Blogs from Morocco, Africa - page 25

Travel is the only thing that you buy that makes you richer- Anonymous Greetings from our riad in Meknes, as I sip my gin and tonic, waiting to meet the group shortly for dinner. Last night we met our fellow travellers and trip leader Abdul, who we all love. We are: eight from Australia (John and Barb from Sydney, Greg and Wendy from Queensland, Matthew and Nicole from Sydney, Jeff and Kathy from Brisbane - originally from Canada), two Americans (Linda and Annie - sisters from Chicago), and Susan and I. We had the usual meeting then walked to Les Fleurs restaurant for dinner. There were tourists there (including the Intrepid tour group that leaves Casablanca the same time as us), but there were lots of locals there too. I had a really tasty couscous with ... read more

Get some sleep on the plane, I said. Take your Dukoral, I said. Go easy on the street food, I said. Alas, my travel advice goes unheeded by my friend who flew in from Winnipeg. We Rock the Kasbah…and then she falls horribly ill. I will call her Winnie the Pooh. Because, well, you can imagine. Our trek across the Sahara, scrapped. Rather than get seriously bummed, I rally. I already know I’ll return to Marrakech. I love it here. Those shifting sands of the great Sahara will just have to wait. Winnie too, perks up, after a brief hospital visit and a few days of bedrest. So, with Marrakech in our rearview mirror, we go forward with our itinerary and head straight for the station to catch a train to Casablanca. Trains in Morocco are ... read more

There I was, a lone woman in a sea of men, sitting in a café. We are all facing in the same direction, towards the street, sipping Moroccan mint tea from impossibly tiny cups, and watching the world go by. No one bothers me. No one stares at me. No one acknowledges me. It's a little weird. But I like it. Later in the day I ask, "Where are all the women?" My newly hired fixer seemed startled by my question. "The women are at home, where they belong." He lightly scoffs. Instantaneously, I feel my feminist dander skyrocket to a Def Com 5, but I keep my mouth shut. Right. I'm a worldly optimist that respects all religions, no matter how misogynistically f**ed up they may seem, don't engage, don't engage. I sit there in ... read more

Since I was staying in a guest house in the medina, I spent most of my time in Fes inside the medina walls, usually lost, but I did venture outside a couple of times. For me, the easiest way to get out of - and back into – the medina was through the Bab Boujloud, sometimes referred to as the Blue Gate for its tilework. “Bab” means gate, and there are a number of them in the walls of the medina. My shortcut for remembering the name of this one was to remember it as Bab “Boogaloo,” which isn’t anywhere close to correct, but helped me remember the distinction between it and Bab Jdid. Musée du Batha Just a short distance outside the gate is Dar Batha, a museum housed in a nineteenth century palace. Of ... read more

There were two things I most wanted to explore in Tangier – writers and spies. And since a lot of them hung out together, their stories were intertwined. And the more I looked into things, the more tangled the stories got. I started with a tour guide. Badr was the night manager at the guest house I stayed in, and did guide work during the day. He was a good guy, and I knew he wouldn’t trot me around to shops when I really wanted some history. I told him I was interested in history and writers, and I particularly wanted to see Dean’s Bar and Caid’s Bar, both of which had been known for the writers, shady figures, and people rumored to be spies and agents of foreign governments during the 1930s and ‘40s. The ... read more