Morocco - Marrakech, Kasbahs, Caves

Our first stop on the big adventure was Marrakech, Morocco. We stayed a couple nights in the old part of the city before getting picked up by our tour guide, Ali, for the next part of the trip. Our first impressions of Morocco were pretty good; we wandered around the marketplaces, ate delicious (vegetarian!) food, and just generally had a great time.

Pretty much everyone we met spoke Arabic, Berber, French, English and sometimes even some Spanis; we were impressed! When they heard we were living in Spain usually the first comment was "Aren't Spanish people so bad at speaking English? They really need to work on that." I got a kick out of that because (A) it's true, and (B) because it is true, I have a job. I think Moroccans who work in tourism have spent years watching movies and TV shows in English with subtitles, something the Spanish haven't started to do yet (everything is dubbed here).

Ok, but back to Marrakech! We stayed in an adorable little riad (a traditional Moroccan house with an interior garden or courtyard) that included an amazing breakfast of Moroccan breads, eggs, jams, butter, and Moroccan mint tea (which is mint tea mixed with green tea usually served with a lot of sugar, but you can ask for it unsweetened). The photo on the left is the courtyard and breakfast tables, so nice.  

The photo on the right is the entrance to the spa Les Bains de Marrakech, where we had the best massages ever! We also did the traditional Moroccan hammam, which is basically an hour in a steam room and then a hearty exfoliation administered by Moroccan ladies. That part was a little weird, but all in all, it was an awesome experience. The other perk is that since it's in Morocco, it was very reasonably priced - would definitely go back again some day just to hang out at Les Bains! 

 

The old city and the new city of Marrakech are divided by the city walls. Outside the walls, the streets are wider and more modern, and all the city's newer housing developments are built around fancy restaurants and international stores. We ventured out of the city walls for some delicious meals of Moroccan food and Thai food (something we don't see a lot of in Spain). Inside the walls the old city is very crowded and crazy, with tons of tiny streets, horse-drawn carriages, marketplaces and people. Here's me with the city walls:

We didn't do too much shopping, but of course, we had to stop by and see some of the Moroccan rugs that we'd heard so much about. As you can see they have a bunch of designs...the stores can be kind of overwhelming though! 

One of our favorite stops was the pharmacy. The picture below is outside the shop, with brightly colored potpourri, and lots of spices. One of the purchases we made was a bag of the Moroccan 40-spice blend ras el hanout, so tasty! 

It was fun going to Morocco right after visiting the Alhambra with WP's parents in Granada. So much of the tile work and wood carvings look like what we saw in Spain. Here's me chillin' at the ancient Islamic college called Ben Youssef Madrasa. 

The food in Marrakech - and Morocco in general - was amazing! The traditional Moroccan dishes like vegetable tagine (veggies and cous cous) were great, and the French influence meant some amazing salads with goat cheese and delicious pastries! Here's a lunch we had on a warm roof terrace - Moroccan mixed salads of beets, potatoes, and carrots in the foreground and little fried cheesy triangles on the right. 

A common dessert in Morocco is just "fresh fruit", which sounds awesome, right? You might expect a fruit salad type of dessert, which sometimes you'll get (including delicious orange slices with cinnamon and sugar on them), but one time this is what they brought me. Why hello fresh fruit, are you happy to see me too?  

                            

After an awesome couple of days sight seeing and relaxing in Marrakech, our tour guide Ali and SUV driver Omar picked us up at our hotel. It didn't take long to get outside the city, pretty soon we were going up some pretty steep snow-capped peaks in the Atlas Mountains. 

Along the way we stopped at a few really cool kasbahs (fortresses) from centuries ago. This is the first one we went to; notice also the giant stork's nest atop the tower! From the way it looks on the outside you expect the inside to be mostly mud/adobe walls, but for this one that was not the case. Inside there were rooms of beautiful tile work and even some painted silk panels. The picture of us in the last post sitting on the windowsill was inside this kasbah.

Here's another shot of us inside: 

Our second kasbah stop of the trip was this amazing one called Aït Benhaddou. Most of the buildings are abandoned, but some people still live here and some others have opened up shops to sell things to tourists. These buildings have been used to film all kinds of famous movies like Gladiator, Jesus of Nazareth, Lawrence of Arabia, Kundun, and The Mummy. 

One lady who lives in the kasbah and weaves rugs also makes some money by allowing tourists to come in to her home and see some props used in the movies. She has some photos up of famous people like Russell Crowe and also keeps some fake swords and spears around. Here's us acting out a brutal fight scene a la Gladiator: 

One of the other hilarious highlights of this part of the trip was our tour of Atlas Studios, located in Ouarzazate.  Atlas Studios houses leftover sets from Hollywood movies that are set in place like Tibet, Egypt, Jerusalem and Rome. We learned that Hollywood uses Morocco all the time since it is safer and easier to get to than places like Saudi Arabia and Algeria. In the movies these sets probably look pretty good, but in real life they are pretty much just pieces of styrofoam falling apart. They keep them around because they can reuse them for new movies - with a little paint and the right camera angle, right? 


Here's WP with a lion from the movie Kundun: 

And the great Temple of Luxor from Egypt (falling apart and much smaller than the original): 

One of the funny things about our guides Ali and Omar was how they seemed to know everyone. Ali has been in the tourism business for about 10 years, and Omar is a family friend of Ali's. It seemed like every roadside photo op and rest stop, Ali and Omar had old friends they'd greet with hugs and smiles. Once we stopped for lunched at this restaurant that is not even officially open yet. A friend of Ali's is working on opening it, so I guess in a way we were test clients. When we arrived they hurriedly set up this table and umbrella for us on the roof of the building:

They made us this very tasty curried vegetable pizza. Everywhere you go in Morocco people serve you mint tea and call it "Berber Whiskey" (Berbers are the indigenous peoples of North Africa and are usually Muslim, so definitely don't drink whiskey, although beer and wine are surprisingly popular in Morocco, so go figure), and so as a joke Ali called this the "Berber Pizza". 

Another interesting stop we made was to visit some of Ali's friends who live in some caves in the mountains. We had to off-road for an hour or so to get to where they live, and passed many herds of sheep and goats on the way. This family has a few caves that are side by side and they mostly raise animals to sell at the nearby town. When we were visiting the father of the family was not home because he had walked into town to sell some stuff and was still on his way back. Here's a shot of the entrance to one of the caves with some of the lambs out front: 

This little guy was pretty adorable, and they let us hold him! He was more like a puppy than a lamb, he kept running after us and trying to see if our shoes, camera and clothes were edible.

                            


The family invited us into the cave for some mint tea. This picture came out a little dark, but you can see our guide Ali on the left, driver Omar near the entrance and one of the sons pouring tea on the right. The lamb got to come in too.

It was a little sad to see the conditions this family lives in, just from a sanitation and comfort perspective.  From what Ali told us though, this is just their way of life and they wouldn't want to change it by moving to one of the nearby villages; and who are we to say they should?  The mom of the family has had 12 children, most of whom are grown up and have moved to the nearby town, but she says she's just too old to move now and wants to stay where she is. This is one of her grandkids, apparently staying with Grandma and Grandpa for awhile. She was adorable, but a little suspicious of us until Omar gave her some cardboard packaging from our lunch to use as a toy.

All in all I think stopping by to visit was good, and I'm pretty sure some of the money we paid for the tour trickled down to her and her family. On the way out of the foothills we came across these girls out with their herd of camels. In this photo they were running towards our car to ask us for money. This happened to us a lot, but usually Ali would give the kids mandarin oranges instead. I thought that was an elegant solution to what can sometimes be an awkward situation. 

Back on the road again we stopped to see a mosque before heading off for our camel adventure in the desert. Naturally across the street from the mosque there is a store crowded with knick-knacks and Moroccan goods that we definitely did not need to buy. Of course, the shopkeep insisted on wrapping us up Berber style to show us how we might look if our names were actually Mohammed and Fatima (which is what Ali started calling us early on). 

After some more driving through desert (much of which looks like Arizona), we finally got to the SERIOUS desert - black rocks and sand dunes! More on the dunes and camel ride coming in the next post... stay tuned!