|
|
 Marrakech from the rooftop of our hostel Morocco: Chapter 2
7.1.2013 Day 1: London - Marrakech From the air, Morocco looks nothing like anywhere I have been before. It seems to be surprisingly populated, though if I had done my research this should have come as no surprise. The country has as many inhabitants as Canada, in about 1/8th the land area, much of it mountain and desert. The roads all spiral out in a series of pinwheels from various townships dotted throughout the mountainous countryside, which from the air, has a uniform brown tinge to it. I still cannot get over the fact that we are about to land in Africa, the fourth continent in my travels, and third for my young family on this trip alone. By the time we get to New Zealand, Aurora and Brynn will have seen four continents, and eight countries. Not a bad haul for children aged four and one respectively. For a Canadian in January, the weather in Morocco is glorious: 20°C and sunshine! Our first taste of how different things are going to be here, is at the baggage claim. There are baggage handlers, though I am not convinced any of them actually work for the airport. About five of them come up to me and offer me help, I try to refuse, but eventually one just starts loading my luggage as I am off looking for a cart on my own ( turns out they were at the far end of the terminal away from the baggage claim, strategic placement for the tip seeking baggage guys, inconvenient for the weary traveller. I am mostly leery because all I have are Euros, in large denominations, and I really don’t want to be paying €50 for baggage transport. We finally get sorted and our taxi driver takes us through Marrakech to our hostel, Laila Rose, just off of the central market square in the medina, which is the old walled section of Marrakech. The scents of Morocco start making themselves clear, and from the airport in, it is mostly stale exhaust and diesel fumes from cars, trucks, and mopeds in serious need of a tune-up. Despite all of this pollution, Marrakech seems to be relatively smog free. Driving in Morocco is something to behold, though our travels in Egypt will later make the roads of Morocco seem like a spacious playground. Tailgating seems an unwritten rule of the road, painted lines indicate where your car should straddle, and horn usage is strongly encouraged. Space between pedestrians and other motorists is meant to be kept to one foot or less (especially while in motion). Speeds shall not be less than 50 km/h in heavily congested areas, and the usage of helmets on two wheeled transport seems to be forbidden. If there is space on the road, it needs to be taken up. The roads must retain the semblance of mobile parking lots as much as possible. Donkeys, pedestrians and cyclists do not have any special assurances of safety afforded them. If they are on the road, they will be not be yielded to purposely. To each their own method of transport. Survival of the fittest, May the odds be ever in your favour! Once to our hostel, a new scent dominates: hooka pipes, mint tea, and Moroccan incense. It is intoxicating, and really adds to the charm of this place. But the getting there was half the fun! Our driver let us out in the square, and since we were enroute to New Zealand, we were a fairly heavy bunch, so we hail a rickshaw to take us down the narrow alleyways the rest of the journey to the hostel, the whole experience was straight out of Aladdin. We must have looked quite a sight, four white westerners, with an overloaded rickshaw of backpacks suitcases, and carseats. Aurora meets the first of her many admirers here as a group of women maul her and stroke her hair. She has already had her picture taken once by a random stranger in the airport en route at this point, apparently little white blonde girls are a big hit over here. It was in no way creepy, and I was actually less worried about random Moroccans coming up to my girls and pinching their cheeks than I would have been back home in Edmonton, where I would likely have been looking for a nearby inanimate object to ward off attention from creepy strangers. Anyway, our rickshaw journey takes us through a series of narrow alleys lined with market style shops that carry everything from trinkety tourist driven gifts to more traditional market goods such as nuts, fruit, and dead lamb carcasses hanging from hooks. It is really an oversized sidewalk, crammed with people, mopeds, scooters, bicycles, and donkeys. And there we are, with our mountain of western wear, utterly defenceless with two young children in tow through unnamed and confusing alleyways. No one knows we are here, and we, aren’t quite sure where here, is. If anyone wanted to knock over the cart and make off with our stuff we would have been powerless to do anything. Kill and dismember, same same. It was around this time that Stephanie mentioned that she was glad we weren’t making this trek at nighttime, which ended up as a true statement of irony in hindsight, because later that night we did do that exact thing, without luggage, as we got hopelessly lost trying to find our way back from the market at night. Back to the hostel, it was an old building built into the side of an alley wall and quite inconspicuous looking from the outside, but inside it had a fully vaulted open air ceiling, and was a myriad of tapestries, and Bedouin decor. The stone steps wound all the way around the outside of the central courtyard to where we found our room at the top of the whole place. A tapestry tent overlooking all of Marrakech. The view was stunning, and we arrived just in time to hear the call to the sunset prayer, which is a bunch of chanting in Arabic over loudspeaker that resonates throughout the entire city, and happens five times a day. We had some mint tea (to which I am now addicted) as is the custom here, and began our adventure in Morocco. After getting settled we ventured to the market place, which had the atmosphere of the fringe festival, complete with street performers, snake charmers, and hundreds of merchants selling their goods well past sundown. We had some food, toured around for a bit, and then, as I mentioned, got hopelessly lost trying to find our way back to the hostel. It is truly amazing how buildings made of mud look the same in the dark. And also how dodgy the alleys we wandered earlier in the day look when the shops are closed up and the area is devoid of people, save the homeless. As it turns out, even though we got lost, we actually navigated our way down the correct alleyway about five times, each time turning back too soon, because it didn’t look the same at night as it did during the day. And of course, street signs are not a luxury afforded to Marrakech. At about 11pm we decided we better enlist some help, and ended up getting a young teenage boy to lead us through a “short cut” through even smaller alleys, that twisted and turned so many times, I wasn’t sure we were still in Marrakech by the time we finished. We survived though, and learnt that day that we would probably be ok, and the people of Morocco were not to be feared, and were actually well beyond friendly. http://www.laylarouge.com/index.html
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|
RSS Feed
