MOROCCO: FINAL THOUGHTS

After a Big Trip like this one to Morocco, my husband and I like to sit down together for a final trip evaluation. We did that on the plane on our L-O-N-G flights (stop in Paris, stop in Detroit) home. With almost no editing (except for adding a few pictures), here are my notes.

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT GEOGRAPHY:

* The Atlas Mountains, with their three levels (Anti-Atlas, Middle Atlas, and High Atlas), are a significant barrier and effectively separate the north from the south. Even today, roads seem tenuous--easily washed out by a storm or destroyed by a landslide.

* Road repair, similar to in the U.S., is a constant struggle, especially on the winding mountain roads. It's one of the few places we saw heavy machinery.
* Mountain roads have few safety precautions, such as barriers on the cliff side.
* Morocco has incredible diversity of terrain and climate zones in a relatively small area.

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT TECHNOLOGY:

* In some ways the technology was way behind, although everyone carries a smart phone, there are plenty of cars, and I've never seen so many satellite dishes. Still, it is as if they skipped over many parts of technological development. (No telephone land lines, for example.)

* There is a complete lack of farm machinery. Large areas of land are plowed by donkey and an old-fashioned plow. In fact, donkeys are EVERYWHERE.
* People in the middle of nowhere are walking alongside the road. Where are they going? Where did they come from?

MOROCCO: MARRAKECH TO CASABLANCA TO LOS ANGELES. SIGH.

Our Moroccan adventure was drawing to a close. After our cooking class we were driven back to our riad just in time to get our bags and meet our new driver for the 2 1/2 trip to Casablanca.

It was still light enough to enjoy the sites as we drove out of Marrakech. Two miniature horses and a camel are not the standard corner decor in the United States, at least not where I live:

People watching isn't quite the same in my neck of the woods either:

. . . and this isn't the type of church steeple I'm used to seeing:

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO: COOKING CLASS AT FAIM D'EPICES

Our last full day in Morocco began with a delicious breakfast on the roof of our riad--cocoa for me and hot milk for Bob, Moroccan crepes (a bit tough and dry) with honey and fig jam, dates, marbled cake, bread, yogurt, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. I especially enjoyed it, knowing in a few days I'd be back to cold cereal or green smoothies at home.

We got picked up at 9:30 AM for a cooking class out in the country. On our way, we stopped at two other riads and added another couple from Turin, Italy, and then a jovial young man from Prague. Lucky for us, everyone spoke a little English. We drove about 20 minutes out of the city to Faim d'epices [Hunger Spices], listed by Travel and Leisure as one of the best cooking schools around the world.

The cooking school harvests some of their ingredients from their own organic farm on the property:

The facility is wonderful--a large, sunny room with individual cook stations, and lots of little accoutrements that add to the atmosphere.

 

IMLIL AND AROUMD, MOROCCO: VIEWS OF JEBEL TOUBKAL

We left the wild craziness of the Berber Market and drove the last few miles to Imlil.

On the way, I spotted this delivery truck on the road and wondered how many mothers in this area have the luxury of disposable diapers, and how the trash collection system works in the many small villages we passed.

There are some things you just don't learn when you are a tourist. 

The spectacular Atlas Mountains stretch more than 1500 miles across the north end of Africa. We had already spent some significant time driving through other sections of the Atlas (see here and here), but we were really looking forward to seeing Jebel [Mount] Toubkal, the tallest mountain in Northern Africa at 13,665 feet.

Aziz took us to the upper edge of Imlil, which serves as the starting point for those who want to make the trek to Jebel Toubkal's summit. Most people take a day to hike 5-7 hours to the base camp, spend the night there, and then rise early for the final ascent, which takes 2.5 to 4.5 hours, depending on the route. (For a complete description, see this site.)

At first we thought this majestic specimen was The Great Mountain:

However, later we got a better view of the real Jebel Toubkal, located to the left of and behind the mountain in the above photo:

Here it is, just over Bob's head:

MOROCCO: IMLIL BERBER MARKET IN ATLAS MOUNTAINS

We used Marrakech as a starting point for a trip to Imlil, a small village of about 5,000 people high in the Atlas Mountains. It was the closest we could get to 13,671-foot-tall Jebel Toubkal, the tallest mountain not just in Morocco, but in all of North Africa. Bob has a thing about high points.

We were back with our driver Aziz, who had driven us from Fes to the Sahara, and from the Sahara to Marrakech. 

We stopped several times for photos. It doesn't look very mountainous, does it?

The area around Marrakech is similar to the high desert of Southern California:

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO: WHERE'S WALDO IN JEMAA EL FNA SQUARE

Fes or Marrakech?

That's a question that many a time-challenged traveler asks. Of all the tourist destinations in Morocco, these two cities have the most to offer in the way of culture and history, but they are 300 miles apart, and the journey between them is not easy. Many tourists try to weigh the attractions of each place so that they can tip the scale in favor of one or the other, but the two cities really cannot be compared. While they have some things in common--a wonderful old town with all its cultural and historical buildings, a new town with its modern conveniences, crazy traffic, interesting people, relaxing riads--there is also much that is different.

In a Huffington Post article published a couple of years ago entitled "The Great Moroccan Debate: Marrakech or Fes?" Nicole Leigh West wrote: ". . . if they were both cakes made with culture instead of flour, Marrakech's other main ingredients are fun, color and exuberance, while Fes is flavored with history, mystery and its own serious brand of medieval mayhem."

The comparison I came up with is that if Morocco were to be compared to Brazil (where, admittedly, I have never been), Fes would be Sao Paulo and and Marrakech would be Rio during Mardi Gras, and the heart of the party in Marrakech is Jemaa el Fna Square, which has been around since at least the 12th century. The square is to Marrakech what Central Park is to New York City. It is a huge open space in the midst of a crowded city that serves as a place for entertainment, relaxation, and gathering.

On one side of the square is the souk, and the other sides are edged by hotels and mosques and cafes:

As in so many places in Morocco, it's a crazy blend of Old World panache and 21st century swagger:

MARRAKECH, MOROCCO: EDITH WHARTON IN MOROCCO AND THE CANNONS IN THE JEMAA EL FNA SOUK

In 1917, American author Edith Wharton (1862-1937), accompanied by the American diplomat Walter Berry and a large retinue of servants, traveled through Morocco "from the Mediterranean to the High Atlas, and from the Atlantic to Fez" (Wharton, In Morocco). When I think of Edith Wharton, the first things that come to mind are her short novel Ethan Frome and the longer, more tedious novel The Age of Innocence, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1921.  I also think of her as a socialite and the belle of the American literary world during the early 20th century.

Photo: Edith Wharton Restoration/New York Times

I don't think of her as a travel writer, but she was. 

Wharton describes her month-long journey to Morocco at the end of World War I in detail in In Morocco, which can be considered the first tourist guidebook for the area, at least the first written in English. Interestingly, our Moroccan adventure followed roughly the same route as Wharton's, beginning on the North Atlantic coast, motoring to Fes, winding through the Atlas Mountains, and then settling in Marrakech at the end of lots of driving.

In 1917, Morocco was "foreign" in every sense of the word, but that was about to change. Wharton notes, "Hardly has the Rock of Gibraltar turned to cloud when one's foot is on the soil of an almost unknown Africa. . . . The air of the unforeseen blows on one from the roadless  passes of the Atlas. . . . [I made] my quick trip at a moment unique in the history of the country; the brief moment of transition between its virtually complete subjection to European authority, and the fast approaching hour when it is thrown open to all the banalities and promiscuities of modern travel. Morocco is too curious, too beautiful, too rich in landscape and architecture, and above all too much of a novelty, not to attract one of the main streams of spring travel as soon as the Mediterranean passenger traffic is resumed. . . .  [N]o one will ever again see Moulay Idriss and Fez and Marrakech as I saw them." Wharton captured the country at the precipice of change.

One year short of a century later, Bob and I felt, somewhat like Wharton, that we were traveling in a country in a tug o' war between the past and the future. One of the places we felt the pull of the past the strongest was in the souks. The deeper we walked into the souks, the further back in time and the farther from the West we seemed to be.

The biggest souk in Marrakech, and one of the biggest bazaars in Africa, is the one attached to Jemaa el-Fna, the city's main square. Before we even got to the souk, however, we dealt with a spill-over of shopping from the souk alleys into the square. A few steps from the square's perimeter, carts on wheels suddenly appear in front of unsuspecting strolling tourists. 

A string of juice carts doesn't have to track down buyers; plenty of folks come to them in search of freshly-squeezed orange juice: