Marching about Marrakech

From Maspalomas, we set out for Marrakech, travelling budget airline Binter Canarias. They were the only airline that travelled direct from Gran Canaria to Morocco so we were prepared to go no-frills. We arrived early in case check-in took longer than expected. But it was probably the easiest check-in process so far. Vueling could learn a few things. The woman at counter 124 was a machine. Before she finalised one group she already had another lined up. “Siguiente en la cola” (next in line).

I was expecting a small aircraft, and it was, with only about 25 rows. If I stood on my tippy toes, my head hit the roof. Take-offs and landings were going to be interesting. But surprisingly, the flight was fairly smooth, although I was worried that the plane was a repurposed Fisher and Paykel washing machine.

As we got off the plane, a short Moroccan man came running out of the plane towards the airport shuttle bus. Jason’s Lost World strikes again! This time, Jason had left his sunglasses on-board the plane.

After queuing for immigration, we needed to begin the bartering process with the taxi drivers. Due to colonialism, French is still widely spoken (and advertising and signage are all in French). Hello high school French!

Taxi drivers, in our experience, are the most likely people to rip off tourists. You’re at their mercy, especially if you don't speak the language, and you really need to get to your accommodation. Our hard bartering paid off – we were only ripped off 50 dirham (AU$7) 😂.

We were staying in the old Medina, constructed in the late 11th century by the Almoravid dynasty. The Medina is filled with Riads, historical elite dwellings that have been converted into hotels/homestays. We were greeted by the Riad Manager, Soufiane, and the owner, Hakim, who was a French Moroccan living in Dubai with his Ukrainian wife and two children. We got the low-down on everything.

We headed to the Big Square (Jamaa el fna), the epicentre of the Medina. We’d spent the last six days in little old Maspalomas and now we had been transported to another world that was almost a sensory overload of smells, sounds and sights. Donkey- and horse-drawn carts are still used in Marrakech. And you can smell it in the air. At first, I thought surely people aren’t just pissing all over the square. No, just horses and donkeys.

Connected to the Big Square are the entrances to the Souk, a maze of shops selling all kinds of wares from teapots and rugs to fragrances and counterfeit “designer” clothes. The counterfeits were really bad. The Moroccans should stick to what they're good at: teapots, pottery, leather making, jewellery, fragrances etc.

The shopkeepers in the Souk were really aggressive in their sales techniques. I think they’re even more aggressive than the shopkeepers in Thailand's tourist areas (or even anywhere in India). One encounter left Jason with bruises along his arm from a shopkeeper trying to drag him into his shop. In the back of our minds, we had the Absolutely Fabulous episode, Morocco, in our heads where Saffy gets abducted and sold into slavery. I wonder how many camels I’ll get for Jason 🤣🤣.

Outside of the Souk, the shopkeepers seemed less aggressive. We had a lovely chat to one woman who sold Moroccan fragrances, oils and spices. She called the spices her Berber crack. Whenever she had a craving, she could take some of the herbs and spices and sniff it like it was crack.

To get to the Big Square, we needed to follow a narrow lane that connected a rabbit-warren of alleyways. Each day we would traipse up and down the lane, weaving between motorbikes and donkeys, passing by the same spruikers coaxing us to look at their wares or dine in their restaurants.

One guy, dressed in traditional Berber attire, tried to guess our nationality, a game that they all play, and not too dissimilar to the games played in South East Asia. Usually it’s a tactic to get you to stop and talk (and also so they know what price to pitch). After going through almost the entire list of countries in Europe, he was left unsure where we were from. The Berber Crack shopkeeper said we looked German, because we were tall, had blue/green eyes and had blondish hair.
French and German were usually the first couple of guesses.

The Berber guy was probably thrown when I responded in (bad) French, but obviously not bad enough to eliminate France as an option. The next day, we gave him enough clues that he guessed correctly. We took a look at his merchandise as a prize for winning the competition. But his pitch was way off. He tried to sell us two leather necklaces for AU$90. We quickly retreated, and he didn’t bother us, except to yell “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” at us as walked by.

Within the Big Square, there were all kinds of stalls during the day, along with snake charmers and monkey handlers. There were numerous stalls in the centre of the square that sold freshly squeezed fruit juice.

Similar to the sellers in the Souk, the fruit juice sellers were competing with others for every person who wandered into their peripheral vision. Usually, we would say nothing and keep our eyes diverted. As soon as they spot you looking at anything they pounce on your like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. It made shopping an interesting sport. One of the juice boys yelled at us to come to their stall, and when we ignored him he asked why we didn't want to buy from him. Before we could respond another juice boy yelled in English “because they don't like you”. We all cracked up and then went on with our day.

On our second day, we headed to the Bahia palace and gardens, which were begun by Si Musa, grand vizier of Alaouite sultan Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman, in 1859 and continued by his son, Si Ba Ahmed ibn Musa, grand vizier of Sultan Moulay Abdelaziz. The family had risen to power from that status of black slaves due to their connection to the royal family. The palace included a number of Riads, some for the grand vizier's four wives and 24 concubines.

After visiting the palace, we decided to explore parts of the new city of Marrakech. We set out for Guerliz, a district in the new city. There was a noticeable difference in atmosphere and architecture as soon as we stepped outside of the Medina boundaries.

It is also impossible to travel to Morocco and not experience a hammam. In the old days, when not everyone had a bathroom in their house, the hammam was the place to bathe and get clean. It was also one of the few places women were historically allowed to visit outside of the home. Due to COVID, we decided not to go to a local hammam and instead went with a more upmarket take on the traditional hammam. Though, the treatment we opted for probably wasn't too traditional – I mean, eucalyptus isn't native to Morocco.

To get to the spa, a Moroccan woman appeared at our Riad and guided us through the windy lanes of the Medina. When we arrived, we were ushered into a changing room, told to strip and put on some black see-through mesh panties. There wasn’t much left to the imagination!

The hammam experience started with rubbing eucalyptus oil over our bodies. They left us there for a few minutes and then returned to pelt water at us. Rinse and repeat; this time with gommage (scrub). And we paid for this!

I’ve never been too comfortable with strangers touching me, even for a foot massage. And especially in Asia when they bring out the stick and dig it into your foot. There’s something about it that makes me feel awkward. I feel like it’s almost a master-and-slave relationship. Anyway, I tried to put that aside.

But really shouldn’t there be at least dinner with that kind of intimacy and heavy breathing. Jason said to me afterwards, “you seemed to enjoy the massage with all that moaning”. But that was the massage therapist not me. I laid uncomfortably on the massage table, losing feeling in my hands and arms. At one point, I thought that I might have been having a stroke.

Fortunately, when we finished the hammam experience, the same woman showed us the way back to our Riad. Jason McGoogle thought that we didn't need her. Apparently he’d worked out the rabbit-warren. Except after the second left turn, he admitted he would have gone right.

Early on in our Marrakech adventure, we found Mazel’s, a restaurant that served the best pitas filled with slow-cooked meats of your choice. Needless to say, we popped by either for lunch or dinner each day to try different items on the menu. On the third night, as we sat at Mazel's, Jason entered the Lost World, panicking that he’d been pickpocketed. But alas, his wallet was just in his pocket.

After dinner each night, we gravitated to the Big Square to immerse ourselves in the crazy atmosphere that is the Medina. We watched the locals enjoying a meal, playing music or belly dancing. A group of Moroccan carnies were playing hoopla with a long stick and a rubber ring at the end. The end game was to snare a bottle and win a lucky dip prize.

As we stood watching the hoopla game, a Moroccan man struck up a conversation with us. The first thing that came out of his mouth after we revealed that we are Australian was “kangaroo”, followed by “Sydney, Melbourne”. He said he liked Australia because it had pubs, something that was foreign to Morocco. The lack of pubs meant our livers have taken a little break from alcohol. I couldn’t justify the AU$7 for a 250ml bottle of beer – well, I did justify it once as an emergency 🤣. After a bit of banter, he invited us back to his house. Maybe he wanted to marry us off to his sisters. We politely made an excuse and headed back to our Riad.

The topic of marriage came up when Jason was browsing in a shop. The shopkeeper asked Jason where his wife was. He replied that he was divorced, which was met with “how sad”. Jason said that he was happier now that he was divorced, and living a much better life without her 😂😂.

Both premarital sex and same-sex acts carry heavy prison terms and fines in Morocco. But interestingly, Yves Saint Laurent, a very open gay man, set up home with his partner in Marrakech without any fuss from the authorities. I guess having lots of money helps. The museum, which was once Saint Laurent’s home, was closed for renovations so we could only visit his gardens.

Jardín Majorelle was created by the French Orientalist artist Jacques Majorelle in 1923 and purchased by Saint Laurent in the 1980s. To be honest, the gardens were a little underwhelming. Many of the public gardens throughout Marrakech seemed more impressive.

From the moment we arrived in Marrakech, we realised that obtaining money may be a challenge. The ATMs that we tried were either out of service or undergoing maintenance, and the money exchange didn't accept Australian dollars. Luckily, we had some Euros to tie us over until we got to a working ATM.

The other issue with ATMs was the 2000-dirham (AU$28) transaction limit. On our third day, we tried to get money out of an ATM and the transaction appeared to have worked but no cash came out of the machine. We went into the bank and a Portuguese girl who had had the same thing happen a few minutes earlier was trying to chat to the bank personnel, who appeared to only speak French.

Eventually, we found a machine that sort of worked. It only worked if you selected French language. Nothing happened if you chose English. The French have never really liked the English, have they?

Another tourist tried to take money out of the machine next to us. We alerted him to the attachment on the card reader that appeared to be a credit card skimmer. He quickly removed his card and tried to use the same machine as us. We walked off to grab some gelato, and when we returned his card had been eaten by the machine. We surmised that he may have tried to select English and because nothing happened the machine took the card.

We were aware of the many tourist scams in Marrakech that take you to leather shops or tanneries. Jason says that I talk too much to strangers but I can't help talking back to them. We were told by a young Moroccan guy that there was a Berber market and it was the last night before they go back to the Atlas Mountains. He gave us some directions and took off. However, he kept popping up along the way. In French, he kept saying that he was out to buy food for his family. He ended up leading us to a Berber tannery; and, when a guy offered us some mint to smell before entering, we realised that we were being taken on a tour of the tannery. We politely declined the offer and quickly retraced our steps, trying to lose the guy who led us there. Exit, stage left.

Meanwhile as we tried to navigate back to the Big Square, the guy zoomed by us on the back of his mate's motorbike. Later, we saw him again in the Souk, and still he tried to get us to go to a hammam or get a massage.

Since alcohol was off the menu, we turned our attention to the patisseries. We had high expectations that the French colonial influence may have lived on in Morocco. We found ourselves some baklava, which was bland and tasteless, and then a Moroccan bakery that sold millefeuille. We bit into it and the custard was banana favoured. Who puts banana in a millefeuille? (p.s it seems the British do). The dirty bastards!

Next stop: stopover in Casablanca.Read more