So,memory test for me. What did I do in Morocco nearly 3 weeks ago? I'm going to start from the beginning which will hopefully help me...
Note: $1.17 CAD=10 MAD (Moroccan dirhams), you can also divide the cost in dirhams
The journey to Marrakesh from Girona passed without event, while I experienced my first Ryan Air flight. It was quite something. We were re-routed multiple times while attempting to check in because we are not EU nationals and needed special stamps etc. The plane had no assigned seating so it was more or less a free for all and the plane was coined 'Fisher-Price' by S. She wasn't very convinced of its ability to get us to Marrakesh safely. Everything when smoothly, though we missed out on the majority of the flight announcements because we don't understand Arabic and the French was pretty unclear...
Arrived at the airport we passed through customs with nothing more than a cursory glance at our passports and were on our way. Told that we should take a cab from Al-Massira airport to downtown Marrakesh, out we went to the taxi stand. We approached a cab driver and asked how much a ride would be, he replied 200 dirhams, we scoffed. NO WAY . We replied that we had been told it should be 50, maximum 60 dirhams and that was all we were paying. The driver laughed, ok he said, no problem. I guess he assumed we were green tourists. We would have had to ignore the sign with the official rates that were posted (they said between 50-60 MAD) and had no idea about the cost of life to fall for his line. This tactic must work quite often though, one of the girls who was staying in our hostel room paid the 200 dirhams without question.
Thank goodness for our lonely planet morocco guidebook. It helped us so much, and saved us a significant amount of money. Knowing that the daily income of the average Moroccan is $3.25/ day, circa 2005, (keeping in mind that this figure probably applied to the countryside, as people in Marrakesh appeared to be rather rich), really helped us keep tips in perspective. Now, I'm rather used the the whole tipping idea, but I was surprised by how differently it functioned in Morocco. We had porters/bellhops show us our room and not even linger for a tip, gone before we even noticed, however a simple thing like direction will cost you 5-10MAD. Now, our hostel was in the Medina which is basically the old city quarter. The streets there are incredibly similar to a labyrinth with dead ends, weird roads that turn around on themselves and no landmarks to orient yourself. Houses are everywhere so all street are very narrow and it was more common to see a cart pulled by a donkey and motorbikes in most of the streets than cars. Furthermore, the streets often didn't have names and when they did their names were often in Arabic. When we stumbled upon a French street name, it often didn't appear on our map, and vice versa. We couldn't find the main streets indicated on our map to save our lives. I can honestly say that I don't think having a map helped us on a single occasion.
Armed with very detailed directions from our hostel we were certain we would find our hostel without incident... oh the optimism. When we were dropped off by the taxi, carrying our large backpacking bags were were immediately accosted by an older man with a cart who offered to carry our bags to our hostel for 20 dirhams. We declined, and after much insistence on his part we set off alone. It became evident pretty quickly that we were not going to be finding our hostel anytime soon, so when a boy who was about 12 approached us and told us he would take us to our hostel we didn't put up much of a fuss... He walked ahead of us the entire time and met up with his buddies along the way, they all chatted briefly (in Arabic so we had no idea what they were saying) and invariably they would disappear down some side street. In retrospect I'm certain our guide took us in circles for a while, but what do I know. In any case, we were getting pretty skeptical of his ability to find our hostel when he took a sharp turn under and archway which lead into a cave like area off the beaten path. S and I looked at each other "what have we gotten ourselves into" we both thought, we decided that we didn't have much to loose though and followed him. Turns out he did know where he was going as we arrived less than a minute later.
The fun was just about to begin though, because all of his buddies he had been talking to earlier were also waiting at the door for us. Our guide asked us for a tip and because he had indeed brought us to our hostel I had no problem paying. I withdrew a 20 dirham bill and offered it to him (remembering this was how much the old man had told us his services would be), and thus began the drama. He looked at the bill, and said 'what is this, 20 dirhams is nothing to me', his buddies proceeded to chime in that their friend had offered us a good service and was worth far more than 2 euros (this turns out to be a very common thing, comparing dirhams to euros when asking for money). S replied that it was 20 more dirhams than he had at before and he should be happy, the boys got increasingly aggressive demanding at least 50 dirhams, and even went as far as to say that we might as well keep the bill because it is worth nothing to them. They were quite intimidating, but S and I refused to back down, after all they were 12 year old boys. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the door to the hostel opened (it was a huge wooden door with no windows that could only be opened from the inside when you knocked loud enough) and we literally ran inside, rather shaken by the pre-teen hasslers.
We both felt incredibly guilty, after all giving them an additional 30dirhams would have been no skin off our backs. We then remembered that the average moroccan makes $3.25 per day, and realized we had been (unsuccessfully) scammed. This made us a little wary, but we decided to set off in search of Djemma-el-Fnaa, the main square which was only 5 minutes walking away from our hostel. We soon became hopelessly lost but whenever we pulled out our map we were jumped on by enterprising would be guides. This was rather unpleasant so we just stopped pulling out our map all together and wandered around ssuming that we would find our way back eventually. We were probably wandering for about 2 hours and near the end we were becoming rather worried... we had seen nothing that even resembled a main square. With no idea where we were and with no road signs to orient ourselves we were 100% lost. However, being the resourceful travelers were are, we decided to follow the cars and people as they all seemed to be headed in the same direction and we assumed that eventually we would end up near somewhere major. Impeccable logic if I do say so, about 15minutes we landed right in Djemma-el-fnaa. What a sight.
Djemma el-fnaa (pronounced Gemm eff na) is a huge square, that is surrounded by merchants selling souvenirs and the souks (specialized areas selling specific wares). During the day the center is empty, but every night hundreds of men set up collapsible tents and benches and tables and it become a huge open air food court. Or rather a glorified bunch of street food vendors. Now, by the time we had located this square it was about 9pm and we were starved so we sat down at the first stall we came across. We might have been worried but there were lots of other white tourists so we decided it must be safe. Dinner started with the most delicious spiced olives I have ever had, then we had the traditional flat bread (delicious again) and little bowl of crushed tomato and spice to dip it in (resembling salsa but not quite). The main course was tajine (moroccan stew) and vegetable couscous. It was all incredibly delicious and very reasonable. We paid 70 dirhams for both of our 3 course meals, not bad. We then stumbled upon a street vendor who was selling sweets from a cart. For 30 dirhams you could fill up a little box. They were delectable, made with honey, sesame and coconut.We assumed they would last at least several days... not the case. They very night we set out to buy some more, telling ourselves we wouldn't be returning to morocco for a long time.
Now, well nourished and sleepy all we wanted to do was return to our hostel. A bit of an issue when you don't know how you got to where you currently are. Now, I did have directions that detailed how to get to our hostel from Djemma-el Fnaa but were we unable to find the cafe that was the starting point. We circled the square at least twice, being hassled the whole while looking for cafe Argana. Just as we were about to give up, we happened to look up and notice a huge white canvas, that said cafe Argana was undergoing construction but used to be there. Things were smooth sailing after that and we made it back safe, sound and full to our hostel. We were rather angry about this obvious lack of updating on the hotel's part, that is until we learned that the cafe had been bombed in 2009 and several tourists had been killed. Perspective changes everything doesn't it.
With any luck tomorrow will be the second installment of my Morocco adventures, I figure I had better get writing before I have such a backlog of adventures I am unable to ever catch up.
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