Erg Chebbi

Friday, March 4, 2011

We set off on our two dromedaries (one-hump camels), Abdul and Omar Shareef with our guide Said.

The desert was peaceful but not grand either. It probably would have been hard to walk the hour-and-a-half on foot. Said walked ahead, leading my camel. Dave’s camel was tied to mine. Said is a shy, gentle sort of guy, and according to Dave, a “pretty boy”. He knows I’m a vegetarian because of my dinner request so when I asked him about getting onto the camel he assured me it was okay because he’s a vegetarian. When I asked if I could touch Abdul, he said “of course. He’s an animal” and showed me where to touch Abdul on the back of his head. We arrived at our campsite, a grouping of Berber tents.

After dismounting and dropping our things into our tent, Dave and I hiked up to the high dune to watch the sunset.

At the top, though, we were rained upon with sand. It was a bit windy and unless we were standing up, we were pelted with sand.

It got everywhere and stayed with us throughout the trip. The next day I saw that my scalp was the red ochre of the sand. The sunset was nothing special, and fortunately we walked down before it was dark. When it’s dark and there’s no moon it’s pitch black there in the desert.

Said greeted us with mint tea and olives, which we enjoyed while sitting on thin cushions at a low table under a carpet in front of our tent. Soon afterward he went to cook us dinner. We sat in candlelight and ate while a sweet fluffy cat put on the charm for a bit of food. Finally Dave relented and gave up a couple of chicken bones and the remains of his stew.

As it was still well before time to go to sleep we didn’t know how we might spend the evening. Well, Said had plans for that. He brought another guide and two sets of drums and they sang us some Berber (and Moroccan?) songs. The other guy left and Said showed me how to beat the rhythm and we drummed together while he sang. He wasn’t very good and he was pretty self conscious, but it was still a nice experience. Then he told us it was our turn to sing. If we didn’t sing, he told us, we’d have to walk back instead of riding the dromedary. We knew, of course, that he was teasing us, but we had nothing else to do but sing. We tried to sing a few songs but we were hopeless with the lyrics, so we switched to Christmas carols. That was tricky only because we’d break out laughing.

Said had never heard them before, and we’re not sure if he’d heard of Christmas either. We believe he’s never been beyond Rissani, the town half an hour by bus from Merzouga. But he knows the desert as he’s from a Nomadic family that settled before he was born. He does muulti-day camping trips in the Erg Chebbi, but it’s a small desert, only 10km by 50km. We could see the width of it from the peak we climbed – and the mountains that are on the other side of the border with Algeria.

After the singing we walked up to the top of a nearby dune to look at the stars. It was amazing to see them so brightly. He pointed out constellations (many with which we were familiar), and for those we didn’t know, he turned on his flashlight and drew them in the sand.

Later Said made up our bed with the cushions we’d sat on around the table and topped them with five or six thick blankets. We were coze, and the tent was pitch black. It was a wood frame tent made of sticks that were covered with black woven blankets. The bed was comfortable and we were warm enough. I laughed out loud in the early morning when a donkey called and another one answered. We got up early to watch the sunrise, but again there were no special color effects.

So we headed back into town without lingering.

We were quieter this time, and it was a peaceful ride. I was starting to feel sick and was surprised that I was able to ride anyway. I got off before we got to the hard sand and dirt road as that would have been too jarring.

Back again at Chez julia we had breakfast up on the terrace.

All the buildings in Merzouga look this dull on the outside.

We enjoyed the company of a kitten who crawled up on me to cuddle. She was restless and went over to cuddle with Dave too.

It’s nice to find something so universal in such a foreign place. Several cats live at Chez Julie but they're not people-cats the way the kitten was with us.

Julia was very accommodating and let us have the front salon (a lovely room) for napping.

She must have assumed that we wouldn’t have slept much in the desert. Dave was greatly comforting to me.

Trip to Merzouga

Thursday, March 3, 2011

The trip down to Merzouga was eventful, to say the least. It was a long bus ride, with stops fairly continuously along the way. You’d see someone get off the bus and see only one house from the road. This clearly was the only transport for folks. Probably only the seven tourists took the bus the entire way from Fes to the end, at Rissani.

We passed through some pretty dry countryside, tall plateaus, and a forest in which I believe I saw a monkey.

This is the town of Rich. The arrival of the bus was a big deal.

After miles of dry countryside these two bodies of water seemed miraculous.

We had plans to take a grand taxi the remaining 20km from Rissani to Merzouga. On the bus we were offered a ride from a man selling tickets for his taxi, and so along with a German couple we would fill that taxi. As we understood we might be ambushed by taxi drivers, we were pleased to have this settled. A bit later, a young guy with a turban got on and spoke to me a little in Spanish. I guess word was out that I spoke Spanish. We got off the bus and into the driver's jeep, along with the turbaned guy. (Turns out he and the driver are buddies.) But the German couple wasn't with us. I was stuck in the back, but wanted to understand why they weren't coming with us since we were going to the same place. They said the driver wouldn't take them to Chez Julia. I was confused, but because of where I was I couldn't get more info. I asked the driver if he could take us there even though he couldn't take the other couple. He said yes.

So, we drove on a paved road for a while and then turn off onto what clearly seemed like a private road; all the signs were for private locations and we were on a dirt road whose edges were marked with small rocks. Pretty soon Dave started to complain that we were not on the road to Merzouga and we both began to fight this guy verbally. He laughed that he's not the mafia, blah blah blah. We laughed at ourselves for distrusting him and we had a few laughs together. But then he stopped his car and got out. The group sitting in the row ahead of us had been utterly silent, and had not insisted on where they did or did not want to stay. When the driver asked if they wanted to stay there, we said no. He got mad at us and said he wasn't talking to us. He gets a commission for this place and it's only 40dh. Of course it's not in our books and it's really remote. We fogured we'd be stuck if we stayed there. And by the way, this was happening at about 9:30 at night, and it was pitch black out there. (We also know the Algerian border was nearby, which doesn't help our nerves any.) After much effort by certainly Dave and me -- even appealing to the other guy in Spanish -- but maybe one or two of the morons in the seat ahead of us (young American guys who've been camping their way through Europe for months and a sleepy chick they met on the bus), we persuaded him to turn around. We wanted to go to the center of Merzouga. Over and over he claimed there was no center but there were five towns. Did any of us know for sure? Only what our guidebooks told us. He also claimed not to know anything about our hotel. He started driving like a maniac and in one dip we bottomed out and Dave cussed out "Jesus F*g Christ!" when he hit his head on the roof of the jeep. That *really* pissed off our driver (Jesus is an Islamic prophet), and he actually skidded to a stop. We didn't know what he was going to do then. I'm not sure if it was then or before, but he decided that he could take us to Chez Julia if we paid him 200dh. Since we didn't want to be robbed of our money we argued for a while as he drove around. (We didn't know if he was going somewhere else or back to main road as we asked him to. Then he decided he wanted 400dh if all of us wanted to go there. Naturally that really pissed us off. He wanted us to pay him before we went any further, which we thought was ridiculous, and of course by then we assumed he would charge us 200dh as often as he liked. We didn't trust him at all and we were stuck. We managed to get him to take us to signpost for Chez Julia and we got our luggage off the car before we paid him. Dave rushed ahead to the hotel while the others got out and tried not to pay. (They were threatened with violence so they forked it over.) When I caught up to Dave we met Julia, an older woman who spoke French and German only but managed to convey that she had just one room. We felt bad for the kids, but we were terribly relieved. If there was a town with a few more hotels (as she claimed), we couldn't see them. This was the edge of civilization as we know it. Inside, I shook with anxiety and fear for what this could have been. We felt so fortunate to have made it -- and for getting the last room. I told Dave I wouldn't bounce back quickly from this. I mean, a good night's sleep wouldn't do the trick.

We were also starving as it was late and we hadn’t eaten dinner, and we managed to convey what we could eat and Julia tried to help us understand what could be prepared at that hour. We ended up with a couscous "cake": cold cooked couscous pressed into a bowl and turned over, then topped with criss-crossed raisins and cinnamon.

We were put in a lovely rooom in a set of connected buildings made of straw and clay washed in bright colors and with colorful weavings and upholstery.

It was a welcome change from the last two places we’d stayed, and was a welcome respite from the monotone desert houses around Merzouga. This was breakfast our first morning.

We don’t know if there were other nice places since they all look the same from the outside. It’s a very simple town very much at the edge of civilization. There was no produce to buy and when I ordered a vegetable tajine I was told I couldn’t get one anywhere in town. So I got an egg sandwich, which was delicious. (I believe it also made me sick all the next day since I haven’t eaten an entire egg in years.)

This is Merzouga with the dunes beyond.

The next day as I was upstairs at the Internet cafe waiting (forever) for my camera's photos to download, I walked over to the window and saw the American kids getting into a car on their way to an excursion. I ran down to find out how they'd made out in their search for a hotel, and they told me that the owner of their hotel knows they guy who drove us around. (The driver owns a hotel in Rissani.) He suggested we go to the police in Rissani. He was upset that an event like this could create problems for tourism, upon which they are so dependent.

Well, our dune outing wasn't going to start until 3pm and we had nothing better to do, so we headed over to the police station. We told our story, pretty sure they would ignore us or only just pretend to do something for these silly Americans who clearly had nothing better to do, and who make enough money to travel far from home. There were conversations in Arabic between the many guys in the office, some Internet searches, and phone calls. We couldn't really tell how much of whatever they were doing was related to us. Finally, one officer asked us to follow him into an office, where he asked to each write a statement about what happened. Then the officer called Mohammed, the driver, and put him on his cell phone's speaker phone to see if we recognized his voice. We couldn't. (We had spoken with him in English and Spanish, so his Arabic didn't sound familiar to us, and besides, we were attempting to recognize his voice over a crappy cell phone speaker.) That didn't matter. He was being asked to come to the station. We were shocked. The police could ask someone to come to the station and know that he would comply? Anyway, I was starving, so I went off in search of food, and figured I'd be back within the half hour it took for Mohammed to arrive. I didn't want to see him. But I was also really nervous about seeing him on the road between the food places and the police station, even if there was a slim chance of meeting because of the direction I was going. And still i was nervous about seeing him the police station. When I returned, Mohammed was waiting in the reception area of the police department. I said "Bon jour" (what else to do?) and moved past him back to the office. The officer was translating Dave's report into Arabic and transcribing it into a journal. He was assisted by another officer who helped him get the Arabic right. The translation basically went from English to Arabic via French. When he finished Dave's he worked on mine. Dave got extra credit for his level of details because he's a lawyer. In writing the introduction of my statement the officer asked me some personal questions such as the names of my parents and if I was single. I looked at Dave because I didn't know what to say. (It's expected that couples travelling together in Morocco are married.) Dave said "It's okay, we talked about this when you were out and we were working on my statement." The officer asked if we were going to get married, and Dave said he hoped so. The officer, a blushing type, put his head down to write and said "Inshallah" ("If Allah wishes it"). At the end of my statement the officer asked what I wanted to be the outcome of this. I said I wanted our money back and I wanted Mohammed to be charged.

Soon after, Muhammed came in and offered to give us back our money, but it was amid a disruptive discussion. He was apparently giving his statement, but it became an argument with Dave and me. I said I couldn't go through this again and got up to leave. (Really, I felt like we were going to rehash the entire night again, and it was too much for me.) Also, we needed to get back to the hotel for our trip to the dunes. I left and Dave stayed to finish things up. In the end, Mohammed apologized to Dave, and the police made him give us back not only the 200dh but also the 20dh we'd paid him on the bus. Mohammed said he wanted to apologize to me, and Dave said he didn't want Mohammed anywhere near me.

We had only positive experiences in Merzouga after that first night, and we were terribly impressed by how seriously we were taken by the police. Of course we expressed great appreciation to them directly.

I told Said, our camping guide that Dave was over at the police station finishing up, and that gave us the opportunity to tell him what happened so he could tell Julia. We wanted her to know so that she could make sure these things got reported, to try to make sure this behavior wasn’t tolerated. We weren’t sure how much they understood, but they seemed to understand the gist of it and were upset at how Mohammed’s behavior could affect tourism. In fact later at our campsite Said asked us to retell the story since he said he wasn’t sure he’d gotten it the first time.

Fes III

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Today I’m writing in anticipation of our trip to the desert. It’s a long ride, but so far our rides have been very scenic, and knitting along the way has helped pass the time. This should be interesting as we will pass through the Atlas Mountains.

We slept terribly our second night in Pansion Kawtar, in Fes. The beds were very hard and the pile of blankets (necessary to stay warm) kept slipping off. I took a nice shower, washing my hair and feeling clean. We went downstairs to pay and found no one to pay. Dave didn’t want to wait, so I wrote down our names so we could leave them money. Just then they guy came in and invited us to stay for breakfast on the terrace. No, we didn’t have time to stay. You see, the night before, this guy tried to sell us his friend’s desert caravan tour for about $500 per person. I was pissed off and annoyed at his gall and wanted nothing to do with this guy.

We almost made it out of Fes yesterday but we didn’t understand the bus situation: After getting ourselves to the CTM bus station in the Ville Nouvelle (new city) we learned (confirmed) that they only have night buses to the desert. So we took a taxi back to the medina, but it went awry. The driver was a rip-off artist who ran the meter and trued to persuade us first that the road we had just been on was closed and then tried to drive us the long way all around the medina. (We had our luggage with us so he probably figured we had just arrived and didn’t know the difference.) Since we had just made the reverse trip we knew the way and we knew the cost of the trip. Dave was in the seat up front being adamant and (as he said later) I was in back muttering. (I was probably cussing.) Dave finally made the driver pull over when the meter was almost double what it should have been. We jumped out without paying and got into another cab. It turns out there’s another station for CTM and other buses right outside the medina (the old city), and had we known we could have taken a bus to the desert that morning. So, we headed back out to the Ville Nouelle with plans to take a bus to the desert the next morning and see more sights in Fes during the day.

We went to a nearby café and had espressos and café au lait and the best chocolate croissants, and we felt utterly refreshed and cleansed of Kawtar. Then we checked into the Grand Hotel, which felt imperial and very grand after the medina. (I think it felt imperial because it suddenly seemed like we were in Black Africa since all the staff we saw were black – completely different from elsewhere in Morocco.) The ceilings were very high, we had a double bed in a huge room, and we had a huge bathroom with a huge tub. The large window had a view overlooking a park.

We rested a little before heading out to the Mellah and the Batha Museum.

We got a little lost after making our way through the Mellah and pulled our our map as we ended up in a large square. (We have found it pretty difficult to orient ourselves.) At first one and the gradually a crowd of boys surrounded us. They were excited by the map, and maybe had never seen one before. We had to break away. A couple of men shouted at the kids to leave us alone, but only getting away gave us peace.

We walked quite a bit and for lunch found an isolated restaurant across from a huge park

and sat up on the terrace like fat cats. Yes, like imperialists. There were leather seats (a bit care worn), glass panels to keep out the wind, and sun umbrellas. We had vegetable penne and tapenade on thinly sliced toast. It was a rare place that served beer, so Dave partook. It was a nice change in flavor to have Italian food.

The house next door to the restaurant was so entirely the opposite of this place. There was laundry hanging on the terrace one floor below us, and all of it was in poor shape. The curtain (the “door”) separating the terrace from the house was very dirty at the bottom. The second floor at the same level as the terrace we were on) was falling apart, and there was a wheelbarrow inside the doorless room.

[As if this were a movie, Moroccan music came on over the bus’ loudspeakers. I find it very pleasant.]

In the afternoon as we sat in the park we watched the people while I knitted. At one point an old man wheeled by some food and I watched with curiosity what he was doling out to a young couple that bought a little. The young man came over to me to offer it to me. I honestly didn’t know if he was offering me his handful or just one to try. I took one from him and loved it. It was cooked garbanzos with seasoning sprinked on. I think the vendor sprinkled on as much as someone wanted. He sprinkled from two different bottles – former soda bottles. It was nice (and quite surprising) to have that interaction.

But we have a hard time even when we use our little bit of French or try to pronounce the names of the city gates. We are often not understood by the taxi driers. Today, from the Grand Hotel to the bus station we offered 10dh after being told it was 20dh, since we already knew how much it was supposed to cost. That made for a direct trip to the right place…for a change.

I don’t really want to travel again to places where I don’t speak the language as it’s a very surface experience. It’s not enough to “get by” and get food and shelter. There’s no talking to people to learn more about how things work, where your seat companion lives, why they’re traveling, etc. It makes for poor ambassadorship.

Late in the afternoon we found some pastry stands and bought a few things to munch: Dave found a decandent chocolate cake with crean frosting filling, and I found some nutty and chocolate cookies. I wasn’t interested later in eating, but we went to a swag place where I had a vegetable tajine with the usual veggies: carrot, zuchini, green beans, olives. The bread was warm for a change and as (gratis) appetizers we had cooked carrots and lentils. We didn’t try the cucumbers because I only read later that the city water is chlorinated and safe to drink. Whoops.

I’ve loved the food and feel well nourished here. The meals are balanced in that we get a little dish of legumes or olives with our vegetable tajine or vegetable couscous, and they're not tame with the olive oil. The couscous comes with a hearty amount of veggies, and the couscous is always light. We believe it has always been cooked in oil, not butter.

There is all kinds of dress here – among the men. Women almost universally wear the djellaba, and almost all wear headscarves. Generally the hood of the djellaba is not up, but men do occasionally wear it up.

Fes II

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

For lunch today we gathered food for a picnic: bread, mixed nuts, peanuts, water, oranges, bananas, olives (from two days ago). We tried to find two museums with artefacts, but they were closed. Instead we came upon a school where we managed to find a class in which students were learning plaster carving. The teacher showed us the stencils they use to mark the wet plaster, and we saw students doing the carving according to the marked plaster. The building had been beautiful at one time, but was in great disrepair. We thought the school was teach restoration, but they did not seem to be preserving or attempting to restore their own building.

This is the view from the second story into the courtyard. It's pretty common for there to be orange trees in these courtyards.

We then happened upon a palace just as we wanted to get some tea. The tilework in this palace was newer and in much better condition and we were given a little tour by in Spanish by a man who is originally from Tetouan. He showed us the main floor and then we paid the price of “admission” via some expensive mint tea.

We had an early dinner and then looked for an internet place to check the bus schedule. But by 6:30 the medina was become unrecognizable. It transformed from a bustling place full of color – people and their wares in full light – to a corridor that was a series of double doors, one right after the other. Each stall really is about six feet wide, and when the doors are open they are hung with wares that spill out onto the walkway. At night it’s a bit dark. A man tried to explain to us that during the day... and the souqs….We had no way to tell him that we knew.

For reference, this is the beginning of the day, when everyone's setting up their stores.

We like Fes as a town, but it doesn’t have the charms of Chefchaouen, so we won’t stay long, nor will we search out other towns for their medinas. We’ll head to the desert from here (rather than Marrakesh) and come back here unless we’re enticed by a town on the Atlantic coast.

I am encouraged to learn French, and found a helpful book. If I speak it with Dave he is encouraged too. I want him to have a richer experience than the “getting by” he’s used to. He loves it that we can get more because of my Spanish. I’m more willing to try French than he is.

Fes I

Monday, February 28, 2011

After following assistance from many people in Chefchaouen, we arrived at the bus station in time to take the bus to Fes. The four-hour ride was lovely and rural, with a half-hour stop at a café and WC. There we picked up bananas and oranges for lunch. I spent most of the trip knitting and gazing out the windows. Dave’s been reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, which takes place in Spain.

In Fes we decided to take a taxi in to the medina. This was fortunate as it was pretty far. But in trying to lose the many men who wanted to help us get to their hotels, we lost our way and did a loop of one part of the medina. We finally found it and realized when we saw the business card that one of those guys has been showing us the card for the hotel and could have helped us if we’d paid closer attention. Sigh.

We have a small room that barely fits a double bed, two twin beds, and a fully enclosed bathroom – enclosed like a translucent shower stall with a sliding door. It's brighter pink in real life than in this picture.

It’s not the most private or most odor-free bathroom we've ever seen. The beds were pretty uncomfortable and we didn't sleep well at all. But it’s quiet and we enjoyed sitting up on the sunny terrace for breakfast. This was coffee, french bread, pastry bread made in the terrace kitchen, honey, butter, and my own avocado.

We ate a late lunch at a nice little place and had a huge pile of cookie veggies: a vegetable tajine. (A tajine is steamed vegetables with or without meat served in a clay pot with a conical lid.) It was delicious. Later we tried a variety of cookies, all of which had a lot of sesame. We didn’t find cookies with chocolate, but we did see pastry bars with chocolate frosting. So far we’ve passed on them.

This is the medina during the day. It's pretty active and can be crowded, especially when a mule or cart is being pushed through. (There are no motorized vehicles in the walled city.)

We peaked into the old library, but as non-Muslims we couldn't get very far.

Fountains are an important feature of Moroccan architecture. These are in the medina around the mosque.

We couldn't enter the mosque, but Dave did by accident (he was attracted to the fountain in the middle) and was chased out! This is one of many entrances to the mosque.

It took us a couple of days before we realized that there were separate buildings in the medina -- that everything wasn't connected. Every building seems connected because it feels as if you're walking in a corridor. Below is a random doorway.