I'm really itchy to tear into those morons on the Texas State Board of Education who brought right-wing politics into the social science curriculum, but it's late and I haven't time for it today. I'll be back to that anon. Meanwhile, my numerous fans are clamoring for more travelogues. Okay it was one person, but she was convincing, so let me tell you about the time Babs and I decided it would be a good idea to go to Morocco.
It did sound like a good idea, so we flew into Casablanca and on the first day we were there, Ramadan began. For those of you who may not be familiar, Ramadan is a monthlong Islamic observance where everyone fasts from sunup until sundown. Mind you if you're a non-Muslim and a tourist, it is possible to get something to eat or drink during the day, but if everyone else in the country is observing, they get a little cranky when someone doesn't observe the fast. Besides, it's just a little rude to be eating when everyone else is starving and cranky. Found out along the way that smokers are prohibited from smoking sunup to sundown as well, and there were some really irritable hotel employees.
The upshot is that we, for the most part didn't eat from sunup until sundown for the entire time we were there. How long were we there? Well, let's see, we saw Casablanca, Essaouira, Marrakech, the big dunes in the Sahara Desert, Fez, and a lot of territory in between. We were there for most of a two week Christmas vacation. Christmas vacation? How about that? Spend a Christian holiday in an Islamic country with a bunch of cranky Muslims.
Frankly, Casablanca wasn't much, a big business and industrial center for the country. We moved on to a quaint little place on the Mediterranean called Essaouira for Christmas Eve and Christmas. Essaouira was lovely and while we were there we learned the ways of the medina. We bought a couple of rugs. Tourists in the medinas (old walled cities within the modern cities) almost never travel alone. The medinas are confusing and winding, and you almost always pay a guide to show you around. For the record, they're all the same, with the same crap that people try to sell you. Some are just larger than others. This is based on seeing the medinas of Casablanca, Essaouira, Marrakech, and Fez.
Anyway, you get some local guy who speaks English to show you around, and he shows you all the usual touristy stuff and takes you to see very specific shops because he gets a kickback from the shop owners if they make a sale. We had been to Thailand already at this point in our travel careers and we thought we had seen aggressive sales people. Yikes! In one shop that specialized in decorative tiles we walked out, not happy with the price. The shop owner came running out of the shop and chased us down the block to offer us one last lower price. Yes we bought the tile.
There is a very ceremonial aspect to every visit to a shop in Morocco. Can't just walk in and browse like you do in America. The shop owner has to offer you the hospitality of a cup of tea. We're talking tea poured from big teapots into little cups or glasses and all of the tea has a bunch of mint and sugar in it. The locals jokingly refer to it as "Berber Whiskey." Anyway, once you walk in and sit down and the tea pouring starts and the hard sell begins you begin to feel like a fly in that spider's web, a bit helpless. Had to wonder at the time how this tea drinking was jibing with Ramadan. Well, they recognized that we were Americans, and not Muslims, and anyway, "Commerce is commerce and religion is religion and never the twain shall meet."
So to get anywhere in Morocco, a pretty cheap way is by Grand Taxi, usually a beat up old Mercedes with a stick shift. They'll drive you from city to city for a pretty reasonable price. Trouble is, going over the Atlas Mountains they tend to fly along at pretty fast clip and I'm reminded of a line from Arlo Guthrie's "Motorcyle Song." ...."On one side of the mountain road was a mountain. On the other side there was nothing....." So these taxi drivers go flying along these winding mountain roads and the dropoff on the one side looks like about 5000 feet, and you meet a Coca Cola truck going the other way. Something's gotta give. We had this one driver who was seriously religious enough that he faithfully says his prayers 5 times a day. He's driving along the mountain road at about a million miles per hour and suddenly pulls off to the side of the road. He reaches under the driver's seat and pulls out a prayer rug, gets out of the car, goes to the edge of the cliff where he unrolls his prayer rug facing Mecca, and gets down and says his prayers while Babs and I sit in the back seat of the taxi twiddling our thumbs and hoping we can convince him to slow down a little. Who knows? Maybe with all that praying, he's convinced that Allah will protect him, no matter how crazy he drives down the mountain roads.
We caught a jet to Fez from the nearest airport to avoid more of this insanity. Spent New Year's Eve in a really fancy hotel in Fez, and at the New Year's Eve dinner they had some French lounge act playing pop music, and they appeared to be a French take on the Partridge Family or something, Father, Mother, and teenage son performing for the tourists. Cheesy lounge act in cheesy lounge act outfits. In a bit of side interest, a waiter at our table was sporting Chicago Bulls socks with a big #23 conspicuously stitched on them. Michael Jordan worship was international at that point.
Took the train from Fez back to Casablanca. Sitting in a 1st class in one of those semi-private rooms with room for 6 people sitting on seats facing one another. A woman got on and came in and sat across from us in Rabat. Seeing that we were Americans she took the head covering off. Then 3 local men got on and came in and sat with us. She immediately put the head covering back on. I believe one of them sat next to Babs and tried to rub her leg. No international incident ensued, but seriously nasty looks were exchanged. Let's just say that Islamic men and their ideas about treating women need some serious examination.
All in all the trip was not what we had hoped, but there was one bright spot. We went all the way to the South of Morocco to the Dra Valley and arranged a trip into the Sahara to see Les Grand Dunes. Somewhere I have some wonderful pictures of the parking lot at the hotel with Land Rovers sitting aside a bunch of camels. When arranging the trip into the desert, we had the option of hiring drivers in Land Rovers or taking the traditional route on camels. Let me just say that I do not ride camels. Big, stinking, ugly, cantankerous creatures. Not my idea of a good time. We hired two young men in a Land Rover and off we went in search of the Grand Dunes.
The desert is a strange place, with its own rules. Periodically you come to police checkpoints and necessary bribes take place to ensure your further progress. What bribes? The odd thing we discovered was that in many instances the bribes consist of 2 liter bottles of water. Water, the currency of the desert. When our young drivers arrived at the last town before entering the serious desert, we stopped at what was a Moroccan version of a 7/11 Convenience Store. They emerged with two necessary things, Marlboro cigarettes and candy.
Almost as soon as we got out of the town and into the desert, we encountered a group of nomads, complete with camels and goats. We stopped and cigarettes were distributed to the adult men. Candy was distributed to the children. We were then allowed to go on our way. I have no clue how these guys knew where they were going. We sported no fancy GPS devices. There were no clearly marked roads to drive on. We were just heading out across the desert and up and over the small dunes and past the occasional oasis, and they apparently knew exactly where they were going.
These young men spoke not 3 words of English but they had some Annie Lenox club mixes they plugged into the tape deck and we listened to that while we navigated the desert. Apparently they had seen some old American movies about the Desert Fox and there were scenes of jeeps jumping over the top of these dunes. Every time we headed up one of these little dunes and came over the top going airborne momentarily, they would look at each other and yell, "High action!" This was apparently the blurb from the Preview of the movie and the only English they knew. Every time they yelled "High action!" they would burst out laughing and it was contagious. We were flying across the Sahara Desert and listening to Europop and referencing old American movies about the desert and having a ball hanging out with two 20 year old Berber guys.
After a couple of hours we arrived at the campsite and there they were, big golden sand dunes hundreds of feet high. We were assigned a tent with cots to sleep on and with hand-woven rugs thrown over the sand for a floor. There was one toilet set up for the camp to use. Dinner was to be served after dark and until then we were on our own. Babs and I trudged to the top of one of those dunes and watched as the sun began sinking in the sky. The endless stretch of mountains of sand stretching to the horizon was golden. For the record, most of the Sahara Desert is not mountains of golden sand but sandy ground and a lot of rocks, sort of like one of those Martian landscapes you've seen pictures of, just not red colored. It's really brown.
That evening Babs and I shared dinner with a French couple and their eye-rolling, attitude laden teenaged children. The camp crew provided us with all the tajine and couscous we wanted. Wine was extra. The crew drummed on overturned buckets ala bucket boys on street corners in any major American city while singing nonsense in Arabic. We went to bed with a million stars overhead.
In the middle of the night I had to go to the bathroom and when I emerged from the tent I looked overhead, seriously, for the first time. The air was so clear that stars, normally obscured by city lights and pollution were visible. There were so many stars that were visible that constellations one would ordinarily recognize were lost in the crowd of billions upon billions of stars. And the difference in the sky between the time I had gone to bed and the rotated sky of several hours later was like looking at a sky where someone changed the channel. It was a moment of beauty, and silence, and like nothing I have ever experienced before or since. It was the Sahara Desert at night.
Morocco, not a place I care to go back to, but the desert? Well, it was one of the top 3 experiences of the natural world that I have ever experienced. Give me Iceland and the northern climes. Give me the Sahara and the isolation and beauty of the desert. Next up, Palau and giant clams and lion fish and jelly fish without stingers.
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