Moroccan Countryside

November 13th, 2017

As I mentioned before, our itinerary included something like 4 days that were very full of driving during our week in Morocco.  Normally, I would consider it very undesirable to spend so much of a vacation on the road, but it worked out well for a number of reasons.  First, we were not doing the driving, Ibrahim was, so the normal stress associated with driving and navigating in a foreign country was eliminated.  Second, we were in a decent-sized van with comfortable seats, so we were not cramped.  Third, we got to stay in a number of interesting and quite varied hotels/camps.  Fourth, we got to see so much of Morocco, from mountain passes to gorges, from sand dunes to oases, from ancient cities to modern resorts to tiny villages to abandoned fortresses.  Mohamed and Ibrahim planned our itinerary to include beautiful roads and so many interesting stops along the way.

Some pictures from the Atlas Mountains:

Nomad caravan

A gorge popular with rock climbers

You can see rock climbers if you look carefully

A scarf vendor near the mouth of the gorge

A very windy road we drove up

Just a pretty mountain

Some pictures of abandoned casbahs and ancient cities:

View of Dades Valley from our hotel at dusk

Abandoned and decaying casbah in a valley

We toured this casbah.  It is very picturesque, so, not surprisingly, many
movies and TV series have been filmed here, including Gladiator,
Lawrence of Arabia, and Game of Thrones.

A view from the top

Another casbah that has been turned into something like a
living museum, like Sturbridge Village.

Here is its exterior

The largest palm plantation in Morocco

A few other interesting stops along the way:

We stopped for a concert in a small town of former slaves from sub-Saharan
Africa.  (Slavery existed in Morocco until about 50 years ago.)

A parking lot for pack animals at a regional market

A delicious meal served to us at our guide's mother's home---Berber "pizza,"
peanuts, dates, and zmita, a mixture of roasted flour, nuts, spices, and sugar.

And here we are just goofing off after hours on the road:

Our Day in Fes

November 8th, 2017

We finished up our trip with a day and a half in Fes.  Having already been to Marrakech, I expected something similar:  medieval walled city, narrow cobbled roads, lots of motor scooters, trash on the streets, women grabbing your arm to apply henna against your will, that sort of thing.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Fes had a very different vibe:  more laid back, less touristy, a little wealthier and cleaner and quieter.  Also, there was very much a focus on all of the local handicrafts, of which they are justifiably proud.  I listed a number of the artisans and craftsmen that we visited during my post on the tile factory.  Here are photos from several of them, with a few photos of just Fes thrown in.  

a very narrow road in Fes

the dyeing district

a square with many metal workers

a shop with handmade perforated shades and other metal work

our guide talking to a friend of her that we ran into

an old hotel that had been converted to a bookshop

wall decoration at what claimed to be the oldest university in the world
(I would say it was more like a divinity school because it was only for studying the Quran.)

the school's courtyard

the girls peeking out from a dorm window

another hotel, this one converted into a woodworking museum

an underground room full of wood chips for feeding a fire to heat water for the hammam

the tannery

transporting the previously tanned leather

detail from our hotel, Dar Fes Medina

another detail from our hotel

view from our hotel's roof deck

Rebar Index

November 7, 2017

Driving around Morocco, we were surprised to see so many buildings under construction.  A few were obviously active worksites with no current occupants.  A number had occupants but were clearly unfinished.  A large fraction just seemed to be partially-built structures that had been mothballed or abandoned.  One could easily spot these buildings by the rebar sticking up out of the top of the structure, setting the stage for another floor to be built on top of the current one.  Sometimes we would see entire neighborhoods with rebar sticking out of the top of every house.  

 

We asked our guide Mohamed about this.  He explained that building costs were high, even if you were providing your own labor.  It cost a lot to buy the bricks, wood, concrete, etc.  So people just built little by little, as they were able to obtain the money to do so.

Of course, our first thought was "lack of a functioning credit market."  So I decided that there was a financial opportunity for someone to step in and create a market where one did not exist.  And how would you identify exactly where the financial opportunity existed?  You could create an index of number of in-process building projects as a fraction of the entire building stock and call it, maybe, the Rebar Index.  (There is a quranic prohibition against charging interest, which I suppose is the main reason that these markets don't exist, but I understand that it's pretty easy to develop financial structures that mimic the charging of interest in those cases.)

Moroccan Sahara

November 6th, 2017

Our good friends Mike and Ahava visited Morocco some time ago, and, as we have done for previous vacations, we followed their sage advice in planning our trip.  In particular, they recommended hiring a guide and driver, doing so from Rough Tours, and making sure to visit the Sahara.  Right on all counts.  We got so much more out of the trip than we would have if we had just rented a car and done it ourselves.  Also, we were very happy with Rough Tours, both in the planning stages with Youssef and with our guide Mohamed and our driver Ibrahim.  They were professional, knowledgeable, and patient.  Finally, the trip to the Sahara was a real highlight.  

town where we stopped near the edge of the Sahara

We arrived at the edge of a large area of sand dunes a bit before sunset.  We hopped on waiting camels (dromedaries, actually, I guess) and rode for about an hour and a half over the dunes to a camp, watching the lengthening shadows play on the dunes and the colors of the sunset reflect off of the sand.  When we arrived at the camp, mint tea was waiting for us.  We drank and chatted with some of the people manning the camp as well as a couple from Germany and two friends from Italy.  Darkness settled and we went inside the main tent for a delicious meal of chicken tagine, salads, fruits, and Moroccan bread.  We had brought some wine, which we shared with the others.  (The Germans were very grateful.)  After dinner, one of the staff built a campfire while others started playing guitar and drums and singing Moroccan folk songs.  The fire was welcome, as the desert cooled quickly after the sunset.  The stars were amazing---the Milky Way was quite visible and we counted several shooting stars.  You don't see stars like this in either Paris or Boston.

We were awoken a bit before dawn in the morning to head back across the dunes, watching as the sun rose, into town.

Kate all ready

our rides waiting for us

Kate and Caroline

lengthening shadows

the colors of the desert

Caroline

dunes as far as the eye can see

our caravan met up with two others---we're the last four

a busy intersection

sunset

Morocco is a big country, and adding in the Sahara trip in addition to Marakkech and Fes meant that we did a lot of driving, but the driving ended up being really interesting and quite relaxing.  I'll talk more about other things we did on the road in Morocco in later posts.

Moroccan Tilework

November 5th, 2017

On our one full day in Fes, we were taken to see many of the local craftsmen and artisans at work.  One of the places we went was a tile factory, where they made thrown and slab pottery and tiles.  They hand painted many pieces, hand cut tiles as well, and created beautiful mosaics.  Of course, so many of the places we went around Morocco had stunning tilework and mosaics, not just the tile factory.  Here are some of my favorites.  

a playful pattern of squares and trapezoids

recently unearthed room where royalty had been buried hundreds of years ago

another part of same complex---each of those rectangles in a grave

amazingly intricate---each tile hand-cut

maybe my favorite---I love the subtle variations in green as well as
organically-flowing pattern

sink basin for sale at tile factory

table-top at tile factory

staircase at tile factory

just a random floor, but, again, I love the variations in the green
as well as the sky blue tiles inset

in our Fes hotel, Dar Fes Medina

table top on the deck of our Fes hotel

floor of palace in Marrakech

I tend to like the more organic tile patterns, but if Anna had been there with us, I'm sure she would have preferred the more geometric ones, in particular the tiling patterns with regular polygons.  (She feels strongly enough about the subject that when I ordered penny tiles for our bathroom renovation a few years ago, she said, "Mom, I can't believe you actually had a plane to tile and chose geometric shapes that don't tile the plane!"  I don't think she's quite forgiven me.)