MARRAKECH, MOROCCO

The train from Rabat to Marrakech conveniently leaves at 9 a.m. so I didn’t have to get up too early. I went downstairs to grab a coffee and a small sandwich then packed up my stuff and went down to check out. My 100 Dh room was now 120 Dh according to the man standing next to the beautiful cross-eyed woman. To prove it he showed me where someone had written 120 in pencil in his book next to my room number. The woman apologized to me, but it meant that my $12 room was really $14.50 so it was not worth getting crazy over although it is still annoying when people do that to you. I walked the few blocks down the main street to the train station, bought a second-class ticket for Marrakech for $12 and got on board.

This time the train was crowded so the compartment I chose ended up with 7 of the 8 seats filled for most of the journey. My legs take up at least half of the space between my seat and the one across from me so it wasn’t too comfortable. I thought about it then that the train costs about $2.50 per hour in Morocco and $3.75 per hour in First Class. From then on I would treat myself to the extra $1.25 per hour for added comfort. I arrived in Marrakech at around 2 p.m. and found a taxi in the parking lot of the train station. I had decided to stay at a cheap hotel in the Medina so I would be right in the middle of the action. I asked the taxi driver how much and he said 40 Dh ($4.50). Once again, that was a high price for the ride, but taxi drivers in airports and train stations know they can rip tourists off and usually get away with it. I don’t mind haggling on the price of a taxi if I know what a normal price should be, but upon arrival in any town it’s impossible to know for sure.

The taxi dropped me off next to a plaza and pointed at a row of buildings and told me the Hotel Ali was just 10 meters away. I finally found it about 80 meters away and it looked busy and atmospheric just like the book said. I asked to see a single room and the only one they had left was in the middle of the building with the windows overlooking the main interior stair well on the second floor. It was only $18 and came with tax, breakfast and unlimited use of their Internet café. I needed to do some writing work so that was the thing that sealed the deal. My cheap room in Rabat was just fine so I thought I would stay on the cheap again. The room itself wasn’t much bigger than the small bed inside of it, but it did have a shower along with a toilet. It wasn’t really a big deal, but I quickly discovered the walls were very thin and doors weren’t tight fitting. I could clearly hear any conversations of people going up or down the stairs and I’m sure if I had sneezed someone walking by outside would have said “Bless You.”

I used the Internet for a while, but with their computer. It was my first keyboard ever that was not even close to QWERTY. It had most of the characters I needed, but they were almost all in surprising places. Since I am a fast touch-typist, it made it all the more difficult to actually have to hunt and peck each letter (the next morning I brought my laptop down and hooked it up for a much more efficient session).

It was time to go see the famous and huge market square of Marrakech that was only 100 yards from my hotel. It’s basically a flat and empty town square in front of the craft markets that gets filled with different things at different times of the day. During the morning and afternoon most of it is occupied by snake charmers, storytellers, acrobats and trained monkey shows with a ring of Henna artists on the outside. I wasn’t too impressed at that point. The shows were well attended and the vast majority of each audience was locals. I walked up to a circle of people surrounding some loud drummers. When I looked into the center I could see a couple large snakes on the ground and also a small squirrel tied to the cage he probably was brought out in. The men were chanting and yelling and after just a few seconds a member of their group spotted my new face in the crowd and shoved a small snake in front of me telling me to photograph it. I didn’t want to so I started to leave then he shouted that I should give him money for the show. I actually did give him a Durham (13 cents) and walked away in shock. I never found out what happened to the squirrel, but I hope the little guy is okay.

Other audience circles surrounded dancing women, or at least they were dressed like women. They were covered head to toe in traditional clothing so you couldn’t see any skin at all. The dance they did was so awkward and masculine that I thought they might pull off their veils at the end to reveal they were men, but I didn’t stick around long enough to find out. In a few rows near the market entrance were these Disneyland-looking orange juice carts selling fresh squeezed OJ. There were about 20 of them all together and they were all identical. I decided to give one a try so I made eye contact with a juice guy and my glass was being poured for me as I was still walking up. I asked how much and he answered in Arabic, but charged me 8 Dh. They use real glasses there so you have to drink it there like it’s a bar. A minute later a woman came up and ordered a glass and was charged 3 Dh. I then noticed the sign hanging from the top of the cart and pointed to it. The vendor didn’t seem to understand my English language explanation, but he gave me back the 5 Dh that he overcharged me. The OJ was actually damn good and would cost around 20 Dh in a U.S. restaurant, but still being ripped off in broad daylight does not give you a good impression of a place.

I walked back into the market area to find small, labyrinthine, mostly covered streets with stalls filling up every inch selling one group of things or another. One thing that struck me quickly was that the stalls seemed to have a completely identical stock to one another. If they sold brass then they would have the exact same items displayed in the exact same way as the stall on either side. The leather people all had the same stuff and so forth. It’s hard not to get lost as you weave your way through the market area since there are no street names and sometimes the correct path is through a small doorway rather than the large and sunny alley going in the other direction. There are bread shops and other food stalls in every area, but otherwise you were in one distinct district or another.

Since there were very few tourists in town at the time in off-season I think I got more attention than I would have in high season. Each alley I would stroll down would be to a near constant chorus of Sir, Hey Friend, Amigo, Hello, and anything else that might get my attention. Occasionally it was in other languages, but I’m sure I look like someone who speaks English more than French or Spanish. It was annoying because it meant that if I would stop at a stall to look at something the merchant would soon be shadowing me with his best sales pitch. I had read the best strategy to get rid of unwanted attention is to just ignore them. Often I would find myself being accompanied by a young man offering to help me find a certain item and my first instinct was always to say “No, thank you” and keep walking. To my dismay I discovered the book was right again. When I said, “No, thank you” they would ask where I was from and just walk along side of me trying to get me into a conversation. I would explain I didn’t want to buy anything, but they just kept talking and suggesting things I might be looking for. I tried the silence thing and instead of 2 minutes of hassle they stop in about 15 seconds, especially if you never even acknowledge them and pretend you are deaf. Sometimes even the 15 seconds of hustle would overlap with another guy either before or after the first one. Over all it makes for a pretty miserable trip through the market.

When I was heading back to the square the sun was setting and that means the food stalls take over. Already the previously empty pavement was hosting dozens of large mobile restaurants on wheels. The food was coming out to be cooked and some of it looked good. By the time it is dark this famous food fair type thing occupies a huge area. I again found it very odd that of the 50 or so places that were now open for business, there were about 8 different types and each of those types was identical. Some small ones were serving a snail-based soup and had a huge kettle of snails in the center. Others had various salads and shish kebabs, others served sheep’s heads (still in tact and impossible to confuse with anything other than a sheep’s head), and others had a huge pot with a mystery soup inside.

It was time for dinner and I had been looking forward to trying this. When I read there were dozens of stalls I imagined ordering one small thing from one then eating it as I walked to the next, but these little places are run like sit down restaurants. As a tourist walks through the gauntlet of similar places, the employees of each one spread out and try to get their attention. Instead of a pleasant and sing-songy phrase like “Hot dogs, get your hot dogs here,” they rely on a more devious method. They have each mastered a certain type of call to try to get your attention that each time sounds fresh and startling. They call at you with the compassion and urgency of someone telling you your just-parked car is starting to roll down the hill, or that you just dropped your wallet. “Sir! Hello, excuse me (your car is rolling down the hill!).

Once you make eye contact they will greet you like an old family friend and all of them not otherwise occupied will pat you on the back and tell you how happy they are that you are stopping to look at their restaurant. Hands are shaken and free mint tea is promised. You are then steered over to sit on a bench seat along a big table, as close as possible to the last people to be corralled this way. Once you are bending down to sit, the entire group but one immediately turns their attention to the other passers-by and you are suddenly just a guy sitting on a bench to them. The one person left in front of you takes your main dish order and immediately begins filling the area in front of you with bread, olives, and a sauce that you didn’t order. If you sample any of them they charge you 5 Dh for each one, including the bland tomato-based sauce. Quickly the main course arrives and if it’s shish kebabs you get 6 skewers each with maybe 1 ounce of meat on it, and the server rejoins the other men trying to flag down new customers.

As you sit there eating, you are surrounded by the non-stop calling out to the current passers-by and you realize there will not be a peaceful bite during this meal. Perhaps it’s different in high season when there are many more diners and the same number of restaurants, but at this time of year it was very obnoxious and the food wasn’t special either. Of course when you ask for the bill you find out that every single thing but the mint tea is extra, so a 25 Dh shish kebab costs 40 Dh. I pulled out a 100 Dh note to pay and the man went to get my change. I saw him passing by several times doing other things and then I finally asked about my change again. He said it was coming. I am almost positive that is a trick they use hoping some people will just run out of patience and leave, which I am sure some people do once in a while. He finally arrived with my change and as he handed it to me he asked for a tip for the crew. He quickly specified 20 Dh would be good and I grudgingly gave him 10 Dh because I didn’t have any smaller change. That was the first time in my life that someone had begged for a tip from me.

I had only eaten a little at the first place and I wanted to try something else. I circled around a couple of times and settled on another place and I had an identical experience, which is why I can tell you this all with such certainty. I hoped the first place was just a weird one and that the hospitality would be more gracious at the second, but it was exactly the same, including the tip begging part. I ordered a Pastilla at the second one, which is a sweet and savory pie and it was damn good, but in that atmosphere it was hard to enjoy anything. My high opinion of Morocco was fading fast.

The next morning I did some computer work and then decided I would forget the previous day and start fresh. I also checked out of the first hotel and into a far nicer and nearly twice as expensive hotel 5 minutes away. Instead of $18 per night I would have to pay $30, but I got a much better room with a large bed and a TV with Arabic and French channels on it. After I moved my gear I decided to walk into the new city, which was the other direction down Ave Mohammed V from the markets. It was about a 20-minute walk into the center of town along the modern main street. The architecture of the old city was sort of exotic, but underwhelming and the look of the new city reminded me of a slightly rundown version Scottsdale, Arizona (where I lived for 5 years). The buildings are all an identical desert pink and most seem to have been built in the last 20 or 30 years, just like Scottsdale. Both cities have a unique deserty look, but Scottsdale is clean and organized.

Another odd thing was the roads themselves. They seem to have been designed to maximize pedestrian deaths. Intersections are mainly like traffic circles with incredibly wide lanes rounding off the corners. This means to cross you either have to walk way down the block to the narrow part of the street, or make a run for it across the super wide part. Running wouldn’t be so bad, but there are very few pedestrian walk signs and even the red and green lights for the drivers are low and at an angle the pedestrian can’t see. Where there are Walk and Don’t Walk signs, the green walking man stays solidly lit up until the red stopped man lights up, which is about 1 second before the cross traffic gets their green light. I had to run at every single intersection and hope the traffic would at least see me if they got the green while I was hung out to dry.

I took a nice photo of a new McDonalds in front of a mosque before going into the McDonalds. I always like to go in when I can to see the menu and prices and the mix of locals to tourists. Just as almost every other one I have seen, it was virtually all locals, the menu was mostly the same as in the States, but with a few mystery items, and the prices were bizarrely high. In Hong Kong the McDonalds are cheaper than in the U.S., but every other place I’ve been they are more expensive regardless of the cost of local food. A sandwich can be had in Morocco for about $1, but somehow a Big Mac was over $3 and a combo meal was almost $6. What gives? No wonder they sometimes get bombed as symbols of America even when they are locally owned.

The new city of Marrakech is boring. My guidebook describes the market square as an attraction you will return to “time and time again” and that was true mostly because the rest of the town offers so little to see. I walked all the way back past the market area to the far end of Mohammed V to see the other top tourist attraction in town, the Palace. There are mosques all over town, but non-Muslims are not welcome inside. I finally reached the Palace and paid my 10 Dh entrance. The Lonely Planet guide says what you will see are mostly ruins of a 15th century palace that was ravaged in 1696. I didn’t realize to what degree this was true until I got inside. Basically, it’s the large, crumbling walls that were once the outside of a palace and then remnants of some other walls inside, with sunken orange groves bizarrely in the center. At the far end you can go into some caves beneath the main floor, but it takes about one minute and you are out the other end. There are these huge storks that nest on the corners of the remaining walls and I found them interesting and took many photos of them.

I went back into the markets to see if there was anything I’d missed the first day, but there really wasn’t. I would walk as far as I could toward the edge of the walled city, but would then be trapped and have to turn around. I did the best I could to navigate by sunlight, but even then some of the alleys go in the right direction you are headed, then suddenly dead end. I kept passing groups of school kids who would ask for money or sometimes offer to guide me somewhere, for money. Even when I was lost I just kept confidently walking like I new where I was going, and it must have been hilarious for them to see me do this when they knew I was racing down a dead end alley. I finally found my way out of the markets and my experience with the shopkeepers was similar to the day before. I felt like Pam Anderson walking through a men’s prison being one of such a small number or tourists. I went back to my hotel and didn’t even go out for dinner that night as my system didn’t seem to be digesting properly. I went to bed early and woke up for the hotel breakfast.

My hotel was right next to the largest and most famous mosque in town. It's a 100 ft. high pink tower containing super powerful loudspeakers for the 5 times per day ‘Call To Prayer.’ The first call is at 5:40 a.m. and it honestly starts out like an air raid siren when the guy begins to chant the thing he chants. It gets a little choppy after that, and then morphs into the sound of a siren blended with one of Hitler’s speeches. It goes on for about a minute, then suddenly ends. Five times a day. It was fascinating, but was even more fascinating to me was the fact that every single person I saw ignored it. I eventually asked a few people and they all told me they are Muslims, but they really don’t practice it. If that’s the case, KNOCK OFF THOSE LOUD ANNOUNCEMENTS!

Anyone who is reading this must think that I had a terrible time in Marrakech and regretted even going. I admit that it was rough sailing in places and overall I was somewhat disappointed, but it was fascinating nonetheless. I was often laughing out loud while the guides and salespeople were harassing me, although it was usually at the absurdity of the whole thing. I am very glad that I went to Marrakech and I am sure it will be a good source of future conversations, but I really doubt I will ever return. I think I would recommend that people go if they have an adventurous spirit, but for most travelers I think the intensity nearly cancels out the pleasures. Next stop, Fez.

I checked out and went out to the curb to find a taxi to the train station. It would be a 30-minute walk, but the taxi ride should be cheap and fast enough that it’s worth it. A taxi pulled over to the curb for me, but there was a girl already in the front seat of the tiny car. He asked where I wanted to go and after I said the train station he told me to get in. About halfway there he pulled over to the curb and the girl got out and paid her fare. He kept going and I jumped out at the train station and gave him 20 Dh. This was more than the meter read so considering I shared the taxi I thought that was a good price. I like the efficiency of multiple passengers in a taxi if all consent to it.