The area around Rabat/Mekenes/Fes is the Darling Downs of Morocco. The Downs is a very fertile, agriculturally rich area of Australia west of Brisbane. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say the Downs is the Australian version of this place. This area was about as far south west as it was possible to be flung during the Roman Empire days but such was its value as a food bowl for the populace, the Roman city of Volubilis was built (again, on the foundations of various Phoenician and Carthaginian cities) to take advantage. And despite the plundering of stone to build other places and the impact of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake which hammered this area as well (take note California), the ruins are magnificent. Does that seem like a contradiction to you? Anyway, for students of history (professional and amateur alike) it’s well worth a visit.
It’s unlikely you would have seen a tractor in this part of the world in 50BC but the strange thing is I haven’t seen any today and we’ve been driving through here for hours. In fact the closest things to farm machinery I’ve seen are donkeys. There are plenty of ploughed fields and neatly clumped bales of hay scattered about the place as well as countless acres of rows and rows of olive trees and grapevines. So there is ample evidence of modern agriculture. Just as there is ample evidence of UFO’s. It must be wait until it gets cooler season.
There are also lots of sheep arranged into small groups of about 50-100 and each group has a human supervisor. Do we still call them shepherds? I don’t know.
And there are police everywhere. There was a tragic incident involving two female backpackers a few months ago which horrified the Moroccan authorities (as well as everyone else in the civilised world). Tourism is huge in this country so you can only assume that a very visible police presence is to reassure tourists and criminals alike. One that they’ll be safe and the other that they’ll be caught so don’t even think about it.
More on Fez in Part 4 but I’ll just note a few things here.
The medina market is a maze of narrow alleyways and passages. The wider ones have stalls on either side and barely enough room for people to pass each other. They sell anything that can fit. Some of the passages are too narrow for an average NFL lineman’s shoulders or an average politicians stomach. And it’s a huge maze. If we had not had a guide we’d have had a better chance of getting out of the Sahara Desert.
Men are ubiquitous. They run all of the stalls in the market (while women do most of the shopping – of course) and occupy all of the outside seats in all of the many cafes, none of which sell beer, I might add. This is a Muslim thing apparently – not the beer thing because you can buy it in supermarkets and some restaurants as I discovered immediately I set foot in this country.
While Morocco is a Muslim country there are few clothing restrictions. It’s not Madrid during Gay Pride Week but local girls and tourists alike get away with yoga pants and tank tops. Just don’t sit in a cafe.
I’ll finish here with a note about our accommodation in Fes. Rather than a modern hotel, of which there are many, we stayed in a riad in the old part of town down an alley way too narrow for a car. It was the best accommodation experience the CB and I have had in a long time, possibly ever. I won’t do it justice in my description because it’s a small palace but you can look-up the Riad Salam Fes and see for yourself. Just a small hint here. The bedroom ceiling wasn’t a mirror and it wasn’t the Sistine Chapel but it was closer to the latter than the former.