Morocco

As we leave this magical country, there’s some things that we will take with us…
The scenery: there’s a constant among the many fantastic sights we’ve seen – mountains. We’ve either been in the thick of them or sighting them in the distance. Rock is one of the hardest substances known to man, yet these mountains have been eroded and shaped by the weather gods over a mind-boggling time, to form what is now Morocco. Even in the desert, we were amongst mountains of sand.
Speaking of the desert, the Sahara sand was the finest sand I’ve ever had run through my fingers. It flowed like water, as though under some mystical spell that brings it to life. It was extraordinary, again created by the overwhelming passage of time.
Water: Abundant in the north, scarce in the south. Roads invariably cross rivers by dipping down into the river bed and crossing it with a concreted section. There’s no need to build a bridge when the river never flows. It hardly ever rains, but then again, there is always evidence of massive water movement at some time in the past, judging by the size of the river beds and flood plains, and the massive gorges and canyons. There are dams in the north that hold back vast volumes of water for irrigation and hydro power. The south-north contrast is noticeable.
Animals: Cats are everywhere throughout the country. They are tolerated but not domesticated. Their job is to keep the rodent vermin under control, and they do it very well - we saw no evidence of mice or rats anywhere. Storks are everywhere throughout the country, creating huge nests anywhere that’s high and out of human reach. Donkeys are common on both country roads and cities. Known as the medina taxi (a horse is a medina Mercedes), donkeys are an essential part of simple Moroccan life.  Sheep and goats are always grazing at the roadside, under the watchful eye of their shepherd. Your heart is always in your mouth as you drive past such a flock - all it takes is for one to break away from the flock and run in front of oncoming traffic.
Houses: people live in houses of concrete blocks or mud and straw, and most of them are only half finished. The bottom floor is inhabited, and the floors above are empty with reinforcing steelwork poking through the concrete framework. We learned that people don't pay tax while their house is under construction. So, they never finish. Aesthetics are never a consideration.
Satellite dishes: In Morocco, it only takes a once-off payment of 50 Euro to buy and install a satellite dish on your roof, to give you have access to hundreds of European and African channels. We saw the biggest concentration in Fez, where the numbers of dishes at roof level could only be described as a forest. Here’s a recommendation for a good business opportunity – become a satellite dish technician in Morocco.
The rubbish: sadly very disturbing in country areas. Plastic bags are like snow on the ground. Ugly, worrying, and very eco-unfriendly. 
The King: Mohammed VI is obviously a very popular monarch, after 17 years on the throne. Well educated, very wealthy and only 52 years of age, he could be described as progressive with some of his reforms. His picture is everywhere – shops, cafes and hotels, where he is either in a suit or at play with his young family. We only ever heard endearing comments about him.
Finally, the people: Always warm, friendly, welcoming … and Muslim. If only those people around the world who have come to distrust Islam in recent years, could experience the Moroccan hospitality and kindness, they would realise their folly. Yes, Moroccans are different – most women cover their heads, and do all the work; men only socialise with men and pray five times a day. Most live simple lives, doing whatever it takes to survivie, but they are eager to help, do not discriminate on race or creed, and will greet you with a smile.

Fez, northern Morocco

Boumalne is a little town on the edge of a barren plateau in the middle of Morocco. Nothing much happens there, but it has some very decent 4 and 5 star hotels. When we stayed in one of them, there were several other tourists also doing so. In fact busloads of them. The reason why this place is so popular is two nearby gorges – Dades and Togra, and we did the loop to see them both. Those poor tourists would not have seen what we saw, because there’d be no way their immense buses could have negotiated the tight corners.
The Dades Gorge begins with a road running beside the small Dades River at the bottom of a narrow canyon. Soon we began to climb up the canyon wall, leaving the river far below. After a half-dozen zigs and the same number of zags, the hairpin bends leads us to the top of the canyon, where we stop at a strategically located café. Looking down makes you draw your breath, and you can’t help but hold it for a few seconds. Two wonders comes to mind – how on earth has Mother Nature created this, and how on earth have the Moroccans built that road that scales a sheer rock face?
Before moving on, there was a group consensus to recognise the date, and we all stood together while looking out over this magnificent scenery. I was quite relieved to be able to  remember the Anzac Oath (“They shall not grow old, as those who are left grow old …”), meaning that I didn’t yet have Alzheimers, and someone finished with “Lest we forget” before we had a minute’s silence. So a bunch of Aussies and Kiwis stood as one and had their own little private Anzac Day service in the middle of Morocco. The moment could be best described as poignant.
Further up into the gorge, the roads turn to gravel and become quite rough, but we soldiered on, and didn’t regret it. Looking from above, huge hands of mountain stretched out its fingers to create hundreds of separate canyons of rock. We’d never seen anything like it, and again we tried to comprehend how many eons it took to form this terrain. We eventually reach the Todra Gorge, which created by the Todra River, and like the Dades, this river is surely too small to have created this gigantic and freakish canyon. Sheer rock walls on both sides are only some ten metres apart and tower 160 metres above us. It was understandable why these gorges attract so many people from around the world. They were both incredible.
With just a few days left for our Moroccan journey, we have continued to head north, and the countryside has changed from rocky barren plains to lush green fields, orchards and forests. We are still surrounded by mountains; they either flank us directly or appear on the horizon in the distance. We have made it to Fez, Morocco’s second-largest city after Casablanca, and we spent the afternoon exploring its medina. This is believed to be the largest city area free of any motor vehicles, and supposedly contains 11,000 laneways. We found it more interesting than the medinas of Marrakesh and Essaouira, remarkably clean, and vibrant with shops of every kind. It has the oldest university on the world (859AD). Its historical significance is recognised by UNESCO, listing the medina as a world heritage site, and there were many 13th Century buildings being renovated, funded by UNESCO. We saw, and smelled, the famous leather tanneries, as well as hand-made ceramic tile and carpet weaving factories. We learned that Australia helped Fez’s ailing carpet industry a few decades ago by donating some fine micron merino wool.

Sahara desert, central Morocco

Following Mike to our Agdz riad, we were wondering what he was leading us into. Off the main street into a small laneway, then into an even smaller alley that the van was only able to negotiate due to Xavier’s precision driving. Maybe a centimetre to spare from both side mirrors. Through a high double gate into a small car park, we then walked through a door into the hotel grounds. Pathways wound their way around resplendent rose gardens, and a central fountain with its own resident tortoise. The owner was an ex-pat Frenchman who had renovated his old place by adding rooms and daubing them in the traditional adobe mud and straw. It was such a surprise to find down the alley to nowhere.
There have been several memorable days on this trip. The day after leaving Agdz will be one of the most memorable. Our destination was the large town of Arfoud. We stopped at a very opulent hotel called the Xaluca, but didn’t check in – this will be our accommodation for tomorrow night. Instead, we each filled a day pack with some overnight essentials, and stored the rest of our luggage in Xaluca’s storage room. We all piled into three 4WDs, were driven about an hour out of Arfoud across a very barren and rocky plain (no roads) to another hotel, behind which we could see large orange sand dunes.
Waiting for us out the back were camels, one for each of us, tended by men wearing traditional blue Berber robes and colourful head scarves. They helped us mount our camels, and we headed toward those large orange sand dunes. Within minutes, we’d been enveloped by hills of sand, and we were in the Sahara desert. Rising to the top of each dune revealed a sea of other dunes disappearing into the distance, indeed it was like being in a mountainous sea of orange water, frozen in time like a huge photograph. It was after 6pm, and the setting sun was changing the hues of the sand around us. The sheltered sides became darker in shadow, while the sunny sides became a deeper red-shade of orange. It was an ever-changing alien world.
Our destination a couple of hours later was an oasis, quite literally, at the foot of a mountain of sand. We socialised beneath an open-air canopy until being called into the dining room, ah – dining tent, for the delightful Moroccan meal that our camel drivers had prepared over a gas stove. The lighting was from solar panels, and water was from a well that only needed a depth of three meters to reach the water table. The evening finished with our Berber hosts playing drums for us, singing in their traditional Berber language about living in the desert, just as their ancestors had done for thousands of years. It was an honour for us to be invited to also bang a drum with them. It was nearly midnight when we retired to our own tent made from camel hair and a carpet floor. A full moon made the middle of the night look like a cloudy day, and it was eerie how much light was shining from the heavens above.
I woke the next morning just in time to see the sun rise. The actual event only took 30 seconds for the entire sun to poke its head above the distant mountain range, and then to be fully visible. The light, however, made the desert an ever changing picture show for an hour. It will be something I’ll never forget.
In contrast, we will quickly forget our tender behinds from riding the camels. They don’t believe in stirrups in Morocco – we should apply economic sanctions until they do. We also saw hundreds of others doing as we were, and of course they all require hotels to stay in. No wonder that Arfoud is  supposedly the tourist gateway to the Sahara desert.

Foum Zguid, central Morocco

Tafraoute is obviously in a strict Muslim area. Yesterday we had lunch at small hillside village, with a short main street of the usual shops and a couple of rows of houses in the back streets behind them. Sitting and observing whilst waiting for lunch, we did not see any women. Not a single female walked the main street. Hundreds of men tended their shops, did deliveries, walked and chatted with each other. The one-sided social populace was disheartening, but then again quite rare in our travels. We guessed that the women folk were housebound doing the chores, but they must’ve been around because we saw plenty of young children in the streets (all boys). The lunch of tagine and lentils from the tiny cafe, by the way, was delicious. It’s quite amusing for us to observe the chaos that we create when twelve hungry tourists rocking up to these small village cafes. They are never organised to cope for such a sudden influx, and the first thing they all do is rush nextdoor to the butcher to buy fresh meat and the baker for bread. We benefit, of course, by having the freshest lunch possible.
Leaving Tafraoute to travel further into the south-east of the country, we passed through more mountain passes. This is getting quite ridiculous. Even the “World on Wheels” travel notes for this tour apologises for Day 11 – “Sorry, but more picturesque riding on great roads, through more mountains”. I’m getting a callous on my right index finger from the constant pressing of my camera shutter. This scenery is beyond words, but I’ll try.
The morning to Igherm passes through, and over, another mountain range. We spend some time crossing a valley floor, before ascending a steep incline in twisting curves and then descending in similar fashion. There are mountains beside us that risk a cricked neck to look at their peaks. Almost close enough to reach out and touch, giant rocks rise up from the valley floor, in sharp relief from the rising morning sun. There are more mountains behind these ones, and still more beyond them, so we can see a three-dimensional painting of ranges that seem to go on forever.
In the afternoon, the landscape settles down to become a flat valley floor with steep cliffs on either side. The only vegetation is the occasional tree, about man-height, growing from an obviously sandy soil. The barren rocky terrain has given way to a barren sandy one. Soon we see a herd of wild camels, and we know that we’re in place that’s totally foreign. We stay the night in what must be termed an oasis in this harsh environment – a hotel about 5 kms outside the small village of Foum Zguid, and it has a swimming pool. While our brains try to decipher how this can be, our swim is oh so delightful in this thirty-degree heat.
The next day, tour guide Mike tells us that our next night’s stay, Agdz, is only an hour’s drive away, and that’s not proper use of valuable daylight hours, so let’s take the long way round and explore. What starts out as the shortest travel day becomes the longest of the trip so far – nearly 400 kms.  From Foum Zguid to Amzraou, Ouiad Drias, and finally lunch in a tiny village called Mhamid. Which is just as well because this is where the road ends – beyond this village is desert. Just over the hill, about 20 kms away, is the Algerian border. This is an oasis on the edge of the Sahara, and its café had delicious chicken kebabs, fresh bread, real orange juice, and WiFi. It was hard to believe. Our driver Javier described it quite aptly as the end of the world.

Tafraoute, western Morocco

Further south from Essaouira finds us in even warmer weather. The mighty Atlantic Ocean is to our right for the whole way. At the halfway point of our tour, we stay the night in Mirleft with a fantastic view of the ocean, then venture to Sidi Ifni, and inland to Guelmim, which is as far south and west as we will travel. We then start heading north and east to Tafraoute, for the return leg of our journey, passing through more mountain passes and rural country that is hilly, dry, rocky and barren. I say “rural” because we still see farmers tending flocks of sheep and goats by the roadside, or tilling the ground with hand-held implements. Dry stone fences are fashioned out of rocks (there’s no shortage of them in these parts). Houses are simple and basic, some are even tents, for we are in Berber country. A fascinating ethnic group indigenous to northern Africa for over a thousand years, Berbers are now mainly in Morocco and neighbouring Algeria. Famous soccer player and current coach of Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane, was born to Berber parents in Algeria.
There is, however, absolutely no water here. We cross many bridges over non-existent rivers, where it looks like no water has flowed in years. We’re told that the rivers come in winter, fed by the seemingly endless procession of mountains around us. Most of these bridges have had their roadway bitumen destroyed and washed away, leaving them as dusty, rough patches of gravel.
Country folk only seem to do what’s necessary to live. They only grow plants to either eat or sell to eat. You never see anything ornamental growing, and therefore small rural towns are dust bowls. Tendering a garden around your home is not a good use of Morocco time. Houses don’t have fences, and herded animals eat grass from the side of the road; after all this is free feed. We see many flocks of about thirty sheep and goats being herded by a single man, sometimes a woman, grazing by the side of the road, where greenery seems to grow more readily that in parched paddocks. All the shepherds must do is stop their animals becoming road kill.
Why collect your rubbish when you can throw it into ditches? The countryside is adorned with decorated plants like its Christmas, but the decorations are empty plastic bags that have been blown by the wind from roadside rubbish dumps. Strewn household garbage in rural parts has become a disturbing regularity for us. At least bigger towns and cities have clean streets, parks and gardens. We even see town workers clearing and sweeping streets. It’s a pity those in isolated communities don’t do so as well.

Essaouira, western Morocco

As we bid farewell to Marrakesh, there’s many thoughts running through my mind. Graham Nash’s classic song from1969 “Marrakesh Express” is one. “Catch the train from Casablanca goin’ south, blowing smoke rings from the corner of my ma-ma-ma-ma-mouth.” Billy Thorpe’s final album to the world, “Tangier”, released a few years after his death, was inspired and recorded in Morocco, and the first song is entitled “Marrakesh”. As Billy’s song says, with children at play under the Marrakesh moon with nothing particular to do, we all shared some tasty Moroccan red wine and contemplated on the last two days.
Outside the medina is like any other modern city in the world, in fact it reminded me of St Kilda in Melbourne. But the old city inside the medina walls is special, with either large open spaces (such as Jamma El-fna) or very narrow laneways. They all contain tiny shops selling anything and everything. You walk down the middle of the laneways at your own peril, for small motor bikes shoot past at considerable speed. How they avoid collisions is amazing, but they are oh so very annoying – you must remember to keep right. The smell of two-stroke fuel reminds me of a lawn mower; indeed the engines in these motor bikes are no bigger than a lawnmower.
There are beggars in the streets. Most women wear hard scarves, some have their face fully covered. Men gather with other men, women with women. The sexes only mix as young families with children. Tourists are obvious, especially the young women who wear very little. I think it’s a pity they don’t pay respect to the local culture and cover up just a little bit more. Maybe I’m being a prude, but I want to respect these kind, friendly locals.
The medina is a maze of streets and laneways. Finding our hotel would’ve been interesting if it wasn’t for another “fixer”. Coming into Marrakesh, stopping at our first seriously busy intersection for traffic lights, there was a knock at my passenger side window. A guy wearing shabby clothes and riding a decrepit old motorbike that should’ve been in a museum, spoke to Javier in Arabic. Harvey replied in Spanish, and the guy immediately switched to Spanish, and asked which hotel. He’d seen our motorbikes, and the name on the van, and surmised correctly. On Javier's reply, the fixer said “Follow me” and took off. Javier looked at us, shrugged, and proceeded to follow. We eventually made it to the riad, and the fixer earned his tip because our hotel was surrounded by road surface works and closed streets, and would’ve been a nightmare to find. These are resourceful people, and are clever at recognising a potential business opportunity.
In the medina we saw snake charmers, horse-drawn carriages, street musicians, and hawkers flogging mobile phones or selfie sticks or watches. We heard the call-to-prayer several times a day, and Jamma El-Fna is surrounded several minarets attached to mosques. And cats. Everywhere in Morocco there are cats, and their population swells in big cities. They may be feral and homeless, although we saw several shopkeepers provide a bowl of water, but the cats are never fed. I imagine this is because they help keep the mouse and rat population at bay.
Next stop was Essaouira ("essa-where-ah"), a fishing town on the Atlantic coast in Morocco’s west. I’d heard a lot about Essaouira from the legends of 1960s rock. In fact our riad hotel had pictures of Jimi Hendrix on the wall in their restaurant. Essaouira also has a medina containing the old city, and our hotel is right in the middle amongst narrow laneways and a myriad of shops. It’s a short walk down to the wharf where the fishing boats had just come in and men were cleaning their catch in readiness for that night’s restaurant trade. All we had to do was follow the sea birds – a million of them hovered overhead in anticipation of some fishy entrails. What the birds didn’t get, the cats were cleaning up. We were careful not to step in discarded fish guts as we walked past some weird looking creatures for sale, many in the process of getting sliced and diced by gritty old men with facial stubble but steady hands. The smell was overpowering, and we didn’t hang around for long.
Today, heading further south, strangely (for us Taswegians) getting closer to the equator, and warmer.

Marrakesh, Morocco

Riding through yet more Atlas gorges and canyons on our way to Marrakesh, it gets me thinking that there’s always people by the side of the road doing nothing at all, probably thinking to themselves “This is a nice place to sit, I might stay here for a few minutes”, which means a couple of hours in Morocco time. Then, “I'll cross the road to sit under that tree over there. Oh look, here comes a white van while I’m still half way across. It’s got a Spanish driver and two Australian passengers. But I’m in no hurry because I’m on Morocco time, so they will have to wait for me.” And so poor Javier has to avoid people dawdling across the road, for they’re in no hurry. Neither is the farmer herding his sheep along the road, or the horse-drawn cart with the whole family on board. They are all on Morocco time. So we have learned that if the restaurant says your food will be ready in 5 minutes, they mean 15. If breakfast is for 7:30, expect it at 8. If you ask a Moroccan for the time, they look up at the sun and answer “half past April”.
I’ve been to cities that never close down (ref: Peter Allen), but I’ve never been anywhere like Marrakesh. After just a few hours here, Marrakesh can only be described as a chaotic, frantic frenzy of people, cars, motorbikes, bicycles and donkeys. Everyone is going somewhere in a hurry, in contrast to the last few days. The old part of the city is called the “Medina”, and is located behind a wall that surrounds it. Our hotel is the middle of the Medina, and is therefore surrounded by the aforementioned bedlam. Just to venture outside the front door is like entering some strange ceremonial pageant of a very foreign culture. Our hotel is another Dar or Riad, what used to be a grand house is now a quaint hotel. Rooms are small, but decorated in traditional Moroccan architecture. It just adds to the Moroccan experience.
At night we strolled along to the Jamma el-Fna, an old town square that becomes a nightly throng of people seeking a meal or a bargain. Nothing has prepared us for Jamma el-Fna. It is a throbbing mass of humanity, thousands upon thousands of people of every nationality, crowded together within a few hundred square meters. The crazy cacophony of sound is broken by the rhythms of street bands singing in Arabic to the playing of simple yet pulsating percussive music. Street stalls sell food of every description. You are hassled to come spend your money at their stall, and if you have a joke with them, they will laugh with you, shake your hand, and move onto their next victim.
I can see why Marrakesh has inspired so many artists, particularly rock musicians, since the 1960s. This is an exciting place. And we have a rest day from the tour to explore it.