Blogs from Fès-Boulemane, Morocco, Africa - page 4

A little travel maintenance this morning as we find and book a desert tour. We will have a driver for three nights and four days who will take us around to all the places you will read about starting tomorrow. We wander towards to the market to look around, leave the medina because we want soup, find some whatever the Arabic word for uneventful is, soup, and dip back into the medina. A little more wandering takes us from soup to souk. The souk is the market inside the medina. This is that Indiana Jones shit you want to see. Narrow alleys criss-crossing with more narrow alleys; merchandise of all kinds hanging in front of worn facades with Moorish arches or other ancient designs. Bags, jewels, antiques, lamps, clothing, every possible combination of nick-nick, tchotchke, craft ... read more

The breakfast at the dar is buffet style with our new Senegalese pal Momadu (as in “Daddy don’t but Momadu”) at the spatula. We haven’t got a damn thing planned for today, but we do know that we are in Morocco’s oldest medina/souk combo and that any kind of decent travelers would do something about that. So, we check in with Said and ask if we can hire a guide. He directs his only word, “Yes,” toward the problem and we’ll have one at the door in an hour. Lhasen shows up with a broad smile and a professorial air. He’s late 50-60s, but like normal 50-60s, not Said the hash dude’s 50-60s… which means be must be 43. We’ve got him for three hours, but the tour starts off pretty slow. He stops in front ... read more

The last morning in Marrakech our guide who we would be spending the next 4 days with met us at our riad and lead us to where he had parked his Landcruiser - which we quickly dubbed our Japanese Camel. Our guide Ibrahim was only a few years older than us, apparently at least (more on this later), and was always ready with a joke which we started dishing out as well when the ice had been broken. Didnt take long until we had given the nickname Zlatan (Ibrahimovic) either. But I digress, on the first day Zlatan took us on a very long driving day, but luckily it had many stops to keep us entertained and stretch our legs. The day took us through the main mountain range of the country called the Atlas Mountains ... read more

Today was a memorable experience with a full day in & around the unique Medina of Fes, an old medieval city with a walled labyrinth of lanes and alleyways alive with craftsmen, markets, tanneries and mosques and a feast for the senses. The city is over 1200 years old & supports 300,000 residents but is fully functional with water, power, street cleaning, the oldest university in the world, many ornate mosques and eleberate homes & is unquestionably the spiritual and cultural heart of Morocco. The City is unique in the world in that Muslims, Christians & Jews live in perfect harmony & are recognised as equals by the government (along with the Berbers who live elsewhere within Morocco) all these factors helped the city achieve World Heritage listing. The lanes are only wide enough for walking ... read more

Dneska byl v planu puvodne kralovsky Meknes a starorimske Volubilis. Ale plan jsme zmenili, ze radeji poradne prosmejdime Fes. Co je treba o stare medine rict a ma obecnou platnost: ztratite se. Moderni technologie vam pomohou, vytistena mapa vam pomuze, ale stejne se ztratite. I kdyz vite, ze mate jit jenom rovne, tak najednou se cesta necekane zalomi nebo se objevi odbocka, ktera by tam nemela byt. A ktera tam po 3 minutach pri ceste zpatky uz nebude. Ale zase pribudou dve na druhe strane. Proste sranda. Nas prvni cil byly slavne kozeluzny. Kdyz uz jsme nejak dobloudili do dane oblasti, tak se nas hned ujal mistni vejrostek, dal hrst maty proti puchu, odvedl nas na terasu a zbezne vysvetlil princip celeho procesu. Vyhled zajimavy, ale trochu z boku, tak jsme chteli zajit jeste na jednu, ... read more