Jeff in Puglia

We finally arrived in Ait Ben Haddou around 3:00 PM. We immediately noticed it was cooler here than Marrakech. We had expected the temperature to go up and up as we descended out of the mountains but that never happened, thankfully. My first thought was, “I hope we can find a hotel here because I’m kind tired of driving and it’s nice quiet little town!” We drove around for a short time and stopped at “Le Perle du Sud”. We checked out a room and haggled over the price. In the end it seemed like a good deal so we checked in. Ait Ben Haddou is a UNESCO World heritage site and it’s been used in several movies with the most recent being “The Gladiator” and “The Mummy”. It interesting to note that most guidebooks will say you need to stay in Ouarzazate and then travel the 30 kms to Ait Ben Haddou but it seems to have a good share of hotels in town, maybe in high season the guidebooks are right. Either way we had a 5-minute walk from our hotel to the streambed and entrance to this incredible mud and straw city on side of hill with very little remains of a fort on the top of the hill. It’s hard to describe and photograph a site like this. It’s like Matera in that you need to be there, which is why we all travel to begin with, I think. We wondered the streets and it was great because most of the tourists had been bused back to Ouarzazate so there were only a handful of us left to explore the site until sundown. Also don’t let the Lonely Planet fool you into believing that the entrance fee of 10 dirhams is optional. The old man at the gate will give you hell if you think you don’t need to pay. I didn’t like it because there was absolutely no sign that he was the official or right person to be taking the money. Anyway back to the good parts of this. In this mud city there is actually 10 families that still live there so you hear the sounds of donkeys, chickens, goats, sheep, and whatever else they have. The families are around to the left side of the town so stay to the right, as you’re not supposed to bother them. Hey you don’t want someone poking his or her head into your home! The other families have been moved to the new part of the town on the other side of the stream. Also there are one or two empty houses that you can pay 5 dirhams to go into and I did. It was pretty cool but very dark inside. There is still no electricity so I imagine it’s pretty smoky when they have fires or candles going to see by. I also was a little worried because on the upper floors the floor didn’t seem too solid but hey this place was here before Europeans set sail for America so I guess they know what they’re doing. We hung around the town to sunset and then headed back the hotel hungry. Hassan was ready for us and tajine was on the menu. The nice dinner was included in the hotel price and then later on in the night he joined us for a mint tea on the front balcony. Everyone in the hotel just hung around enjoying the calm, cool night until Hassan and few friends decided to liven it up by playing some drums and singing traditional songs in the dinning room. In the morning we paid another visit to the town in the morning before the crowds arrived. Then we went backwards and visited another Kasbah that is up the road from Ait Ben Haddou. It is almost completely overlooked because of its bigger cousin down the road. That was one of the cool things of driving ourselves. We saw a picture of it in the hotel and we realized how close it was, so we changed our plans slightly and checked it out. You can only do that if you’re running your own vacation. After that our next goal was to be in Tinerhir by late afternoon to find a hotel, hopefully.
This drive was ok down to Ouarzazate and then over towards Tinerhir. We made pretty good time, only stopping a few times to admire the vast barren countryside. It was then we decided that we had time to drive up the Gola de Dades. It was supposed to be spectacular but they say if you only have time for one then do the Gola de Todra. It appeared we had time for both at this point. The picture below of the road shows about where we had to turn back. The guide said the road ended a little further up the road so it seemed like there was a need or time to go further (and I was hungry).

We ate in hotel at the bottom of the gorge. Nice place with decent tajine and reasonable prices. Almost right on schedule we arrived in Tinerhir. The town was small and chaotic. We checked out several hotels but now seemed right. Then we checked out a room in a very new hotel on the edge of town. It was very comfortable but the place itself didn’t seem very inviting. The man at the front desk was a little scary to me and the hotel appeared to be completely empty except for him and us. I think it was just the fact that we were tired that we settled on this hotel. We all agreed AFTER, that we all wanted to stay somewhere else. Better communication was needed in hotel selection from then on! The next morning we had a good breakfast at the scary hotel, which didn’t seem so scary during the day and there were other guests.

It was a short drive to the Gola du Todra and it’s a good thing too. We stopped many times to take in this beautiful little stream that cut a huge canyon in the red Moroccan rock. At times there was canyon walls rising several hundred feet on either side of us. There was only room for the road and the stream. The stream doesn’t like the road because you could see that yearly flooding destroys parts of the road and I imagine every year they have to replace part of the road. Several times the poor Clio was forced to bounce it’s way across sections where there was no concrete. Now we see way 95% of the other cars are 4×4s and the other 4% are donkeys and then there is us. Finally at one point we stopped and parked the car. The road ahead was out. They were working on it feverishly as I’m sure the bus companies were upset because couldn’t take people further up the gorge. We surveyed the situation. Hmmm, there is a temporary road that went down into the riverbed. Doesn’t look toooo bad. Screw it, it’s a rental! So we took the Clio where it shouldn’t go. After all we had to see the “cute town at the end of the road” as the guide described it. After that section in the stream the road returned up to the paved section then the canyon opened up to let the sunshine in. We arrived at the famous end of the road town. The kids in this town were nuts! They would run out to greet the car begging for “bon-bon” or change. They would even jump in front of the car while others reached in if the window was open. They were really starting to piss me off. A little is ok but this was like running some type of gauntlet of mutant zombies. I felt good when we finally got out of the town but then we realized. The guide says this road ends so we have to go back through that again. Those little nuts maybe worse when they know we are trying to skip town without giving them anything. I wasn’t at all excited about that. Instead we continued on to see exactly where the road ends. Guess what, it didn’t end. By now we aren’t sure exactly where we are but there was this one little hotel in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Really, I mean it. We get out and there is one guy there. I buy a coke and get out the map to get some advice from this guy. What a character and very nice. He’s probably bored out of his head because of where he is and he’s very eager to show us how he is learning Italian, German, and Spanish because he already knows Arabic and French. He’s going to be ready when the tourists arrive. I didn’t tell him that most tourists will be put off by the fact the road is out and crazed kid gauntlet. He made some indications on our map so we would know what direction to go to arrive back on the highway without going back the way we came and he assured us it’s all paved. Shoot, that’s better than we had done. We had plenty of gas and it was still early so off we went into the unknown. Where the streets have no name…. Well, I’m sure the locals have a name for the street.
I’ll add photos soon. temporarily not working. Oh and Happy Birthday Sis!!!

“Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.”… I have to admit it sounded cool to be arriving in Morocco via Casablanca. It’s famous! It has a whole movie about it. But in reality we chose that route solely because it was where the cheapest flight from Rome landed. Our research quickly told us why the cheap flight went there. Our flight was over an hour late so we landed after midnight. Luckily we had told the rental car company the flight number and paid a little extra for a late pickup. To them in turned into a really late pickup because we also waited for our bags that never came and then had to fill out the forms. The guy was not too happy but he was still there and we did get our nice mid 90s Renault Clio. So we took to the road and had maps to get us to the hotel hopefully in no time.
View from the hotel in Casablanca

The first obstacle we ran into was tollbooth on the highway from the airport to Casablanca. Of course we had never heard about this in any research and our late arrival made it impossible to change money to Moroccan Dirhams in the airport. I didn’t even see an ATM. The tollbooth operator did not look like he was going to give as we pleaded with him to take Euros for the toll (the toll was equivalent to about 50 cents). Finally he gave in and took our 5 euro note and gave us pretty exact change in Dirhams. That was a rough start. Going into Casablanca very late the streets were empty which was exactly what we needed to help us find the hotel. We kept heading in the right direction but it just didn’t seem right. We finally stopped to ask a security guard (turned out he was guarding the Spanish Embassy) and we were very close and on the right road.
At the hotel it was nice that we had some dirhams because there was a guy out front that needed 10 dirhams (for reference 11 dirhams is about 1 Euro) for “security” for the car until morning. Hmmm I thought the doorman for the hotel, which was right there, could take care of security but it’s only a euro.
In the morning we started off early as our destination was Marrakech for 2 nights and we didn’t want to waste part of the day stuck in the traffic in Casablanca. This worked like a charm and in no time we on the highway to Marrakech. There were many fields of mature grain on both sides of the highway that eventually changed to drier bare land. The High Atlas Mountains appeared slowly on the horizon. We pulled over several times to take pictures of towns by the side of the road.

The picture below is the one I call “The town by the rock”.

We arrived in Marrakech and found our hotel very easily. It was on THE main road in the new part of the town. The difference from Casablanca was night and day. Casablanca was dirty, beat up, closed, and scary. Marrakech was nice, pinkish buildings, clean, open, and HOT!! It was around 35C (95F!!!) so we were in love with our cool hotel room but still for some odd reason we immediately left and went for a walk to the Medina (the old walled in part of town) which was about a 30 minute walk in the hottest part of the day. We went to the main piazza and then into the souks (or markets). I’m not a big fan of salesmen so didn’t appreciate being approached to buy stuff but I was mentally prepared for it. It was booth after booth of silver tea pots, shoes (babushkas!), rugs, and other touristy type things.
The photo below is of the main piazza in the Medina with the hot sun out.

I didn’t mean to get the guy on the scooter but I’m glad I did. It’s important that I note the VERY real difference in scooters of Morocco and the scooters of Italy. In Italy there is a huge variety of sizes, types, colors, etc. Generally you think of Vespa when you think of Italy but anyone who has been here knows there is a mind-boggling array of scooters including the new Mp3 was has two front wheels side by side and one back wheel. In Morocco almost everyone has the same scooter that you see this guy on. There are all of “quasi-bike” kind, that’s how I refer to them. They all have a very small 2 cycle engine that putts along with no real acceleration and a top speed of maybe 50-60 kmh. I also love it because they have that very sickly sounding horn that you hear all the time in Morocco. I just thought it was amazing how many people have the same scooter, even the same color, black. I’m sure there’s business reason behind it. I think a French company that was very influential in Morocco makes it. They are everywhere in the bigger cities. Occasionally you’ll see them in the middle of nowhere and you know that person has a long ride ahead of them.
That reminds of another huge difference between Morocco and Italy. Morocco is a very hot, dry, sunny country like the south of Italy. So I was very amazed at how nobody seemed to be wearing sunglasses. I think this was a big sign that you were a tourist. None of the locals were wearing sunglasses and you know it’s not because they are too poor because there are tons of cheap sunglasses that they could get your hands on. I really think it’s just not ingrained in the culture like it is here. I remember sitting in the Rome airport when we got back and laughing at all the people with sunglasses on, inside the airport. I’m thinking to myself, “Yep, I’m back in Italy!” In Morocco you see shepherds by the side of the road that are outside all day in the sun and no sunglasses.
Marrakech was easily one of the highlights of the trip. Our bags finally caught up to us there and with that celebrated with a big dinner in the piazza in the Medina. That was a one of THE highlights for us because it was so unique and Moroccan. Sure there were tons of tourists but we made a point to look and see where Moroccans were eating. For those of you who haven’t been there, the main piazza in the Medina fills up with temporary food stalls. It’s like a big festival every night. There are areas for certain types of food and they all have temporary tables and chairs next to their “cart”. The cart is what the cook on or what they used to bring all the food to the piazza. Our first stop was at the one of the snail soup stalls on the far right of the piazza. In this case the cart is also the table so you just sit on one of the stools around the cart. There is only dish and one guy so he just wants to know if you want a big or little bowl of snail soup. Now I’ll admit that I didn’t have the snail soup because I don’t like the texture of snails. I did try the broth and it was pretty spicy. Moroccan food in general didn’t seem real spicy like I imagined. I think I had just assumed and stereotyped it as spicy based what you see and hear. The next place (stall #15, I highly recommend) had a more normal soup that I loved. It was dirt-cheap and there were only locals eating there, and us, of course. The people were friendly and not in the pushy salesmen type of way. I think it was 6 dirhams for a bowl of soup. I should have had two! Then we went on to a stall where they had tripe and lentils. I don’t like tripe but I love lentils so that’s what I had and again spicy but not real spicy or spicy hot. Our next stop was a more touristy and pushy salesmen type of stall but I wanted to try the roasted meat on sticks. It wasn’t that great but I’m glad I tried it. They had other things there like olives and bread that you get everywhere in Morocco. I guess I explain the bread as the shape of small thick pizza. It’s pretty good and came with every meal in Morocco. We were told that families in Morocco prepare the dough at home and then take it to communal bakeries where it’s baked. That makes perfect sense because there were many times I saw kids carrying wooden boards with towels covering the dough ready to be cooked or the freshly baked bread. I could see that was the kid’s job. The mom saying, “Take this down and get it cooked, then we’ll eat.” At the end we went back to #15 for dessert. They had fried dough that was covered in honey that was very good. By this time old number 15 was packed (and a few tourists were there) but still it was mainly Moroccans. They welcomed us as they had remembered us from earlier and we found a seat close to the stall and the huge bowl of bubbling soup. We enjoyed the desert and a glass of mint tea as well as some very small talk with the locals and the cook. Then we drifted around the piazza listening to the musicians and witnessing the acts of skill. In the end we were very happy with what we eat and how we ate. The other night we searched out a restaurant from the Lonely Planet guide but it turned out to be way too “new” and not Moroccan so we stopped in a place we had passed on the way. It was good and local. It was a little expensive but I think it was because it was such a nice setting. It was called something like “the garden of peace” in French. And you ate outside in a garden of trees and fountains. It was very nice and relaxing and very different than the other night.
Then we had another early start as we were driving to Ait Ben Haddou and maybe to Ouarzazate depending on where we found a hotel. The hotels in Casablanca and Marrakech were reserved ahead of time but the next 3 nights would be random search for a hotel. We had a hotel reserved in Fes, so we knew when we had to be there. The rest was whatever we found. The road into the mountains was awesome. I already posted a photo near the highest point. It was full of great views and people selling geodes. I had no prior knowledge that they were common in this area. We stopped more than once to admire the view and hassle over a geode. In the end we each bought about two geodes per person. I hope for a good price.

Going to the Spice Piazza. Well it’s called something like that.

Buying Spice!!!