Our first night in Morocco was in the city of Casablanca. We ventured out to dinner and ate at a nice little restaurant. We didn’t do too much, because we had an early appointment with our tour guide, Hicham.
The next morning, with Hicham, we toured the Hassan II Mosque, the third largest Masque in the world. It was beautiful, and we learned a lot about the Muslim religion. The tour guide took the girls into a roped off area. This was a special privilege, both because tourist generally not allowed and normalyl it is all men on the pray floor. The guide took their picture in from of the minbar, the podium where the imam lectures. After touring the mosque and some of the city, we drove to Rabat, the capital, for a quick tour of the city then headed to Fes, Morocco, where we stayed for three nights.
It was hot in Morocco. Our first day in Fes, it was really hot! Did I say it was hot? Anyway, we had our first experience with heat exhaustion/dehydration. After a long day of touring, we had dinner, and the girls went swimming. Brooklyn was suddenly finished, she said she had a stomach ache, so I took her to the room, leaving Chris and Kaleigh at the pool. A little later, she started throwing up. Then, it started coming out of both ends. We kept pushing her to drink water. Finally, she fell asleep, at least for a while. When she woke up she was on fire. Her entire body was hot. We started to get worried. We called the front desk to see if there was somewhere we could get a thermometer or if they had one. The hotel did not have thermometer and it was late, so all the pharmacies around were closed. Her entire body seemed to keep getting hotter and she was still throwing up and having diarrhea. We were getting even more worried. We started researching if there was a clinic we could take her too. During this time I had Chris help me get Brooklyn to a cool shower to try and cool her off. She sat in the bottom of the tub letting the cool water just run over her as she sipped on a bottle of water. It took a while, but she started holding down some water and her body seemed to cool off a bit. As she felt better we got her back in her bed and let her sleep. It was a long night, Chris or I would get up every hour or so to check how her body was until we felt comfortable. She ended up getting better, but it was a scare and a lesson learned.
In Fes, we visited the medina (old city). It was a series of roads, alleys and walkways in the city surrounded by a wall. In the small city streets, some were covered to keep the city a bit cooler than outside, they called it natural air-conditioning. I was fascinated by the doors. They were old looking, made of wood and still had the old castle key hole (modern locks also we in place on the doors). They were often two doors in one a large door with a smaller door inside. Usually the small door was used for people and larger for moving stuff in and out. Whenever we saw a door open all of our heads would turn to look if we could see inside. It was very difficult because there usually was a staircase the went to somewhere and that was all we could see. The reason we wanted to see was the doors were on old dirty buildings, but the insides we could see were often grand a beautiful. The theory explained to us was all outsides were very similar, to make people equal, not to flash wealth, the inside was to display wealth and beauty. When we ate in the medina we walked through little door to walk into a three-story beautiful restaurant. We just kept asking the girls, “Can you believe this was behind the doors?” Prior to the restaurant, the businesses we saw were small shops.
The businesses were still divided up into areas as they were hundreds a years ago. There was a dyeing street. The dyeing street was where people who specialized in dyeing thread or clothes had their shops. Some of these streets or areas now exist as co-ops, such as the brass square. Brass square is where men make hand make brass, and other metals, into bowls, tea pots, or anything else. They all have stores, but the money goes into a share each month and divided up. The brass square is cool, it had a rhythm as they banged away. In fact, supposedly, Jim Hendrix sat and listened to the beat when he visited in 1969. There were other streets selling spices, meat, fruit and vegetables, fabric, oils for medicinal reasons, shoes, clothing, anything you can think of that you would need to buy. The worst part of the medina was the tannery. It is where they tanned animal hides, in the same way they have for hundreds of years. The smell was so bad they would give a sprig of mint to keep to your nose. Even with the mint held tight to mine and their girls nose we had to leave!
One of the things Fez is most famous for is their tile mosaics and pottery. The area was just outside the medina because of the hot kilns and smoke it produced. They still use the traditional ancient kilns to fire the pottery using olive pits and olive oil to start it. We got to walk through the entire process from using kick pottery wheels, firing, painting, and even chiseling to small shapes for mosaics. It was very impressive.
We did learn in Fez that when it is hot outside the people come out at night. Our hotel room window overlooked a popular gathering place. It would start about 8pm as it cooled off a bit. The median in the street would just get packed with people, including families and kids, until about 1 am. Kaleigh and Chris ventured out one night to grab a snack…at….McDonalds. They said it was absolute crazy. There was people everywhere and at least a couple hundred at McDonalds. They nearly got hit crossing the street.
Along our 10-day tour of Morocco we visited several other smaller medinas. We also stopped at Volubilis, which is ancient ruins of a city founded in 3rd century BC. We walked through the ruins receiving the history from a guide. We learned they believe the locations was picked for several reasons including a local river, olive trees, and location between other settlements. Some of the tile work that has unearth by archeologist is unbelievable. It was hot but the ruins were just hard to comprehend. We try to explain to the girls the ruins are from city they exited 2000 year before the United States was even formed. Next, we stopped at Moulay Idriss, which is the founding city in Morocco for Islam. In 789, Moulay Idriss arrived in the city bring Islam to Morocco. We started at a mosque in the city that is considered a holy place. In fact, Moroccans can pilgrimage to Moulay Idriss mosque 5 times to equal a pilgrimage to Mecca.
The next day we had a long drive over the mountains to our next destination. There was a couple of interesting stops along the way. First, we stopped in a little town they call the Switzerland of Morocco. It is up in the mountains in a town that gets snow, so the building is substantially more like building in Switzerland with slopped roofs actual windows. Just a lot different than anywhere else. The town had a University and very modern feel. We stayed for a short time before heading to our next stop, the monkeys. A bit up the road we stop to feed the monkeys. It was this random pull off that had a bunch of Barbary macaque monkeys. They were very friendly and would take food from your hand. We all enjoyed walking around feeding the monkeys! Several other stops and a night later we arrived at the Gateway to the Sahara. The first thing we got to see is the prehistoric aspect, when it was a green tropical or even covered by ocean. First, we went to fossil place that made about everything from fossils and fossil granite. These fossils are from the paleozoic era meaning the region dates back some 245 to 570 million years. Next, we drove to an area with fossils, they were everywhere. Just walking around, you could find fossils ever step. We all could have spent all day there finding fossils.
The next stop, was one of the most anticipated stops, our camel riding day. Kaleigh had been talking about riding the camels since we entered Morocco (actually before). We learned that the camels in Morocco only have one hump and you will find two hump camels in China. On our way into the Sahara Desert for our tent stay in the desert we stopped to purchase Berber clothing to wear in the desert. We got the whole getup! Once we had our clothing we went on a 4x4 ride over small sand dunes to our camp site. Upon arriving at the camp, we were welcomed with hot tea, which was everywhere in Morocco, then we headed straight to the camels. We all got our own camel, Kaleigh was super excited now, and began our journey into the desert. The camels laid down for us to mount and then they would stand up. Important part here, make sure you hold on. The camel shifts your body all they backwards getting up on front knees, all the forward getting all the back legs up, finally fast as it comes off the knees. Everyone was enjoying the ride until we came to our first steep downhill. Remember how I said Kaleigh was so excited? Well after we went down the hill she looked at Chris and I with this look of terror and said, “I don’t want to ride my own camel anymore, I want to ride with you.” We told her that she could do it and to just hang on tight. She made it through and got comfortable after a couple hills, but we still laugh at the look of terror and tease her about being so excited to ride the camel. At night we had the camp to ourselves, I guess many people don’t like to camp in the Sahara in the middle of summer. We had a nice quiet dinner, played some drums with our host, and had a bottle of wine before heading to bed. As we settled in for the night, a storm came through with a heavy wind and rain. Yup, we go to the Sahara and it rains on us!
After the desert, we headed to Marrakech. This was by far the most modern city. We had a great tour and visited many aspects of the city. We did visit the medina and one of their specialties is the Berber medicines or herbs. They had a natural remedy for almost everything. The one I recognized was Moroccan oil. I really wanted to buy some Moroccan oil but, since we are traveling, we cannot keep buying things to carry with us. However, at the airport we had some extra Dirham we need to spend so I ended up purchasing some!
Our last five days were spent relaxing in our hotel in Casablanca. We started school and it gave us some downtime to catch up with family. The girls swam in the pool and we visited the beach for a walk a couple times including one at sunset. It was a nice to be able to relax after running for 10 days.
Along our journey, we picked unripe olive from an olive tree, checked out almond trees, and tried prickly pear fruit. We ate plenty of tagine. We noticed the restaurants have a limited choice of options, it was usually tagine (small pot roast you could pick lamb, meatballs, or chicken) or chicken kababs and couscous both server with olives before and fruit after. After 10-days we were ready for a bit more variety!
Elizabeth
