be used in terrorist activities – primarily related to the situation in the Western Sahara. As far as I could make out, terrorist activity seemed to be non-existent in this part of the country at this moment in time. The countryside seemed peaceful. People did not appear to be on edge. The thought occurred to me that these checkpoints could only serve as an annoyance to locals going about their business. Our bus was let through most of these checkpoints without further examination. We are not supposed to take pictures of the police. It became an issue at one checkpoint where an officer suspected that a person on the bus had taken his picture. Things were sorted out quickly.

Our first stop was at Ifrane for “Happy Time”. Ifrane is a ski resort town. The roofs of the buildings are very different from those in other parts of the country for a very good reason! We had a few minutes to walk around town. Here is a picture taken at a location in town that has become popular with tourists. From what I read, there is no particularly important reason, historical or otherwise, for the presence of this lion. It is not a memorial.

As we were leaving the town, Youssef educated us about the use of guns in Morocco. They are apparently very strict about it. Civilians cannot own guns. Police are not normally allowed to carry guns, and if there is a discharge of a weapon and somebody is hurt, there can be severe repercussions – even for the police.  But there is also an armed presence of security personnel on the street that we encountered, with units of three people, one of them military. They are apparently there for purposes of preventing terrorist acts, and they are forbidden from responding to other local problems. I did not even try to take a picture of such a group of armed personnel – for obvious reasons.

We entered the land of the nomad Berbers soon after leaving Ifrane. There are still Berbers that live their old lifestyle and move around freely. Land ownership laws are different in this part of the country. We came across a few isolated small settlements where a few families live together.The one below looks more permanent.
We also saw other isolated individual Berber homes. Wealth, in this society, is measured by the lifestock that one owns. The people do not own motorized vehicles, and move around using their animals. There are towns where the people go to to trade their lifestock. Sometimes they have to take the bus back to where they live. It is difficult to provide school education to children in this kind of a setup.

We stopped to see barbary apes.The aggressive barbary apes in Gibraltar are descendants of the ones in North Africa. In contrast to their Gibraltar cousins, the ones in Morocco seemed to be quite mild mannered in the presence of the tourists.

These are pictures taken during the drive that morning.

Despite the look of the place, agriculture is prevalent in these parts. They grow apples, peaches and pears.

Every now and then the open spaces were interrupted by busy towns that we drove through. There always seemed to be something or the other going on on the streets in these towns. We often saw groups of young people. In some cases it was obvious that they were kids going to school.

Most of the street stalls in the particular town we were passing through in the picture below seemed to be stocked with apples!

We passed through another town where the weekly market was going on, but I was unable to snap any representative pictures.

We saw vehicles transporting cattle.On one occasion, we even saw cows being transported on top of a vehicle.

We stopped for lunch at a rest area in an isolated section of the road between the two mountain ranges we were crossing that day.

We drove by the town of Midelt. Its theme was the apple.There was at least one more such piece of advertisement for the town, with a differently colored apple, at a second roundabout in town. According to the Wikipedia article, MIdelt is one of the highest large towns in Morocco. They apparently have a week long apple festival once a year. There are other cities that have their own annual week long celebrations in honor of the particular fruit they are known for.

We drove through town without stopping, negotiating the many traffic roundabouts. Incidentally, Morocco is country of traffic roundabouts. It is the preferred strategy for handling road intersections almost everywhere in the country.

We passed many forests of ceder trees. Ceder is used extensively for construction and other purposes.

Another section of the drive featured wild dogs beside the road waiting for food handouts from trucks. Apparently, they are quite friendly. I believe there is a story related to how the dogs began to make their appearance here, but I do not remember it.

The landscape becomes more spectacular as you approach the High Atlas mountains from the high plains. There are the isolated villages and settlements with the mountains in the background. The buildings are primarily in the adobe style. Most of the space is open land with agricultural farms.

The streams and river beds were all dry.The rainy season is from December to February according to Youssef.

It was a spectacular drive over narrow winding roads as we climbed into the mountains.We drove through canyons.There was a lot of road widening work going on through the mountains. Narrow roadways that originally wound their way around the sides of mountains were being shortened by cutting straight through the mountains instead.

It had already been a long day of travel, but Youssef urged us not to tire of the drive since there was more to see.

We were driving along the Ziz river during this section of the trip, and we would continue to do so all the way to Erfoud. The Ziz valley lay next to us for certain sections of the drive,and then below as we climbed to higher elevations – higher into the mountains. The green trees and homes that we saw at the bottom of the valley as we gained elevation caught my immediate attention!The trees in both of the pictures above are date trees. There has been a transformation in the vegetation since we left Fez in the morning.

We were told that many caravan paths through Morocco passed through the Ziz valley.

We drove past a lake created by a what is the largest dam in Morocco.The Barrage Al-hassan Addakhil produces hydroelectric power. It also supplies water to surrounding cities. As is obvious in the picture, the water level in the lake was low.

We passed a town called Errachedia soon after the lake. It is apparently a big military base. The map shows that it is not too far from the border with Algeria. The town looked deserted for the most part. The picture below shows the entrance to the town.

Youssef informed us that in this area of Morocco, Kasbahs were not forts, but were fortified houses for extended families. Fortified towns are called Ksars. Errachidia used to be called Ksar Es Souk.

We passed through another section of the road where we could see the greenery of the Ziz valley once again. It was full of date trees and villages, some fortified. The area covered was huge. Beautiful!

Youssef talked about the nature of the date tree. I found it very interesting but I did not take notes that would help me remember the details. What comes to mind is the fact that humans fully manage the cultivation of the trees including the pollination process, not depending on natural processes and the bees in this regard. The ratio of the female to male trees is quite large. This is managed deliberately because the dates only grow on the female trees. And there are ways to differentiate the male and female trees by their looks. They mainly grow Medjool dates in Morocco.

We passed adobe buildings that appeared to be in states of disrepair, perhaps abandoned. We were told that this was not the case. Because adobe is basically mud, these building need to be rebuilt every so often. There is a time of year to do this. The building lies unoccupied during that time.

We passed a few Berber cemeteries. The bodies are buried on their right side with the head facing Mecca. The marker on the grave site is a flattish piece of rock, and all of the rocks face a particular direction relative to Mecca.

Not the least of the interesting pieces of information that Youssef provided was the fact that they have iguanas in this area.

We were staying at a Berber Kasbah that night at Erfoud. We arrived there in the late evening. We had covered quite a distance that day, and traveled across different geographical areas and climate zones, crossing two mountain ranges in the process. We were now at the edge of the Sahara desert!

The Kasbah Xaluca Maadid was certainly another unique place to stay at. The vibe was that of a resort, but the accommodations were of a Moroccan Berber style. The place had a dated feel to it,with mementos of visits from celebrities of the early movie age to be found in the big and ornate reception area. Some Hollywood history seems to have played out in these parts, with movies having been filmed with the Kasbah as a base. Movie stars must have stayed here. Apparently, filming of parts of the new Indiana Jones movie, currently scheduled for 2023, will happen in these parts.

Just as at every other hotel we we have stayed at thus far, we got mint tea as a welcome. Dinner was buffet style. We crashed out early after a minor bit of drama regarding the lock to the door of our room. We could not get out of the room easily once we were in it! It took a couple of attempts to get somebody to fix the lock. Youssef was constantly joking about Moroccan time – in terms of how quickly things get done, and how prompt Moroccans were. Sure enough, we were told that somebody would fix the problem in a couple of minutes, but the issue was only addressed after we came back from dinner, after we contacted the staff once more.

It had been a long day. The next day would turn out to be an even longer one.

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

Fes, Morocco

Our drive from Chefchaouen to Fes (also spelled “Fez”) took us through flatlands and rolling hills. The land had been tilled in some places and the soil looked dark.
We passed orange groves and farms of pomegranates trees. Also farms of olives. Donkeys, mules, horses and sheep are the common animals beside the road.

Youssef grew up in the town of Meknes, not far away from Fes. Fes is in the Meknes governmental district. I was hoping that he could see his family for a short while in the evening. He said that there was no time. I am not surprised when I see the way he is engaged in his duties, seemingly every single moment of time that he is awake.

We arrived in Fes later than usual. We were staying in a riad. Riad El Yacout is an old, traditional, formerly residential home that has been restored to provide accommodations for travelers. According to the owners of the riad, the house was built by a famous researcher and professor at the University of al-Qarawiyyin in the 16th century. It was recently renovated and converted.

The Riad was located off the main road, where the bus could not travel. We had to walk down some narrow roads, and finally a narrow alleyway, between some buildings to reach our destination.Our luggage was brought to the riad on carts by porters.

The place was unique. It had a huge open area in the center, and rooms all around.
You could not figure out where your room was from the room number. We were taken to the top floor by an employee assigned to help us in the endeavor. A door that was not very obvious opened up in one corner of the verandah to reveal a narrow stairway that took us down to the room. We were apparently located in-between floors!The room was grand,but the bathroom had problems. The conversion of a big 16th century home – without electricity or plumbing, and also air-conditioning – into a building capable of hosting an army of tourists of this day and age was not without its issues. The guest rooms were also all unique and different from each other, each having been converted from whatever purpose they had served in times past. One, perhaps unkind, guess was that we had been given the maid’s room!

We had a view into a courtyard with an open pool from the windows in our room.

The expectation from the tour organizers had been that we would have dinner on our own on the day of our arrival. Instead, Youssef arranged for a late dinner in the hotel for all of us. We had a tajine dish with couscous and chicken. There was a lot of food! Three musicians entertained us with traditional music during dinner. The beats of the music sounded familiar. We have heard them in India. Folks were tired after the long ride and appreciated not having to hunt for food that evening.

Fes is one of the old cities of Morocco. It was its first Imperial City. It used to be a center of education. The city was built in the 8th Century by Idris 1st. He was an Arab.

Fes is very different from Tangier. We were warned by our tour manager about being very careful in Fes, especially in the medina we were visiting. Lots of pickpockets. Lots of people, including gangs of kids, trying to extract money from you. People would apparently try to peddle junk to you, trying to distract you, while their compatriots would attempt to rob you of your stuff. Others, selling stuff that was perhaps somewhat more legitimate, would not leave you alone even if you refused their offers.

The Fes el Bali is the older medina in Fes. It is the biggest and most complex in Morocco. It is like a labyrinth!  Apparently people get lost easily, even Moroccans from other places. It was developed between the years 789 and 1200. We were told that an attempt by a travel company to map out all the alleyways of the medina was given up after a few months of effort as being an impossible task. Our guide mentioned that the medina in Fes is of Arabic design, while most other medinas in Morocco are Berber in design.

We were met by a local guide before we set out into town that morning. We drove up to the Borj Sud, The Southern Tower, located on a hill,(please excuse the poor quality of the above picture!) to get an expansive view of the whole city from the south.You could also see some of the mountains surrounding the city through the early morning fog in the distance.

Our next stop was the medina. We were met here by an assistant guide who was also going to come along with us through the medina – to help keep us safe, and keep us from getting lost. He was kept busy throughout our visit.Both our guides are from Fes, and are very familiar with the insides of the medina.

We were told to keep put in one place if we ever got separated from the group, and not to follow random people who might offer to help. We were told to move out of the way immediately if we heard the word “Balak”! If we did not move, we were likely to be knocked down by a person or a donkey in the narrow crowded alley. We were also told to politely ignore folks who bothered us. Also, the guides were allowed to lose up to 10% of the people in a tour group during a visit to the medina. The last statement is, of course, a joke!

The experience of a medina is quite unique – the shops, the storefronts, the displays lining the streets and alleys, the people, etc,




We were occasionally followed by little kids who seemed to be in their element looking for trouble, and also by the insistent hawkers who picked on one person in the group, and bothered the person indefinitely even while being ignored, keeping pace as the group as it made its way single file through the alley. They targeted the women in the group, and it was a mistake even to look at them or give them a smile.Plainclothesmen accompanied us occasionally, people passed you with carts and animals, some even carrying stuff on their head. I barely missed being hit by the cardboard boxes being carried on the head of a person going the other way, while other more confident locals ducked under his load and passed us on his side of the alley.

There was the occasional dog poop. The cats were everywhere.There were the dark and sometimes narrow, empty, alleyways that lead to god knows where. Some of these areas were residential, and we were told that the nature of the door did not reveal the wealth of the people living behind them. The insides of the abodes were also built with security in mind.Spaces between buildings were supported by wood in some places, an indication of how fragile some of the old structures might be.This is a metal worker who is supposed to have gained some fame on Youtube. It seemed like he was performing in the small square for the passers-by.There was the man posing with his donkey. He was, of course, expecting money in return for allowing us to take his picture.

We stopped at a carpet place recommended by the tour group. We were given a lecture about all the different kinds of carpets made in Morocco.We learnt that the Berber carpets had their own characteristics, different from carpets of other places – including the way the materials came together, and their designs and the fact that both sides could be used – he described a side for winter and one for summer. We were free to purchase carpets here that could be shipped to the US.

We walked beside the wall of the University of al-Qarawiyyin, but could not enter the premises. This university began as a mosque, and its minaret and the green tops of some of its buildings, are visible in pictures of the medina in Fes taken from afar. The University is considered the oldest continuously operating university in the world. Maimonides, the famous Jewish philosopher and scholar of the 12th century, is known to have studied here.

We visited an old Al-Attarine Madrasa in the medina, where children used to live and learn the religious texts.About 50 children lived and studied here at a time. We could walk into the rooms in which they lived in on the upper floors of the building. The rooms were quite small. They each had their own mailboxes. The calligraphy on some of the walls was notable.

When I asked, I was informed that the text in caligraphy like this, and on the walls of mosques, most of the time consists of lines from the Koran.

We could not enter the Mausoleum of Moulay Idris II because it was closed due to Covid. This is one of the entrances to the mausoleum.The minaret of the mosque of this mausoleum is the most distinctive feature of the medina of Fes when seen in pictures taken from a distance. It towers over its surroundings.

We visited the museum called the Fondouk el-Nejjarine. It used to be a Caravanserai for travelers in times past. The museum was dominated by artifacts of wood.Lunch was provided in a restaurant within the medina. We had tajine once again!

After lunch we visited the tannery. We we were given mint leaves to hold over our noses to keep out the smells.They work on camel hide to produce the leather in this tannery, and they use pigeon droppings in the vats for softening the leather, the key ingredient in the droppings to make this happen being ammonia. We were given a lecture on the process of creating leather products, and, again, we were taken to the store where we could make purchases. We bought a couple of leather poufs. I also bought a belt, and a wallet to replace the the one in my hand that was falling apart. I was very naive when it came to bargaining, but Youssef helped me get a good price in the end. While I was standing around waiting for others to get done with their shopping, one of the service people struck up a conversation with me and started talking about India. He said he knew songs from Indian movies. I ended up singing pieces from a Hindi song with him!

We apparently walked about 4 miles through the medina!

The next stop on the bus was the Jewish cemetery,
after which we visited the Jewish marketplace.Apparently, the open upper levels that one sees in these pictures is one distinguishing feature of Jewish marketplaces in general. The pathways in the medinas of Fes are all covered.

We walked over to the front of the Old Royal Palace to take a look at the entrance.The palace is still in use.

We were supposed to get our own dinner that evening after we returned to the hotel. We were given a few options for places to go to for this purpose, including a restaurant where one could get a camel burger if so inclined. We decided to have dinner at the riad itself, and in a spur of the moment decision, after looking at the menu, placed the order right away for what we wanted when we came down to dinner a couple of hours later. It was a good thing that we did this, because people who came to the restaurant later for dinner were limited in their choices. Some decided to wander outside the riad to look for food more to their liking – with mixed results.

I have been enjoying the beers of Morocco with my dinners – Casablanca and Flag. Both beers are on the light side.

We are crossing the Middle and High Altas mountain ranges tomorrow!

You can read the next blog in this sequence here.

To Chefchaouen, Morocco

We left Tangier for Fes early that morning. There was an intermediate stop and a visit to Chefchaouen planned for the day. Departure from town was delayed a little bit because of something left behind by mistake in the hotel room by one of the travelers. I took a couple of pictures of the modern buildings of Tangiers as we motored back and forth in town.

Our route to Chefchaouen took us out of town fairly quickly. We were headed, generally, in a south-easterly direction, towards the Rif mountains. Soon we were in a hilly area and entering the mountains. We were motoring up and down the mountainsides, with views of valleys below. Unfortunately, I was seated on the side of the bus away from the valleys for the initial part of the drive, and the sun was also in my eyes. I could not get good pictures.In the picture above, you can see the wall of clouds built up against the mountainside in the distance. The Mediterranean sea lies on the other side of these mountains.

I did get a picture of this wind farm in the mountains. We were told that there is a push towards renewable energy in the country. I think that what were seeing was the Dhar Saadane wind farm.

As we drove through the mountains, we passed a series of lakes formed by dams that had been built by the government for helping the farmers.We stopped near one of these lakes for to visit the The Happy Room.This is what Youssef euphemistically, and consistently, called our rest stops for the entire trip. People used the toilets, got some drinks and light snacks if they wanted, and also walked off the stiffness in the joints by walking around the area. With 41 tourists on the bus, many older than the two of us, there was good usage of these rest areas. In many places there were long lines that formed for the use of the facilities upon our arrival. The nature of these facilities varied throughout the trip.

Our drive took us to the west side of a big city called Tétouan. Tétouan lies along the Mediterranean coast, with the coastline facing in a easterly direction.It is Morocco’s second biggest port along the Mediterranean sea. Tétouan historically used to be a well known place for travelers from Europe and other parts of the world to come to because of its location. It saw a lot of historical action, again because of its location. The city is apparently also a destination for vacations.

We turned south, off the road that we were on that was leading further into the heart of town, on the outskirts of Tétouan, to stay on Highway N2 to Chefchaouen.

Here are a picture from this part of the drive. The sun was still in my eyes.We arrived at Chefchaouen without incident.

Chefchaouen is called The Blue City, or The Blue Pearl, of Morocco. The reason will be obvious once you see pictures of the place. The town is situated along the slopes of the Rif mountains. The city was founded in the 15th century. Moorish and Jewish people settled there first. The Jews were fleeing religious persecution in Spain.

In order to make the exploration of the town on foot easier, the bus was driven to a point above the town – so that the walk could generally proceed in a downhill direction. We were met by our local guide at that spot.

We entered the walls of the medina from one of its entry gates. We were told that there are seven of them.

These are some generic pictures of the alleyways of the medina.

I have many more pictures that I took of the medina of Chefchaouen that I liked – too many to present here!

I must speak to the picture of the water fountain in the above gallery. Water fountains like these are common on the streets of the towns in Morocco. The water is available for cleaning oneself prior to performing ablutions, and for drinking.

There is some commonality of experience of the medinas we have visited in cities so far. They are located in old, walled, sections of town, and they are full of alleyways that go in every direction. They are like a maze. They are full of small stores selling all kinds of different things. The merchants are all small businessmen. Locals are friendly with tourists. Some speak to you in English.

We stopped at El Haouta Square to take a break before continuing onward. People were going about their lives while we tourists wandered about in their midst. I could see that in this particular case our presence was disruptive to some.

We stopped at the main square opposite the town’s Kasbah to have our lunch.

A restaurant owner allowed us to use his space while we ate the food we had bought with us from Tangier. (The intent was to save time.)We compensated the owner by purchasing drinks from him. The owner was an intense bearded chap. He scolded me for letting Teresa take the trash from the table when she asked him where to put it. He was all about equality! He spoke to us about India, and Mahatma Gandhi, and about some other leader, spiritual I think, also from India, who he followed. (Later on, I read about the prevalence of cannabis in this area. It made me wonder.) In any case, I was perturbed by his initial response, but did not react. I knew that he was struggling with the sometimes confusing requests from the many tourists who had suddenly descended upon his establishment, and so was not sure if he was generally irritated. I realized after a while that some of the Moroccans we were meeting with simply had different boundaries than what we expected as tourists. They meant no injury or insult. The people we encountered were indeed generally friendly.

We had some time to wander through the medina on our own. We did not go too far from our meeting point in the square since I was worried about getting lost.

The bus was not where we expected to be at the end of the our walk through the medina after lunch. Youssef and our local guide led us on an extended walk into the newer part of town to get us to the place where it was waiting for us.

It was good to finally get to the bus. Youssef and Rashid were waiting patiently for us. We boarded and got on our way to Fes.

On the way out of town, I was able to take advantage of two photo opportunities that were presented to us by the Youssefs. We stopped beside the road so that we could take a picture of Chefchaouen of from a particular vantage point.Youssef (the driver) then slowed down the bus enough to allow passengers on one side of the bus to take a picture of the door at the entrance to Chefchaouen.There was a similar door beside the road when we were driving into town, but we were not able to take pictures at that point.

The town of Chefchaouen is probably a good place to hang out, not just to spend a small part of a day as a tourist on the run. The town square had an easy-going vibe to it. From what I hear, it is probably a good place to use as a base for explorations of the surrounding mountains. That is something I could dig!

Before I close, some last bits of information about the presence of a Jewish population in Morocco. Jews have apparently lived in Morocco since the times BC. The large migration to Morocco took place in the 15th century. They inhabited cities all over the country and maintained their identity. From what I read, their relationship with their Muslim counterparts seems to not have been ideal, but they were not persecuted as much as in some other Arab countries. Morocco apparently had the largest Jewish community in the Muslim world before the formation of Israel. We found Jewish sectors in many of the towns we visited. We also visited Jewish medina’s in a few cities. The king’s senior advisor today is a person of the Jewish faith. The numbers of the Jewish population went down after the creation of Israel in 1948, when many immigrated. We were told that Moroccans are now the second largest community of immigrants in Israel. While Morocco has had informal connections with Israel for a while, they only recognized the country in 2020.

There are also signs that more is being done in recent times for this Islamic nation to be more inclusive of this of its own Berber heritage. King Mohammed VI made history by marrying a local commoner, outside of the line of his line of Muslim ancestry and royalty. Recently, the Berber language was also made one of the official languages of Morocco, to also be used in the administrations in the future. An official script was developed for the above purpose. You might happen upon some Berber script in a few of the pictures that I present.

We arrived in Fes a little late in the evening that day. We are staying in a Riad. More about this in the next blog about Morocco.

You can find the next blog in this sequence here.

On To Tangier

We left Rabat early in the morning, heading north for Tangier.

Youssef told us a little more about his country during the drive. He indicated that 75% of the population was Berber. They are the original nomads of North Africa. Other groups that reside in the country include Arabs, Moors, Jews, Christians, etc.. The country is a constitutional monarchy, with the king sharing power with an elected body. The current king is Muhammed VI. He is considered young and forward-looking. Morocco has been ruled by kings of the Alawite dynasty since the 1600s. They claim descent from the prophet Mohammad. The country used to be a protectorate of France and Spain. They got their independence in 1956. They are still undoing the damage that the French did. (That sounds like a very familiar story!) They do not have a good relationship with neighbor Algeria. There is disagreement over the ownership of the land now to the south, called the Western Sahara. They are a modern Islamic Nation. They have partnerships with the US and Israel. (The reasons became clearer with the passage of time.)

General observation – many people in Morocco tend to wear their traditional clothes. Also, women do not, in general, cover their faces. Many have scarves over their head.

Our route took us close to the sea coast and the Atlantic Ocean for a good part of the drive. We were on a toll road.

We passed through a park with forests of cork oak and eucalyptus trees. The harvested cork oak tree has a very distinctive look because of the way cork is harvested.

Agriculture is the major occupation in this part of the country. It contributes significantly to the economy, and so does tourism. Morocco mostly has small farms.Our surroundings were surprisingly green. There are lots of donkeys, horses,sheep and cows
– and an occasional camel.The camels would dominate the scene more as we headed towards the east of the country.

More recently new crops have been introduced to the country, including banana and avocado. They also produce honey. 50% of the avocado is apparently exported to Israel. In order to ensure good and healthy growth, the banana trees are grown in an enclosed environment, but they seem to break out of their enclosures as they grow taller. We saw many banana tree enclosures along the way.

We arrived at Tangier in time for lunch. I was surprised by the design of the apartment buildings being built on the outskirts of the city,and by the line of modern car dealerships and other stores along the road. It felt very different from Rabat. This seemed to be a modern city strongly influenced by the west.

Tangier is considered one of the big cities of Morocco. Due to its northern location, it used to be a gateway from Europe to Africa. It used to be an international city for some time, governed jointly by several countries – including USA, Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, and Sweden. There were different sections of the city that were administered separately and differently (including regulations and enforcement), and the architecture in each section reflected the architectural choices of people from the administrating authority.

Tangier is a famous city of international allure and intrigue, and notoriety – known as a center for spying, smuggling, etc.., during times past. It used to be, and still is, a favorite of celebrities, movie stars, artists, writers, etc.. Real estate is expensive. There are palaces built for kings – seemingly mostly from the Middle East.

We met up with our local guide just before we broke off for lunch on our own. Lunch was in a restaurant with an open terrace overlooking the bay.

After lunch, we went on the bus to Perdicaris Park, on the west side of the city. As we drove up the hills, you could get an expansive view of the sprawling city below us. (I was not able to get any good pictures.) Our local guide kept talking about the expensive real estate we were passing, and the owners of these properties. I really did not care.

Once at the park entrance, we were taken along the edge of the park to a spot where you are supposed to be able to see across the Gibraltar Strait to Spain. Unfortunately, it was a hazy day. Our guide continued with a story-telling session about the Perdicaris Affair. The house that we could see on the hill was a part of this story.The house was called the Place of Nightingales. It has now been renamed Chateau Perdicaris.

We would have loved to have had some time to actually explore the park, but that was apparently not part of the plan. The park did seem to be a very popular place for locals to visit.

We continued our drive further west, crossing some hills, and eventually caught sight of the Atlantic Ocean as we started descending towards the coast.We were in an area called Cape Spartel. Our first stop was at the Cape Spartel Lighthouse at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It was amazing observing Youssef, our driver, navigate the bus through the twists and turns of the narrow automobile-lined streets, to the more open space of the parking lot for the lighthouse.

Our local guide gave us a little history of the lighthouse. You can read the very interesting original agreement between all the countries involved in the creation of this lighthouse here. The Sultan of Morocco built this lighthouse for the benefit of humanity – for use by the seafaring nations of that time – those from Europe, and also the United States. Morocco itself had little to gain.

Our local guide told us that we could actually see the difference between the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean here. The Atlantic was supposed to be rougher, in general. I could not make out the difference. I did notice a tanker in the distance, through the haze. It seemed to be heading eastward, towards the Mediterranean sea.

It was during this stop that I noticed a somewhat distressing tendency of folks in our group to not pay attention to the tour guide and to get distracted by a bunch of other stuff going on around us while the person was speaking. This behavior was somewhat disrespectful for one thing. Also, it did not make sense that folks had come all this way, to another country, without the curiosity and interest to learn new things. Anyway…

It was in this general area that somebody on the bus turned on their mobile phone to receive a text message from their US network carrier, Verizon Wireless. “Welcome to Spain”, it said! We were close enough to the European continent to receive cellular phone signals from Spain!

We drove down the hill on which the lighthouse was located to a road that went past the beaches on the Atlantic Coast.There were people hanging out on the beaches. We were headed further south to the Caves of Hercules for a visit.

(If the good reader has not already realized this, now may be a good time to inform you of something that may be obvious to some – that many of my pictures from this trip have been taken under non-ideal conditions, from a moving bus, with internal reflections from the bus impacting the overall picture. That may be a good or bad thing depending on your point of view. In any case, what the camera captured happens to be the reality of the moment!)

I have to admit that I lost interest in the Caves of Hercules when I heard that the cave was partially man-made. I did not care for the mythological background either. It sounded like a tourist trap. In any case I went in along with the crowd. It seemed to be a very popular place among the locals.This was the end of the tours for the day. We started our drive back to the town of Tangier. After once again crossing the hills of Cape Spartel, we took a different route into town during the latter part of the drive into town. We ended up on a waterfront along the Mediterranean sea. There was a beautiful esplanade beside us. We drove past two ports – one for fishing boats and the other for leisure. (We would get a more expansive view of this area the next day.) The locals were out taking walks and having fun. I was thinking that this would be a nice place for us to walk during our spare time.

We were dropped off at the hotel that we were going to stay at. It happened to be close to the waterfront – a convenient location from which to start explorations of the city on foot. The hotel was a high end American brand. Our expectations were a little high.We were a little disappointed, especially by the view from our room. And then there were little things about the place that were not completely up to par.

We decided to do a little exploring in the evening. We went to a shopping mall close by, including a small food market and a food court. Neither seemed to be very inviting at first glance. We decided to walk along the water front to look for a place to eat. We had seen a few restaurants as the bus was making its way to the hotel.

It was in fact not easy to pick a restaurant, the problem being that we could not understand the French menus, and that we also lacked the communications skills to figure out if there was some food we would like to try.

As we wandered around looking for a restaurant to eat at, we were greeted as Indians on the street. Folks seemed to react in what seemed to be a very friendlier than usual manner. The thought occurred to me that we should use this to our advantage during the trip! We were greeted with a “Namaste” on a couple of occasions while in Tangier.

We eventually landed up at a restaurant that had the word “grill” as part of its name. It looked like a place for people who might be seeking a quick bite – with a Moroccan restaurant chain vibe. The food items seemed familiar, and there were English translations on the menu. We went in to find two other people from our tour group seated there. They themselves had just arrived. We had talked to them for the first time that evening when we arrived at the hotel. They were from Walla Walla, WA! I had heard of Walla Walla before, and had no trouble remembering the name – just because of the way it had sounded! It was a complete coincidence running into the folks from Walla Walla once again at the restaurant. It was time to make new friends from Walla Walla!

Based on my experiences of that day, I got a feeling that Tangier was probably not the best place to learn about the Moroccan culture – even though the city is amazing in its own way. It was so full of life. It was very much alive. I was to find out that I was wrong in this initial judgement. We had a more relevant experience about Moroccan life the next day. Also, as I learnt during the rest of the trip, different parts of Morocco are so different from each other.

Breakfast at the Hilton the next morning was on the 15th floor. The breakfast area, and the breakfast itself, was where the hotel started to redeem itself, and regain a little bit of its lost reputation. While enjoying breakfast, we had a wonderful view over the strait – where a ferry from Spain happened to just be coming in.

After breakfast, we wandered over to another open space on the 15th floor, facing the other direction, to get a view of the railway station.There was an Al-Boraq train on the move just outside the station.These “TGV Morocco” trains, built by the french company Alstom, started running between Casablanca and Tangier in 2018. They can run at up to 200 miles/hr in certain sections, and they have apparently halved the travel time between the two cities. They are the fastest trains in Africa today. Our road route into Tangier had paralleled the path of this train in certain sections. There was a moment during that drive when my attention was drawn to something flashing by the windows on the other side of the bus. It was the train, and it was gone in an instant!

Our program for the morning was a walking tour of the Casbah and the Medina in Tangier. This was more like what I was hoping to experience! We would get an exposure to history and life in Tangier.

We walked to the Casbah from where our bus had dropped us off.

There was a banyan tree near the entrance of the Casbah. I had to laugh to myself since it looked puny and pitiful by Indian standards.We walked through the alleyways of the Casbah where people still live and buildings are also used for commercial and other purposes.

The Hand of Fatima knocker that you see on one of the doors in the pictures above is there for good luck. It is is quite common in Moroccan homes.

We were able to go to the rampart of the fort to look at the harbor and the bay.

We then made our way through the alleyways of the Medina.

We were regularly accosted by street vendors selling their wares. We had been warned by our tour manager to not buy things from these vendors. He will be taking us to places that they recommend to buy some Moroccan keepsakes. The vendors are quite aggressive, but not to the point that you feel threatened. They have a very friendly demeanor, but it is difficult to get them to give up. I noticed that we were accompanied by a plainclothes policeman who did his best to not be obvious to the tour group. A group of 41 somewhat naive Americans make a good target!

We stopped at the American Legation Museum.
This building was the first American public property abroad, and is the only U.S. National Historic Landmark located in a foreign country. Morocco was the first country to recognize US independence from Great Britain (in 1821), and this building served as a diplomatic outpost after that for 140 years. Morocco’s relationship with the US runs deep.

Lunch was with the rest of the tour group at a restaurant in a location that, we were told, used to be a safe house in the past. The restaurant was located along the seaside wall of the Casbah. We had tajines for lunch. Tajines are uniquely North African, and they are used for slow cooking. We had tajines on many other occasions during the trip.

We enjoyed sitting in the terrace area overlooking the harbor – and making some new friends, this time from Missouri. We had good food and company for lunch.

We were taken by bus back to the hotel.The rest of the day was free time for us. I fell asleep at the hotel, knocked out from all the walking.

We went for a walk along the beach in the evening as the sun was setting.What a marvelous atmosphere! People were everywhere – kids, adults, couples, both young and old, young boys and girls on bikes and scooters whizzing around on the promenade. I especially loved seeing the young girls on their scooters. It spoke to the equitable nature of their society.

The promenade was nicely lit up.

The Moroccan women in Tangier are quite fashionable in their own way in the way they dress. Women also wear makeup and seem to feel free to present themselves as they wish. Even though a majority of them dress somewhat conservatively, many covering their heads, there were a few who were not shy about going out of their way to get themselves noticed. But, for the most part, even the stylish folks dressed more demurely than what you would see in a big city in the US on a summer day. Subtlety works better than an in-your-face approach most of the time.

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge our adventures crossing the streets on foot in this and the other big cities where we happened to take walks. We typically had to cross wide boulevards, if possible at crosswalks – sometimes without the benefit of lights to stop traffic at the crosswalk. Automobiles approach people crossing the road at high speeds and only stop at the very last moment. But they do stop! When in doubt about crossing the street, it is wise to follow the locals. And do not hesitate!

One other thing, that I hesitate slightly to bring up, is the sight of indigent people on the street in some places. We came across a lady with a baby in her lap sitting on the sidewalk the two evenings we were there. She might have been trying to sell small packets of tissues. There were also other people at some locations on the street between our hotel and the beach. And there were the random ladies, not many, who might approach you with their hand out. In this matter, Morocco seems to have the same problems that many countries have, including the United States.

We are heading for Fes tomorrow morning with an intermediate stop in Chefchaouen. We had to get some food today for our lunch tomorrow. There were slim pickings at the food market in the mall, but I noticed that many in our tour group were also in the store the same time that we were looking for food. We improvised.

On our way out of the mall, we ran into a lady who was wandering around near the entrance trying to get people to try out a perfume from a certain company. Soon after we said no, she stopped “selling”, and started talking about herself. She was Filipino. She was by herself in Morocco, having left her home to find a job and make a living. She had kids she had left behind. She had trained as a nurse, but she had ended up in this job because of stuff that had happened since she left her country. She was hoping to get a better job and improve her life eventually in Miami. Things seemed to be difficult for her – her life story felt a little sad, but she had a cheerful and optimistic demeanor nonetheless. It was an amazing and unique encounter. In the end, she asked us to pray for her.

I was having a problem that last night in Tangier finding a place to get dinner, especially since I was on my own in this endeavor. We were both adjusting to the change in the diet since we left home. We were typically eating much more than usual for breakfast and lunch. Dinner could feel forced, and I was the only one interested that night. I ended up up having a Big Mac for dinner at the tail end of our walk – at the “McDo” near our hotel.It has been many years since I indulged in a Big Mac. I had squashed the craving for this burger for many, many, years!

You can find the next blog in this sequence here.