Morocco - Part three: Shopping, Drowning and Eating

Riad Eden

There are cats everywhere. Even in the middle of the desert the campsite had cats. They are not the cute and cuddly type, but a Moroccan type, that make the weirdest meow noise ever. It is like a scream cry (like cats do), but they seem to not have the ability to make normal meowing noises as well. Just the horrible cat scream.

There are a lot of sounds actually. Like the call to prayer. You don’t notice it so much during daylight, but at 5:30am you can clearly hear the ‘singing’? I think I didn’t sleep through the night once while staying there (though I am sure the rock hard beds added to that).

During the day time the sounds change. Just like Asia you are constantly hounded to buy things. Common sayings in Marrakech included: “what’s this?” (for those selling soaps and spices and anything that smells) “you’re too skinny, come eat” (food stall holders in the evenings) and the age old “you promised me yesterday”, were a few I can remember.

The selling strategy at the food stalls in the evenings literally made me walk down the aisles cracking up laughing the first night we arrived. Everyone charges at you with menus and promises from every direction and takes no shame in grabbing your arm, trying to drag you, and standing right in front of you so you can’t move. The novelty wore off fast though and by the last night I had given up even speaking to them and just walked past ignoring all comments, eye contact and charging through anyone in my way.

We had arranged a lovely Riad to stay in after our trip into the desert. Riad Eden is owned by a French couple and their staff are very friendly, the breakfasts extremely generous and the guesthouse just plain lovely. Breakfast in Morroco is normally quite tasty, they have these deslious pancake things generally eaten with honey, fig or apricot jam. Tasty. And of course there is the fresh orange juice, not unlike South America. Emmanuel, the owner seems to have an endless supply of conversational topics and a lot of really helpful advice as well.  A highly recommended place to stay if you ever go to Marrakesh.

Sweet treats

All the sweets in Morocco are almond flavoured. By sweets I mean cakes, cookies, slices all the little baked and non-baking goodies they eat. It gets a bit old after a while. Although they are pretty tasty, just probably not as good as they look.

The median in Marrakesh gets pretty mental. There are people pushing everywhere and bikes and motos try to squeeze through streets which can barely fit two people wide. I even got hit by a pushbike and damn it hurt. I spent most of my time wishing they would just ban bikes from the median They even managed to fit small trollies down some streets and small cars down the slightly larger ones… what a nightmare!

We did our fair share of shopping and bargaining. There is a lot of neat stuff to buy, Tarjines, tea pots, bowls, luggage, shoes, lampshades and so on… The best value buy probably was Spikes fake Rolex, which started off at 650Dh (65 euros) and we ended up paying 140Dh (14 euros). Not bad. Though it is not always keeping time… The bargaining was good though!

We couldn’t visit Morocco without going to a Hamamm. The massage was below average but the Hamamm itself was a surprise. Sitting naked on a little stool getting hot water thrown at me by a lady and then scrubbed down with black soap and drowned again. Intense.

On a side note I was determined to complain to the guy that sold us the tour. With his encouragement to “please come back and tell him how it was” after the tour. My goal however was to gain back some of the money we were ripped of through being sold to another company. There was people in our van who only paid 700Dh each, where we paid 175D more each (for the ‘better experience’ we were ripped off). I must admit with the numerous tours we had done and been ripped off I expected nothing. After waiting patiently while others handed their money away we finally got our turn to speak up. After a good half an hour we walked away with 200Dh and an offer of a free  day trip. We didn’t want the day trip. But it was better than a kick in the face and a lot more than I expect from Best Travel. Although, still not a fair deal.

After a little over a week in Morocco we were ready to leave and on our way for one night in London before embarking on the long journey that is getting to Melbourne.