In Morocco 4 - 8.12.1999 with a Spanish bus tour

The trip started half past six in the Saturday morning with a taxi drive to the bus. Some people were still going home from restaurants when I took some money from an ATM. The Luxotour bus was in time; a few people had gotten into it from Granada. Boy, they had got up early! Or not at all.

We stopped to collect travellers in Fuengirola, Marbella and Estepona. At this point it started to rain, and the bus windows got steamy, a situation that got very familiar to us during the tour. We had a stop a little before Algeciras, after which we waited in the harbor. Finally we were admitted to the ship. I saw Gibraltar the first time when we drove alongside it, and for me it was close enough.

Crossing the strait took a couple of hours, during which I had lunch: Gambas Pil-Pil and a somewhat dry tenderloin. Actually I chose lamb chops from the menu, but those were not available. The rain had stopped, but the sky was so dark that the scenery resembled more like Arctic Ocean. We saw a group of dolphins when they played jumping out the water. After we reached Tanger, a guide, Munil and an assistant, Aziz, came into our bus and we continued our trip only after half past three.

We didn't head for Marrakech, but instead drove to the marketplace and had a lunch! The group in the next table courteously introduced themselves, they were from Granada. Only one of them admitted to know English, but even Fernando who was sitting next to me knew English enough to be able to create a conversation. First we had soup, then minced meat in spit and the main course was of course couscous. To finalize the meal we were offered sweet pies and mint tee. All this with a local band playing and even a dancer. The music seemed to please my fellow travelers; I learned that most of the tunes were originally Spanish, but played in the local fashion. After the meal we returned to the bus, made a little sightseeing trip and parked in front of hotel Solazur, still in Tanger. At this moment I was a little bit concerned, since the clerk in the travel agency had told me that we would stay overnight only in Marrakech. Because of that I went to ask our guide about the situation. It appeared that my name was on the list, so I was in the right bus after all. The information I had got earlier was wrong; we would stay only two nights in Marrakech.

The cleaners hadn't made up my room yet, so I just left my baggage there and went to a walk. In the first few hundred meters I got the impression that every fifth bloke tried to sell hashish to me. After a while I reached the bazaar streets, and now they tried to make me buy bags, food and other stuff. I felt unsecure and hold the straps of my backpack quite tightly. When returning back I found a new and stylish area of buildings near our hotel. There were still much construction work going on.

I found out the rate of dirham against Finnish mark when I changed some currency in the hotel, it was 0.6 FIM per one dirham. After I reached the hotel, it was time to take a shower, rest for a while and getting ready for the dinner. I met two men - unfortunately I'm so bad with names that I can't tell them any more - from our bus in the bar, and we decided to share a table for the dinner. We stayed together the whole evening discussing casually in Spanish... I was surprised how much information you can achieve and pass along with so little knowledge of the language! To end the evening the lock in the door to my room didn't open, no matter what! After I had got some janitor to open it, it took him only ten seconds to open the door with just a screwdriver. Some secure locks, I thought, and regarded the whole Tanger to be one big joke! Hopefully the other parts of Morocco wouldn't follow the suite.

I almost got a stroke in the morning when the telephone rang loudly just next to my ear: our guide had ordered a wake up call for us all. The breakfast was quite humble, just some bread and butter with tea and coffee. Our first target was Rabat, the capitol of Morocco. There we went to see the sister minaret of La Giralda of Sevilla. This one had lost the upper half in the earthquake of Lisbon in the 18th century. Besides the minaret there were the remains of a mosque, which once had been the biggest in the world. Only the floor and some stubs of the pillars were left, the reason being the Christian invaders who built their own church, and took the material from this mosque! After seeing this place we visited the large area where there are most of the ministries and the castle of the king.

The drive to Casablanca offered no thrills, the road was just a straight line along the shore. In the city of five million people the biggest attraction nowadays is the huge mosque that was built in the beginning of 1990s. The minaret is 200 meters tall, and in the mosque itself you could place a football field.

This was the only place in Casablanca we visited, in addition to the lunch. The lunch was again mediocre, menu was like in Spain: a salad, deep fried fish and fruit salad. I ate with a group from the other bus, whom I seemed to fool with my first words to believe that I was from Spain as well. After that they were quite astonished when I confessed that I knew only a few words of Spanish. After leaving Casablanca we had a five hour drive to Marrakech in the dark, with one stop though. Along the route there were the big jeans factory of Levis and a reserve landing field of NASA for space shuttles. Since we arrived in Marrakech only after 11 PM, we were guided to have the dinner from a buffet, and only after eating to the reception. The food was probably the best so far, but still not really good. This hotel, the name was imaginatively 'Marrakech', had even television in the rooms and the channel selection was surprisingly good with many languages to choose from.

On Monday our first target was the local mosque named Koutoubia, of course. Or actually the outside, since we were not allowed in the Muslim mosques. Outside there were a couple of water sellers, nowadays seemingly mostly tourist attractions. Their outfit was really traditional otherwise, but somehow the futuristic looking brand sneakers didn't fit the rest of the clothing. Next we went to see an Arab palace, where the inside had many similarities to Alhambra in Granada, Spain. If my memory serves me right, I visited the same palace some ten years earlier, when I had a vacation in Agadir and took a trip to Marrakech. From the palace we drove to a water reservoir surrounded by olive and chirimoya (?) trees, after which we were guided to a pharmacy in which we got a lecture of a big variety of herbs, scents and medicine. The goal was to sell that stuff to us as much as possible, of course. From the pharmacy we went to have lunch, finally. As the local habit seemed to be, the entrance looked poor and humble, but the inside was big and well kept. The food was best so far, and we saw some performances also: a dancer with a tray of burning candles on top of his head, belly dancer (young and slim!) and Berber dancers. During the lunch I noticed that my throat started to get sore, and in the evening I had to admit the fact that I was getting a nasty flu.

The time between the lunch and the dinner was free, meant for shopping, naturally. So, after having a nap, I too went wandering around the souks and tried to tolerate those pushy peddlers. I managed to buy a couple homecoming presents from places where the personnel were less irritating. When I walked back to our hotel I admired the lightnings of a thunderstorm in the mountains. After dinner we took the bus again and went outside the town to see a local Berber horse show, called Fantasia. It appeared to be a really big business, there were over twenty buses in the parking place. Around the arena we found tens of tents for serving food and refreshments, and many groups of musicians and dancers circling in the tents. The main show had many parts: snake dance, flying carpet, tribe bands etc., but the main thing were those young riders who showed us their talents on their horses.

On the Tuesday morning we were set to leave at ten o'clock, and since the breakfast ended at nine, it was a good opportunity to have a walk in the neighborhood. This area seemed to be rather rich and to some extent have western influences. I happened to find the local opera house, which was a really big building along a really wide avenue. Then in to the bus and towards the mountain region. At first the landscape was really flat, small villages every now and then. After the road started to go up, we had to stop. The rains had ruined the road with landslides! Our bus drivers decided that they wouldn't go further.

While we wondered the situation we saw some local cars to drive through, though. At this time my desire to see some snow faded. The local people took advantage of the situation and came to sell their daggers, pots and fossils. All this took time, and after a while there came two tractors from the opposite direction and mended the road, and our drivers agreed to continue. For one time I was thankful for those peddlers!

We reached a small village in a river valley where our lunch restaurant was situated. The scenery was beautiful, and looked at the same time both poor and relatively well off. The most striking feature were the many satellite dish antennas, even on top of really humble huts.

After we had stopped, the other lady with whom I had had lunch in Casablanca came to me and introduced a group of four nice women from their bus: Fatima, Isabel Maria, Lourdes and Rosa. All single, by the way, she said, and asked if I would like to accompany them for the afternoon. Well, does a tiger have stripes? Unfortunately only Fatima knew English, with the others I had to manage with my inadequate Spanish and using Fatima as the translator. Since it was still too early to have lunch for my Spanish travel mates, we walked up and down the river side. We were just about to turn back, when an old man started to wave to us and said something of a mill. Just around the corner there was a small water mill, and they were using it at the moment also. At the lunch we had salad, chicken and orange with cinnamon. It started to rain while we ate, and we could only hope that it wouldn't rain too much! Luckily not, and we started our drive back to Marrakech in almost dry weather.

In the city we had ten hours free time. That is, before we would start our drive back to Spain at three o'clock in the morning! The plan was to go shopping again, but at this time I couldn't make myself buying anything, I had had enough of that haggling. The hotel restaurant was relatively empty at the dinner, while I ate with another group of se?oras from the other bus. At the end of the meal I ordered a bottle of water, which I planned to take with me in the bus. No one brought the bottle, so after waiting for a while I was leaving when a waiter came to saying something about the water. I thought that he was bringing it to me, so I paid for it. Then it cleared to me that this waiter insisted that they had brought the water to me already. The situation grew to a quarrel, and the personnel kept me there about 20 minutes before they agreed to bring me the bottle, which I had paid. The behavior of the waiters and even the headwaiter was unbelievable for any restaurant, and this was supposed to be in a four star hotel! Later in the evening I had a beer in the hotel bar, and even here the waiters quarreled between each other, only this time they didn't include any customer in the situation. This and other, previous experiences made me realize that the Berbers are still nomads, they think that the customers are their cattle! Just when I thought of this, I remembered that I had drawn the exact same conclusion in my previous trip to Morocco ten years earlier!

Wednesday had just started when the wake up call came at one o'clock, after which the breakfast started at two. The first time every Spaniard was in time, and we were able to take off in schedule at three. This day was just driving to north. My ears were totally blocked because of the flu, the good thing being that the world around me seemed to be so quiet. We had a stop at seven in the morning, lunch at eleven in Larache, and reached Tanger after two in the afternoon. The queue into the ship was long, and in the ship we were too tired to look at the scenery while crossing the strait; well, it would have been too dark for it, too. The last leg in the bus took me back to Málaga at half past ten, and after a taxi drive I was finally at home. I was tired, had a bad flu, and only one day to recover before I would go to Sierra Nevada for a weekend of Telemark skiing.

This tour to Morocco proved to be interesting. The country itself offered less attractions and hospitality than I had expected, but traveling with this group of Spaniards more than compensated the disappointment. I had a chance to see how they behave and to discuss with many of them. Compared to Finnish people Spaniards are more active, they seem to introduce themselves to each other easier, and they comment their feelings to the guide more. They probably criticize as much as Finns, but more directly to the guide. When the people little by little learned that I didn't speak Spanish, many of them - possibly most of those who could speak English - came to ask where I was from. And when I told I was from Finland, they of course were astonished: had I come all the way from Finland just to attend this tour?

?Hola para todos mis amigas y amigos en el tour, especialmente Lourdes, Fatima, Rosa y Isabel Maria!

Copyright(c) 2002 Jari Kirvesoja. All rights reserved.