Today I wholeheartedly can say that I was questing (Bob I hope you’re reading this). This was day one in Morocco and a big day of traveling for me. Saimah and I went from Cadiz—where we had stayed the previous day—to Tarifa on the Southern tip of Spain. We walked through Tarifa and then hopped on a ferry to Tangier Morocco. Morocco is an entirely different world than anything I have previously experienced. We get off the boat, only to be harassed by people with very few teeth who grab your bag, run up the stairs with it, and then demand money from you. After making it past this hurtle, a guy waiting by the information desk decided to help us orient to the city. We were trying to skip Tangier and take a bus to Chefchaouen because we heard Tangier was just awful for tourists-people just prayed on tourists and that all in all, it was just cheesy. Well, the last bust to Chechaouen (will now be referred to as Chef town) left at noon. It was now 12:45. I also quickly learned that Friday is the holy day—the Sabbath—in Islam, kinda like our Sunday. It’s called the Jummah. Everything shuts down around 1 or 2 for prayer and doesn’t start up again until 3 or 4. Essentially, it is the equivalent of Spain’s siesta, except they actually do something during this time. This put a little bit of a damper on our plans, but we managed to get a taxi driver to drive us all the way from Tangier to Chef city, which was a 1 hour and 45 minute drive. The trip was kinda pricey, but I think worth it, for it was “safe” and quick. The safe part came from not hassling around in multiple cities with little Arabic knowledge, but the car not so much, though it was entertaining. This guy’s taxi car was a really old, maybe ’75 Mercedes. So you knew that it was at least going to run well and make it to wherever you were going, but nothing above that. There were no working seatbelts and only one handle that we shared to roll down the windows in the back. I didn’t care, and just laughed as Saimah and I passed the handle back and forth, rolling up and down the windows, and leaning out taking pictures.
I tried my hardest to stay awake for the drive because the countryside was absolutely beautiful with farms, rolling hills, and green everywhere, but eventually the steady movement of the car lulled me to sleep. I woke up to Saimah patting my arm. I guess my had was just kinda hanging over to one side and she thought I might hurt my neck and so woke me, but we were close enough to the city so I forced myself to keep my eyes open the rest of the way.
We arrived in the city, paid the overpriced cab fee and turned around to face our nearly toothless tour man. He claimed that he was an “official” tour guide, flashing us his government badge and spitting at us through his two teeth. He seemed nice enough and showed us to our hostel. We told him that we’d meet him later for a tour, but decided to call it a day with nearly toothless Nick and ended up going out to dinner instead. Oops, oh well. The dinner that we had definitely placed in my top five meals of Europe so far, for it wasn’t Spanish food and that’s really all I cared about. Initially, I was quite excited for the food in Spain because everyone said it had some of the best food in the world. This may be true if you like fried food, smoked fish on bread with olive oil, and pork. I don’t really like pork or smoked fish/raw fish except in sushi, and definitely do not do well with massive around of fried foods. Though I haven’t had much native Moroccan food yet—mainly fruit from street venders and bread—it does look and smell good, which seems promising.
After dinner we wandered around the city. I got harassed quite a bit, but I knew that was going to happened right from the start, especially since summer has turned my hair into a sandy blonde color. On our way to our hostel, some guy started hitting on me in Arabic. I’m pretty sure he was asking to sleep with me based on hand gestures, but am not entirely sure. These types of mutterings continued all night in Chef town and all through the next day in Fes, which made me quite thankful that I didn’t understand a lick of Arabic. Here I am finding that Ignorance definitely is bliss. I also incurred quite a few glares from the local men and women. The lady who cleaned our hostel would stop and glare at me every time I passed, despite me speaking formalities in Arabic to her. She would also mutter insults and I think once spat at me. Such a charming little lady.
Though I don’t think I was spat on any other time, I definitely was the prime target in “souika” areas, which are essentially huge bazaars where 100’s maybe 1000’s of vendors prey on tourists. Each vendor usually sells one specific type of good such as fabric, rugs, shoes, tons of leather goods, jewelry, hookah stuff, herbs, spices, pretty much everything. Shopping here is a very different experience than shopping in the states. People here are extremely abrasive. They will call out at you, get right in your face, and sometimes grab you and pull you into their shop. For a while I didn’t mind; it was a new experience and I figured it was a good time to get some souvenirs for people. In Morocco, there is also very rarely a “fixed” price like in the U.S., and if there is a fixed price, there will be a sign that says so. Rather, items should be bargained for, it’s the Berber way. It is even expected and vendors get disappointed if you don’t bargain, it’s like a small game. And although this is terrible, I wanted to and actually did start buying some cheap stuff just so I’d get to barter with the vendors; it was so much fun for a while after the I made it past the initial stress of the situation. After successfully purchasing gifts for most of my family and friends, and I began the search for a scarf to wrap around my head. Although I started to become somewhat immune to all the unwanted attention and stares from people, I decided it might be kinda nice to try and ward off this attention a little bit more. I settled on a nice blue scarf that of course matched most of my clothing and the city itself as well. Even though I was still obviously not Moroccan—Saimah fit that mold a little better than me—I did seem to get a little less attention and a few people even said it looked nice on me. The scarf wearing didn’t last too long though because temperatures began to creep up to significantly uncomfortable levels, making scarf wearing and unbearable option.
The city itself though was absolutely beautiful. There colors of a wide range of blues and turquoise were painted all over the city. After filling our cameras of pictures of the buildings, Saimah and I realized that all of our pictures were of pretty blue doors or of us standing in front of pretty blue doors. Later I learned that the blue and represented the Jewish hold on the city for at one point the city had a significantly large Jewish population. The blue and white maybe come from the Israeli flag, though I think the city was painted this way before the flag existed, so I’m not entirely sure. The city was also called the “holy city” for a period of time for it served as a stronghold against the growing Almohad army at one point I believe. Maybe?? Despite numerous encounters with goats roaming the streets and the smell of shit everywhere, I did still find the city quite beautiful.
WoW awesome!!!!!
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