After a few nights in London catching up with mates, we said goodbye to the UK for this trip and hello to North Africa. After shivering through the last 6 months we were hanging out for some hot weather, and something different from Europe. It's safe to say Morocco was the itch we needed scratched.
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| Slowly bounding into the West Sahara on the back of a camel. |
What to know about Morocco in June:
It's hot (30-40C) and relatively quite because of Ramadan. I believe it is considered the low season for tourists because of these two reasons, however other then maybe a few less restaurants and shops open or on display, and a reduction in public transport frequency, it didn't hamper our experience.
Handy things to know about Morocco:
Carry toilet paper - public toilets and some toilets in cafes don't supply toilet paper.
Most market shops use the bater system for buying goods, not the same in convenience stores or cafes etc. However, its important to ask the cost of items when prices aren't displayed so you don't get a surprise when you've committed to the purchase. We did not do this enough!
English is widely spoken, on top of English most locals speak French and Spanish fluently which is pretty impressive - as well as Arabic.
Its safe, you can walk around at night and feel safe. People will constantly ask you where you are from, or for you to have a look in their shops. Greeting them with a smile and no thanks was the best way to keep from being harassed.
Prepared to be ripped off at least once... consider it as a part of the experience.
Compared to everywhere else we've been alcohol isn't massive in their culture, only the odd restaurant that will serve beer, and it will cost a small fortune.
Between big buses, local mini buses, and taxis there is plenty of ways to get around the country. We experience most options successfully, some without air-conditioning some with. All were a pretty pleasant experience and didn't break the budget like European transport systems.
Morocco currency is Dirham. 70 Dirham was 10 AUD, a 1.5l bottle of water is 7 Dirham. Expect to pay 30-40Dir for a main meal off the street (couscous, tangine, skewers and salad), and 80-100+ for something a bit more classy. Softdrink is 8-15dir a 300ml bottle. 1.5lt of water is from 7-15dir. A beer at a restaurant was 30dir.
The Kingdom of Morocco (the king looks like Louis Lit from Suits), is made up of rugged mountains and desert which was divided into French and Spanish areas in the early 1900's, before becoming independent in the 50's. Its a Arab country predominantly muslim, and relatively comfortable and modern by African standards.
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| First night dinner - thought we'd trek into Africas busiest square the famous market Jemaa el-Fnaa, only a couple of hundred meters from our Hostel (rainbow hostel highly recommend). Anyway, we paid 340 dirham for a subpar morocco meal when we should have paid <100. |
We spent a day wandering around Marrakesh, visiting its popular sites like:
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| Bahina Palace |
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| Ben Youssef Madrasa |
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| Ben Youssef Madrasa - so much detail in carved wooden/plaster walls. |
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| Spices in the Jewish market areas |
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| Our only really 'suss' experience - we were successfully on our way to the tanneries, when a local ask if we were on our way to the tanneries. We said yes of course... next minute he was chatting like he was our best mate, asking questions, being really nice. He went on to tell us some information about a couple of little markets etc. we past through on our way there. We semi-tried to lose him but he kept waiting for us when we stoped. Eventually we walked into the tannery area and he tried to give us some mint to hide the smell which we declined. Im not sure what happened next but all of a sudden there were other locals around us trying to get money out of us for the bloke bringing us to the tanneries. It ended up quite heated because we weren't handing over any cash, then we bailed. |
Climbing Toubkal
When we pictured Morocco I imagined hot and dry, I was surprised to find out that a large part of Morocco is mountains! After speaking with a couple of mates, who had recently been to Marrakesh to hike Jebel Toubkel, we thought it sounded like a pretty attractive exercise. A couple of hours researching on tripadvisor on what other people's experiences were, we had our overnight packs and hiking gear out ready to see what it was like at altitude.
Previously we've almost been to the top of Mt. Kosciuszko (2000m) skiing a couple of years ago, in France we had climbed to 2500m but for this we would be staying at 3200m and hiking to 4167m, 32km return from a little Berber village Imlil which was about an hour or so south of Marrakesh by mini bus.
To get out to the summit head, its 1.5hr to Imlil - itself is a pretty nice little village. Our transport options were a local mini bus or taxi, the cheapest option is the most attractive to us was the local mini bus, so we headed off early one morning to find the local bus stop where we stumbled across a Kiwi, and a German couple who were also doing the hike. The local bus system here doesn't run to a clock, but rather it leaves when its full - much to the disgust of our new friends who were chomping at the bit to get up the hill to the refuge ASAP before the heat.
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| Imlil was really nice! especially after the hectic scenes in Marrakech. |
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| It was a well marked track to the refuge, steady for the first couple of hours before it got a bit steeper about 2/3s of the way there. |
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| Plenty of mules in this area of the world carrying luggage, and supplies up to the two Toubkal refuges. |
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| A couple of hours in we to got the last village about 2/3s of the way up to the refuge and stopped for a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. We were about 2500m high and I was starting to feel a little vague and sluggish. After leaving the village the heavens opened which was a little refreshing although as we were starting to get higher the temperatures were pretty mild. |
The hike to the refuge took us about 5.5hr. the last few km were slow, the altitude (around 3000m) was affecting both of us a lot more then we expected and meant we needed a bit of a rest every 15minutes. We didn't feel sick, just lacked energy. When we eventually got to the refuge (26euro pp for a bed, dinner and breaky), the boots were off as quick as possible, the feet were up and a cuppa tea in hand while we had plenty of chat with our new mates before heading to bed for an early night. The refuge was at 3200m, and after we'd stopped walking we really didn't notice the altitude. The temperature had dropped from mid-30's at the base to around 20deg at the refuge. We were in bed early that night, but would have only managed a couple of hours sleep - maybe due to the altitude or excitement I'm not sure...
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| Up at 4am, departed refuge at 4.45am. Rocky under foot and hard to see the track. Mapsme kept us on route as well as following guided groups from a distance. You defiantly don't need a guide with Mapsme, the best travel app we have I reckon! |
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| 4/5th of the way up at about 3800m. |
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| The top, I felt 100% and better then the day before at a mere 2500m. We reached the summit at about 7.30am taking us a bit over 3hrs to complete. |
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| Toubkal peak 4167m above sea level - the highest point of North Africa. While I felt fine, it affected Amy a lot more, she was feeling vague and little light headedness. After 10min of sitting and having a drink she came good - no nausea! |
It took us a couple of hours to get back to the refuge, where we had a coke and a mars bar, packed our sleeping bags then headed back to Imlil. The walk back down was good but very tiring. By the end we had defiantly had enough and were keen for a shower and to get off our feet. The feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment was maybe overshadowed by tiredness, but we'd really enjoyed the challenge, we'd made some new mates and had a great time overall.
Two night desert trip
Rainbow hostel offered tours from 89euro per person, but on our first night we were pointed to another tour operator Travel Tamegroute. We managed to get the tickets through this company down to 75euro per person after a tiny bit of negotiation, which we were pretty happy with so we went with Travel Tamegroute. Our experience was great, we saw more then we expected and overall had a fantastic experience. We met some cracking people who were also doing the tour, had plenty of laughs and would highly recommend to anyone going to Morocco. Accommodation breakfast and dinner was included, we had to pay for lunch and tip a couple of tour guides which was where the hidden costs were, but for what we saw, I think it was overall a really good deal!
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| Air Benhaddou - the spot of several films ie. Prince of Persia, Gladiator, Game of Thrones and many more. The 1100th century old town has a handful of family still living inside its walls without power or running water. The city basically has to be re-rendered each year after rain damages its clay and staw walls. |
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| Despite the how remote and rugged much of Morocco is, it was surprising to see how much water was actually around via natural springs. In these little Berber villages, they are still growing wheat, barley and oat for consumption in little hand planted and harvested fields next to streams. They have little irrigation channels dug by hand running into each crop. The flow of the channels is determined by the locals damming off each channel with dirt. It was pretty primitive but very effective. |
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| Todra Gorge - first stop of day two. A popular rock climbing gorge. |
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| Walking through a fertile valley filled with small villagers crops. |
Finally after two days and many of hours riding shotgun in a minibus we had reached the little town of Merzouga and the edge of the West Sahara. The journey to Merzouga reminded me quite a bit of the Australian Outback, and Australia in general in terms of summer climate, geologically the dry rolling hills, stoney open plains, a lot of similarities to home. There are also A LOT of Australian gum trees throughout the country! Merzouga was hot, and we had a sweaty couple of hour wait mid-afternoon in a semi-complete mud brick hotel while we waited really for the time to pass so that it was cooler when we headed into the desert with the Camel - and to time the 1.5hr of camel riding with the sunset.
As the sunset over the red sand dunes it offered some amazing colours, unfortunately by the time we got to our camp it was dark, and we couldn't really explore or get a good look of the area other than what we saw on the camel.... We had tagine again for dinner at camp, before laying down and staring into the sky (full moon) and bed.
The next morning we woken from our army style tent at 3.51am, by 4.15am we were back on the camels heading towards Merzouga for breakfast. It was about 45min in the dark before we started to get some sun.
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| Surprisingly the camel isn't the most comfortable mode of transport, and after an hour you start to wonder how much longer.. |
Instead of taking the 9hr group bus back to Marrakech, we decided to leave the tour to get a 7hr bus to Fes, which was a cost on top of the tour, but effectively saved us 24hr of travel.
Fes or (Fez):
After Marrakesh, Fes was like a holiday. The medina was full of locals buying, manufacturing and selling. In the couple of days we were there we were hassled maybe twice. Everyone seem a lot happier. The markets were well organised and clean compared to Marrakesh and basically have been this way for centuries. Fes medina is notorious amongst tourists as a place to get lost since 33% of the streets run to a dead end, there is no logical structure to street direction, and the height of the housing mean you can't make reference to any geological landmark or reference. However thanks to our offline mapsme. app we managed to guide our way through without too much trouble.
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| The big medina gate signifying the entrance. |
One thing we were excited to see was Fes's tanneries, since we didn't get much of a chance in Marrakech. Its a fascinating place full of stone vessels filled with dyes and various liquids spread across a courtyard with blokes up to their waist working under the hot sun. Sheep, goat, cow, and camel hide all worked on for many hours until an ideal softness is achieved. Everything here is basically still manual labour and unchanged since medieval times. The tanneries were pretty much smack bang in the medina, which was heaving with blacksmiths, dress making, butchers and sheet metal workers all going about their trades in little open shops.
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| Wool out to dry after its been washed. |
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| The tanneries. |
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| Salted camel anyone? |
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| Your one stop chicken shop! |
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| The hostel had a dog! |
Chefchaouen:
The blue city - must be the drug capital of Morocco. Everywhere it smells like weed, and everyone was offering it. I think a lot of tourists come here to smoke and relax, for us it really could have been a day trip from Fes. There is plenty of hiking on offer, but unfortunately got struck down with some stomach bug and couldn't stray to far from the toilet for a day which kept our time at Chefchaouen a little low key. The old town is blue (pictured), which was introduced to the city by the Jews in the early 1900's, now I believe its truly just a tourist attraction and it seems to be working well!
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| Lookout from the Spanish mosque back over the old town. |
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| Old town medina entrance was a little underwhelming but is unique that its still as it would have been for hundreds of years. |
I think we experience the really old fashion Morocco. Medinas, riads etc. Outside the old towns there are modern neighbourhoods with western comforts and people living with all the modern means. Its hard to get the sense of this, but when you drive outside the larger cities this become prevalent. When you travel somewhere, the tourist population gives you a sense of the place your traveling, and Morocco seems to be attracting a lot of oriental tourists. Overall, Morocco was stunning and a real eyeopener. Our best experiences were outside the cities, in the desert or in the Atlas mountains. Fes takes the cake for a city experience. Marrakech, I'm sure it has a lot to offer but for us we didn't really enjoy it because it was so full on... If we had more time it might have been good to get out to the coast for a look but unfortunately it wasn't the case. Maybe next time...
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