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Published: February 3rd 2006
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Cloaked salesman
Medina Chefchaouen Not only is this a physical journey for me, but also a journey in english semantics. Be indulgent, have patience with my linguistic faults as I try to twitch and wrestle with english expressions that you'll find far from idiomaticly correct.
It felt good to leave Chefchaouen at last, next time I'll be back with the hordes of tourists in July or August. Not only did all the hotels get booked by police and security staff prior to the kings arrival, the constant cold and the afternoon drizzle got to me at last.
So of to Fes it was.
Once again I had sharpened my elbows all for nothing, the hassle I'd prepared for was not to come.
I mean, of course you've got the restaurant-touts at the main entrance to the medina, but they were not as persistent as their alikes in Mediteranean Greece or Turkey. Same thing with the merchants; never as tricky as their akin in the bargain-deranged India.
The medina is as much conglomeration as it gets. A huge maze of life, that it's perfect to get lost and found within.
-Take to the left, then two turns to the
Nomadic Morocco
Bus-stop enroute to Fes right and you have a 1150-years old mosque before you; stumble further on past some sweet- and incense-stalls, walk through the silkvendours quarter and the foulsmelling street crammed with tanneries and you stand in front of a beatiful medersa (quranic schools), another turn to the right, pass some fruit and vegetable-stalls, juice- and awkward-food-vendours, take to the left and it's yet another cul-de-sac.
And so it goes. After a couple of days you'll get your bearings.
At times it sad to see monuments and buildings inside the medina, jampacked with ellaborate plasterworks, mosaic and woodcarvings, now in a state of decaying. Some parts are crumbling under their own age and seemingly lean heavily onto supportive beams.
Still Fes is definitely a place to visit if one goes to Morocco, not just for its unparalleled artistic creations but also if you want to get a touch of diarrhoea..
The "24-hour-run-as-fast-as-you-can-to-the-toilet-experience" is now (hopefully) off my ticklist of things to encounter/experience.
A day on the train later and we where in
Marrakesh.
Marrakesh caters more for the shopping-oriented amusementpark visitor. The high Atlas mountains surrounding it makes the perfect scenery for this show.
The city could be divided
Bordeaux Jillaba
Medina Chefchaouen into three main areas: two upperclass areas with bourgeois wellplanned rows of high-end hotels and just as boring resorts, separated and linked by perfect roads with neatly cut palmtrees.
And then there's the medina.
The medina could also be further divided into different areas, but what seem to attract the masses are two things:
Djemma El-Fna. The main square of the old town with a 70m high minaret to its side.
It's full of magicians, storytellers, singers, dancers, snakecharmers and other animal tormenting fellas; monkeys, squirrels, chameleons, anything that moves and can make them a dirham (money) is locked up in chains for the amusement of man.
In the evening, hawkers with food roll out into the square with kerosene lanterns swaying in the savoury-smelling turmoil. There's freshly squeezed orangejuice-vendours, figs & dates-stands, persistent hennawomen, dodgy dentist, sexherb-salesmen all in abundance. And a neaver ceasing flood of beggars.
The Souqs. A huge bazaar at the north of the main square. Far from being as quaint as the market in Chefchaouen and it's by no means as interesting as the history-teeming maze of Fes. But it's the perfect stop for buying those souvenirs that
Sesamy Open
Medina Chefchaouen friends and family expect you to bring back home.
Felt it was time to leave when everything occured to me as a badly run cirkus, and I wasn't sure if I was part of the provoked audience or the molesting members of the cirkus..
The most commonly uttered phrase by me when in Marrakesh:
-No!
The most commonly uttered phrases by people in Marrakesh when approaching me:
-Hashish?
-Room?
-Change money?
-Spices?
-Carpet?
-Come look my shop!
-You no want?
Back to Casablanca for a quick meet with the Mauretanean consulate and a well deserved pit stop at the pub (b.t.w. Hotel Batha in Fes accomodates an excellent pub with an open fire. The hotel once was the brittish consulate and has a tangible colonial touch to it). Then of south along the atlantic coast.
Upon arrival in
Essaouiera most of the central streets where flooded. We navigated our way through the charming and windy streets of the medina to a hotel not to beatiful, not to good quality, more our style: Rockbottom.
When we moved in, they were still constructing it, to no concern with either one of us.
The
Berberwoman and mountain
outside the Medina Chefchaouen town was full of fishermen and tourists. There are some relaxed but windy open squares. A windy fortification breaking the windy waves of the windy atlantic ocean.
-Oh, did I mention it's windy?
Somewhere I had read about goats climbing trees to eat its leaves, but still I wasn't expecting this very most peculiar sight.
It all looked like if it was "photoshopped" into the image. A couple of goats munching away in a tree. Not just at the lower branches but at the very top of it. Wish I hadn't broken my camera.
Got to
Agadir. A huge resort-city with a cold crescent-shaped beach. Loads of what must have been disappointed package tourists, paint-thinner sniffing kids and beggars.
Most of the city was reconstructed (after an earthquake) in the sixties to a concrete jungle.
This is how I imagine the muslim dominated banlieue (suburbs) of Paris to look like.
Jumped on a 19-hours long busride taking us further south on the only road connecting the occupied area of west sahara in the south, with it's occupier Morocco. Mostly a rocky desert with the only vegetation small (a foot high at
Berberwoman at market
outside the Medina Chefchaouen the most) bushes and plasticbags (predominantly black ones, but all colours where to be found, adding the only dash of colour to this bleak landscape).
Dirty and exhausted we're now resting in
Dakhla for the night. Shopping around for transport that will carry us across the border of Mauretanea and further south.
Further into Africa.
Further into the unknown.
Facts for other travellers:
Aprox costs for travel in Morocko;
20USD a person a day, of wich a room is 4$, you eat for 6$, and transport is an average 6$, and shop/internet/visa/parcel-posting add up for the rest.
A visa for Mauretania costs 200dh in Casa, and the price on the border differs between 250 and 500dh depending on the issuing officers mood and your appearance.
At hotels the room tariff is just as fixed as anything else for sale in Morocco, if it says 120dh for a double, it's usually 80, and so on.
Swedish translation:
drizzle__________________duggregn
bargain-deranged_________pengagiriga
conglomeration___________ihopklumpning
tanneries________________bearbetning av djurhudar
cul-de-sac_______________aotervaendsgraend
ellaborate_______________genomtaenkt och utarbetat
plasterwork______________gips-sand-vatten blandat och format
beams__________________bjaelkar
bourgeois_______________smaklos oeverklass
kerosene________________fotogen
turmoil__________________oreda
abundance______________oeverfloed
molesting_______________ofredande
tangible_________________paotaglig
rockbottom______________saemsta moejliga
predominantly____________huvudsakligen
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Marc
non-member comment
marcnapoli.com.au
wow.. you lucky lucky man. im geting lucky soon too, we get married in 3 weeks!