Morocco - Part one: Not what we expected.

As we flew over the gap between Spain and Morocco the land became so much greener than I expected. There were clearly marked paddocks, crops and cattle. Not exactly what one imagines when you think of Morocco. It was very beautiful and not at all sparse as my imagination and small amounts of education on Morocco had told me.

Hassan II 

Casablanca airport welcomed us not with the warmth I was expecting or hoping. It was somewhat warmer than Spain, but not enough to become a non-coat wearing human again. Damn it. A reasonably comfortable train ride into the city and a short taxi later we found ourselves a hotel. Another shock had hit us upon arriving – that French appeared to be not only a widely spoken language, but the dominate language. Being a European language they all expected us to speak French. Doh. I later read that French is only really around in the cities, and Moroccan Arabic is much more prevalent throughout the country as a whole. Although it brought back strong memories of backpacking through South America, old and grimy. This was not the Morocco I had imagined. It felt like it lacked anything, sort of like Yangon in Myanmar did. Reflecting on that experience I knew for certain that things would change, if not in other parts of the city then when we headed down to Marrakech the following afternoon. The first meal in Morocco added to my South American fears. Meat and dirt and chips...... I snacked on a few fries and hoped the next day would bring better things.

The next morning after a below average Moroccan breakfast (more concerns were upon me by this time) we headed out to see Hassan II mosque on the waters edge. I had seen a number of pictures and was looking forward to seeing this amazing building. The fog lingered (it is around in the mornings, we were informed by the taxi driver to the hotel the night before and re-confirmed by the one this morning) and our photos were very largely impacted by this weather, but the sheer size of this building was not lost in the physical presence. It is an amazing building. Only built in 1993 and designed by a French architect, it is over 200 metres tall (worlds tallest minaret) and can hold 25,000 people and a further 80,000 if you include the courtyard area. It is the 7th largest mosque in the world.

After this, we jumped back in the taxi and discovered that, yes, we were staying in a terrible part of town. The waterfront area in Casablanca screams wealth in a very obvious way. There were even surfers in the cold water. Morocco was proving to be full of surprises already.

Mint being sold in the Medina

Next it was time to take a three and a half hour train journey to Marrakech. Our fingers were crossed for a feeling of more life and culture. What I would describe as soul to the Marrakech than we had found in Casablanca. Within arriving and making our way to the central medina it was evident there was a lot more going on here, with the hustle and bustle of Asia (although Asia still remains my favourite travel destination to date by a long shot). Next was the mission of finding our Riad (guesthouse) in what is well known as an area to get thoroughly lost in Marrakesh.  I was pleased to have had a bit of a read of my Lonely Planet Morocco at that stage when I remembered that 20Dh (about 2 euros) would get us a guide of sorts to escort us to where we needed to be. As those thoughts hit home a guy tapped on Spikes shoulder.

Riad Bahia

The next hour was spent looking for our accommodation. We had pre-booked on Agoda with the hopes of avoiding a nightmare upon arriving to Marrakesh. This was all in vain as we followed our guide around the medina making phone calls and looking for this mysterious Riad. Eventually the address was certainly located. No sign, nothing to indicate this was any type of accommodation. An elderly Moroccan man finally greeted our guide after a few minutes of knocking. In French. After about 10 minutes of discussion and a phone call or teo it had been established that this was the correct Riad, and that we were the first guests it has had. At about that time I knew that it could go any way from here on. The Riad host spoke not a word of English and us no French. This lead to an interesting first few days. Luckily, before our guide left we established what time the host would have breakfast ready and our general plan off attack for the next few days.

After he shared with us some weird steamed (I think nuts?) one afternoon we had an interesting conversation (or maybe more like anti-conversation) about our accommodation with him. He was trying to say we needed to pay tax on top of our booking. However, we had used this site a lot of times and it is fully inclusive. So we tried to explain with diagrams and arrows that our tax was included. In the end I think he just gave up. Was pretty funny though trying to think of as many different ways as possible to explain, including role playing.

Lunch

You would think that the food in Morocco was full of flavour. Rich with the coloured spices you always see on TV. However, in reality this was far from the case. Coloured with Turmeric was about as far as it went and if you were lucky there was cumin and salt on the table which you could add yourself. It was pretty disappointing that’s for sure. Although I think I picked up a couple of tips for making cous cous better than before I left. I have yet to try these out though as when you eat cous cous every day you get pretty over it. They don’t seem to have much variety in food either which was shame.