Chefchaouen
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2007
1
6
Trip End
Mar 02, 2007
Chefchaouen, Morocco
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Okay, this has been under construction for long enough, I'd beter write about it. Chefchaoen means 'look at the peaks' which was certainly the first thought that sprung into my head when we arrived. As we wandered through the streets sizing up the various hostels, we got offered drugs about 5 times. We started keeping count, and at the end of our 2-night stay there we think the tally was something like 20. When we foun a hotel, we took a stroll around the rest of the town, which is just large enough to get thoroughly lost in. The hardest part is that all the streets, as you can see in the photos, are painted blue and white. Apparently, they were originally green and white, but while under Spanish control they passed a law forcing the green to be replaced with blue. Not that the colour scheme is anything to complain about, since the entire town is very beautiful. It's as if one of those picturesque greek island villages got transplanted into the rough mountains of Morocco.
As far as the markets go, the whole town seems to be dedicated to selling hippie clothing and accessories, which I suppose complements the main cannabis trade nicely.
The Rif mountains around the town are not the snow-capped winter-wonderland variety, they are jagged, raw and without any hint of modernity about them. Our second day there, we took off into the countryside and simply started climbing a random peak, which was very serene. As we climbed, we passed a local goatherder puffing away on his 'kif', a milder version of the cannabis that was so abundant in town.
There are not a whole lot of 'attractions' in Chefchaoen, other than the Al-Kasabah, which is the only non-white/blue building in town, with an attractive garden in the centre. But Chefchaouen doesn't need any attractions, the whole point of visiting it was to relax and drink in the atmosphere, which was a wonderful way to finish our trip to Morocco.
