Arrival of a king

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I must admit, I was expecting a lot more hustle. After my small enquiry among people back home and abroad. I soon had my picture ready. It was exotic, arabic, and picturesque with all the hustles that comes. Persistant salesmen, touts, con-men and the deceptive drug-dealing-alley-yongsters you find all over the world.
So far the hustles are yet to come.

Got spat out in the middle of the night at Mohammed VI airport. Always a bad time of the day to bargain over taxi-fares or being finicky with hotels.
It's such a feeling to be out again. Out of Europe, into something a little more unexpected than 9to5 and sleep&shower.

Casablanca; The city is widespread with broad avenues and narrow alleys expanding in all directions. The Medina (old town) is a jumble of buildings. Shops of all kind, living quarters, cafés, butchers, barbers and bakers all in a muddle. In some structured chaos the medina stretches from the city centrepoint (an ellipse-chaped roundabout) towards the atlantic coast.

On our first stroll around the medina I came to notice the amount of sheep being pulled on carts or dragged in their horns allong the narrow alleys of the medina. Next morning we headed for the Mauretanian consulate to apply for visas, just to find it closed due to some three days long feast. While riding our petit-taxi we see men standing selling big knives, lods of them, in every junction and outside every petrol station. Strange I thought.
Until we came back to the centre of the city again around noon and everybody seemed to slaughter a sheep. Everywhere.

At every streetcorner throughout the city people had put up grills and where barbecueing sheep- and goat-heads.
Found out that this was to honour the ancestor of the muslims Ismael. As he was about to sacrifice his son due to some vision in a dream of his. But just before he beheaded his son, God gave him a sheep to decapitate (how rewarding blind faith can be), and ever since..

Left Casablanca with it's beatiful mosque of Hassan II and headed for the northern mountains.

Chefchaouen; (means mountainview in berber tounge) is a chilled out village clinging to a hillside in the Rif mountains of north Morocco. Once again we arrived before the rooster even had thought of crowing, found our way into the medina an crashed in some random guesthouse.

Con: It's cold The mountains are January-clad, we sleep under five thick blankets and we use all our clothes at once (feel greatful towards my mom for forcing me to bring my jacket).
Pro: The abundance of tourists (There's plenty of pros traveling low season). I can imagine how different Chefchaouen must be in the summer since all the empty hotels tell of hordes of tourist coming here to relax during the hot summer. Coming to sleep on the countless rooftops, trekk in the valley and its surrounding mountains and to smoke the Kif-pipe.

So far we've spent most of the time getting lost and found in the medina. Being built on a partly steep hillside during hundred of years it now better be descriped as a maze. A clusters of houses, arches, roofs, kasbahs (fortifications), stairs, alleys, holes, walls, tunnels, minarets and mosques all painted in babyblue and creamwhite floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall. All attached and detached at different times in history, white-washed and painted so many times it now look organic, I'm just waiting for some part of this giant Smurf-cavesystem to start move.

In five days the king Mohamed VI will arrive to this small village for the first time since he started to govern Morocco seven years back. People seem full of expectations and preparations are being made. The berbers are decorating the whole city and any free space is a perfect spot for a moroccan flag or a picture of the king. They paint the walls and windows in an even deeper smurf-blue colour and the men will most probably wear their best jellabas (long flowing cloaks with pointy hoods).

None of this we will experience since we've got a ticket to Fe's to ride in two days from now. An even bigger medina to manage and some bustling tempo to expect.

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