April 2, 2015  Marrakech and Mon Riad and Words

Riad.  

A riad (Arabic: رياض‎) is a traditional Moroccan house or palace with an interior garden or courtyard. The word riad comes from the Arabian term for garden, "ryad".

These are views of the inside of our hotel MonRiad.  The one on the left is the courtyard and pool with the first floor balcony above.  The photo on the right is the view from my window looking down on the open courtyard.  This is the traditional style of home in this Muslim culture.  The life of the family was carried on inside the house, away from the street and from prying eyes that might assault the modesty of the women.

The growth of tourism has led to the purchase of large numbers of old home.  The buildings are then gutted and converted into commercial "riads" as small hotels or guest houses.

Medina. Souk. Kasbah

Medina. The Arabic word al-Madīnah (المدينة) simply means "the city"

The word souk  refers to Berber/North African traditional markets. (Arabic: سوق‎, Hebrew: שוק‎.

 The souks we saw did not allow cars inside.  The streets and alleyways are narrow.  That does not exclude donkeys, donkey carts, donkey carts pulled by humans or mopeds and motorcycles.

A Kasbah is a walled city or section of a city.

The airport is about 15 minutes outside of Marrakech.  The highways are modern, with traffic lights and controlled access.  The drivers are all madmen (and women).  Lights and lane restrictions are "suggestions"  and right-of-way is who-got-there-first.

Blue Gate    Bab Agnaou

As soon as we approached the walls around the medina, the exotic part of the country emerged.  There is a uniform color of terra cotta of all the walls around the city.  The walls are pierced by elaborate gates.  Marrakech has nineteen gates.  These were built over the years by sultans, by prime ministers and by wealthy citizens.  Each trying to outdo the other in size, color and beauty.

Our taxi entered through the Bab Agnaou.  It is  not the main entrance to the city but is the one closest to the kasbah of the royal palaces and to our hotel.  Once inside, the streets took on the geometry of pathways and alleyways and then played out altogether.  We stopped at a parking lot where our driver obtained the services of a porter and his pull cart.  We followed the porter and the driver and plunged into the souk.

souk street with a shop of goods

 all made from rubber tires

It was maybe a five minute walk from the outside of the souk down a confusing array of turns to the entrance of MonRiad.  We were soon to get very adept at finding our hotel, but that took a while and a few episodes of getting lost.

Were we safe?

Open Square   Note parapet of old wall

Before I left, I had several worried inquiries about safety in Morocco.  Morocco is a stable, safe country.   Things like ISL/ISIS cannot take root in a country that is stable, has an intact police and military and a confident government.  We were safe.  We were safe in the day, in the night and finding our way back to our little riad.  We were off the beaten path and not staying at an international hotel chain.  By choice.

The staff at MonRiad were courteous and kind.  Most did not speak English.  The reception staff spoke many languages including French, Italian, German, Arabic and English.  We surrendered our passports, registered and said, yes, we would like to eat dinner in the riad.

On the way to MonRiad

Journaling.

Marty and Paul were limited in what they could unpack because their major luggage was ---- somewhere.  I presented them each with a blank travel diary and asked/encouraged them to write in it daily.  It helps me to catch the details of a day.  As much as I hope and believe I will remember a special moment, I often do not.  It fades into the fabric of the entire trip, but sometimes you want that little detail.

No record of the wire transfer according to the office.  The transfer was confirmed by my bank and I had forwarded a copy of the confirmation to MonRiad.  They had no record.  Well, we will work on that. I think that they preferred to work in cash and in wired transactions to avoid the fees associated with credit card payments.  In fact, they offered a substantial discount for cash transactions.  I had brought with me both Euros and dirham.  

A nice room with a view.

Because these are converted private houses, the configuration of rooms is most likely going to be narrow, with tall ceilings and a window opening onto the central courtyard.  The courtyard were physically open to the sky but the ones we saw had roofs of vinyl or glass to retain warmth in the winter.  They had not yet been opened for the warm season.  So a window opening onto the courtyard is not necessarily going to get you much in the way of fresh air.  Our rooms had heat pumps that served as A/C as well as heat.  MY room, however, had a window that opened from the bathroom onto the alleyway where the entry door stood.  I was blessed with not only cross ventilation but also a place to hang my laundry so that it could dry.

The dangers of Moorish design.

The carved door is beautiful. The second photo is the view into the tiled bathroom and at the window overlooking the entry street.  But look at those projections of wood from the door frame.  Imagine how that feels when you walk through in the middle of the night, not quite awake, and smack into your head or face.

Supper in MonRiad.  

The riad offered optional prix fixe dinner to its guests if they let the kitchen know earlier in the day.  We were late arrivals but they were able to accommodate us.  Most dinners will feature a salad, bread and a main dish.  Couscous is central to the cuisine, with added meat, usually beef.  The breed of sheep in Morocco reportedly stores its fat in its tail, and so lamb and mutton do not have the pungency of these meats in other countries.  Seafood is around but we did not see much of that in the places we ate.  Moroccan bread is really good and every neighborhood has a bakery.

Tomorrow was to be a busy day.  We three travelers slept well.

Marrakech, or you can't get there from here.

I had never used my Frequent Flier miles.  I had never quite figured out how to do that.  So they kept growing to over 100,000.  Time to cash them in for this trip.  Well USAir and its Star Alliance partners could not get me to Marrakech.  Madrid was as far as they could manage.  Marty and Paul were going to be routed through Frankfurt by their carrier.  Not a big deal.

How do you pack for a place that you know nothing about?  Will it rain?  Will it be blistering hot?  Will the hotel have any laundry service at all?  If you do not know Magellan's, I recommend them.  Not cheap.  But very savvy products for travelers.  By relying on their washable products I was able to pack light, carry three changes of clothing and all the other stuff I needed for the trip and still had more clothing than I actually needed.  Microfiber is a good thing, especially in a hot and dry climate.

Madrid-Barajas Airport

The flight was nice and I actually slept.  I arrived at the Madrid airport.  That is a true misnomer, because there are five of them, all connected by subways.  It is complicated. Each terminal has four floors.  You are obligated to walk though the Duty
Free Shops just to get to your gate.  Many times, and many Duty Free Shops. I got through immigration and customs. I got back through security and got all the way to my gate.  I had left my fanny pack with passport at security.  So all the way back through the maze of subways, elevators, duty free shops and escalators to the other end of security.  I found the line I had gone through and they had my stuff.  Great relief; great lesson.  Do not leave security until you are secure in all your stuff.

I was now aware that there was a large blister formed on the ball of my left foot.  

Two hour flight to RAK, the airport at Marrakech.  Marty and Paul were scheduled to arrive before me and we were to be met by the driver from MonRiad.

Lost Luggage.  

Marty and Paul had arrived before me.  Their luggage was not aboard their jet from Frankfurt.  Marty was negotiating that with the airport.  I knew none of this, went through immigration and customs, found my luggage, and exited into the enormous, cavernous, echoing terminal.   Ranks and ranks of men standing with signs of names of hotels, groups, travelers, etc.  I found my guy, determined that he had not seen the others.  Paul, Marty and I left the airport two hours later, no luggage but reunited.

 

MARRAKECH & BEGINNING A SERIES OF SURPRISES

There is some risk in listing surprises, because

it reveals what an ignorant blighter one can be.

Morocco is not all desert.

 There is a lot of desert, true, but it is mostly irrigated, verdant and productive agricultural land.  We crossed over the Mediterranean and flew along the Atlantic side of Maroc.

Patches of cultivated land emerged.  The closer we got to Marrakech the more was under production. 

And, then the Atlas Moutains emerged. 

Surprise.

Marrakech is nestled at the base of the High Atlas range.

This photo is of the new terminal under construction at RAK.  In the backgound is the range.  Still with snow.  We later learned that the major melt had occurred the week before (last week of March) but the north faces of the mountains were still white.

Surprise.

This is Berber country. And, 

Surprise.

Berbers are  not Arabs. And

Surprise.

Most of Morocco is Berber.

The population of Morocco is estimated in 2013 at 35 million. The overwhelming majority of Moroccans are of Arab-Berber descent, whether they speak the Berber language or not. Part of Moroccans identify themselves as Berbers through the spoken language, through a mix of family/tribal/territorial ties, or through both. Another part of Moroccans identify themselves as Arabized Berbers or simply as Arabs, mostly based on them speaking Moroccan Arabic and/or not being able to speak Berber. Some of them believe they have an Arab descent from the Arabian Peninsula or the Levant. Some Moroccans believe to be of mixed Arab-Berber descent or of Berber-Arab-Andalusian ancestry. There are no official figures about the exact ethnic origins of all Moroccans, but the implicitly accepted idea inside and outside Morocco is that Moroccans are essentially mixed Arab-Berbers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Morocco]

It was the Berbers from Mauritania ("Moors") who invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and occupied until the 15th.  It was the Berbers--now called "Moors"-- who were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella as the Christian forces gained supremacy in Spain. 

Marty, Paul and I were going to be immersed in Berber culture and history for the next two weeks.Berbers some in all colors and sizes.  They have their own language and alphabet.  They occupied the lands from the Niger River north from 5,000 BCE.  The origin of the word "Berber" is not known and may be a corruption of the Latin word for "barbarian."  The Romans would have called them barbarians since they never were able to conquer them!

Marrakesh/Marrakech, Fes/Fez, Atlas Mountain Range and the Sahara...

...were the places that survived my study and process of elimination.   We were a trio of septuagenarians who were not going to be able to "see everything" in two weeks.  My personal preference is to narrow down and dive a little deeper into a place rather than see a lot of places.  A choice.  I started also from a list of over a dozen people who I thought might enjoy a trip to Morocco and with whom I thought I might enjoy spending two weeks. The effects of schedules, budget, appeal, alternate vacation plans, etc. narrowed the group down to three, a married couple and me.

The Trio at Marrackesh Museum

 Planning a trip.

Is pretty easy with the Web and with published travel guides.  I relied on Fodor's. I knew nothing at all about Morocco; it was all new.  My friends were going to rely on me and I wanted the challenge.  We mutually decided that we did not need to go to the beach.  We agreed that we would like to see a variety of places, terrains and, where possible, cultures. 

The reward for planning something like this is the whole process of learning.  I would never claim to say I know a lot about Morocco or that we even "did" Morocco. But it turned out to be an awfully good taste of the place.  The basic plan was a triangle that would start in Marrakesh, go to and through the Atlas range, get us to the desert, get us to Fes and back to Marrakech for flights home.

[NOTES on spellings.  There is a lot of variation on how these names are spelled.  So "Marrakech" is the same as "Marrakesh" and "Fes" can be "Fes,

Fès or Fez"  The official language in Maroc is 

Morrocan Arabic with French as the second language.  But then there is also Berber, a separate language with its own alphabet.  There will be much more to say about the Berbers later.] 

Get Some Help, Fellah

When I went to Turkey time before last, I did all the planning.  It was exhausting and the anxiety was at times overwhelming.  I learned on that trip to seek help.  When we went again to Turkey in 2014, Gretchen did much of the "heavy lifting"  for that trip.  I have overcome some of my aversion to "Guided Tours" -- but only some.  My visit to the Hermitage in St. Petersberg was totally ruined by the aggression and obnoxious behavior of large tour groups, so I have pledged to myself never to be part of one of those.  That said, I was very happy to ask our "Riad" in Marrakech to get us a tour guide for the first day.  I also found a company that would put together a private tour for the three of us to "trek" in the Atlas Mountains, to ride out into the Sahara on camels, to spend the night in Berber tents on the Sahara and to transport us to Fès.

Street Scene in the Souk

We would then rely on our Riad in Fès to 

• help us with a guide of the Medina in the old city, 
• get us a car and driver to go to the Roman ruins at Volubilis and then
• get us tickets and on the train back to Marrakech.  

  I made email contact with Mohamed who operated the Mountain Travel Morocco Agency.  http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g293734-d2162022-Reviews-Trekking_in_Morocco_Private_Day_Tours-Marrakech.html.  

We are in our 70s, we are not interested in or able to do long hikes, but want to see the Atlas Mountains and all the following.  Can you help us with this?  He could.  He did.  More about that later.

Both Mohamed and the Mon Riad required that a deposit be wired to their banks.  Now, I had never wired money anywhere and, it turned out, neither had the staff at the branch of my bank at the Stop N Shop market.  We had a couple of false starts, but the money eventually reached their destinations.  Not for the faint of heart.  For some random reason, the riad in Fès was perfectly happy to accept a credit card number.                                    -30-

 

April 2015.  Morocco.  Marty Andersen Glanzman, Paul Glanzman, Steve McCloy explore North Africa.

Why Morocco?  Where is Morocco anyway?

Morocco sits on the top of the African continent across from Gibraltar. 

 [http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/africa/ma.htm]

It is at about the same latitude as South Carolina and central Georgia.   This is a stable monarchy with a young, educated King and Queen.  He has done good things for the development of this ancient country.  "Maroc" was the first African country to have 3G. It is electrified and its large agricultural resources are supported by a fine national irrigation system. 

Everyone has heard of Casablanca and Tangiers.  Most have heard some version of  "Marrakesh Express" and may see Marrakesh as a hippie haven and den of drugs. 

In planning this trip, I wanted to see as much of traditional and authentic Morocco as possible.  I wanted also to avoid places that are more European than Moroccan or that reflect too much of the French "Protectorate" that managed Morocco between the World Wars.  So I got planning.