Travel Journal: Morocco

October 20, 2008

From Tarifa, Spain, we took a 30-minute ferry-ride to Tangier, Morocco. The ferry was modern and looked a lot like the WA State ferries but with snack bars that sold beer. I had never been to an Arab country before and though I did research before we left, didn’t know what to expect to see the Moroccan women wearing. On the ferry, most women wore Western clothing, and many wore short sleeved shirts or tank tops. I had on a long-sleeved, loose fitting, button-up shirt I purchased specifically to wear in Morocco. After seeing all of these other women, I felt a little silly for the effort I had put into it. Well, that feeling went away as soon as we got there.

We left the ferry terminal and immediately people began soliciting us for taxi rides, help with buying tickets, tours around Tangier, and whatever else we could ever possibly need. We knew there would be hustling, but nothing could have prepared us for what it is actually like. We hired a taxi to take us to the hotel. It was a tiny, beat-up, shell-of-a-car with no seatbelts and a broken meter. There are two taxi companies in town, the one that has these types of taxis and the other that drives you around in Mercedes SUVs and charges you $20 to get anywhere. Our taxi driver had forgotten his glasses (or perhaps he doesn’t own glasses) and had to take our hotel address to some other guy to read to him. This, combined with the no seat-belt issue, was the first of many things that made me nervous in Tangier! 

On the drive to the hotel, we got a good glimpse of the city. Like Tarifa, Spain but on a much larger scale, the city is a mishmash of old and new. There are buildings crumbling down on one side of the street and new, modern buildings on the other. Many homes share a single water spicket. Most women wear a hajib and traditional Muslim clothing. Some cover their entire faces. Of the women we did see not covering their hair, they wore conservative clothing. I was glad to be dressed as I was and not in a tank top!

The taxi stopped on a side street and though the driver didn’t speak English it was obvious this was the end of our ride with him. We thought that maybe he forgot the directions since he couldn’t read the paper we gave him, but he had a short conversation with one of the several men hanging around on the street and the man spoke English. He told us he would take us to our hotel, Dar Nour. It was in the Kasbah (old city) and the streets aren’t wide enough for cars. We would walk the rest of the way. Somehow, while the man talked to the taxi driver, a teen-aged boy swooped in, grabbed Cody’s bag, and told us he would take us to the hotel. We started to tell him that the other guy would do it, but the other guy told us that this kid was his son and we could trust him. Not knowing where the hotel was we had little choice but to trust these people.

The kid led us through a crazy maze of tiny, crumbling streets. After turning around about 25 times we arrived at our hotel down a cranny of a street. The kid made an effort to show us street names so we could navigate ourselves later, but I’m sure he knew that would be impossible. He told us he would wait for us and show us around the city when we were ready.

The hotel was one of the most interesting places I have ever seen. It is an old Moroccan house converted into a bed and breakfast. Old Moroccan houses have separate living quarters for the men and women and several generations live together. The houses are tall and narrow with narrow stairways leading up to all of these different suites. The suites include a sitting room, a small reading area, a bathroom, bedroom and usually a couple of balconies. The main floor of the house has large rooms for mixed-gender family gatherings and a large kitchen area.

It was beautifully decorated in Moroccan and other African artifacts and furnishings. It was like being Alice in Wonderland! Everywhere I turned there was a different staircase leading to a nook and cranny crammed with comfy seating and interesting art, books and games. The rooftop had an outdoor seating area with multiple levels with city views. From there we could see the Kasbah around us, the Medina (marketplace), the port, beaches, and the newer part of the city with modern hotels and condos. All around us the houses used the rooftops to air-dry laundry on clotheslines. There was one roof top with goats and chickens walking around!

We settled into our suite, which I guessed used to be women’s quarters because it was tucked away from the main staircase and smaller than some of the other quarters. Then it was time to explore the city. We left the hotel and began back-tracking our way to where the taxi dropped us off. In no time, the kid that led us to the hotel was on our tail asking to be our guide for the day. We asked him how much he charged and he said “I’m not an official guide, you can give me what you think it was worth,” and we were off.

He took us on a whirl-wind tour of the Medina where tiny shops sold clothing, shoes, leather goods, thread, spices, and many other interesting things. I say whirlwind because he walked very fast, and I had to take pictures while walking. If you stopped the shop owners would bombard you with their products so I quickly decided that moving fast was a good idea. Almost everyone was dressed in Islamic clothing. I felt very Western in my pants, with my hair hanging out and my giant camera around my neck. I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but it was an eye-opening experience to be so obviously out-of-place.

The kid took us to a restaurant for lunch where he said we could get Moroccan food. We sat down, looked around, and realized that everyone else in the place was a tourist. This was obviously where guides take their wide-eyed, Western tourists for lunch and get a kick-back from the restaurant owner. There were no Moroccans eating in the place. The food was fine, and I was happy enough to eat in a that would serve us vegetarian food. Later on, our tour we passed a restaurant where men used their fingers to scoop up bits of meat and vegetables that were spread out over the table. No plates or forks were anywhere. After seeing this, I didn’t feel so lame about eating lunch in a place full of tourists.

After lunch the kid took us to a carpet store. We didn’t ask to go to a carpet store, but apparently all Moroccan tourists end up in a carpet store. A man in the store took us up many flights of stairs and through room after room filled with carpets. He took us all the way up to the roof where we got another great view of the city. He took a few pictures of us up there, and then took us back down to a room full of carpets. Another man brought us mint tea, which they call Moroccan Whisky because it’s the “national drink.”

Then began the sales pitch. The first man laid out carpet after carpet and told us all about where they were made, what the symbols on the carpet mean, and what they were made of. We played along and at some point decided to go ahead and buy a carpet to hang on the wall at home as our souvenir from the trip. We chose a yellow silk carpet and an orange and yellow silk blanket. Let the games begin! Haggling is not Cody or mine’s strong suit, but we held our own and after 15 minutes of haggling we reached a fair price. After Cody paid for the items the salesman wouldn’t let him go without leaving a tip! We learned quickly that everyone in Morocco wants a tip.

After we bought the carpet, our guide was pretty much done with us and left us at a local bar that didn’t sell alcohol. We gave him a tip which he promptly told us wasn’t enough, so we argued for minute or two before Cody gave him another ten bucks. Cody and I agree that it’s sometimes better to be the rich American, able to share our wealth, than be stubborn and see what comes out of that.

We tried to find the hotel on our own but a “nice” Moroccan woman decided that she would lead us there. I’m glad she did because we turned about 13 times, but when we gave her a tip she told us it wasn’t enough. At that point we didn’t have any more small bills because we had tipped so many people for being nice to us.

We were relieved to be back at the hotel. It’s not that we felt unsafe walking the streets, but it was uncomfortable to be approached so many times by people who wanted to be our guide or help us in some way for money, to be told it “wasn’t enough.”

We stayed in the hotel for the rest of the evening, lounging around in our suite and up on the rooftop. At 8:00 we had a fantastic dinner of potatoes, veggies and bread in the hotel dining room. It was so flavorful and delicious; it was one of the best meals we had on our trip. We shared the table with an older French couple also staying in the hotel. Cody and I tried to make small talk with them and they were amenable to a point, but it was uncomfortable and obvious none of us enjoyed sitting together. They even went as far as to tell us that they “don’t much care what America does” when we mentioned the upcoming election between Obama and McCain. Cody and I took our dessert to our room.

We woke up early and took a taxi to the ferry terminal. We had our fill of touring Morocco and were ready to head back to the more familiar, tame land of Spain. We gave the taxi driver a generous tip without him asking and made our way to the terminal. While standing in line at passport control a woman in front of us threw up a few times on the floor and it looked bloody. It took about 10 minutes for someone to come by to clean it up with a big machine that smeared the puke across the floor and sucked it up. Nothing disinfected the area.