Morocco
Marrakesh, Ait Ben Haddou, Fès, Chefchaouen & Tetouan 14 days
AFRICAMAROCCO
6/24/202411 min read
June 2024
(14 days, 13 nights)
Across Marocco
3 nights in Marrakesh
2 nights in Ait Ben Haddou
1 night on the bus
1 night in Fez
5 nights in Chefchaouen
1 night in Tetouan
From the plane approaching in the night, I start to see clusters of buildings grouped around small squares, more and more numerous as we get closer to the city. There seem to be swimming pools everywhere in these residential parks.
In the street, the first guy tells me it's the first time he's met an Egyptian who speaks French. Throughout this trip, people will recognise my accent and my way of speaking Egyptian, which will fill my heart many times, hearing "inta Masri". Later, when I was paying in a shop, the clerk said "Zamaleck", which is where I grew up, an island in Cairo, and also a famous football team.
In the main square, which I had intended to avoid but which is in fact unavoidable, there is a whole mix of fruit juice sellers, grills and music players who seem to have come from a nearby African country, further south. Above all, there are these groupings of people, around musical instruments, some sort of stringed instruments, which make a psychedelic bass sound, accompanied by percussion and brassy rhythms. People dance in groups and seem to enter into a kind of communion and trance. I would later learn, something that everyone knows, that this is Gnawa music, originating in Saharan communities.
The leader of the group asks the crowd for pennies. While everyone was handing out coins, I handed over a 20 dirham note, which was greeted with a big smile. When the band starts playing, a man stands up, pulls out a 5 cm thick wad of cash and takes out a 100 dirham note. He must have the equivalent of 300 euros in his pocket.
There's Moroccan wine in the mini-bar of the hotel, a Ryad, which is in the centre, reached by a series of winding streets. There is a small airlock, which opens onto a small courtyard, which rises to 3 levels, serving the rooms via passageways. There's a swimming pool at the bottom, which cools the air that circulates and ventilates the upper levels.
"When you have a red (European) passport, you can do whatever you want", I hear myself say in a taxi. I see places where they make sandwiches with Laughing Cow. There are no mosquitoes. I pass ultra-perfumed women.
People have a style of dress that mixes pop brands and Arab style, a syncretism embellished with fashion logos known to be counterfeit. There's clearly an obsession with certain fashion names, so recurrent that you come to think that Gucci and Louis Vuitton are brands for Moroccan youth.
The city is flat, there are lots of bicycles. There's no shisha. When I ask to buy a single carrot from a fruit and vegetable stall, the shop assistant offers it to me.
LOCATIONS
Riad Persephone
Small Riad in the heart of the centre, very good value for money
Hammam Mille et une nuits
Beautiful, raw and in the heart of the Medina
Sardines and chips snack (50 d)
A low table and chairs in the street for a simple and wonderful kitchen
https://maps.app.goo.gl/PpQvwgpC6eLLJtJM6
Grilled meats
Popular place, lentil soup (8 d) and meat brochettes (1.5 d)
Marrakesh
As in all countries, when you leave the city and head out into the countryside, real life takes shape, the people are simpler, rougher, poorer too, but everything is more beautiful, in tune with the land.
There are buses to Ouzazarte, but you have to get off at Tabourhate and take a shared taxi to Ait ben Haddou, a former trading post on the trade route between Marrakech and the former Sudan.
As you cross the Atlas mountains, they are always red. The new town is built opposite the old one.
I am constantly told that Egypt is the mother of the world "Masri oum El Dounia" and this time, this woman also tells me that Morocco is the father of the world "Maghrebi abou El Dounia".
A Ksar, or Ksours, are fortified villages in pre-Saharan North Africa built using earthen techniques. Defensive walls are always present. It would seem that the history of the towns is the history of the protection of their inhabitants.
The roofs of the traditional houses are made up of different layers of fine bamboo superimposed in a star shape and covered with a layer of earth. My host tells me that the outside walls of his house are 1.5 m thick.
The telephone numbers start with 06, just like in France.
The water in the mountains is full of sodium and has a very strong taste.
Buses to Fez depart from Ouarzazate at 18:00 and 22:00.
At the bus station, there's a big rush to get on the buses, everyone with more suitcases than the others. One man brings an incredible number of stacks of folded cardboard boxes, which he stuffs into the hold of the bus.
The bus stops at the petrol station, everyone gets off and most of them light up and smoke their cigarettes between the petrol dispensers. There's a counterfeit clothing shop that's doing its thing. About twenty of the boys who were on the bus with me are trying on jogging suits and tracksuits. This fascination with brands is omnipresent.
LOCATIONS
Chez Brahim
Nice little traditional hotel, with a breathtaking view of the old town
https://maps.app.goo.gl/euSEnxeLJTg2CNJ48
Suq Indigo
Incredible 2-level shop of regional carpets
https://maps.app.goo.gl/pAFQkzLDgDzS2brg7
Chez Fahmi Ahmed
Traditional Berber coffee house
Ait Ben Haddou
I love arriving at the bus station and drinking coffee in the station bar.
I roll up a cigarette and the barman immediately says "good Moroccan hashish".
There are cats everywhere, small and medium-sized, in cardboard boxes. People put bottles filled with a yellow liquid in front of the houses to stop the cats urinating.
Tea is always 2 teas. A tray, a teapot and 2 glasses. In Egypt, I've seen people put up to 6 spoonfuls of sugar in a glass of tea. Here, the tea is served with sugar on the side, but the lumps are huge. It's tea sugar.
Morning coffee in the interior of a building. I enter through a small corridor, the café is at the back in a small room that you can see from the street. It's early, the atmosphere is calm, everyone is drinking their coffee and everyone has their cigarette, some of them perfuming it. And the barman is chaining coffees to the comings and goings of customers. There's a sign above the bar that says "no smoking".
Located in a corner towards the "madrassa" (school) mausoleum, two men have this stall, where I approach to ask if they have any sugar cane juice (I need a boost after the siesta in the mosque). They don't have any but offer me a taste of the grape juice, which is very good.
Some of the women order a glass of milk with a scoop of ice cream inside and a gazelle horn, a treat I'll try the next day.
LOCATIONS
Palace el Mokri
Sleeping in a palace on the edge of the Medina
https://www.airbnb.fr/rooms/32866583
The Ruined Garden
A bit posh but very nice place and food
https://maps.app.goo.gl/QNVcZSdLrRhJByhs5
Zaouia de Moulay Idriss II
Magnificent mausoleum and mosque
Coffee Risf
Popular restaurant and café with terrace and beautiful sunset views over the Medina
Fez
I take the Petit taxi, a shared taxi. (Generally, the fare varies between 3 and 15 MAD). In Fez they were red, here they are blue.
In the toilets, I don't have any change, so I tell the old man at the entrance that I only have a 100 MAD note, and I offer to come back later. No problem," he replies, smiling. Same thing at the bakery, where I buy 2 loaves of bread to top up my bean soup. I'll come back later to pay my bill.
You can drink the tap water from a spring in the mountains. It's very good, unlike the Atlas water, which was full of sodium.
There's a Greek version of 'San Jose del Pacífico' and a mix of folkloric 'Taxco'. There are the same types of buildings and mountain habits, small houses and small rooms, probably for heating reasons. I also pass a lot of people dressed in woollen jumpers and dresses.
My host insists that there are no problems here, that you can get lost and let people take you away, that here there is trust.
I'm on the terrace and I find myself sharing time with the man who's doing some work on the house. He's extremely calm and gentle, and we exchange glances and words while he prepares his joint and drinks his tea.
I climb up to the heights of the town, and after crossing the gate and the wall, I arrive in a large park that doubles as a cemetery, with a few tombs scattered around. The atmosphere is very pleasant, with lots of people carrying branches (which look like boxwood to me), lulled by the bells of the goats being walked by a shepherd.
As I try to change neighbourhoods, a little further away from the main square, in a street, in a small square, I take a photo of a woman painting her house with a blue broom. She asks me to paint it myself and have her take my photo. All laughing. She asks me to delete the photo because she has a husband.
At the restaurant terrace, I ask for some music to be played, the waiter tells me he likes English music because he's learning the language, so I play him some Lybian music, he likes it and another waiter starts dancing.
There are two tables full of foreign tourists. Each time I notice the bottles of Coke they've ordered. They seem to have had enough of tea and as there is no alcohol, they don't know what to take.
The flow of tourists mixes with the locals who use and live in these places. There are souvenir stalls dotting the alleyways from time to time, enough to turn the head of the tourist who, intrigued to no end, looks to see if she might buy something interesting to take home, without stopping to walk.
There are no thefts, I'm told. However, doors and shutters are often closed with a large metal bar hung diagonally and padlocked.
At a café terrace in Place Houmata on Tuesday evening at 10:30 pm, everyone has one hand crumbling hashish and the other preparing a joint. There are Prince cakes, oranginas and a few guys who seem to be delirious under the effect of a surplus of drugs on the squares.
I ask for some vinegar to clean an oil stain that has unfortunately become embedded in the leather of my slippers. She takes the bottle out of the fridge. Which isn't a bad idea, because real vinegar continues to work, it lives.
I'm going back to this marvellous fish restaurant, huge on three floors, where I ate alone, first in the first room, then in the café area, and spent a few hours on the terrace. The fish was exquisite and you could really feel that Mediterranean air that had been recommended to me.
This time, even though I had put off my meal to savour all these emotions as much as possible, and was determined to make the most of it, this time I asked the charming waiter who had treated me so well the day before if he had any wine, to which he replied by showing me the minaret of the mosque, which appeared like a tower watching over the terrace where I was. When I tell him that the meal would be even better with wine, he tells me that I can have some, hidden away, pointing to my bag. I ask him where I can buy some, to which he replies: behind the school below us. Oum rabie, ah the famous bar, at the bottom of the stairs on the road coming from the bus station. There are two entrances; I take the one on the left, when a man who reminds me of the Kabyles in the mountains of Algeria confirms that it is indeed there, by passing through the curtain of iron chains. Inside, 4 huge fridges filled with around thirty different wines and fifteen different beers. It's paradise for a foreigner craving a taste of home.
The potato is a very good addition to the tagine, as is the anchovy and lemon confit, which I enjoy while sipping my white wine, the bottle tucked away in my bag, my Libyan music bathing the whole terrace - the waiter tells me that the music is very good, every time he passes by. Suddenly, in the midst of all the chatter around a table (there were 2 occupied tables) further on, I make out the word "mole", a mixture only known in Mexico. They tell me that they, Mariella and her daughter, come from Sonora, and that they've been coming every year for the last 3 years. After proudly showing them my tattoo of the map of Mexico on my forearm, we take photos, proud of our common origins, and I return to my table, where I resume reading my book "The Promise of Dawn" by Romain Gary, who, one page later, says that he is finishing this chapter in a hotel room in Mexico City.
The staircases are 1.60 m high, and there is often a leather cushion attached to avoid banging your head.
There's avocado juice mixed with orange.
The noise in the street gives the impression of being in a residence, a housing estate where you can hear everything. The kids, the people talking and passing in the street give the impression that they are whispering under my pillow. It's a quiet morning in the Medina. The activity starts to pick up at 10/11am.
When I ask the orange juice stall if there are any toilets, after jokingly asking if there's wifi, he tells me about the Tounnsi café on the other side of the river. Just as well, I had my coffee there this morning and I've already got the wifi code. I leave my iPad open on the table and show my bag to the orange seller, waving that I'll be right back, having no doubt that I'll find my things.
The Muslims who inhabited the Arabian Peninsula were the first to use the name 'mahaba' (Morocco) during the Islamic conquest. In Arabic, it means "the place where the sun sets".
LOCATIONS
Blue house on river
https://www.airbnb.com/slink/5iUAIs1j
Restaurant Chourafa
Wonderful fish restaurant on several levels with different atmospheres, crowned by a terrace.
Coffee Chkoro
Tables and parasols on different levels on the terrace overlooking the valley.
Baissara Ansara
The best Bissara (split pea) soup in an authentic little place.
Restaurant Bab Ssour
Super meat and fish restaurant. Same owner as Chourafa.
Bar Oum rabie
Good selection of wines and beers, to take away or enjoy on the premises.
Coffee The Bridge
Café by the river, open late at night
Chefchaouen
You can feel the Mediterranean breeze straight away, the very special light of white cities set against this great sea. Crowds of people are converging on the Medina.
At the first café terrace, I watch men wave their hands, there's hashish here too, and I realise that kif pipes are much more widespread, even in public places. As I approach a pipe shop, the men inside invite me in. I find myself in the middle of such a peaceful atmosphere. One of them offered me a joint and then the other made me smoke his pipe, which was much more professional than the one I'd tried.
The medina is immense, a maze of streets that are even narrower than in the others I visited. It really helps to create a neighbourhood atmosphere, with children running and jostling in all directions, and this contributes to creating a more pleasant climate.
When they ask me where I'm from, and I reply "Egypt", I'm told "Iskandria" Alexandria, as if the Mediterranean was more important.
The day I leave, it's Eid, and there are lots of goats being dragged off by their owners, who will be delighted to eat them.
LOCATIONS
Riad Dalia
One of the city's first Riads, in the heart of the medina, a palace at the bend of an arcade. 4 levels, beautiful rooms worthy of the elegance of a palace. https://g.co/kgs/W6TbE7F
La Esquina del pescado
Very good fish restaurant, simple, fresh and friendly
Restaurant Al-Bahr
Popular cafeteria-style fish restaurant with buffet and fast service
https://maps.app.goo.gl/SAQA1xvk2CXYzkdt7
Coffee Touristes
Nice local café in the colonial centre