Unexpected. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind when I
try to describe Morocco. Other words are friendly, dangerous, dirty, achingly
beautiful, mysterious, joyous and sad. It’s full of contradictions, and it will
take time for me to sort out exactly how I feel about it.
You definitely can’t put it into a box. It’s a predominately
Muslim country that speaks French; a place where young guys in bright Adidas
track suits haggle with bearded men wearing robes and slippers; where the music
in one taxi can be Bob Marley and another a morning prayer. It defies
expectation and definition. It makes no apologies for what it is.
On Skype talking to my Dad I had a hard time answering
questions about what I thought of it. What did I think of the people, the food,
the music and architecture? The fact is, I have no idea. I liked parts and
found it hard to like others.
My first impression of Tangier on the northern coast of
Africa was the view through a dirty taxi window, whipping through streets and
roundabouts. We passed through markets and the neon glow of clubs, I saw
half-constructed buildings and men on cell phones herding sheep through dusty
fields between cement towers.
We rented a house through Airbnb, a site which I highly
recommend. It lets you rent apartments, rooms, and houses directly from owners.
If you look through you can usually find places way cheaper than hostels. Our
place was located inside the Kasbah in the middle of the city. To reach the
neighborhood you had to pass through an ancient walled gateway. The taxi
dropped us and our bags off and we gave the driver our 150 dirham (about 15 euros)
and waited for Anne, the owner of the house.
Anne and her sister turned out to be the two older ladies
waiting underneath a tree, hair wrapped in scarves and wearing long robes. They
led us through the dim, stone streets; at times the walls were so close you
could touch either side with your hands. I got glimpses down alleys of men
talking, snatches of singing coming from an open window, strange writing on
walls.
The house we rented was five narrow stories and overlooked
the entire Kasbah and bay. There were six of us and we each had our own room
and the guys and girls had their own bathroom. The whole place was decked out
in modern furniture and stocked with tea and coffee.
We dropped our stuff off and immediately set off into the
city. It was about 10 and we didn’t want to get caught out in the city too late
so we went straight to a place we had heard about through a friend who had
lived in Morocco.
Saveur de Poisson was the best meal I’ve had in my life.
Hands down. No question about it; from the service to the vibe to my new
nickname given to me by our server (Gran Maestro). We walked down this wide,
steep stairway and the restaurant was literally a hole in the wall to the right.
A cook was up front, chopping piles of vegetables on a low wooden table,
watching us with an amused grin as we navigated the slick stairs.
The restaurant itself was two rooms, the first separated by
a small partition and set aside for the stoves and cooks, the second was the
dining room. There were about 7 small tables and at that time there was only
one other couple looking at us from the corner. On the walls were paintings and
old cooking implements, pots, pans, woven baskets, and near the kitchen a
porcelain sink with a nail holding grey napkins that could be ripped off to dry
your hands.
Our server was a bald smiling Moroccan wearing a crisp white
shirt. He spoke a muddled mix of Spanish, French, and Arabic and quickly made
us feel at home, maneuvering tables around to fit us all and ripping pieces of
paper off for us as placemats.
You don’t order here. The place has no menus but the food is
brought out to you as soon as you sit down. Here’s a list of the courses and
food:
1st Course: Loaves of round brown bread piled
high in a basket with chili paste and fresh olives.
2nd Course: A steaming shallow pan of shark, calamari,
white fish, spinach, garlic and other spices you scoop up with wooden forks.
3rd Course: Grilled Flounder served whole with
skewered shark meat and lemon.
4Th Course: Fresh cut strawberries with pine nuts
and honey, and an almond/nut mixture in a thick honey paste.
All of this we washed down with the house ‘sangria’ a
chilled fruit juice made from figs, oranges, raisins, raspberries, and
strawberries.
After living off frozen pizzas and cheap wine for six months
my body almost shut down with such amazing food. We had to crawl back to the
Kasbah that night, dodging merchants still trying to trap us in their shops and
walking past homeless men wrapped in carpets passed out on the sidewalk.
The next day we started with a Moroccan breakfast, six
loaves of bread and a wheel of goat cheese wrapped in a palm frond. We chugged
some coffee and piled six people into a taxi to make the hour drive to Asilah,
a white Mediterranean city on the coast.
Asilah was beautiful and the day was perfect, not a cloud in the sky. We wandered through little alleys and streets. The stalls on the side were packed with merchandise: cheap key chains, bracelets, teapots, hats, shirts, robes, belts, carpets, tapestries, spices, carved wooden boxes, paints, dyes, and leather bags. The walls gleamed white and blue and in the distance you could hear waves crashing against the stone walls.
Side note to people travelling to Morocco. People know
you’re travelling, they know you have money, and they will do whatever they can
to take it from you. That being said, all it takes is ignoring someone when
they try to get you to come into their shop or a firm ‘No’, but all the same.
Don’t follow anyone to a second location and don’t let someone tag along with
you and your group who says they ‘just want to help and show you around’. I
speak from experience and it took us nearly an hour and a half to shake this
guy. Many of the people I met were friendly and it’s not everyone but all the
same, be careful.
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| Cody getting cornered |
We ended the day in Asilah with a few beers and lunch
outside the medina, then caught a taxi back to Tangier where we munched on some
loaves of bread and hit the markets.
It’s hard to describe the markets in Tangier. One reason is
that there doesn’t seem to be any real starting or ending point to them. The
fruit vendors and cigarette stalls spill over into the more residential areas
of the Kasbah and even before you reach them you can hear the honking of horns
and growl of motorbikes as they whip through the streets. There are women and
children begging for change and old men sizing you up from the doorways of
their shops, arms crossed over their chests. Young men call out the different
types of spices and teas and medicines they have and all the while people are
walking, shoving, pushing and you’re caught in this torrent of sights and
smells. There are big shops full of swords and ornamental tea sets, little
shops with a couple Playstation boxes on display, clothing stores full of red,
blue, brown, robes, swinging in the doorways as people pass by. Little kids
with their hands on the bars of balconies call out greetings in Arabic and
French. One little boy was on the third story of an apartment building with his
head pressed against the bars of a window practicing his numbers in Spanish.
-Uno. I heard from above.
I looked up and caught his eye.
-Dos! I shouted back.
-Tres! He returned.
-Cuatro!
-Cinco! Seis! Siete!
His brothers and sisters ran to the window then laughing
grabbed him and dove back into the house.
After the sun went down we headed into the new part of town
where the nicer hotels and bars are and where alcohol is available.
It took us approximately an hour and a half to find a shop
that sold any.
We went bouncing back and forth from different bars and
shops and either people honestly didn’t know where we could buy some beer or
didn’t want to say. A younger guy in a grocery store heard us asking for
alcohol and came over.
-It’s difficult to find alcohol but if you keep looking
you’ll find a place that sells it.
I thought that these might be the vaguest directions to a
liquor store I’d ever heard.
-Like in a basement somewhere or in a shop?
-No, they’ll have it out on display.
-Okay, so like a place close by here?
He shrugged.
-I don’t know. Maybe down that way.
Behind the counter the shopkeeper was eyeing us. We walked
outside. Almost immediately after, our friend from the store popped his head
around the corner and whispered quickly:
-Go down that way and look for Casa de Pepe.
Then he was gone.
Casa de Pepe turned out to be a little grocery store and
they did sell alcohol, which we bought and consumed a lot of when we got back
to the house.
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| The blue walls of Chaoen |
The next day we took a van to Chefchaoen, a town that not
one of us could pronounce correctly and what I thought was pronounced Chef Chow
Mein for the first half of the day. Chaoen, for short, is a town perched high in the mountains two hours
south on winding roads from Tangier. We had rented the van through one of the
hotels in town and it only cost about 250 dirham (25 euros) apiece to get us
there and back.
The old medina in Chaoen is a sprawl of narrow streets
connected by stairways, cobble stones and little shops and restaurants. Many of
the streets lead down to the central square where the Kasbah is and where you
can get mint tea and check out awesome views of the mountains.
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| She wasn't impressed by the entrance to the market |
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| View of the mountains outside the Kasbah |
We sat and had tea and watched little kids trying to sell souvenirs
to tourists while being kicked and shoved away from restaurants by the waiters,
only to come scuffling cautiously back as soon as their backs were turned. I
watched one little kid with a messy mop of brown hair, stick arms hanging out
of a dirty sweater. The kid eyed us hopefully with his arm outstretched full of
rings while our server (out of sight from us) cupped his hand and collected the
cold water dripping from the canvas roof, smiling to himself and tapping his
sheaf of plastic menus against his leg happily. When keychain kid got close
enough he flung a handful of water into his eyes and the boy screeched and ran
into the square, where he stood sobbing and rubbing his face. The server looked
back calmly and continued smiling, tapping the menus slowly against his leg.
We finished the day with a long drive back to Tangier, a nap
and a return to Saveur where we relived our infamous dinner from two
nights before. This time our waiter invited us into the back where he showed us
where they stew the fruits for the sangria and store the vegetables. We headed
back to the apartment, exhausted and satisfied that whatever we all of thought
of the things we had seen, Morocco wasn’t going to be a place we would forget, and
that because we all went together the six of us could never forgotten.
Shout out to Sharon, Erica, Rachel, Cody, and Jake for
making this such an amazing trip. You guys are family, thanks for reminding me
that the company you keep when you travel is as important as the journey.
