First days in Morocco

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Arrival in Casablanca, Morocco, was uneventful and after fiddling around waiting at the airport for other Insight tour passengers, we were transported to a mediocre Sheraton hotel – you know the type – gorgeous and sumptuous lobby, and pretty ordinary tired rooms. Dave was horrified at $10 NZ beers and Pringles in minibar. And thank goodness we'd bought a bottle of scotch at the duty free on the way through.

We were now ten, as we met Ali and John Tocker at the airport. So our group (Vicki and Frank, Sue and Pete, Pip and Rick along with Davie and me) was now complete.

The others seemed to retire until dinner, but Davie and I ventured out into the ‘ancient’ medina up from the hotel across a very busy road. This was a very busy market with food and lots of tourist junk. There must be millions of fake watches and Gucci bags in the world!! It was all a bit pushy and edgy, so we wandered back past the very smelly wok full of cooking snails, a colourful waterman and desperate salespeople who thought we really needed their products.

Our first real day involved a bus trip around Casablanca, not a prepossessing city at all, apart from the mosque on the sea, Hassan II Mosque, with a woman in full regalia letting herself get tossed around at the surf’s edge. We had no idea what that was all about. Ritual cleansing of some sort, or maybe something more sinister?

And then we hit the road to Imperial city Meknes with a magnificent gate, a short wander around a market while some of our Australian and South African team had gentle rides on Berber ponies (just like the school fair with ponies being led by their halters, how pathetic really) and our only visit to the inside of a mosque.

Then it was onto Fes (Fez). Dinner was in the medina and pretty memorable for the surroundings (sumptuous), entertainment (noisy drums, a magician and a very tacky belly dancer), food and the two allowed glasses of wine per head – insisted up on by one of the Aussies. The restaurant was a Riyadh - with a courtyard and tree inside the building itself. The alleys were a bit spooky when we came out, especially when Davie and some of the South Africans didn’t notice us all leaving and I had to go back and get them. Very brave that was!!

What caused it? I don’t know, but the dreaded bot hit me in Fes and I was down for the count for 24 hours – not much compus mentis at all. Thank the dear lord for lomotil. The others had a fascinating day in the Medina, looking at the dye works and later going out to visit artisans living in caves making exquisite buttons and carrying water buckets on their heads. One of the party apparently nearly bought a $40k rug, but I wasn’t there to confirm.

My tum was better in the morning, thank goodness, and off we headed up and into the High Atlas Mountains. These were pretty spectacular with great swathes of cedar forests, and snow!! The higher we got, the colder it got, and more ice and snow surrounded the bus. By the time we got to ‘happy happy time’ for a wee and a coffee, the bus had great crusts of ice on the front.

We were dressed for the hot desert climate. Error Error. A tourist tat shop sold out of scarves in the blink of an eye, without anyone even considering bargaining. This experience was a repetition of the bizarre outfits seen on kiwi travellers in Sergovia, Spain.

The snow at this time of the year was so unusual it made the telly news and our tour director was very excited. Some of our party also enjoyed the experience, but boy it was cold.

Luckily once we were soon over the mountain passes and we drove into the Ziz gorge and then into a major oasis (Hassan maintains the word oasis comes from the name for the local river, Ziz.) This was a surprise, it was much larger than we expected and rather than a palm fringed pond with a couple of old camels, it was a river bed with dense date palms, and little paddocks or fields of alfalfa, vegetables and wheat. On the sides where the river didn’t reach, the mud/adobe homes were built.

These look pretty rudimentary and we saw a lot that had been abandoned or which were only partially built. The people are dirt poor, really sad. We were told the king is helping the country drag itself out of third world status, and much is being done, apparently to create jobs. But there were a lot of donkeys, and women, carrying huge bundles of alfalfa and other burdens, and there was little sign of affluence anywhere - despite the glorious, stark, amazing surroundings.

We drove for miles through what can only be described as high chapparel - remember all those spaghetti westerns? No trees, rocks, grey mountains, extraordinary light, and just nothing to break the monotony out to the mountains in the distance. We headed south with the High Atlas on one side, and the low Atlas on the other.

Our hotel in Erfoud that night was adobe and seemed more Tex Mex than Moroccan. It was a Kasbah i.e. a walled community with towers on all four corners. The hotel rooms were in buildings housing ten units each; no second stories at all.

This was a highlight visit as we clambered into four wheel drives and headed directly out into the desert to view the sunset. Remembering that during the morning we had experienced snow, it was a bit a surprise to find a sandstorm in process.

Anyhow, a visit to a Toureg nomad settlement, with real life hardly hidden i.e. The real kitchen at the back of the tent was clearly visible, while we were shown a dinky little cubbyhole in the tent housing a propane burner and shelf. We were then led to a knot of camels and our much vaunted ride to the sunset. This was simply hilarious – far less uncomfortable than I expected and the main fright came when we alighted as the camel bent down to its knees to let me off – I nearly fell off frontwards!!

We were then dragged up the red sand dunes by our guides – literally dragged, it was hard work, they were VERY steep and the sand had no purchase. We made it to the top! A razor edged dune among a never ending sea of waves of red sand. We sat with our wine and ‘tapas’ i.e. chippies and nuts while our plastic glasses filled with sand which rained down from above. Hmmn.

So the next step was to slide down the other side of the dune into the lee of the wind, and wait for the sun to settle. Well, you have to give them credit for giving us an experience; our heads were wrapped in ‘real Berber women’s scarves’ and we were posed carefully as couples seemingly ‘catching’ the setting sun. Ho hum, lots of fun and we will never get that experience again.

So it was back onto the camels, a quick skirmish with some wily fossil sellers, then into the 4X4s and back to the hotel for a VERY late dinner, and showers to get the sand out. This was difficult, and more so for those with lots of hair. It took two days for my eyes to fully clear of the sand. But, the experience, while very touristy, was heaps of fun and a bit more exciting than most.

You have to hand it to the organisers, and our guide, we had lots to do every day, even when we had many miles to cover.

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Photos

80 percent of the Kiwi contingent
Frank and Vicki must be AWOL. Note desert behind.

Woman in surf outside mosque
Why she was in the water, and why she stayed there was a mystery. This is in Casablanca.

Snow in the High Atlas
Christmas in late May!!

Davie does what a husband has to do
How about that? Who's the leader today?

Simmons of the Sahara
Note it is still pretty cool - she is wearing her golf jacket, despite the sun shining.