Marrakech — Bahia Palace

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Ginger

Marrakech is filled with palaces, some of which we tourists cannot tour (for example, the royal residence just around the corner from our riad) and others of which we are urged to tour. But Dan and I didn’t want to spend a whole day touring historical structures. After all, there was delicious Moroccan food to eat, and beautiful rugs to buy, and whole neighborhoods to explore.

What to do? We asked our host Laurent which palace, if he had to pick only one, we should go see.

“Bahia Palace,” he said. “It is the most beautiful.”

Intended to be one of the most glorious palaces in the world when it was built in the late nineteenth century, the Bahia Palace today is a well preserved avatar of the Moroccan and Islamic styles of its time. We entered through a beautiful garden that was already indicative of the fine craftsmanship within.

Inside, it was hard to know where to look first. Every ceiling was a work of art.

And not just ceilings. Doorways, columns, floors, fireplaces… It was hard to know where to look first.

A fountain graced the center of a tranquil courtyard.

At the end of the tour, we returned to the garden, where we met some of the palace’s current residents. They seemed to be very happy to be living in such a peaceful spot.

Marrakech — the medina souks

Posted on August 19, 2013 by Ginger

Woo-hoo, one of my favorite parts of a journey–a visit to the marketplace!

I like being overwhelmed with sights and sounds and smells and textures–and the souks of Marrakech do not disappoint. They are huge, an unmapped maze of covered streets bordered by shops with overflowing and attractively arranged goods of every description. And shopkeepers eager to invite the wide-eyed tourist inside, where she can see and touch and try on whatever they can offer. And buy it, of course.

Dan walks purposefully past all the shops in order to avoid having to go in. I, however, like to linger and enjoy the richness on display. (No, I did not buy the beads.)

And even though it’s still early enough in the morning that some of the shops haven’t yet opened, there is indeed much richness on display, from fine jewelry and antiquities…

…to affordable jewelry and ornaments…

…to lamps and other objects of skilled metalwork…

…to (of course) food…

…to, well, lots of other stuff.

And it’s not just the textures and patterns of the various shops that overwhelm the senses. Even the very streets are sublime.

On a corner just outside the souks, the shops seemed more geared toward local clientele, perhaps neighborhood folk.

Marrakech — Plaza Djemaa el Fna

Posted on August 18, 2013 by Ginger

Our guide Hicham dropped us off in Marrakech as evening approached. He got us as near to our riad in Marrakech as a vehicle could go, contacted the riad, and stayed with us until a person from the riad came to meet us. We were SO cared for! Thank you, Hicham, and thank you, Youssef from Morocco Expert Tours, for the great desert experience!

We stayed at Riad Nafis in Marrakech. It was inside the medina in a quiet neighborhood, a two- or three-block walk from the nearest vehicular street. Riad Nafis has comfortable rooms, a central pool in the courtyard, a pleasant roof deck with a great view, caring and helpful staff, and a wonderful cook.

After three days in the desert, we were eager to experience city life again. Besides, we had to change money. So as soon as we settled in and oriented ourselves, we set out for the main plaza of the Marrakech medina–the Djemaa el Fna. It was dusk as we passed through the gate that led to the vehicular street.

Maybe I need to pause for a moment to explain this phrase: vehicular street. This is a street where cars and motorbikes (motorcycles, scooters) shoot by from nowhere at escape-velocity speeds and where it’s perfectly clear that when you try to cross, you might get killed. This is as opposed to pedestrian streets, where this can still happen, but mostly only with motorbikes.

The presence of motorized vehicles in the medina is a significant difference between Fes and Marrakech. “Marrakech is a real city,” Dan said to me at one point. “Not like Fes.” It was an interesting observation because Fes is actually a bigger city than Marrakech. Why did he feel this way? In part because we had to dodge traffic.

The Djemaa el Fna is a huge open area in the middle of the old medina. It’s almost shocking, actually, to see so much space deliberately left open in the midst of such ancient density. The square was filled, though, with booths, carts, vendors selling… well, mostly selling food.

As darkness descended the crowds increased, and vendors cooking full meals in temporary stalls actively solicited customers to buy a dinner and eat at the tables set up in ranks in the square.

In the morning, the plaza was deserted. An entire bustling marketplace had disappeared!

But vendors were setting up for the daytime activities: selling food and other items, of course; snake charming; henna painting; and more. A new, different bustling marketplace was being set up.

Also, all the shops around the plaza opened for business.

We decided to have a cup of coffee and watch the plaza come to life. An attractive second-floor cafe seemed the right spot for this–and there was a table right by the railing. But first we had to ask the current occupant of the table to allow us to use the other chairs.

With her consent, we enjoyed a great view of the busy-ness below.

In which we leave the high desert behind without actually visiting Ait Ben Haddou

Posted on August 17, 2013 by Ginger

Our next stop was a crafts shop. Dan, shopophobe that he is, took one look around, assessed the situation (they were going to try to sell us something), and decided to wait in the car. I went in–and I’m glad I did. A loom dominated the front of the store.

A small number of men were displaying their beautiful wares to a busload of tourists from, I think it was Korea.

A small number of Moroccan women, while not actually stopping their work, sat and watched the process. The women were beautiful.

And the wares were beautiful, too.

The one Korean man in the store and I shared a secret enjoyment at how the Korean women oohed and ahhed every time a fabric was spread out before them. We were immune to temptation, that man and I. I, because my disapproving husband was waiting in the car and I’d never be able to face him if I bought one of these beautiful things we didn’t need and would never use. The tourist gentleman because he knew his wife was already going to buy enough for both of them.

But we had a lot to do that day, and I didn’t want to keep Dan and Hicham waiting. Time to head on to Ait Ben Haddou. Ait Ben Haddou is a ksar, a fortified town of the high desert. It is so well preserved and restored that it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We parked in the village, which was dominated by shops selling postcards, souvenirs, and other tourist essentials, and walked down the trail toward the ksar.

On our way, we passed this modest dwelling…

…perhaps the home of this man and little boy, selling their wares to the tourists.

And then the ksar came into sight. Indeed, it was beautiful.

Ait Ben Haddou, originally an eleventh century caravan layover, is literally picture perfect. You may recognize it from Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth, Gladiator, and other films.

It was still fairly early in the morning, but the place was already crawling with tourists. Well, but what were we, after all, if not tourists? We should have gone in. But poor Dan had reached his limit of old kasbahs and medinas and ksars. After all, is not this region of the high desert the “Land of a Thousand Kasbahs”? And had we not already seen nine hundred of them? So this is the moment of confession: We decided not to go in. I regret this. But, hey, gotta save something for the next trip.

So, after a few moments, we headed off. Our destination: Marrakech. Our route: the serpentine Tizi n’Tichka pass. Luckily for us, the pass was not made impassable by snow, as it well might have been in December. As we drove north, the villages became fewer and the landscape more extraordinary.

The road did some kind of really breathtaking things…

…and then we were over the pass and heading down…

…to Marrakech!

A whirlwind tour of Ouarzazate

Posted on August 16, 2013 by Ginger

We arrived in Ouarzazate around sunset. Hicham stopped in a parking area where we could see an overview of some of the town’s main sights… the Kasbah Taorirt (which we would tour the next day)…

…one of the film studios (yes, Ouarzazate is a thriving film center, and many of the desert scenes you’ve seen in a variety of films were made here)…

…some local residents…

…and a tantalizing glimpse into the medina.

Then it was off to our hotel, the brand new and very pleasant Dar Chamaa, where we had a nice view from our balcony, a great bed, and a photogenic and delicious vegetarian dinner.

The next day, it was first a visit to a crafts center, the Labyrinthe du Sud. At first, it seemed to be an interesting exposition of historical and traditional crafts, utensils, jewelry, and so on of this desert region, but it quickly devolved into–I am not joking–a rug selling session.

No, we did not buy a rug in Ouarzate.

Yes, we were probably rude to the salesman. I regret this now–but not terribly.

On to the Taorirt Kasbah, an amazingly well preserved palace. Everything, from the ornamentation of the adobe exterior to the ceilings to the tilework and painting on the walls, was a lovely feat of craftsmanship. And the views were also lovely. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

The screens on the windows are so that the harem of women could look out without being seen from the outside.

Kasbah Amridil in Skoura

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Ginger

Having come to the Valley of Roses through the “back door,” so to speak, across the desert, it now fell upon us to travel down the length of the valley to rejoin the highway at Kelaat M’gouna, the capital of the region. We passed a number of villages in the valley and a number of kasbahs as well. I find I cannot tell the occupied from the unoccupied ones, partly perhaps because many of them are both. Here is one of the more picturesque groupings.

After we reached the highway, we traveled through flat desert country, but the snow-covered High Atlas mountains could be seen in the distance.

The approach to Skoura is unmistakable. Desert vegetation gives way to palm trees.

This is “the oasis of a thousand palms,” a UNESCO-protected site, where carefully tended palm oases string out for fifteen miles along a river not far east of Ouarzazate. And because Skoura was once a major destination for caravans coming out of lower Africa and the Sahara, Skoura is punctuated with fortified kasbahs. Most famous among these is the seventeenth-century Kasbah Amridil.

The left-hand portion of this once-great kasbah has been turned into a hotel.

The rest is a museum. For better or worse, we did not hire a guide. So we wandered peacefully at our own pace through the kasbah’s maze of rooms but almost certainly did not learn what we might have about the history and culture of the site.

The entry courtyard

Also in the courtyard

Looking up from the courtyard

A resident of the kasbah

“Ginger, what’s taking you so long?”
“Just a minute, Dan; I just want to take one more picture.”

Impressive ceilings

Storage jars, tiny windows

The view from the top floor

“Ginger, are you coming, or not?”

As the day waned, we crossed a provincial (or departmental?) border–demarcated along the road by towers symbolic of welcome, or protection, or perhaps both–and entered Ouarzazate.

Boutgharar in the Valley of Roses

Posted on August 14, 2013 by Ginger

We emerged from the desert into the village of Boutgharar, the last town on the road high up in the Valley of Roses.

We crossed the Asif M’Goun River, where a group of women washed clothes in the traditional way, and then entered the village, passing by the ruins of an ancient kasbah.

Boutgharar is the family home of our wonderful guide Hicham, who works for Morocco Expert Tours. Though his English was quite good, he didn’t learn it in Boutgharar. His family are farmers, and so he had to support himself at the university in Marrakech, where he completed two years, majoring in math. He dreamed of becoming a math teacher, but such jobs are hard to come by in Morocco. Meanwhile, Hicham learned and practiced English by hosting a Web site visited by people all over the world. Now he’s found he really likes being a guide.

Hicham had arranged for us to have lunch at a riad owned by his uncle. Herewith, an unusual architectural element and the panoramic view from the rooftop terrace.

Our lunch was served in a traditional dining room, where, it being low season in the Valley of Roses (December–not a rosebud to be seen), we were the only guests. And it was delicious.

Other sights around the village include a typical street, the wall of a butcher shop (fresh goat meat tonight, I’d bet), the well-ornamented Chez la famille Moulay, and a stork’s nest upon the tower of a nearby kasbah. Storks, we were told, bring good luck to the place where they nest.

In which we venture off road in the high desert

Posted on August 13, 2013 by Ginger

It may have been an outskirt of Boumalne that we circled back to, or more likely, it was another, smaller town we came to. Wherever it was, our guide Hicham made his way to a street where the paved surface disappeared.

We followed this, er, street? path? track? out into the wilderness.

We were keeping our eyes peeled for some Bedouin, whom Hicham assured us often came to this area. Sure enough, we did see their encampment, but the Bedouin themselves were not there. Probably tending their goats our somewhere…greener.

We took this stop as a chance to get out of the car, stretch our legs, and recover a bit from all the jouncing about.

Then it was back into the car, and more stunning desert scenery.

At last the outskirts of Bou Tgharar (also sometimes spelled as Boutharar) came into view. Time for lunch!

Boumalne du Dades and the lower Dades gorge

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Ginger

After leaving the market, we drove through the town of Boumalne du Dades.

We were heading through the idyllic Dades valley, with its picturesque farmland and adobe dwellings.

Soon the landscape turned more rugged.

Just in case you didn’t get the scale of these rock formations, here is an enlarged detail of the dwelling (or kasbah or other structure) in the lower third, toward the center, of the above picture.

In the foreground is part of the formation that our guide Hicham called “the monkey’s paws.” Here is the whole thing:

After this, we followed the road out of the Dades gorge…

…and back into farmland to continue our journey.

Market Day in the Desert

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Ginger

Just outside of Boumalne de Dades, we noticed some people walking through the desert. They seemed to be walking purposefully, all in the same direction.

Surely, it was not just their morning constitutional!

“Where are the people going?” we asked Hicham, our intrepid guide.

“To the market,” he replied.

Market? We hadn’t seen a market.

“It’s the weekly market in this place,” Hicham explained.

“Oh, wonderful! Can we go, too?”

Hicham must have been thinking something like, Crazy Americans, but being a kind and polite person, he didn’t say this. Instead, he took us to the market.

And here it is: A very well-attended, very local market, with lots of fresh produce offered by a variety of vendors.