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.