Dispatch XXXIII

We headed through the citadel’s heat and labyrinthine passages and onto the Tizi n'Tichka, the Berber word meaning snake road. Its pass worms its way through the High Atlas Mountains that separate Ouarzazate from Marrakesh like the flanks of two shoulders. I  thought again how incredibly unforgiving this land could be, at least to me who had grown up in a lush Pennsylvania river valley. How Morocco’s Berbers, like the Bedouin of Arabia, have managed to survive, let alone thrive is beyond understanding.  It is dry enough that you can hardly find the saliva to spit. But then I thought of the Inupiat and Sami people of the arctic and Tueleche in Patagonia, the Fuegians of Tierra del Fuego and the Aborigines of Australia’s Outback and realized humans seem capable of laying down roots almost anywhere.

On To Marrakesh!

June 5, 2022 - The Mountains of Atlas - Day 252

The morning saw us bouncing with Ismail west out of Merzouga’s dunes and away from the mountains of Bedah which, if I was reading my compass right, lay to the north of the Sahara’s vast sands. Marrakesh was 300 winding miles away. We’d be threading over roads that would buckle the spine of a snake; up and down the ancient rock of the Atlas Mountains, through desert and past cliffs until at last on the other side of it all we’d find the fabled city itself, a white cluster of ancient and newly erected buildings, cheek by jowl, bustling with 210,000 Moroccans.

Before making it to Marrakesh, Ismail insisted we visit a tiny town off the beaten path at the base of the Todra Gorge. We parked the car along the road where it bends at a right angle because an immovable wall of basalt makes it impossible to do anything else. Ismail was leading us enthusiastically toward the wall when I noticed some climbers hanging like bats, methodically working their way to the sky. Several scores of local people were wandering the road and I wondered why.

“When I show you where this water comes from, you didn’t believe me,” said Ismail, misplacing a tense. We turned the corner, and he was right. On the opposite side of the rock wall ran a cool stream at the base of the gorge. We moved into it and found water simply running out of the rock like some biblical gift, an enormous series of springs that spilled into the basin and stone below, turning into this unlikely stream. In some places the water was pooled enough that families waded and frolicked in the scorching heat, and in others the water was so thin that people had set up chairs or tables to picnic and chat, using the running water as a natural air conditioner. Water in this arid land bubbling out of nowhere. It was a sight to see.

After awhile, we returned to the car and continued through the parched land back up another set of mountains, navigating more dreadlock twists until we found the Wadi Todgha and our home for the evening, the La Ma Lodge, an oasis within the Wadi created by Vanessa and her husband (whose name I never caught). Vanessa is Belgian and her husband is French. They met while working for Club Med and bought a chunk of property 17 years ago in the river’s wooded valley.

Property was all they had until they began building their dream, every inch of it from scratch. A wall now enclosed the grounds which were filled with great adobe and concrete buildings including a lobby complete with circular fireplace and stone columns, festooned with french art and fine carpets over polished stone floors. Beautiful and calming. Outside were palm and date trees, fragrant flowers, elephantine pillows and hammocks where anyone could lounge any time they liked; tables and chairs for breakfast, lunch and dinner beneath canopied trees and umbrellas. Even a corral where horses grazed with goats that apparently provided cheese and milk for both staff and customers.

After checking in, we were conducted to our room in a separate building within the compound, beautifully appointed with crystal lamps, ornate, wood-carved shutters, and a lazy ceiling fan that reminded me for a second of Sidney Greenstreet mopping his brow and prevaricating with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. Except here it was cool and comfortable. We ate an excellent dinner outside, walked the grounds and gazed at the diamond studded sky, a private show between us and the universe, and then we turned in.

The La Ma Lodge and its gardens. (Photos - Chip Walter)

June 6, 2022 Skoura to Marrakesh - Day 253

Departing the La Ma Lodge the following morning was a sad affair. We could have happily spent days there walking its grounds, lounging among the trees. We were back onto the main road and heading into the bone-dry folds of the mountains, and I felt I had gained a taste of what a true oasis is: safety and respite in the midst of a barren land. We were off to visit Ismail’s family who lived in Ouarzazate, a city of about 80,000 that lay in a flat valley of rock the color of brick along the road to Marrakesh. The Arabic words for Ouarzazate literally mean “no noise,” and that was true enough when we rolled up to Ismail’s family home in the heart of the town.  There was none of the hub-bub of Tangier or Fez here.

lsmail wanted us to meet his family. He had that kind of boyish enthusiasm, an insatiable desire to share everything Moroccan with us, all at once: the serpentine roads, the ancient and battered mountains, even fossils hundreds of millions of years old embedded in the rock. He wanted to tell us about the Berber people - Morocco’s version of America’s Natives (he is part Berber), the ancient jews, the arrival and rapid spread of Islam in the 8th century, and of course his home. 

We could have met Ismail’s family in our backyard, that’s how sweet and kind they were. His parents, Jemaa and Ahsain, greeted us at the door, and welcomed us inside their concrete and adobe home. Like Ismail’s parents and sisters (Meryem and Malika) the house was understated but spacious with several bedrooms, an expansive living room and up-to-date kitchen from which Meryem brought us plates of roasted almonds, cinnamon croissant, crepes, tea, coffee and honey, laying it all on a low table where we then sat crossed legged in the living room gobbling the goodies and doing our best to share our appreciation of the family’s kindness without the advantage of speaking any more Arabic than “inshallah” and “shukran.”  We discussed food, the house and told Ismail’s parents what a fine son they had brought up and said the same for their delightful daughter (Malika was not home). Ismail sheepishly translated our compliments the best he could, but we didn’t want to be too intrusive and after an hour, it was time to go.

We waved the family our inept, but heartfelt, thanks and made northwest to one more stop before Marrakesh, the tiny commune of Ait Zineb, a place dry as dirt that sat in the midst of absolutely nothing. Yet it is famous as a location for movies like Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones, The Prince of Persia, The Mummy and most famously, one of the great battle scenes in The Gladiator. We parked and then crossed a wadi to climb through the town’s steep and looping medina to its spired citadel, once an important fort according to legend, though what legend exactly seemed to escape everyone.

It was hot, over 100º F, but we walked through narrow streets and tight hallways in and out of the sun, passing technologies as old as the stone age. That was the thing about the place. It gave me the feeling I had entered a different time when Jesus or even Abraham had mounted these steps. At the top we could survey the citadel and see where Russel Crowe had battled fake gladiators, ruminate on the passage and power of time and, above all, feel the heat.

Then it was back through the labyrinthine passages to the car’s air conditioner and onto the Tizi n'Tichka, the Berber word meaning snake road. This was the ancient caravan route through the High Atlas Mountains and is one of only two passes through the largest mountain chain in Africa. Slowly we would worm our way through the monstrous rocks that separate Ouarzazate from Marrakesh like the flanks of two great shoulders.

As we climbed through the hills I thought again how incredibly unforgiving this land could be, at least to me who had grown up in a lush Pennsylvania river valley. How people like the Berbers of Morocco and the Bedouin of Arabia had managed to survive, let alone thrive in land like these was beyond my understanding.  It is dry enough that you can feel the saliva in your mouth disappearing. But then I thought of the Inupiat and Sami people of the arctic and the Tehuelche in Patagonia, the Fuegans of Tierra del Fuego and Aborigines of Australia’s Outback and realized humans could lay down roots just about anywhere.

As Tizi n'Tichka mounted the High Atlas Mountains, its lava layered folds forced us through more spaghettied routes, crazier than the switchbacks of the El Chepe Express in Mexico or the wild roadways of the Pyrenees  that we would see in another few weeks. The road bends on itself again and again in parallel threads and at its summit, after passing through rocks the size of houses, you can see a slow, clotted plateau tilting towards Marakesh.

Another couple of hours and we were there, rolling through the ancient city gates and into the heart of the medina. Ismail pulled us into a closer of other cars and then one of the riad’s attendants grabbed a wheelbarrow and hauled our bags through hallways that quickly lost us. Our riad, the Dar Sara, was classic, cool inside with an interior courtyard, tables for eating and our cool, dark room protected by an immense, carved doorway.

We were so lost in the bowels of the Medina that we had to be escorted to the Dar Zellij, a magnificent restaurant and dar (dar means house) built in the 17th century. The tagine we ate was spectacular, and so was the mint tea and chilled watermelon/tomato soup, but the dar itself was the real star of the evening, a place where more than a few of Morocco’s 17th and 18th century elite pulled the strings of power in Marrakesh.

June 7, 2022 –  Marrakesh – 99° - Day 254

I have scribbled notes in my journal that read, “Day of leisure according to our itinerary. Really? Remained in the riad and worked 10 hours just to catch up on writing, posts and email.”

We would wind through it’s thousand year old Medinas, and there would be a riot of sights and smells, palaces, and dars; a blur of magnificent architecture like the Dar Si Said Museum, rambling Medinas, shops, music, insights, all of it steeped in the history of this astounding country. But first, the next day, we would not visit the city, but head of again with with Youssef and Gabriel to learn more about the region’s Berber culture and then hike a bit into the Atlas Mountains.

Day 255 - June 8, 2022

Hot! 95º F. The car takes us into the foothills of the Atlas Mountains to visit Hassan who runs the Berber Carpet Institute. It’s maybe a half hour out of Marrakesh. He’s a stout, strongly muscled man with thinning hair, heavy beard, quick eyes, and a concise way with words, even in broken English. I quickly saw he was supremely confident and loved the history of the region and its people, all of which he explained to us as we walked the Institute, a building wedged into the mountainside as if it had been there forever;  hammered into a wooden house of hardwood planks and dirt floors, it’s walls festooned with the carpets, ancient looms and tools and sepia-toned 20th century photos of Berber culture.

The building used to be the former home of the village’s most prominent citizen, now deceased. The three-story house was topped with a terrace that overlooked the valley and other small towns in the region all clinging like mushrooms to the brown rolling earth. Inside we walked among pictures of the Berber women and men. Images of nomadic tents filled one room.  Mostly Berber women made the carpets, and each told a story, using a kind of graphic language. Each shape and color on every carpet had a special meaning: green for fertility, red for danger, purple indicated royalty, while triangles stood for birth, and black for death. In each carpet you could see the women and the stories they painstakingly threaded into a carpet/story  made of wool or camel. Stories of a boy, who was still born, another about the growing size of the family, still another about difficult times that they overcame.

Berber tools are ancient, but remarkably efficient and portable. Berbers are, like Bedouin, migratory. One tool was especially creative, made of strong yarn or rope attached, and wound to a stick with a bowed piece that ran perpendicular to it like a bow. This created a simple machine that could start a fire, weave yarn, even carve wood into various shapes.

After exploring with Hassan, we hiked into the torrid afternoon to climb hills nearby. Mohamad, our guide, was a dynamo, spilling with knowledge. He grew up in the village one over, he said, though I had no idea where this village was, let alone the one over. “I’ll show you when we get higher,”  he said.  We started along a small river that ran out of the barren hills.  All of Morocco's rivers, feel like mini Niles. Wherever they run, a belt of green, surrounds them: trees, small farms, and orchards appear like a blessing.

We crossed the river (really a creek) walking its wooden suspension bridge, many of its wooden slats long gone and walked on with Mohamad pointing out orchards of apple, apricots, cherry trees and few egrets. The orchards were fed by an irrigation system that date to the Romans. Water runs from a cistern higher up into aqueducts guide it to the farmland. Local farmers open the gate to irrigate their small lot plot by unblocking the aqueduct. When the water is no longer needed, he closes the aqueduct and the water then flows on. Mohammed says no one seems to debate who gets what water when. “It's a community effort, and many generations of the same family have worked this land for as long as they can remember,” he says.  Fighting for control makes no sense, he says and benefits no one.

In time we emerged from the greenery into rising hills and land turned, rocky, desiccated, devoid of moisture. We watch hawklike birds rising and diving high above us, but Mohamad explained that they weren't hawks. They simply enjoyed flying with their wings pulled to their bodies for 100 to 200 feet before opening their wings suddenly to soar back into the high cliffs.

In time, we made it to a hilltop riad and restaurant, enclosed by a high wall. Just outside we had passed two men walking our path, heading higher with mules laden with I wasn’t sure what. “They are carrying first and cement mix so that they can complete the foundations for cell towers.”

It reminded me of seeing men in Beijing hauling heavy equipment by using a series of rolling logs beneath them. One ancient technology creating a modern one. The meal was excellent, though I have no notes that describe it. We sat quietly, enjoying the river beneath and enjoying the cool breeze that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Afterwards, our car appeared like magic at the restaurant and by late afternoon we were returned in our cooled car to our Marrakesh riad.

Day 256 - June 9, 2022

A lovely breakfast — coffee, eggs, pita, yogurt, the whole Moroccan magilla, some more scribbling on our mammoth bed and then off to explore more of the grand city. I would be a busy day. The heat refused to relent. 102º F, so we spent most of our time wandering the the city’s medinas, snatching what breezes we could, trying on Moroccan shirts, enjoying the sites, and inhaling the scents of a perfumery where we were also told Morocco was the home of mascara. Youssef took us to Dar El Bacha, built for Pacha Thami El Glaoui, who ruled over Marrakesh from 1912 to 1956, an outstanding example of Moroccan riad architecture. And we walked the Secret Garden, a recently restored complex showcasing Islamic art and architecture that dates back 400 years.

On our way back to our riad we crossed Marrakesh’s famous Jemaa el-Fnaa, a grand plaza near enormous gates that were created when the city itself came into being under the powerful Saadian sultan Ahmad al-Mansur. He ruled between 1578 and 1603. It is sometimes translated as "assembly of the dead" presumably because in the early years executions were conducted here. Right now it was home to sparse clusters of dervishes, merchants and snake charmers wandering its sprawling stone perimeter. 

It was a hodgepodge of people moving in the desultory heat like tired birds. At one point I was taking a picture of the square — just a wide shot to attempt to capture its size — when, a snake charmer got it into his head that I was taking a picture of him and demanded I pay him.  Truthfully, I hadn’t even noticed him and so told him, in no uncertain terms, I didn’t intend to pay anything. One thing I that had sometimes bothered me about Moroccan merchants, was their need to try to extract some form of compensation. This isn’t universal, but it happens enough, apparently part of a deep culture of haggling. Maybe the heat had gotten to me.

Later that night, insisting we must join him for one last surprise before departing the city,  Youssef met us at our riad, perfectly attired, as always, in a Moroccan-red shirt, jeans and sunglasses, and took us to El Fenn, a famous hotel and restaurant owned by Richard Branson’s sister, Vanessa and Howell James. Posh, I think, might be the right word to describe the place. Beautiful people were strewn all around the open terraced garden — perfectly coiffed French tourists, wealthy locals, tanned mustachioed men wearing white linen suits and  women, heavily painted, seriously augmented, and sharing what minimal clothing they wore. No djellabas, kaftans or niqabs here. We sat on pillowy couches as the great orange ball of the sun descended, sipping cocktails (forbidden by muslim law), as the evening call to prayer echoed from the turret of the great Kutubiyya Mosque, built in 1147.  It was an odd, yet relaxing, conjunction of sights and sounds.

There was more to come. In the twilight we descended the city’s luminati and sauntered to the Jemaa el-Fnaa, now transformed into a place utterly different from the one we had seen during our afternoon visit. Nine hours later it was butt by hip with thousands of milling people, a few remaining snake charmers, performing monkeys, stalls heaped with escargot, roasted tagine, fresh fish, cooked meats and chicken, open tables for eating, great racks of fruit poised to be transformed into fresh juices, their owner’s calling out to potential customers to try a taste.  Youssef explained that the owners of these precious stalls are passed down from one generation to another and some families have been preparing and selling their goods in this place for centuries.

We wandered among the throng and then hiked up to another terrace to view the riot of human interaction below, all color, music and human vibrancy, then strolled the market itself some more, getting caught up with one of the big fruit vendors who hauled us above the hundreds of fruits laid out on the monstrous display racks, insisting that we choose fruits while they turned them into delicious, refreshing drinks. People waved at the Americans and we waved back, Cyndy with one of the vendor’s tarbouches clamped on her head, until we were handed our drinks to return to the plaza and hop a carriage, central park style, that Youssef had secretly arranged as a parting gift.

There had to be 100 of these carriages surrounding the market. We clip-clopped through a stream of mopeds, taxis, bicycles, camels, horses and trucks - pretty much every conveyance known to man. We swung beyond the old gates into the new city, a term I use loosely since it was built in the late 19th century, but nothing as ancient as Marrakesh’ early medinas. The horse took us past high-end hotels, expensive cars, expansive gasoline stations, modern retail shops, broad, big and bright, the antithesis of the old city’s souks and alleys (drbs) hidden amongst its serpentine adobe walls.

Before swinging back to Jemaa el-Fnaa, Youssef wanted to show us the grandest hotel in all of Morocco, La Mamounia. Immense and truly stunning. You could put five or six of the Bahia Palaces in this single location. Sultan Mohammed ben Abdallah gave his son, Moulay Mamoun, the land for gardens and a palace in the 18th century, but the hotel wasn’t built until 1929, an elegant combination of Moroccan architecture and Art Deco. It’s been called the world’s finest hotel by Conde Nast, and everyone from Paul McCartney to Andy Warhol has hung out here. Nearly 100 years ago Winston Churchill often relaxed amidst the gardens to paint his watercolors.

After lollygagging around La Mamounia, our carriage returned us to the Jemaa el-Fna, and Youssef walked us and our barking dogs back to the Dara Sara, exhausted but enlightened, trying to absorb everything we had learned about this astounding country. And then we slept the sleep of the dead. Tomorrow we would rise and make our way by train to Rabat, this time, no guides, just a couple of white Americans heading North into one of Morocco’s most arresting cities, a guaranteed adventure (and, stand by for the next Dispatch, it was)!

This is Dispatch XXXIII in a series about a Vagabond’s Adventures - journalist and National Geographic Explorer Chip Walter and his wife Cyndy’s effort to capture their experience exploring all seven continents, all seven seas and 100+ countries, never traveling by jet.

If you’ve enjoyed this dispatch, please take a look at Chip’s other adventures (and misadventures) … and don’t forget to check the Vagabond Journal and our Travel Recommendations to help you plan YOUR next adventure.

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Morocco Recommendations

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