Morocco: Days 3 and 4
February 25 (sunday)
We woke up early this morning. I walked outside to get my first good view of this place in which I slept because when I arrived the night before it was all dark. It was nothing out of the ordinary from that which one thinks of as far as moroccan farms go. You know, your standard farm in the plains of morocco. Boh, there are pictures of this too.
We walked back through the mud (it was a bit easier in the daylight) to the main road where we waited for a taxi. The taxi took us to a “suk” which is a huge open air market that sells everything you can possibly imagine. Spices, food, clothes, etc. Basically, it sold anything one might need to survive. We walked around for a while, wading through raw fish and dodging hanging animal hides and hunks of meat. I had one of the best sandwiches I will ever eat in the middle of this suk. There was a man chopping meat from a hanging leg of what I think was cow, however I can not be sure, then putting it through a grinder and then forming the ground meat into little balls. We will call them meat balls. These meatballs were seasoned and then put on a grill type thing. These were then put into a piece of the standard bread that was made and sold throughout morocco (round, soft, good, bread). Then I ate this sandwich accompanied by a beverage none other than a tall glass of hot moroccan mint tea. This experience can be found among my many pictures.
We walked out of the suk to find Mohammed, the driver that took us from Asilah to the farm with Abdul in the trunk, waiting for us with a taxi. I guess Abdul told him to pick us up from the suk. Mohammed took us back to Asilah where we would relax for a few hours before catching our night train to Marrakech. Back in Asilah a few of us were wandering around the beach and found some really cool caves. This is my best attempt at describing these caves that were much better than “really cool”. Even the pictures only show them as “really cool” but they were truly better than just that. I was sad to be leaving Asilah. It was a beautiful place with an amazing “medina” (arabic for city, but is used in arabic to describe the oldest part of the city. It is basically the part that is walled in and has very very narrow labyrinth like streets and feels like it is still several hundred years earlier. Pretty much every city in morocco has one). In the medina of Asilah everything was painted white and light blue. Therefore the pictures with white and light blue walls is Asilah, also the pictures of the ocean.
We took taxis to the train station of Asilah and got on our twelve hour train to Marrakech. We opted for spots on the sleeper car which was a good decision. I slept like a baby.
February 26 (sunday)
I awoke to the sun shining through my window and the train still moving. We were not passing through the desert. Unlike Tangier and Asilah, Marrakech is further south of Morocco and not on the coast. The climate and topography had changed quite a bit while I was sleeping. We took a long walk from the train station to the medina of Marrakech. We found a beautiful hostel for fifty durham each (five euro) and then left to explore. Marrakech has an expansive piazza type space in the middle of the medina where there are all kinds of people doing things for money. Snake charmers, people playing instruments, women giving henna tattoos, people selling things, really all kinds of street entertainment type things. However, I was very disappointed with the snake charmers, they would just come up to you and put snakes around your body and try and get your friends to take a picture and then ask for money. The snakes were cool, but I guess I expected them to be charming snakes for fun or because that is what they do, not to try and get your money. I would have even paid if they would have actually sat cross legged and played there little flute above a basket with a huge cobra in it and charmed the snake into dancing out of the basket. Maybe my preconceived ideas were too stereotypical but I am pretty confident that you too would have been a wee bit let down. So I wandered around with two of the girls I was with who were doing a good deal of shopping. This was entertaining because bargaining is really funny to watch. If you don't pay for less than a third of what their initial offer is, you're not doing a good job of bargaining. At one point, I was asked if I would sell one of my “wives” for one thousand camels. The thing is, the guy was dead serious. This was not the only time men wanted to negotiate with me a deal to sell one of the girls I was with.
We shopped for most of the the day, the markets were pretty cool and I got some good pictures. All in all I was not really impressed with Marrakech. However, if we did not go to Marrakech we would not have gone to this place to set up an excursion into the desert on camel and I would not have had one of the best experiences of my life. The next day we were to leave Marrakech early in the morning and set off for a small town in the desert. I would soon be riding a camel!
We woke up early this morning. I walked outside to get my first good view of this place in which I slept because when I arrived the night before it was all dark. It was nothing out of the ordinary from that which one thinks of as far as moroccan farms go. You know, your standard farm in the plains of morocco. Boh, there are pictures of this too.
We walked back through the mud (it was a bit easier in the daylight) to the main road where we waited for a taxi. The taxi took us to a “suk” which is a huge open air market that sells everything you can possibly imagine. Spices, food, clothes, etc. Basically, it sold anything one might need to survive. We walked around for a while, wading through raw fish and dodging hanging animal hides and hunks of meat. I had one of the best sandwiches I will ever eat in the middle of this suk. There was a man chopping meat from a hanging leg of what I think was cow, however I can not be sure, then putting it through a grinder and then forming the ground meat into little balls. We will call them meat balls. These meatballs were seasoned and then put on a grill type thing. These were then put into a piece of the standard bread that was made and sold throughout morocco (round, soft, good, bread). Then I ate this sandwich accompanied by a beverage none other than a tall glass of hot moroccan mint tea. This experience can be found among my many pictures.
We walked out of the suk to find Mohammed, the driver that took us from Asilah to the farm with Abdul in the trunk, waiting for us with a taxi. I guess Abdul told him to pick us up from the suk. Mohammed took us back to Asilah where we would relax for a few hours before catching our night train to Marrakech. Back in Asilah a few of us were wandering around the beach and found some really cool caves. This is my best attempt at describing these caves that were much better than “really cool”. Even the pictures only show them as “really cool” but they were truly better than just that. I was sad to be leaving Asilah. It was a beautiful place with an amazing “medina” (arabic for city, but is used in arabic to describe the oldest part of the city. It is basically the part that is walled in and has very very narrow labyrinth like streets and feels like it is still several hundred years earlier. Pretty much every city in morocco has one). In the medina of Asilah everything was painted white and light blue. Therefore the pictures with white and light blue walls is Asilah, also the pictures of the ocean.
We took taxis to the train station of Asilah and got on our twelve hour train to Marrakech. We opted for spots on the sleeper car which was a good decision. I slept like a baby.
February 26 (sunday)
I awoke to the sun shining through my window and the train still moving. We were not passing through the desert. Unlike Tangier and Asilah, Marrakech is further south of Morocco and not on the coast. The climate and topography had changed quite a bit while I was sleeping. We took a long walk from the train station to the medina of Marrakech. We found a beautiful hostel for fifty durham each (five euro) and then left to explore. Marrakech has an expansive piazza type space in the middle of the medina where there are all kinds of people doing things for money. Snake charmers, people playing instruments, women giving henna tattoos, people selling things, really all kinds of street entertainment type things. However, I was very disappointed with the snake charmers, they would just come up to you and put snakes around your body and try and get your friends to take a picture and then ask for money. The snakes were cool, but I guess I expected them to be charming snakes for fun or because that is what they do, not to try and get your money. I would have even paid if they would have actually sat cross legged and played there little flute above a basket with a huge cobra in it and charmed the snake into dancing out of the basket. Maybe my preconceived ideas were too stereotypical but I am pretty confident that you too would have been a wee bit let down. So I wandered around with two of the girls I was with who were doing a good deal of shopping. This was entertaining because bargaining is really funny to watch. If you don't pay for less than a third of what their initial offer is, you're not doing a good job of bargaining. At one point, I was asked if I would sell one of my “wives” for one thousand camels. The thing is, the guy was dead serious. This was not the only time men wanted to negotiate with me a deal to sell one of the girls I was with.
We shopped for most of the the day, the markets were pretty cool and I got some good pictures. All in all I was not really impressed with Marrakech. However, if we did not go to Marrakech we would not have gone to this place to set up an excursion into the desert on camel and I would not have had one of the best experiences of my life. The next day we were to leave Marrakech early in the morning and set off for a small town in the desert. I would soon be riding a camel!