Morocco 2008: A Much Needed Holiday

There are two sorts of traveling: on and off the path. The new generation of guide books (Lonely Planet, Moon Guide, etc.) aim to deliver the “off the beaten path” experience, but in their efforts, noble or otherwise, they have exactly the opposite effect – they turn the “off path” in to the “on path”. Thus contrary to our efforts to blaze new trails and avoid the crowds, we are still bumping shoulders with loads of ‘unnatural scenery’, all plodding along with the same guide book in hand. While hardly surprising, it still is disappointing to find out you’re not the first to capture a brilliant photo of an old Berber man sitting in front of a beautiful 13^th century mosque. Especially after he holds out his hand for money and you realize he earns his daily bread off our naivety.

Solutions to the guide dilemma are typically twofold: wholesale condemnation of travel guides for their homogenizing effect, or a search for an even newer, more ‘off-path’ publication. My recent experience in Morocco presented an alternative solution, namely focusing not on the trail of tourists, but their benefactor: the tourism industry itself. Economic rankings aside, Morocco beats out Thailand for its overtly tourist-oriented exploitation of its own cultural capital. Everyone wants you to take a picture of them in their faux-traditional garb, wants to put some bizarre animal in your lap, and wants you to lose your way in a labyrinth of handmade trinkets and domestically-useless junk. This sculpted strategy that homogenizes the travel experience is not the fault of the guide books, but the industry itself, and throughout my years of carefully yet often unsuccessfully avoiding this racket, I’ve become a very cynical traveler.

Some travelers with great amounts of charisma and creativity can not only navigate these traps but even see the experiential value in these interactions. I’m thinking about my pal Fielding, who on the streets of Bangkok or the sands of Boracay can craftily turn the joke on the tout and make a memory out of it. Outside of cynically rejecting it all or getting frustrated, what else can we do? On this trip, I realized the importance of getting out of the cities and into the real, where the touts aren’t crawling and the tourists aren’t sprawling. This is not to say that I got the authentic experience in our trek into the Sahara, but close enough to get a whiff of desert life without buying the camel. So forgive me if I come down too heavily upon our urban experience and look naively past the packaged, meals-included desert tour, but for my money and time, I’d allot a day to the former and the rest of two weeks to the latter.

Marrakech, Casablanca, and Fes

Moroccan cities developed in stages, and with each historic era, inherit a new quarter rather than refurbish the old. Unlike the hybridized architecture and city layout seen in colonial cities like Hanoi or Phnom Phen, Moroccan cities have distinct districts that each tell a different historical tale, neatly revealing its various artistic and cultural influences. While these areas are rather similar from city to city, they offer several different experiences within each city (my suggestion: just visit one). Within all three of these history-rich cities, there is a Medina (medieval town enclosed within crumbling walls) and Nouvelle (obviously French quarter with modern facilities, roads, and even a traffic light or two). Fes takes the crown for having three quarters, their Medina being so old that one Merenid (14^th century) ruler established a new quarter in his time, thus endowing the city with two “new” neighborhoods, one in Arabic, the next in French.

Predictably, the touts are awaiting you in the most scenic area: the Medinas. As I quickly discovered, it’s hard to get directions anywhere inside because everyone wants to show you for a tip or become your day’s ad hoc guide for hire. Jinhee had the most success, not only because she speaks some French, but being a girl, she got the most sincere responses from either women or shopkeepers who couldn’t tag along. There’s also the incessant cat-calling that assaults your senses from every angle. I found myself avoiding all eye contact because it immediately initiates the process and cringing after the 100^th time I heard konichiwa upon their seeing an Asian. I wonder, do they really think they’re each the first to try this? At the end of the day I began pre-empting everyone I had no intention of talking to with an assertive konichiwa! Our worst experience came about in the Jemaa El Fna (old market) in Marrakech, a circus of cultural simulacra and eager vendors. Upon sitting down at a food stall (among hundreds of identical choices), we picked out two dishes from the menu, neither of which were very expensive. While waiting, loads of appetizers were brought out, along with sauces, bread, and water. As we gorged ourselves and reveled in excess, so too arrived another item in excess: the bill. We were not the first nor last that night to fall for their scheme of perceived generosity. They charged a price for every last dish, down to each roll of bread, leaving the tab at more than double what we had anticipated (and more than what I might pay at a restaurant in Manchester). Unfortunately we didn’t have any small notes, so we ended up paying most of it despite arguing it out in three languages. Our final comment, more of a hand gesture, could be understood in any language, and based on the racket they were plying, I’ve no doubt they’ve already learned it.

On the more noteworthy side of our urban experience, I rather enjoyed the chaotic, impromptu layout of the residential streets within the Medinas. I can only wonder what a city planner was thinking (more likely there wasn’t one) when designing the mazes city-dwellers were to navigate to find their ways home. One night in Marrakech there was a blackout in the entire quarter, leaving Jinhee and I with the full moon and her sharp memory as our only resources in finding our way through the corridors to our guesthouse. Inside, we were greeted by the doorman with candles for each of us, which lasted us until the following day’s sunrise. Each morning, we would wake to a cacophony reverberating in the narrow street outside our window – dink donk, dink donk – the sound of a troupe of youngsters wailing away at their favorite toys, African hand drums. I’ll never tire the sound of a drum, but this was a different matter – these kids needed a lesson in rhythm! I do hope, given Morocco’s great leaps in educational enrollment over the last decade, that the drum corps routine each morning was their march towards the school and not the market.

Erg Chebbi (Sahara Occidental Minor)

The greatest treasures in all travels are to be found far, far outside the city. The degree of difficulty in reaching it is indicative of the value of what awaits. I’m reflecting on my stay in El Arenal, Nicaragua (the cooperative farm), motorbike ride through the outskirts of Hanoi, and especially Tel el Armarna, Egypt (the village of my undergrad excavation fieldwork). Trekking to the Sahara was no different. There is no easy flight or cushy train ride to the dunes. From Fes to our tent in the oasis, it took 10-12 hours, as the necessary transport was a 500km taxi ride, 25km in a 4x4, and another few by camel. The views along the way were astonishing, as we passed through each season and virtually every imaginable geographical terrain. To get there, we had to drive through a mountain pass in the middle Atlas range, across vast plains, through river valleys and steep ravines, until the last town on the map, where literally (and I use such word sparingly) the scenery just ends. While the dunes are still a ways off in the horizon, there is a buffer zone of scorched earth with absolutely nothing except one paved road and miles upon miles of Martian terrain. This is not the place for an engine breakdown. After many miles on this road, the 4x4 driver put his gas-guzzling vehicle to use and suddenly veered off the paved road and into the nothingness. There were no signs, so how and when he knew to turn still puzzles me. In the horizon, however, lay what we had come to see: dunes upon more dunes, still glowing in the setting sunlight. Because the dunes were surrounded by a horizon of flat, ashy terrain, Jinhee and I both were stirring the same whimsical thoughts: that this was god’s sandbox, or Samsung’s new “Desert Theme Park”. Who knows, we might just see the latter in Dubai any day now.

The first night we stayed in Les Hommes Bleu, a castle-like guesthouse perched right on the edge of the dunes. Sadly, because it was January, we were the only guests there, though the young staff made us feel welcome that evening with a round circle drum performance and singalong. I eagerly jumped in and followed along as we rotated drums, from large djembe style to smaller bongo sorts. Fortunately, we were all many notches above the dink-donk kids of Marrakech, so the outcome was absolutely beautiful and certainly more kind on the ears. This continued all throughout the following day while we waited for sunset to depart by camel.

No matter what you think you know about camels, don’t make any wagers on a race until you’ve ridden one, because no matter what Hollywood or Wikipedia tell you, these creatures are slower than mud. I could run laps around these things all day if they didn’t have one major advantage over me: weather conditioning. I admit I did start to adore the furry beast as we bonded over the next few days: he carried my pack and never got feisty like the one in Turkey that almost bit my hand off. Camels are so high-tech that they can pack their lunches for the next week in one of their several stomachs. My dromedary buddy spent his siesta hours burping and chewing, burping and chewing, and perhaps at that moment above all others I realized they’re not all that different from some of us.

We spent the next few days frolicking in the sand, racing up and down the dunes and just enjoying being kids again in the world’s largest sandbox. To risk sounding cliché, the silence was, in a sense, deafening. My ears felt like they were going to explode from the stark absence of any sound beyond my own panting. Sand absorbs sound more than it reverberates, and as there are no other surfaces to bounce off, it felt much like a sound-proof chamber: voices are flattened and even when calling from the next dune over, sound like they’re ten feet away. Before assuming that we must’ve had the best sleep of our lives, note well: 1.) a beach catnap and a full 8 hours on a sand mattress are entirely different experiences, 2.) the temperature dropped to below freezing every night, and 3.) even in the middle of NOWHERE, Morocco, there was a rooster calling away well before dawn. Suddenly the world felt small, as my anti-rooster encounters of Nicaragua and Thailand merged with this latest episode.

Despite having little to do but watch the sun and moon rise and set, we were more than content, and weren’t ready to head back (well, a shower and functional toilet are always welcome – when we asked our guide where was “le toilette”, his hand just waved across the horizon in a moment of mutual understanding). Each night, Jinhee and I shared a tent and dined by candlelight, then came out to watch the stars. It was perhaps the most romantic setting, putting the freezing temperature and minefields of camel dung aside, that a wanderlust grad student could afford. Of course, it wasn’t without a few snags. On our first night out there, upon climbing the most colossal sand pile in the region, I arrived at the peak, in the dark, out of breath, sweating, and feeling accomplished in my solitary achievement, only to be greeted by two spritely Americans from Philadelphia. Never in a million years did I foresee a discussion about Ed Rendell and the King of Prussia mall at the peak of nowhere. Another naïve assumption of mine led me to disappointment whilst wallowing in my own little paradise. It’s a wonderful day when you don’t have to reach in your pocket for money and the day is enjoyed without a single purchase – and there are no merchants eager to facilitate this. Our guide Mohammed, camel master and former caravan trader, was a fabulous host and talented chef, but even he had a touch of Marrakech in him. About once a day, he would open up shop and display for us his assorted collection of nature’s detritus – calcified shells, beads, and fossilized camel dung (he swears it’s a piece of meteorite), all on sale in various combinations for only 100 dirham ($14 dollars!!). The Berber children too, with their dink-donk drums and colorful miniature schoolbags, would come by when you’re not looking busy (it’s hard to look busy in the Sahara) and set up shop right before our eyes. Against all common sense, Jinhee and I were hoping those backpacks were packed for school and somehow the camel schoolbus would be rolling over the dunes any minute.

The ride home was turbulent, besides obviously being long. The moment the 4x4 made contact with the paved road to nowhere, I felt like I had reconnected with civilisation and was once again on the map. We took a bus from Rissani, the second to last town on the map before Algeria, 500km all the way back to Marrakech. While this could be done by car in 6 hours, the bus took a whopping 14. It wasn’t a particularly slow bus, it’s just that there is no direct bus to Marrakech. Rather, it’s more of one long commuter bus that stops in every little hamlet to empty and refill every last seat and inch of aisle. In fact, you could wave down the bus in the middle of the desert if it comes your way. Before taking the bus, we were warned back at our guesthouse that it’s a good idea to give a 1 or 2 euro “tip” (ahem, bribe) to the baggage handler to keep an eye on your luggage. We did this, and the young guy smiled and knew exactly what we meant… yet, as the bus departed, we discovered that that guy wasn’t on the bus. I’m not sure if he even worked for the bus company. But he sure did a heck of a job watching over our bags while the bus sat in the station (note: sarcasm). Alas, despite our worries, our bags made it with us all the way to Marrakech, though we barely did, for lack of sleep and borderline hypothermia (straight across the mountains with no heat). Upon arrival in Marrakech at 7am, I confessed my love-hate relationship with the city, which at the time, provided all the comforts we were awaiting – heated rooms, hot showers, and a hookah pipe (yes, we smoked at 8 in the morning).

While Morocco is a relatively expensive place to visit, it really was worth every dirham, euro, and dollar (they might even take Cambodian Riel). Especially this time of year, when the tourists are few and all the merchants can focus their attention on just us (hmm, maybe there is a upside to being surrounded by tourists), we got to see it all, urban, mountainside, desert, and passed through all four seasons, all in 11 days. And for an extra few thousand dirhams, they might just have let me take the camel home too.