Red Wine Express

In no particular order:

1. To politicians and sportspeople and the ludicrously named, so-called “elites” and other ingrates who feel the need to be ashamed of their first world countries where opportunities abound, where you can attempt a triple somersault with pike and know there’s a safety net, where everyone who criticises them is a racist or a “phobe”, I say look outside your bubble. In Morocco I have never seen so many national flags with not a council bureaucrat with a cease and desist notice in sight. They love their country. I’ve seen the same in India. We go to places like India and see something entirely different to what Indians see, which, in all of its complexity and contradictions is still “Mother India”. The Moroccans, for their part are bound by three pillars – God, the Nation and the King. If only our spoilt brats, professional complainers and cultural traitors had even a third of that or the equivalent.
2. The second language in Morocco is French. Without bothering to look it up I’m guessing that “escalator” in French doesn’t mean “escalator” in English. So we didn’t have a nice comfortable ride down to the bottom of the Ouzoud Falls and a nice comfortable ride back to the top. We took it step by step by bloody step by interminable step. Similarly “douche” has a rather different meaning to that usually referred to in your bog-standard American teen movie. So the contents of the douche bottle are to be used to wash oneself in the shower rather than squirt…. never mind.
3. The CB and I agree that this is the toughest trip we’ve done physically which is mainly down to the heat and the amount of walking and climbing. If there is a God he gave me red hair and a fair completion. He could have completed the job by stamping across my forehead “Not to be taken into the desert”. It wouldn’t have mattered because we’re stubborn buggers. So the heritage listed Ait Benhaddou kasbah a 13th century fort (prominent in Game of Thrones as it happens) was rocked all the way to the bit on the top of the hill. I didn’t think anything could top the 29 flights (according to Mr iPhone) at Ouzoud Falls but we did 38 mostly here. Stupid is as stupid does as a great philosopher once said.
4. There are unfinished shells of houses and bigger buildings scattered through every town and village we encountered. It’s almost like after putting up the outside the builder ran out of money or lost interest. A lot of these buildings aren’t run down or derelict so maybe they will eventually get finished. I’ll probably never know.
5. Our guides also double as our drivers. Their lot can get a bit boring with sometimes long drives between stops although for us it’s never boring with ever changing landscapes and some mind-bogglingly spectacular scenery which you hope the driver isn’t looking at. So when they get on the soft sand in a four wheel drive vehicle they are straight away in the Paris to Dakar rally which incidentally came through this area some years back. So they can follow part of the actual route which makes throwing the vehicle into a sand dune like a snowboarder into a half pipe even better.
6. There are football as in soccer fields all over the country. I am yet to see one with a blade of grass on it. And most have been constructed by moving the larger rocks beyond the touch lines. These guys would be either the most fearless and fearsome sliding tacklers in the game or they don’t do it at all – no inbetweens.
7. There is so much more to this incredible country than I’ve been able to report here but we have to move on. Well worth a visit but take the 50+ sunblock and a hat.

Yesterday we drove through the northern part of the Sahara Desert, not far from Algeria, and were in a sandstorm. Not the sort you see in the movies where visibility is practically zero and Lawrence can’t see his hand in front of his face but one where I’m glad we were in an air conditioned pressurised vehicle and the sand scudding across the road was staying outside. And here’s a turn-up. It rained. Actually, if a few drops on the windscreen qualifies as rain, it rained. I’m claiming it. I’ve seen it rain in the Sahara Desert.

Seeing how people live out here can be quite confronting. Culture shock is a clear and present reality. First they have to put up with sandstorms. Then there’s the heat. The absence of creature comforts that we take for granted. The list goes on. Isolation would be a bit more of an issue if it weren’t for the electricity and phone lines that criss-cross the landscape and the occasional communications tower on a bare, craggy hill. But every kilometre closer to Timbuktu increases the IQ (isolation quotient).

But some things never change. We had lunch (Berber “pizza”) at our guide’s family home in Erfoud and his four year old son and seven year old sister proved that kids are the same the world over before they become culturally conditioned.

Actually, we’re all mostly the same all of the time if you can strip away that cultural stuff. Human nature and common sense are universal traits that reduce us all to the same approximate base line. These traits are however respected and abused to various degrees across all cultures. Man, where did that come from. Now back to normal programming.

Yesterday, after arriving at our desert camp the child bride and I went for a camel ride as the sun went down. Very romantic except when I got off the camel, I realised I should have been riding it side-saddle if romance was to get out of the dugout let alone to first base.

Notwithstanding, it was cocktail hour and Sex on the Beach (sort of) beckoned. Two uncold beers and a bottle of room temperature white wine – drinkable after the sun went down and room temperature was survivable – was as close as we could get to cocktails. I’m reminded of Frankie Boyle’s Scottish pub where an Englishman asked for a lager and lime and was told by the barman in a gruff, deep voice “we don’t serve cocktails”.

We did however drink in the serenity. I said to the CB “it’s quiet”. “Too quiet” she said. Then the drums started, slow and faint to begin with but gradually increasing in urgency and volume. I noticed a distinct increase in activity round our camp. “What’s happening?” I said, somewhat alarmed. “The dancing competition at the next camp down the road has started and we’re getting dinner underway”. “No worries” said I.

So we got up this morning at sparrow fart (5.30am in desert parlance) and headed for the dunes astride our trusty ships of the desert. The objective was to see a desert sunrise. It was about 6.45am before the sun put in an appearance and by that stage it was a few degrees above the horizon thanks to the haze. Our desert sunrise was like our desert storm the day before. But we’d been there for both and that’s 99% of the experience.

It’s time to talk about survival skills.

A life skill (only a survival skill in certain circumstances) that we all need to learn is the ability to say “no”. This can come in handy in all sorts of situations – marriage proposals, bungee jumping invitations, children who don’t know the difference between wants and needs, politicians who want pay rises – you get the drift.

Walk through a Moroccan market and if you don’t have to say “no” three or four times a minute check for spiders. You are invited to buy, to eat, to consider, to look, to try-on, to chat. And word gets around. The first day the CB and I were in Marrakech we asked a few restaurant spruikers if they sold beer and wine. The answer was generally “no” (see, they can do it too) but afterwards grubby individuals were sidling up to us inviting us, in whispered tones, back to their no doubt salubrious premises to partake of beer and wine. The answer to this invitation is “no”.

After a week in Morocco, we have to face up to (and survive) the inevitable. It’s the same when you go to Bali or other places in Asia like India. I’ve been to both, India many dozens of times so the inevitable is …… inevitable. You know what I’m talking about right?

People who know about these things say don’t drink water from the tap, don’t put ice in your drink and don’t eat salads (the lettuce is washed in that horrible water, don’t you know). What they don’t tell you is not to sit anywhere near those fans blowing clouds of fine water spray out over where you happen to be sitting because it’s a hot day and that spray feels so cool as it settles on your food and in your drink and gets breathed in. They should also tell you not to breathe. Precautions be damned. Bow to the inevitable. But don’t eat street food under any circumstances.

And be prepared because anything lurking in the bowel will be evicted with extreme prejudice. If you haven’t experienced this, imagine sitting down, relaxing and the hangman releases the trapdoor. Sound and fury ensues. Anyway the process is so efficient I’ve dropped two hat sizes.

Harking back to The Iberian Intervention it was pointed out by our guide that Americans are uncomfortable with the word “toilet” and prefer something less confronting like “washroom” whereas Europeans couldn’t care less. So you never see someone go to the toilet in an American movie (unlike in European movies) unless it’s actually the butt (mirth mirth) of the joke. I guess it’s not something that’s generally vital to the plot like gratuitous nudity.

The toilet stop is an integral part of life in this part of the world. In fact “Life of Brian” would have been much more believable with the occasional bog-stop.

And how can we talk about survival skills without talking about the roads. Not just the roads actually. In the tight winding market alleys you’re constantly avoiding motor scooters. A silent electric one went past us once and I thought there was an accident waiting to happen.

And be warned if you happen to be driving through the High Atlas Mountains. There’s a lot of roadworks so if you get too close to the stop/go man there’s a chance you’ll be showered by rocks loosened by the digger about 20m above the road, as a tourist bus in front of us was.

A few months ago I put a picture on Facebook (I can’t remember where I found it) because it appealed to my sense of the absurd. It was almost Monty Pythonesque and I didn’t know if it was real or a clever mock-up. Not long after, the same picture was used in a TV advertisement. Then just before we left I was reading the blurb about our trip to Morocco provided by the travel company and there it was again. Not the picture but a description which can’t be mistaken for anything else.

So the child bride and I and our guide are on the road between Marrakech and Essaouira and bugger me, there was that picture again, in the flesh so to speak. And here it is for your viewing pleasure – goats in trees.

They are very special trees as it happens – argan trees. They grow in a 170km by 30km band in this area and nowhere else in the world. Fortunately for the goats they are able to eat things other than the leaves and outer shells of nuts from argan trees or goats would be as rare as …. well, argan trees.

As the regular reader of this blog will know, I like to write about the odd and the quirky when it crosses my path, as the above demonstrates. So we drove into Essaouira and there were these blokes standing on the side of the road waving door keys. Like goats in trees, I had never seen this before. And unlike goats in trees I had never even seen a picture of this practice or read about it before. Apparently they are advertising empty holiday apartments. If you didn’t know you might think there was a good time to be had (by whom I’m not willing to speculate) or that the key holder was about to rob a house and needed a hand. Anyway, rather an odd thing to do in this Internet age, I thought.

For the brave investor who missed the Byron Bay surge, this might be the place for you. The Atlantic coast, wide sandy beaches and a plethora of French tourists (and the occasional Aussie day-tripper) make this a future Torremelinos or Bali or Gold Coast. You read it first here.

After our trip to Essaouira yesterday we have a day to ourselves so it’ll involve nosing round the markets of which there are many, picking up souvenirs and no doubt the ubiquitous t-shirts – my office wardrobe is expanding by the day on this trip – and working up a thirst.

We’ll be heading for the mountains again and the desert tomorrow. Until then.

I’ve been channelling Graham Nash all day – Don’t you know we’re riding on the Marrakesh express – and I can’t get that song out of my mind. But then I don’t go anywhere without my music (in my head) so this song is entirely appropriate. This place (Marrakech – note the different spelling) was one of the hippy havens back in the 60’s and there’s enough of that environment left to accommodate the Cheechs and Chongs of the……what do we call now? The 1990’s were the nineties and the 2000’s were the noughties. Are we now in the tenties? But hippy stuff notwithstanding this is a haven for tourists as well.

So we did the walking tour through the various palaces, mausoleums, mosques and markets and were once again subjected to a piece of economic tourism. Only mild compared with Fes since we were only required to contemplate the efficacious properties of various potions and lotions at a local herbalist’s. I think the bloke talking to us was an adjunct professor at Hogwarts.

The upshot of being rubbed with numerous oils and greases was that I came out smelling like a tart’s hanky, as they say in the classics, and the CB had some magic potions that will allow her to make her lips something or other and a rose smelling thing that will get rid of the bags under my eyes apparently.

But the most important thing about our first day in Marrakech is that we found a bar which sold cold beer. After another day in the sun I was reasonably happy with the first beer which didn’t touch the sides as it went down but the CB said it could have been colder. I was so proud of her. Anyway the Sky Bar is just down the road from our very comfortable riad and is open tomorrow (we checked) which is a public holiday on which we were advised no booze would be available. Our friendly waiter is reserving our table for us.

Incidentally this riad we are staying in advertises that it has a bar. The most potent thing it sells is Red Bull. I’m not going to bag them because it’s a very nice place and very conveniently located (vis a vis the Sky Bar) but their advertising is somewhat semantically challenged.

615. That’s how many stone stairs there are from the top of the 110m high Ouzoud Falls, the highest waterfall in Morocco, to the bottom. And funnily enough, it’s the same number from the bottom to the top. I know this because I counted them. Three hours later after climbing all of the way down then all of the way back up, my legs were still jelly but I do feel sorry for the, ahem, rather unfit ladies in all of their Islamic gear hauling small children up and down in 33degC. I only had a backpack with a camera, a bottle of water and various other bits and pieces. It almost killed the CB and I but our guide barely broke a sweat.

It’s not Victoria Falls or Niagara Falls in respect of the amount of water falling but it’s a sight to behold nonetheless with numerous swimmers and boat rides in an area about the size of two Olympic pools at the bottom. In this heat and with not a lot of water around in the High Atlas Mountains I guess you utilise whatever is at your disposal to stay cool.

The riad we stayed in is high above the falls with an incredible view across a magnificent landscape except for one thing. That last comment was only valid a couple of years ago because now a multi-story hotel has been built right in front of it. And I mean right in front. It’s only a few metres away, casts a permanent shadow and means you have to walk about 20 metres to see the view. Not a major inconvenience in that regard but hardly the point. A planning battle of Waterloo proportions would have ensued elsewhere but I guess here, the rules are different.

The High Atlas Mountains are not so high (where we went) that you can’t drive up them but it’s a pretty hair-raising drive through magnificent scenery with hair-pin bends that anything bigger than an SUV would have to do a multiple point turn to get round. And it’s higher than anywhere in Australia.

Being Australian I know what the middle of nowhere looks like. Just when you think you’re in the middle of nowhere here, there’s a brand new petrol station or a village or a bloke on a donkey or a little kid who runs out into the road to sell you a bag of almonds or a lonely goatherd yodelling to himself songs from The Sound of Music. A bit further on when you think you’re really in the middle of nowhere you realise that those randomly scattered trees are olive trees and they are actually planted in long neat rows.

Being an ex-geologist I’m still fascinated by rock formations and structures and up here in this arid part of the world there’s plenty to look and marvel at, if that sort of thing gets you all hot and throbby. You can see rock faces the size of the side of a mountain with huge folds in the rocks and massive fault discontinuities with throws of tens of metres. And you wonder what damage could have been done if that had happened today rather than six million years ago. And my respect for processes in geological time grows at the expense of ignorant doomsayers who tell us we have 12 years to save the planet. Morons.

There are three types of beggars in Fez that I can work out. Now the presence of any type of beggar is a sad reflection on any society but in some societies it’s also a sad fact of life.

So in the medina of Fez (and old parts of towns all over the developing world) there are variously afflicted people who rely on the charity of others (in many cases their organised crime handlers) to survive.

Outside on the roads there are those for whom it’s a spare time job. They hang around intersections trying to scam pocket money from naive tourists. These guys with their jeans and branded t-shirts and back-packs look like they’re competing in a best dressed beggar competition.

Then there are the refugees on the outskirts of town. They are from sub-Saharan Africa and are on their way to Europe. You can feel sorry for their plight or you can feel sorry for the people who will have to accommodate their everyday needs when they get to their ultimate destination – Germany, France, Sweden, U.K., take your pick.

One thing’s for sure, after seeing this, it’s hard to feel sorry for beggars in Australia and other western countries who have access to a range of welfare safety nets that are amongst the main attractions for those begging to get there. I’m reminded of a reasonably dressed bloke who regularly sat on a bench in Brisbane city with a hat on the ground in front of him. His “act” was to rhythmically tap on a tambourine. I remember thinking “when you can play Hotel California on that thing I’ll consider it”. Callous I know but you had to be there.

But back to the Bash and the reason we are here. Economic Tourism. Actually no, that’s not the main reason we are here although I did my best to support a t-shirt driven recovery in Spain. It’s the reason the Moroccans think we’re here. And good for them. I’d do the same thing. Incidentally what I’m about to describe doesn’t just happen here. The CB and I have experienced it in China and Turkey and even Italy (Murano glass and Burano linen anybody?).

Economic tourism is when you are taken to various workshops and factories, with shops attached, ostensibly to marvel at the ancient techniques and brilliant craftsmanship on display (I’m not being cynical here, I mean it) but the real expectation is that you will buy something. I’m awake to this and have only ever been duped into buying things in China (jade), Turkey (carpets) and Italy (Murano glass and Burano linen). So they’re not going to take me for a Moroccan mule ride. I really did want to buy that leather saffron coloured bag and those silver earrings for the CB. I’m nobody’s fool.

In my own defence the bag man thrust two bags at us that the CB had surreptitiously (she thought) glanced at. He wanted 1500 dirhams for one (the one she really wanted) and 800 dirhams for the other. I said I’d give him 800 for the 1500 bag. Long story short, after checking with the boss, he agreed. And I immediately felt uneasy. But at 10 dirhams to the euro if I left a few on the table, so be it.

But that wasn’t the main tannery story. Any economic activity was ruthlessly overwhelmed by the smell. The leather is prepared and coloured in about an acre of pots which can fit a man who stomps on the hides in the preparatory and colouring solutions. The solutions contain natural colouring ingredients like saffron, geranium leaves, poppies and mint and others contain urine and pigeon shit, the combination of which rivals dog shit in its potency. Hence the smell. Notwithstanding, we have a bag which withstands fire (as demonstrated with a cigarette lighter) and can be washed and I have a shirt I can never wear again (an almost brand-new Rodd and Gunn polo). The sprigs of mint they gave us prior to observing the process prevented that morning’s breakfast being added to the tanning process.

It’s a similar story with the earrings (the bargaining, not the smell). While a little old man engraved the most intricate pattern on a brass plate with various sized hammers and chisels (no dentist drills for these guys) his henchman went to work with the big sell. Long story short (again) we got the 550 dirham earrings for 300, in hindsight a little too easily I thought. Oh well, let’s support the local economy.

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.

Our ancestors had some funny ideas about space. Not outer space, although you could probably make an argument for that pre Galileo and Copernicus. No, I mean surface space. Back in the day, two thousand years ago, a thousand years ago even, land wasn’t taken up by mall car parks or cricket grounds or huge barn like taverns or useless (in some cases) national parks so you have to ask yourself, why was it necessary to build things on top of other things. Utilisation of existing foundations is the only reason I can think of, hence the mosque and necropolis of Sala in Rabat dating back to the 1300’s are built on top of the pre-existing Roman city ruins dating back to between 100 BC (not “BCE” in this blog) to about 200 AD.

And none of them recognised the future value of beach front property although to be fair, long term plans don’t normally go out 2000 years. However I do get the feeling the bloke who planned for all of the cemeteries in Rabat to cover hundreds of acres of the hills gently sloping down to the beach may have done so with a twinkle in his eye.

And whereas Casablanca is brash and in your face, Rabat is more sedate, more manicured and more monumented. It’s the capital and the king lives there so it stands to reason. Parts of it therefore resemble Canberra. No, that’s not fair. Sure there are wide, well planned, flower-fringed boulevards separating mansions built for ministers and ambassadors and captains of industry, with views to die for, but there’s still personality. It has an old bit (the walled medina) which most cities that have been around for a while have. And it has a surf beach which Canberra will never have unless the Greens decree climate catastrophe as of yesterday and Lake Burley Griffin turns into a wave pool. And the outer bits are like, well, Casablanca.

It also has a massive new theatre which, when it’s finished will look like a larger, ironed version of the Sydney Opera House.

Overall, a great blend of the old and new which, when you think about it, is a reasonable definition of everywhere we’ve been so far in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

What’s the first order of business in Casablanca? A visit to Rick’s of course so we duly went there and took some photos – you have to book to get a table and we didn’t have enough time. Notwithstanding the absence of Ingrid and Humphrey impersonation opportunities, we can pretty much go where ever we like as long as we stick to the basic itinerary because even though this is a guided tour of Morocco, it’s only the child bride and I who are being guided. We have a driver/guide to ourselves. We were told it would be a small group and in the circumstances, this is about as small as it can get.

Getting here was relatively painless – a short flight from Madrid on Royal Air Maroc. That’s the second airline on this trip that I’ve been on for the first time. The other was Ryanair which I’d been avoiding but which was the only airline with a direct flight from Manchester to Madrid when we wanted one. And it was fine. Maroc would be better called Midget (or should that be “Little People” – back off, social justice warriors) Airlines because the seats were closer than any others I have experienced. They were so close that the overhead lights and air vents were completely out of alignment with the seats. No long hauls with them thankfully.

So, first impressions. The life skills we learnt in Vietnam in respect of crossing busy roads have come in handy. There are zebra crossings here which are a complete waste of paint. You get harassed in the markets – par for the course – and people want to befriend you and show you around – of course.

Casablanca’s a bit like a coastal Indian city and a bit like an up and coming Rio de Janeiro but there are more mosques than in both of those places combined. In fact it has the biggest Mosque in Africa which is the fifth biggest in the world. On special occasions it can fit 25000 people inside and about 75000 outside. The Catholic shrine at Fatima in Portugal can accommodate about 100000 outside also. If you can’t arrange a seat inside at either of these venues in summer, I suggest a large floppy hat, a portable fan and a bucket of ice to stand in.

Casablanca is untidy, messy even, busy and noisy as befits a city with 6 million people. It’s dusty because of all of the construction and because apparently there’s rather a large desert not that far away. And it’s the commercial centre to Rabat’s government centre which explains, well it explains a lot actually.