Mint times in Morocco

Having been a little idle on the travel blog front, I am finally posting a new instalment. Since being to Prague (my last post), I have moved to London and travelled a bit around England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and France. While these countries are beautiful and interesting, I didn't find the inspiration from these places to write a blog about them. But hoorah! I am now inspired and motivated to write a blog about the Kingdom of Morocco or al-Mamlaka al-Maġribiyya (in Arabic). My journey in Morocco is my first country (of many to come) in the African continent. What drew me to Morocco were similar reasons as to why I was drawn to Ecuador - the diversity displayed in a such a small country. In particular the ancient cities, the Sahara Desert, the Atlas Mountains, and the Atlantic coast.

Accompanying me on my trip was my friend Jo and we decided on a 8 day tour starting & finishing in Marrakech. We had an amazing Moroccan guide, Younes, who definitely helped make the trip fantastic. We were joined by 5 other travellers (from Australia, Wales, and Canada). There was 6 girls and 1 guy, which prompted a Moroccan to yell out to the guy in the market that he was a very lucky man to have 6 women and wondered if he could have one of us.

Morocco is an amazing country with lovely people, amazing scenery and great cuisine and tea. I started my love affair with mint tea (which the locals call 'Berber Whiskey') from day one. I had heard about how good it was, so was worried it might not reach my expectations. But it is really really good. It is made up of mint leaves, green tea, and sugar and is a big part of Moroccan culture. The food is amazing - tagine, couscous, brochettes (kebabs), olives, delicious oranges, figs, crepes, and bastilla (chicken pie) made of chicken, saffron, egg, nuts, fruits, and a variety of spices, wrapped in filo and topped with powdered sugar. Yum. The orange juice in the Marrakech square is also the BEST freshly squeezed orange juice I have ever had, and a bargain at 20pence.

Marrakech

We started the tour in Marrakech - a large city near the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. We took a horse and carriage ride in and around the medina (old fortified city) and stopped to visit Saadian tombs, the Bahia Palace, and the Djeema el-fna square. The square is one of the busiest squares in Africa and the world, and adjacent to the square is the largest traditional market (souk) in Morocco.

During the day the square is a colourful mix of story-tellers, dancers, musicians, snake charmers, belly dancers, orange-juice vendors, healers, henna tattoo artists, astrologers and acrobats. At night, the square becomes a huge open-air restaurant, jammed packed with steaming food stalls. Choosing what stall to eat at is a bit mind boggling, but we were finally persuaded by one who had a photo of them posing with Jamie Oliver. Good sales pitch.

Casablanca

After leaving Marrakech we stopped in Casablanca - a city on the Atlantic Coast, and the setting of the famous film of the same name. Here we had a guided tour around the impressive Hassan II mosque - one of the largest mosques in the world accommodating 25,000 worshippers inside and 80,000 in the mosque's courtyard. Almost half of the surface of the mosque lies over the water, which was inspired by the verse of the Koran that states "the throne of God was built on the water". The mosque is full of beautiful mosaics, carved wood ceilings, and stone and marble floors and columns.

Rabat

After lunch we went to Rabat, the country's capital where we visited the Mausoleum of Mohammed V and the Hassan Tower, which is perched above the Atlantic coastline. The mausoleum contains the tombs of a previous Moroccan king and his two sons. Unfortunately we weren't able to have a look inside as the current King was on this way there so it was closed. The Hassan Tower is the minaret of an incomplete mosque, intended to be the largest minaret in the world but when the sultan died in 1199, construction on the mosque stopped.

Fez

We next headed to the city of Fez. On the way we stopped at Volubilis, Morocco's largest and well preserved Roman ruins. The Romans began building the city around 40 AD and was most likely destroyed by an earthquake in the late fourth century AD. The city has beautiful preserved mosaics depicting Roman life and myths, ruins of aquariums, temples, public baths, solariums, brothels, olive presses, and storks have made their nests on top of remaining columns.

Day 4 we did a day tour around Fez, the medieval capital of Morocco and best-preserved old city in the Arab world. The Fez medina is a colourful vibrant maze of more than 9000 small narrow cobbled streets, which are a hive of activity with donkey and carts trotting along with full loads, and many souks selling scarves, leather, lanterns, jewellery, spices, olives, nuts, ceramics, mosaics to name a few things. We saw beautiful monuments, mausoleums, and mosques and visited the tannery with colourful dye pits in the medina where they make leather using techniques unchanged since the Middle Ages.

The Sahara Desert

After a long drive over the Middle Atlas Mountains on day 5, we stayed in Merzouga on the edge of the Sahara Desert. In the desert are where the Berber people of Morocco predominately live. Berbers are the indigenous North Africans, inhabiting the north coast of Africa for at least 5,000 years. We spent the night singing and dancing to Berber music (and tried out some drumming myself), and eating traditional food. We slept in huge Berber tents after chilling by a camp fire looking at the stars and listening to the Berber tell (terrible but funny) jokes. We even got mint tea brewed on the fire, and it was extra sweet (how the Berber like it).

The next morning we got up early and had a camel ride amongst the massive sand dunes and watched a gorgeous sun rise from the top of a dune. Here I learnt that Dromedar is actually the name for one-hump camels (two humps is called a camel), which are the ones found in Morocco. After breakfast we stopped at a rug/blanket market where I bought a little rug for myself after an intense and fun session of haggling accompanied, of course, with some mint tea.

Todra Gorge

After leaving the Sahara, we were able to go to our guide's parents house to meet the family and stay for lunch and mint tea. They were a lovely welcoming family, and I feel very lucky to have had that experience. We spent that night in the Todra Gorge, on the east side of the High Atlas Mountains, which has spectacular narrow canyon walls which drop 300m straight down to the valley floor.

Day 7 we drove back to Morocco, passing through Ouarzazate- the Hollywood of Morocco due to many films being made there (e.g. Gladiator, Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, Babel etc). We also saw some amazing scenery, and the Kasbah (fortified city) of Ait Ben Haddou. Whilst taking photos of the medina, a local man come up with a snake for us to hold and take photos of. He was a lovely old man with lots of character and laughed by loudly saying ha ha ha, which had us all laughing along with him.

Our last night was spent in Marrakech, where we went back to the market and had crepes for dinner.

Cascades d'Ouzoud

On our last day in Morocco, we decided to take a day trip out to the waterfalls (110 m high) 2 hours out of Marrakech. We walked through a path of olive trees (Ouzoud is the Berber word for olive), and passed troops of Barbary Macaque monkeys. The waterfall was pretty awesome, and at the bottom we took a raft across the river to climb back up to the top of the other side. We had lunch at a little cafe with a full view of the waterfall, then walked to the top passing many markets and Jo got a henna design on her hands.

One little stall I stopped at, I was the first New Zealander they had ever meet. They were so excited by this that they took photos of me, gave me a special discount on some earrings, and invited us in for mint tea. We stayed and chatted with them for about an hour where he talked about Berber life, trying to hold onto their traditions, and striving for equal rights with the Moroccan Arabs. He was such a lovely warm guy, like most of the Moroccan people I met, where they are so welcoming and passionate about their country.

On the drive back to Morocco and the airport, we passed a wedding party on the side of the road where a large group of colourfully dressed people were passing presents onto a trailer whilst singing, dancing and playing music. Our driver stopped for us to have a quick look, and they beckoned for us to go and join them. So we hopped out and danced and clapped with them. It was so much fun, and my cheeks hurt afterwards from smiling too much! An amazing moment and experience to end my time in Morocco.

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Part of trip: Europe & Northern Africa

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