Marrakesh
Trip Start
Oct 03, 2009
1
26
34
Trip End
Mar 31, 2010
Marrakech, Morocco
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The first morning we walked into the square a snake charmer had a snake wrapped around waz’s neck and others were cross legged on the ground charming cobras with their flutes and chants. Lesson one in Morocco is you cannot take a photo without paying for it - the guy asked us for 200 dirhams which is about $30 and we walked away paying about 10 dirhams. We spent the week watching (and laughing at) other tourists falling under the same trap and handing over big bucks for their prized pics (It’s much funnier when it happens to someone else)! There are fortune tellers, hanna tattoo ladies, locals screaming out old folk tales to a captivated crowd, alleys selling only drums, games, martial arts, dancing, comedy, monkeys on chains ever ready for their tourist snaps and almost anything else your imagination can conjure up.
Kent and Ely (as a very generous Christmas gift) booked us into the most luxurious riad where we could retreat to from all the madness. These riads are amazing, the entrances do not give anything away, walking down dark alleys, with beggers and street kids its hard to imagine the luxury and excesses behind these humble walls.
We stayed in our beautiful riad over new years and after unsuccessfully trying to book a venue to spend new years at, we ended up sharing a bottle of wine and some nibbles in front of a grand fireplace just the 2 of us. I could get used to being served and waited on! Very easily! (Very very easily).
We had a first hammam experience in Morocco too. I couldn’t bring myself to go to a public one, I was too shy! I could just foresee some really humiliating situation - so we decided to have a private hamman at the riad. In hindsight we should have just gone, but baby steps! The private one was a bit awkward, you stand in a 2x2 room in your underwear and get scrubbed raw by a lady using a loofa and black soap. I didn’t know where to look and the lady was so tiny I felt like a giant! After my scrub, I had a 1 hour massage - feeling totally relaxed and my new layer of skin glowing I floated back to our room and slept for most of the afternoon not wanting to shake off that pampered feeling! Waz also had the hammam and massage (separately but with the same woman), I imagine it was more awkward for her than it was for him. He also walked out feeling like a million bucks and gloating that the women said she had never seen someone so clean!( hmmm….)
Marrakesh builds you up and wears you down. Its pretty hard to walk around the medina without being led in the direction you were already walking to then asked for a tip! Or offers of cheap leather bags, drums or ‘berber’ cosmetics. At first we were a bit resilient and defensive, but by the end we were defeated. Travelling to Morocco helps build a kind of resistance maybe tolerance to touts and would-be city guides. You learn to just go with the flow - realise everyone is trying to make a living and just put your foot down when you think things have gone too far.
Haggling was fun too, the Moroccans start out with some really ridiculous starting price, maybe 5 or 6 times the price you should be paying. They act like you insulted their mother when you give a really low counter offer, and more often than not you end up closer to your “impossible” figure than theirs. I haggled so much with this guy over a bracelet that after my haggling victory he looked at me totally unimpressed and said “you berber” - I felt like I had gradated from haggling school. I was so proud. Another memorable experience we had was when I fell in love with this leather bag at one of the stalls. The guy wouldn’t budge on the price and despite doing a few “walk aways, and call backs” negotiations broke down and we didn’t buy from him. I couldn’t get this bag out of my mind and we couldn’t find it at any other store, so one day we did a mad hunt and actually found the source - we met the guy that made the bag and ended up getting a really good bargain. Too bad the bag smells like a cow (we think they forgot to treat the bag or a cow died inside it or something) - the hunt was fun anyway.
There was a certain relief in leaving Marrakesh, one week is more than enough time to discover almost every corner of the city (new and old). Even to the very last second we had people hailing cabs for us, running into the middle of traffic and pushing aside old ladies, asking for tips and offering words of advice. As we pulled away on the bus to Casablanca, as well as having the most unforgettable experience, you also have a sense that you have survived something - maybe not won, but survived.
