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Published: June 18th 2017
We left Fez aboard a public bus heading to the town of Chefchaouen. Called Chaoen for short, Chefchaouen is arguably Morocco's most beautiful city. It is set in the heart of Morocco's Rif Mountains and is well known for it's blue colored homes in it's medina. Abdul also gave us a little surprising heads up in regards to the availability of marijuana in Chefchaouen. He told us not to be surprised if we were offered some marijuana as the surrounding hills are known to be a hotbed for marijuana production. The bus ride was just a few hours as we drove through some very beautiful and verdant countryside. The weather took a turn for the worse upon arrival into Chefchaouen. What had been a slight drizzle throughout much of the bus ride had now turned into a steady rainfall as we pulled into the bus terminal. From the bus terminal, Abdul had arranged for a few taxis to take us to our accomadation for the next 2 nights, Darechchaouen. After settling into our awesome rooms and having the obligatory mint tea, we all decided to not let a little rain put a damper on our day. So we all headed out
into the medina for a little exploration and to grab some lunch. Despite the rain, we were all in good spirits and needless to say a little excited as we ventured into the medina. We were all in such awe as almost every corner and every turn had some sort of gorgeous blue structure or alleyway. The town's close proximity to Spain was clearly evident as we explored the medina. For the past week, I had been used to hearing French and Arabic but here we were greeted with a lot of "Buenos Dias" which is Spanish for Good Day or Hello. Chefchaouen's medina was also a lot more easy to navigate than the medina yesterday in Fez. It was probably made a lot easier due to the lack of people and the easy on the eyes blue color of everything. Eventually, blue overload set it and all the snapping of photos that we were all doing, slowly dissipated. As the rain intensified, we eventually made it to the medina's main square, Place Outa el Hammam. We quickly all gathered at a small restaurant in the square in order to have lunch but really to take refuge from the rain.
Lunch was nothing spectacular but still delicious and we were entertained by local stray cats circling our feet hoping for scraps.
After lunch, we continued wandering through the medina and ended up at a Berber carpet shop. I came on this trip with really no interest in purchasing a carpet. However, after the carpet shop visit yesterday in Fez, I told myself that if I saw one with a nice design I would contemplate buying it. Again, we had the obligatory mint tea and before we knew it, the staff started unfolding countless rugs before our eyes. So after piling up all these rugs in front of us, they started going through them and putting them in various piles based on our responses. We would yell out "la" for no and "yemken" for maybe. All the rugs that we said no to, were quickly put away while those interested in the maybe rugs, were taken into another room to start the negotiations. I absolutely hate bartering and negotiating a price. I simply want to know how much an item is an not have to haggle for it. I was the first who went into the negotiating room with one
of the carpet salesman. I knew the price they were going to initially offer would be outrageous but I wasn't prepared for just how outrageous it would be. His initial offering price was approximately US$800. After about a half hour of negotiating and even using some of my french, we settled on a price of around $400. I probably still ended up paying too much for it but in the end, I was getting a little tired of all the back and forth so we eventually settled for about 50% of the seller's initial price. After our time at the carpet shop, we continued exploring the medina before making our way back to the hotel. We were all cold and a bit damp and everyone was looking forward to going back to their rooms to take a hot shower and warm up in our heated rooms. Tonight was a very quiet night as we all had a wonderful dinner in the hotel and everyone pretty much retired back to our rooms after dinner.
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