Marrakech Express

Day 1 “We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign—foreign from top to bottom—foreign from center to circumference—foreign inside and outside and all around—nothing any where about it to dilute its foreignness—nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! In Morocco we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in pictures—and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot any more. The pictures used to seem exaggerations—they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough—they were not fanciful enough—they have not told half the story. Morocco is a foreign land if ever there was one; and the true sprit of it can never be found in any book save the Arabian Nights.”

-Mark Twan, The Innocents Abroad

I’ve never been less prepared for a trip than I was for Morocco. I was tired of planning. I wanted to leave room for the unexpected, to be able to follow my whims and land where I may. When we docked in Casa Blanca I had no reservations, did not know the train schedule, and had no set plans whatsoever. Heck, I didn’t even know the exchange rate. I did, however, have a great group of friends to travel with and the express intent of landing, somehow, in Marrakech.

After leaving the ship and quickly getting some money (the exchange rate was 8.60 dirham to $1.00, by the way) we stopped by Rick’s Café for lunch before setting off on our uncertain journey. A former United States diplomat opened Rick’s in a restored riad in 2004 after realizing that a Casa Blanca without a restaurant tribute to the movie was leaving a gaping hole in the tourism market. It is decorated in a lush, art deco fashion that is both reminiscent of the movie and a comforting transition to the decorating style of Morocco. We ate in the cheaper rooftop café where I first began ignoring the ship’s warning about food and ordered a goat cheese salad. Food in Morocco is, in a word, delicious. It actually gives Italy a run for its money. The fact that a delicious, multiple course meal here usually costs less than a happy meal in The States only makes the food taste even better. After I finished off my fresh salad and washed it down with a “Casa Blanca” label beer we headed off to buy a train ticket.

Second class was all that remained for the day, so with a pinch of apprehension and a heavy serving of excitement, we all boarded the Marrakech Express second-class car. O.K., I’m lying. The Marrakech Express is actually the train that ran from Tangier to Marrakech during a time when Marrakech was one of the last stops on a popular hippie traveling route that winded through northern Europe to this oasis at the edge of the Sahara desert. “Colored cottons hang in the air, charming cobras in the square, striped djellabas we can wear at home…” Crosby, Stills and Nash immortalized the city in their popular song named after the train route and its destination. The name Marrakech Express might also refer to a particularly strong strain of hash. But, I was on a train to Marrakech and it made a catchy title so I’m going with it. So anyway, I’m on this train, talking to all sorts of interesting people and watching the hazy plains turn into dusty deserts and finally melt into the red walled city of Marrakech.

By this time it is dark and beginning to rain and we still have no reservations. My new favorite way to travel… A man approached us offering a taxi large enough to take our group and asked for the address of our hotel. We tell him we still needed to figure that detail out. He immediately offered up a riad for 150 dirham per person per night. That’s less than $20, so we were ecstatic. Soon we found ourselves in a van whose floor was covered in Turkish rugs heading for the old medina of Marrakech.

This man named Muhammad led my friends and I through a series of tumultuously winding alleys to the riad we were renting. In Marrakech the streets are so narrow that in the old parts of town cars cannot go down them. Instead, a tangle of donkey carts, pedestrians, and scooters all pulse down the same narrow alleys usually without collision or incident of any kind. In one section of this zigzagged walk I was startled to find rows of butcher shops packed with cages of live chickens and bunnies munching on clover and completely unaware of their impending doom. I also saw vegetable stands by the dozen, fresh fish that still smelled like the salty Atlantic, sweet shops displaying mountains of sugary and exotic delights, and small delis packed with fresh bread and meat ready to be taken home. I would soon realize that this series of winding alleyways is the collective public pantry of Marrakech. Everyone comes here to purchase the freshest food from the best vendors to take home for dinner. It is a bustling place packed at all times of the day with people ranging from little boys playing games in the street to women buying food for their families to old men sitting around, talking quietly in murmured Arabic and French about whatever subject fits the mood.

We finally arrived at our riad at the dead end of yet another winding alley. It was magnificent. As we toured the lush courtyard, the sitting room complete with our own personal water pipe, the kitchen that came with a live in maid, the four bedrooms all with lush bedding in vivid colors and massive, dark wood wardrobes, the three huge bathrooms with open air showers, and the rooftop garden that overlooked the chaos below, we knew that this place was way out of our price range. We were right. It took us an hour of negotiating to get the price back down to what we had originally requested from the taxi driver, but we finally did and proceeded to settle into our palatial lodgings. I was in love. I have begun to feel that I deserve some sort of business credit for the amount of negotiating, haggling, and overall diplomacy I have exercised on this trip. With the markets Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco as my classrooms, I have learned a lot about the art of negotiation and saved a bundle of money in the process.

Soon after unpacking our stuff we found ourselves exploring the city in search of some cheap dinner. I eventually decided on what can only be described as a Moroccan chicken sandwich and was soon off to bed. This is the point when I realized the catch of our great steal of a riad. There was no air conditioning. That was completely manageable in Italy, but in Marrakech the highs regularly ring in around the 120’s--not exactly a place you want to share a bed and have no fans or AC. I would soon learn that my assumption in Istanbul that I could never possibly sweat more than I did in the sauna of the Turkish bath was dreadfully wrong. I took a lot of cold showers this trip.

Day 2
The next morning we woke up to a delightful spread of fresh coffee from our maid Attika and assorted breads and cheeses courtesy of our riad’s owner. Soon after we set off to explore the souks of Jemaa el Fna Square. This part of Marrakech is Islamic culture filtered through the lens of Western imagination and realized in a blur of sensory experiences. It is the snake charmers in the square, the fortune tellers squatting on an oriental carpet, the spice markets packed with cures for every ailment, the bright, vivid colors adorning every door, the monkey trainers, the souks packed with enough leather goods to warrant substantial attention from PETA, the little boys playing in the street all day, the steaming tagines, the fresh couscous, the 3 dirham orange juice squeezed right before your eyes, and the endless array of souks full of exotic goods whose prices are always negotiable. In the evenings the Jemaa el Fna Square turns into a festive carnival packed with people from across the globe and natives to Marrakech alike who all swarm into the square for impromptu street performances, delicious and cheap dinner, and to take in the sights, sounds, and smells that come with such an entertaining evening. It is, quite possibly, one of my favorite shopping districts in the world. Where else can you haggle for a monkey, a chic leather bag, and organic eye makeup in the same block? Is there any other place on earth you can buy jewelry, tea and tortoises from the same store?

I took full advantage of the unique shopping opportunities of this area and spent the entire day with friends meandering in and out of the deep alleys packed with souks until I finally emerged weighed down with a small cows worth of leather goods, a henna tattoo, assorted jewelry, and even a few Moroccan organic cosmetics. All this and I still had cash in my pocket. Later that evening we returned to the square to experience the nighttime carnival. Every day at dusk hundreds of small restaurants are erected in the square and serve up delicious Moroccan specialties for around 20 dirham a plate. That’s around $2.50. We split tagines, couscous, and grilled eggplant and set off for our riad to get ready to go out.

After slipping into a dress and finishing off the wine we had bought earlier, we headed to one of Marrakech’s most popular nightclubs and danced the night away. While there we met some of our other friends from the ship and ended the night back at our riad talking and drinking until the morning call to prayer and the rising sun prompted us all to go to sleep.


Day 3

After an hour-long nap, red bird was calling and Leah and I had to pack our things to meet our SAS tour group. We signed up for this trip long before we left for the voyage, and did not want to miss out on our $250 worth of hotel lodgings and pre planned activities. We planned on meeting them at the Majorelle Gardens, a beautiful place designed in part by Yves St. Laurent. We waited there for over two hours, took a very brief nap on a park bench, ate a delicious albeit overpriced lunch and finally relegated ourselves to meeting them in the evening at the hotel and taking it easy for the day.

When we finally did catch our group it was time for dinner and we were ushered into a bus that took us to a section of town that was remarkably close to our riad. From there we walked through a series of alleys to a riad turned restaurant that was the most luxurious dinner I’ve had the entire trip. There was a belly dancer show, a liberal scattering red rose petals covering every horizontal surface, delicious food and excellent company. By the time we made it back to the hotel, Leah and I were delirious from lack of sleep and full from great food and passed out immediately in our beds. Tomorrow would be our last day in Morocco and we didn’t even have the energy to go out. Oh well, you have to sleep sometime…

Day 3
We set off at 7:30 a.m. to visit a berber village in the Eourika Valley in the Atlas Mountains outside Marrakech. Here I had the most authentic experience of my entire voyage. Our group was relatively small, close to 30 people, so I didn’t feel like a circus parading down the streets of this small village. Instead I was able to truly observe these people’s everyday lives as they collected water from the creek, began cooking lunch in tagines, and as little children ran around playing in the sunshine. Our tour concluded at a berber home, where our tour guide dropped in occasionally with groups but could never give notice ahead of time since they did not have a telephone.

Once inside we were all seated in the main living room of this red mud walled, multi story home and invited to share mint tea and fresh bread with honey. We sat for long time as an old woman named La La Fatima went to work preparing the tea. She set out three teapots and dumped a healthy portion of green tea into each. After this she went out to the garden and gathered an armful of fresh mint and verbena, which she divided into the teapots without ever rinsing off. I don’t know why that should bother me, since she probably got the water from the creek running outside their home. While all this was taking place, little kids began to wander into the room still in their pajamas and I got yet another henna tattoo from a bright-eyed ten-year-old girl. After savoring our delicious tea, it was sadly time to leave and head back for Casa Blanca.

I had planned on sleeping during this three-hour drive, but something terrible happened. The air conditioner stopped working. As the outside temperature wavered between a cool 106° and 112°, our bus had no cool air to keep us comfortable. Just as I began to hallucinate and feel unreasonably faint, our bus driver mercifully pulled into a shell station where I dug the remnants of my currency out of the bottom of my purse to purchase a liter each of room temperature water and orange juice. The water was gone before I exited the gas station and the orange juice I shared with fellow dying passengers on the drive home in a Juno, straight from the carton fashion. We made it back in one piece, but let me just say that if I were in America, subjecting us to that heat would probably be illegal.

Already I miss Morocco because besides the oppressive heat, it was my favorite country. I love the mesh of cultures, the vivid street life, and the fact that everywhere I went seemed to be a scene from a movie or my imagined setting for a good book. It was a magical piece of earth, and I wish I could have spent longer experiencing it. Now I am floating on the Atlantic, heading home with a head full of memories from a summer like no other. Some of these stories are becoming more vivid, standing out against the blur of sights, people, countries and cultures that have made up my Mediterranean adventures; while others are quickly fading into the background, only to be recovered by pictures and accounts in my journal reread for years to come. Now I can only look forward, rather reluctantly, to some return to normalcy. I am forever changed, but I will have to make that change work in my day-to-day life.

At least I know that I have seen and done what not many people have but what everyone should: I have traveled to cultures vastly different from my own and appreciated every second. Mark Twain wrote in his novel account of the first ever “pleasure cruise,” The Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” I refuse to take the standpoint that this statement is entirely true for every person, but I do know that my travels have forever eradicated narrow-minded thoughts from my head and have introduced an entirely new set of big dreams and lofty desires into my ever growing list of aspirations. It has taught me that there is more to the world than the USA, but reaffirmed my lifelong belief that I am along the luckiest people in the plant to have been born in this wonderful, completely free country. This trip has been among the best experiences of my entire life and I am intolerably sad to see it pass away. For now I will do my best to use these last days to visit with friends on the ship and learn all I can from my professors before we part ways for our different lives at home. We will always have Semester at Sea…

With Love,

Bonnie

Egypt: Mummies, Pyramids and the Nile

I am sitting now on the top deck of the Explorer watching the lights of Alexandria disappear into the horizon as our ship pulls away from Egypt.

Writing about Egypt is a daunting task for me. Everything I’ve seen here has been so very different from anything else I have encountered on this voyage or ever in my life. In many ways, Egypt was a wake up call for me; an abrupt reminder that I am in Africa, in a nation that is home to one of the oldest civilizations on earth as well as much present political strife, surrounded by poverty, illiteracy, and a conservative Islamic culture that demands respect and adaptation on my part. Egypt is not a safe country, but I felt in awe more than I ever felt in danger. So many things that I saw-people, culture, sights, lifestyles, languages-lent imagery and experience to my previous impression of this country and made me oh so glad to hail from a country that has its act together at least in terms of economic and personal freedom. I sit here intrigued, shocked, and with an burning desire to learn more about the Islamic cultural norms and the constant political discord engulfing this entire region. For now I will write about what I have already seen and learned.

Day 1: Where in the world am I?!?!

We got off of the ship our first day in Alexandria with the intention of exploring the port area by foot or cab. On the ship they had warned us of crazy drivers and encouraged conservative dress, but beyond that we had little to go on. A large group of friends and I, nine in all, walked through the opulent port, past a huge gushing fountain, through throngs of tourist police wearing crisp, pressed, white uniforms until we finally exited the gate guarded by semi-automatic weapon carrying officers to the “real” Alexandria. At this moment, I realized immediately that any other time I had felt out of place on this trip, I was not. I felt foolish for thinking Spain had economic woes, for being baffled by the Greek alphabet, for believing that Turkey was not a western state. In comparison to the cities of Egypt, Istanbul is as Western as New York!!!

Alexandria is unlike any place I have ever seen. We took close to 10 minute to cross the street that was crowded with 10-year-old taxis, the oldest tram system in Africa, trash of all sizes and origins, the occasional horse or donkey, and other assorted motorized vehicles. Once across, we immediately realized that Alexandria was not a city we were prepared to walk, and we rapidly returned to the port to grab a clean, blue, tourist taxi whose fare might be more, but was regulated by the tourist police.

At this point most of the group had decided to join a Semester at Sea day tour of Alexandria, but Katie, Leah, and I had an itinerary in mind and chartered a taxi instead. Our first destination: the mall. Yeah, yeah, I know. But I had to ease myself into Egypt, and I know malls, so I figured I’d start with what I know. I’m calling it a significant cultural experience. Apparently I hadn’t packed enough conservative clothes on this trip, and my height and hair color had been warranting enough stares as it was. At the mall I was able to fill in my wardrobe at H & M and the Levi’s store while observing the many cultural differences and similarities here. First, I noticed how friendly everyone was to us. Despite my expectations, in my experience everyone LOVES Americans. They love our food, our clothes, our hair, our eyes, our president, and our seemingly bottomless wallets. They love to practice English with us, to tell us how beautiful we are and stare, stare, stare. By the end of the trip I was beginning to wonder if I had somehow become a YouTube celebrity and not known it for all the stares I was getting. No such luck, just my hair color, height and fair complexion.

Next we visited the Catacombs. Our cab driver, who at this point we referred to affectionately as “Uncle Khamis” and I decided looked like an Egyptian version of my Grandpaw, dropped us right by the ticket booth where we waited for a veiled woman to finish praying before checking our cameras and selling us our ridiculously cheap student tickets. A SAS trip had just left and we were very fortunate to have the entire place to ourselves. After descending a wide winding staircase underground into a series of tombs, I was met with what could have easily passed as an eerily lit set for an Indiana Jones movie. Seriously, this place was a series of ancient winding passageways all flooded with water so that we had to navigate on planks of wood. There were inscriptions covering some walls, intricate carvings on others, and some were left blank with modern, sharp edges that made me question the authenticity of the place. To make the entire experience even more eerie, there was a glass cabinet randomly positioned in one of the rooms full of human bones. It was such a cool place and seemed so much like what a movie producer would recreate as an Egyptian tomb that I thought I might be in a theme park. Of course, if I were in Disneyworld I would most assuredly not be one of three people in the entire place.

After that, we decided to hit up the Biblioteca Alexandria. This was such an unexpectedly modern site in a city that seems to be from a different era. This brand new library rises to meet the Mediterranean Sea in one of the most picturesque areas of the city. It is an extremely modern building of circular shape that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Inside, it is the second largest depository of knowledge in the world, only behind the Library of Congress in D.C. I absolutely loved it here. Everything was so new and there were books everywhere. If I lived and went to school in Alexandria, I think I would be in this library every single day.

At one point I was separated from my friends for about 30 minutes and was wandering in the library by myself. This is a very safe, extremely secure place and I was not concerned to be alone in the least. I realized, however, why the ship stressed so explicitly that girls should never be alone in Egypt--I have never been hit on more in a library in my life. It’s the hair, I swear. But it was kind of ridiculous. Really ridiculous. I mean, I was wearing a skirt that went down to my ankles and a T-shirt that went up to my neck! Whatever, I guess I just look really different over here.

After our time in the library we found Uncle Khamis outside to take us back to the ship. Our trip to Cairo left really early in the morning and we hadn’t packed yet. On the way back, Khamis started digging around in the front passenger seat for something when all of the sudden…HE HIT ANOTHER CAR!!! Don’t worry, I’m all right. I mean, my Egyptian cabby just rear-ended a guy, but his bumper’s still halfway on, so it’s O.K. What does one do in that situation??? I sat there, speechless in the backseat and watched as the two parties involved shrugged it off in the middle of a side street in Alexandria. Oh Uncle Khamis…

Day 2: And I thought Alex was crazy!

My SAS trip to Cairo left at 8:00 in the morning and I was full of excitement for the next two days. We all piled into an air-conditioned bus for the 2 and a half hour drive to Cairo, during which we received a brief history lesson from our amazing guide. The drive from Alex to Cairo is kind of surreal. In many ways, Egypt is Western. Just like the states, Egypt has gas stations, KFC, and McDonalds sprinkling the roadways. Unlike the states, the entire country is covered in desert. Our drive went like this: desert, desert, dunes, desert, cluster of stores and a gas station with a splattering of small trees watered by hoses daily, desert, desert, desert…

I took a quick, or perhaps long, nap on the ride, and before I knew it I was in a metropolis of 20 million built along the Nile but very much so in the middle of the, you guessed it, desert. I’m not so sure that this was a smart idea. So many people in such a small space, surrounded by desert, fighting for precious resources, cannot make for a perfectly balanced, happy society. Issue number one (in my opinion at least): trash. Trash was everywhere. I wasn’t in the city for very long before our bus traveled a road which runs parallel to an irrigation canal that has turned into the city’s garbage disposal. Mountains of trash made up the banks of this mud colored creek. I couldn’t look away as we passed island upon island of floating trash. This was seriously the most polluted, trashed, yucky thing I’ve every seen. Occasionally I could spot a school of small fish just below the surface of the muddy water, and I could swear that they glowed. As we went further, I began to see something more alarming than any of the trash I had already passed: boys were swimming in this water!!! As polluted as this thing was, it passed as a viable recreational swimming area for the boys of Cairo.

Luckily, we were soon past the creek and at our first destination: the pyramids at Zoser. These smaller step pyramids often go overlooked by tourists, but were really very cool. We were able to go inside one of the pyramids where a guide showed us the intricate engravings on the walls and the paintings that after Millennia still contained vivid color. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would every be climbing into and around an ancient pyramid, but I did, and it was pretty darn cool. Plus, we were able to bribe the guide, or rather take up his offer, to take forbidden pictures of us inside. Not the last time I’d be bribing someone in Egypt, that’s sort of how they do things here.

Next we had lunch at a five star hotel and were off to the Archeological Museum of Cairo. This is the big daddy of all Archeological Museums. This is the place where all of Egypt’s relics are stored and put on display. It was vastly different from any museum I’ve been to in the states, partly because there was no air conditioning, but mainly because at every corner there was some relic or antiquity whose picture I could easily find on the pages of my world history textbook in the ninth grade. In my whirlwind tour I saw mummies, the famed coffin of Tutankhamun, solid gold thrones, statues of solid marble that were two stories high, ancient papyrus scrolls, ancient gold jewelry that seemed modern enough to be unwrapped from Tiffany’s today, and, strangely, the world’s oldest condom. Simply building the pyramids was not enough for these guys…

After all that history, it was time for a nap at our hotel. We stayed at the luxurious, five star Mena House, the closest hotel to the pyramids in all of Cairo. Our room looked out directly onto the towering Pyramids of Giza as though they might just be billboards advertising the sight. There were so close I could see the guards walking along their base. It was a beautiful hotel, but after only two hours of relaxing, it was time to head to the nighttime light show on the pyramids. I loved this. I mean, it’s a light show on the Great Pyramids!!! I’m a sucker for a light show I suppose. Most people thought it was totally cheesy, and it was, but I really secretly thought it was super cool. 

Day 3: Holy Camel! It’s the Great Pyramids!!!

We had dinner and approximately 3 and half hours of sleep before our 4:15 wake up call to watch the sun rise over the Pyramids. Only a handful of groups get special permission to go into the Pyramid viewing area before sunrise, so this was truly a once in a lifetime experience. I am soooo glad I did this because it was quite possibly the most magnificent sunrise I have ever seen in my entire life. Scratch that; it is, definitively, the most amazing sunrise I have ever, ever, seen. Ever. Don’t worry, I think I took 300 pictures that morning, so I should be able to remember and share it. We also rode camels here, which was quite an experience. They are HUGE! And not nearly as comfortable as horses if I can say so myself. But they do give quite a ride, and I laughed the whole way around as I was barely holding myself on.

After this, and about 1,000 more pictures, we went shopping in the Grand Bazaar in Cairo. I didn’t spend much money here, but we all got a lot of attention from vendors. I was able to score a wooden Camel and a bright pink scarf. I think I’m getting better at bargaining, because everything here was much cheaper than in Istanbul. Could be the economy, but it might be my haggling prowess. I guess we’ll never know… It wasn’t as good as the bazaar in Istanbul, but I still loved looking through this open-air market. As soon as we were finished here, we piled into the bus to go to our Nile cruise.

Now that I’ve experienced lunch on the Nile, I want to come back and do a longer cruise. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would get the chance to float down this majestic river, but now that I have I want to see more. I really want to come back to Africa and do a safari, or maybe some volunteer work. I’ve only scratched the surface…

One two-hour bus ride later and I was back in Alexandria. I was pretty tired at this point and went to bed.