Rabat - Morocco’s Hidden Gem
Dispatch XXXIV
Vagabond Adventure.
Continent #3. Africa
We walked out of the Rabat train station completely clueless. My Arabic consisted of phrases like Salaam, Inshallah and Yella in an Arabic speaking nation, and we had no more idea where we would be laying our heads this night than a blind man plopped in a Moroccan medina. Our cell service was non-existent, but I had preloaded a map of our route to the riad on my iPhone and it told us we were about 12 minutes away. All we had to do was get a taxi to the right hotel.
Outside the station a cluster of taxi drivers clambered up to us ready to take us anywhere we wanted to go. A small boned driver with a dark mustache elbowed his way to us. “Yella, yella!” He said. Let’s go.
“How much,” I asked, rubbing my thumb and forefinger in the universal signal of dinero.
He spoke in rapid Arabic but I thought I caught the word for eight, and I had also roughly calculated that the trip would cost about 80 dirham. So I figured this was our man. That was my first mistake.
The Train to Marrakesh to Casablanca and then Rabat
June 10, 2022 - Day 258 - Meeting Zayneb at the Marrakesh Station
The Marrakesh train station is broad, clean and organized. Cyn and I towed our baggage toward some passenger seats, tickets in hand awaiting the announcement of our train north to Casablanca, connecting to Rabat. Outside we could see the long nose of high speed train gazing back at us. As we approached I noticed a slim, pretty woman, perhaps 35; sharp nose, dark eyes and perfect olive skin, sitting quietly on a string of chairs. She wore a black hijab, and I was certain she was Moroccan when she turned and out of her mouth came an Irish brogue that would have shamed a Dublin bartender.
“Hello,” she said, “do yah need me tah move?” I nearly dropped my day pack. This is not what my brain expected to hear in the halls of Marrakesh.
Once we settled into seats next to her, I said I had to ask where that Irish lilt came from. Very prim, hands crossed on her lap, she explained. Her name was Zayneb. “But most people call me Z.”
Z was part Irish and part Libyan; a mother and a poetess. Both work and marriage meant bouncing between Ireland and Morocco, which explained why she was awaiting the same train we were. But what about the brogue?
It started with her Libyan father, she said, Mohammed, who was sitting in a bar in Ireland several decades ago talking with a group of Irishmen curious about Islam. Joanna, a coleen, all of 17 at the time, overheard the conversation and decided to share a few thoughts with the men along the lines that muslim women were enslaved and without rights and should liberate themselves from the tyranny of muslim men. Mohammed begged to disagree and asked if she would like to meet some of the muslim women he knew in Ireland and see how they felt about these things. She agreed and spent quite a bit of time listening to their points of view. In time she liked what she heard and came back for more. Joanna was Irish, but not particularly happy with the Catholic faith; too many vague answers to her 17-year-old questions. Islam, on the other hand, felt more concrete. Six months more of these explorations with the women who became her friends and the little Irish girl from Dublin converted to Islam.
Around the same time, while at the mosque in Dublin, Joanna ran into Mohammed again. He was stunned at her turnaround (who wouldn’t be?). More conversations ensued, and it wasn’t long before they married.
“Ever since they have been inseparble.” Joanna and Mohammed brought 14 children into the world, one of them was Zayneb … “all while my mother ran an international development company with holdings as far away as Turkey.”
“She was quite a woman,” I offered.
Z nodded, dropped her eyes. But now, she explained, her mother and father had been separated, and so were the other 13 children, at least from their mother. Two months ago Joanna fell while cleaning gutters at her house and broke her wrist. The x-ray of her arm led to revelations that there tumors in her liver and heart. Inoperable, terminal cancer, and not a thing to be done about it. The family never told Joanna about the disease.
“She was gone in a couple of weeks.”
Cyn and I told her how saddened we were. Zayneb smiled a sad smile. She nodded. I had so many questions, but the announcement told us it was time to board. We shook hands and promised to stay in touch and then Z was up, adjusting her hajib and walking regally, roller suitcase in hand, to a coach somewhere other than ours. What a fine woman, I thought.
The Train to Casablanca and the Roots of Hatred
The ONCF train we boarded was a Harry Potter style affair, very British, except without the mahogany wood interiors. Multiple compartments, with sliding glass doors that opened to two long benches on each side. Room enough for six. The six of us sat elbow to elbow, bags crammed in the compartments above our heads, or wherever we could fit them on our feet.
We were a quiet crowd as the train rattled out of the big station north toward Morocco’s largest city, the one famous for Rick’s Café Américain and the celebrated (if inaccurate) phrase, “Play it again, Sam.” Seated among us was a young man, slim, a black headset clapped over his equally black hair, phone in hand, smiling at whatever he was looking at on the phone. His mother sat beside him, wearing a turquoise caftan, gripping her leather purse for dear life. Her COVID mask was as firmly fastened to her ears as her ears to her head. She is silent. Also in the compartment is a strong, stocky black man around 40, and next to him a woman with shortish brown hair tinged with blonde highlights directly across from me, around the same age.
Hopping the train to Casablanca and then Rabat. That's Cyndy on the left. (Photo - Chip Walter)
The train accelerated past apartments seven stories high, and swinging cranes busy stacking new apartments like Legos. Next came the suburbs and then beyond mud huts trimmed with plastic roofs sitting among flat, scrub, and dry rocky land the color of Caucasian skin. I watched a donkey lying on his back rubbing the dirt like a dog with an itch. Here and there, thirsty trees sprouted from the dust. Beyond lay low mountains. Morocco’s summers are scorching, but luckily the train’s air conditioning was good enough to keep the sweat at bay. Once the train found the flat arid land, it made a kind of skating sound as it sped north into the scrub.
In the corridor outside, I watched a young man in an orange and black uniform pushing a cart of chips, drinks, and European-style snacks past our compartment. I thought again of Harry Potter and wondered if he had any Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, Chocolate Frogs, or Jelly Slugs handy. But then I was pretty sure this train wasn’t headed to Hogwarts.
All of us in the enclosed room tried valiantly to shoo a pesky fly out of the cabin. It was interesting. No one wanted to kill it, just send it elsewhere. I took this as a good omen. The stout man directly across from us sat in tan shorts, a red check shirt, black baseball cap beneath a handsome ebony face. His arms were thick and so was his beard, striped with gray at the chin. The woman with the brown hair, glasses perched on her perfectly upturned nose, often spoke in English to the man who turned out to be her husband. Her accent was Dutch or German, his … I wasn’t quite sure … British?
It was the obstinate fly that got us all talking. We had to laugh at six humans who couldn’t outfox a single bug. The woman across from us was named Corinna and her husband was named Mutawakilu Samori, from Ghana. I loved the sound of his name, but he said, “Just call me Muta.”
Corinna has been working with Lufthansa since she graduated college — managing employment and human relations for the big company’s far-flung North African operations. She grew up in central Germany and loved the trips her family would take to Poland and Hungary. She won a masters degree in geology, but quickly found she made a better living at Lufthansa. She and Muta met at a disco 20 years ago, each was just out for the evening, but while they were talking they found they were both about to travel to Ghana. So they decided to make the flight together, and fell in love.
All sorts of discussions then ensued and soon even the young man with the headphones joined in. His name was Tariffi and he couldn’t have been much more than 25-years-old. Soon we were all talking politics, Facebook and its algorithms, the importance of face-to-face encounters vs. social media and how conversations like this one knock down echo chambers and make it difficult to demonize others. Here we were, six people from five countries, openly exploring our thinking and no one once yelled at the other, or called them names (like a certain former American president routinely did). This then drifted into chats about the importance travel and other countries. Tariffi mentioned the ongoing border problems between southern and northern Morocco, not to mention Algeria, just to the East. I had to admit I didn’t know much about these disputes, but there is history among the people of the south. This part of the world was once known as Spanish Sahara and goes back to the end of 1975 after Spain relinquished control of the region. Morocco and Mauritania divided the territory between themselves, but the pro-independence Polisario Front, backed by Algeria, proclaimed a Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and launched a military struggle against what it viewed as two occupying powers. Mauritania withdrew from its part of the territory in 1979 after a series of military defeats at the hands of the Polisario, leaving it to Morocco to deal with the conflict. Meanwhile Rabat (Morocco’s governmental seat) consolidated control over most of the south. The Polisario still wants to be recognized as the world’s 196th nation.
This seemed to lead to views that conflicts like these can be resolved IF we aren’t so bent on hating people we don’t really know. “So many people don't think! Because it's hard to think for yourself,” said Musta, a sentiment that Cyndy and I heartily agreed with. “And people don't think they make mistakes, but they make them again and again.”
“It’s okay to make mistakes, “ I added. “But not repeat them. I remembered Buckminster Fuller writing somewhere that all of civilization was nothing more than the sum total of its mistakes. But we only grow if we learn from those mistakes. So often we don't.”
“People hate others without really knowing who they are, or where they come from,” said Corinna. “Without really seeing what we have in common, but only assuming that we are enemies.” She told the story of how South Africans would say when she traveled, “‘You're going to Nigeria? You'll die!’ And Nigerian would say, ‘South Africa? They will kill you.’” Yet, she said, here she was, still alive. “People are mostly good,” she said.
We even touched on women’s rights. Corinna said that she’s always loved the different phrases cultures come up with. I thought of the Navajo shaman we had met in Monument Valley. “How much weight can you carry.” In South Africa, they say, “a strong woman can carry a lot of water.”
“I love that,” said Corinna. I knew that was true. Cyndy was proof every day, and so were each of my three daughters, and so many more women I’ve met.
With that, the train began to slow and we came to the Casablanca Station, just long enough to thank Corinna, Muta and Tarrifi (and his very quiet mother who didn’t understand a word of our conversation) and wish them well on their safari (Swahili for ‘journey’). We then waved in the general direction of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, and caught the next train to Rabat where more adventures awaited.
Rabat - Exploring A Moroccan Treasure
The Rabat Taxi Fiasco
After a quiet ride of an hours or so, we walked out of the Rabat train station completely clueless. My Arabic consisted of phrases like Salaam, Inshallah and Yella in an entirely Arabic speaking nation, and we had no more idea where we would be laying our heads this night than a blind man plopped in a Moroccan medina. Our cell service was non-existent, but I had preloaded a map of our route to the riad on my iPhone and it told us we were about 12 minutes away. All we had to do was get a taxi to the right hotel.
Outside the station a cluster of taxi drivers clambered up to us ready to take us anywhere we wanted to go. A small boned driver with a black mustache elbowed his way to us. “Yella, yella!” He said. Let’s go!
“How much,” I asked, rubbing my thumb and forefinger in the universal signal of cash.
He spoke in rapid Arabic but I thought I caught the word for eight, and I had also roughly calculated that the trip would cost about 80 dirham. So I figured this was our man. That was my first mistake.
We loaded our bags into the small, battered taxi and crammed ourselves in the back. I noticed his meter wasn't running, but I figured we had settled on the price so off we went. Through some internet magic, even without cell service, we we were able to map our location on our phone, and the taxi seem to be heading in the right direction. Then suddenly it wasn't. Soon we were well past 12 minutes, pushing 20. I knew our riad was in the ancient section of town, the sorts of areas we always stayed in. But as we looked around there wasn’t a hotel or riad to be found. We were in a nice residential area, nowhere near a medina. Cyndy and I were not feeling confident.
Finally, the taxi driver looked around then stopped the car. He pointed his finger outside. “Here,” he said.
“Where?” I replied.
He looked oblivious. I jabbed again at the phone with the name of the riad. "Riad Kalaa,” I said, maybe a little too loudly.
The mustached driver got out of the car and wandered around a bit. He seemed to agree that there were no hotels and got back into the car. He was clearly lost, but I saw he had another idea. He put the taxi back in gear and headed off we knew not where.
Clearly we’re in a pickle. Our lack of Arabic isn’t helping. At one point the driver stopped, and invited a woman on the street who also apparently needed a taxi. WTF was this? Did he think she could help? Was he looking to make more money because he was losing money on all our fare? Five minutes later, he stopped the car and she got out. I punch the phone some more and called out the name of the riad. By now I’m fuming and he was getting rattled. He was now desperate, driving nowhere in particular. He pulled his ball cap off and wiped his shiny head with his sleeve. I felt badly for him. Here he was thinking he had a nice ripe fare from some American tourists and now he was thoroughly lost, stuck with an angry white man jabbering in a unknown language whose decibel levels seem to be rising every block. But we had now been driving for 45 minutes!
At last, the taxi driver stopped at a gate outside of the big building and walks out toward a man in a uniform. Many questions. The uniform points down the road and indicates a few turns. He seems to know his stuff. Back to the taxi. Three minutes later we are standing in front of a very ritzy hotel. The taxi driver motions for help and gets out. I get out too. I show a man who works outside the big hotel the address of our riad. He nods. He turns to the driver and explains where the location is. The taxi driver shakes his head no. Yes, says the man at the hotel. Again, the taxi driver begs to differ. He’s defensive now. The hotel man waves his arms vigorously to clarify in no uncertain terms that he's wrong and I hear the word “ancienes,” the French for old. Again, he says it. A lightbulb goes off at last in the taxi driver’s head. He lowers his head in submission. Maybe he had the right address, but he is in the new part of town, not the old sector.
“Okay, I say to the ritzy hotel man, does he know where to go, really?”
He then pulls the taxi driver over and speaks rapidly. He turns to me.
“Yes, he knows.”
I get back in the car, and the taxi driver puts the old car in gear.
“Does he know?” Asks Cyn. This is now the universal question.
“I think so,” I say. But who could say. This might be one of the world’s great riddles, like the mystery of the Holy Trinity or the location of Atlantis! To be extra certain, Cyn turns on her cell phone service. It’s expensive in Morocco and mine was out, but we figure it’d be worth it if we could find our beds before midnight. She dials the riad. The man on the phone says he speaks no English, but wait… Silence. Then a man gets on the phone and asks in English how he can help. Once again, Cyndy to the rescue. I explain our predicament and then put the phone in the taxi driver’s ear. The two men talk. Then back on the phone … OK. The man at the riad promises to meet us outside when the car arrives - 10 minutes. Ten minutes later he does. We’ve been driving almost an hour. At last we haul out our bags. The taxi driver looks like I put a knife in him. I pull the last bag out of our car and give him 50 dirham — about five dollars. He is absolutely elated, and hops into his car as fast as a mongoose, thrilled, I am sure to be rid of the Americans he had so assiduously pursued 60 minutes earlier. That’ll teach him.
Riad Kalaa
The pleasant gentleman who had been on the phone, guided us through the city’s old medina, by now a familiar site. Compared to Fez and Marrakesh, though, the cobblestoned alleys were peaceful except for a couple of children walking by, talking in whispers. Five minutes later our host escorted us into Riad Kalaa where we met Zachariah, Alexii and Rayna, and were given a key for a room right off the open air courtyard common to all riads. It was two stories with steep steps inside that lead to a large queen bed and a spacious bathroom. Perfect!
Our room and the view from above of the open courtyard. (Photos - Chip Walter)
Soon we were walking the building’s many floors where we hiked up to the open-air roof garden to see the courtyard beneath. The sun was setting and a cool breeze drifted off the Atlantic. I took some pictures and then we returned to the courtyard for another spectacular tagine dinner. Fish, this time, because we were so near the sea.
Afterwards, sleep came fast. After all, we had spent three weeks cramming a lot of Morocco into our noggins and we required rest!
June 11, 2022 81º
We lost much of the day to work the next day — you know, the quotidian business of paying bills, answering emails, preparing for our return across the Straits of Gibraltar and into Europe and Spain where there would be no guides, no tours, no inside information. We lounged on our bed, ate at the riad and had some clothes washed. I booked a Hammam, an islamic kind of bath cum massage because it’s what I felt should be done in an Arabic country. (More on that in a separate dispatch. It was quite an experience!) But by 7:30 PM, we were ready to get outside. We donned our day packs and wandered along the same quiet medina that brought us to Riad Kalaa. Soon we emerged into the broad street where the taxi driver had dropped us the afternoon before. Below us lay a broad harbor and inlet, a kind of small lake that led out to the Atlantic ocean. The atmosphere was festive but not raucous. The marina reminded me of the melancon in Loreto, Baja Sur, Mexico, joyful, filled with children, parents and young people.
We saw lots of children wearing t-shirts and shorts on scooters, the old fashion kind, nothing battery operated. They swung in great arcs among their mothers and fathers, giggling, waving. A dark-haired boy of seven, with eyes black as marbles, ran by at top speed, wand in hand, with his younger sister trying to keep up. His shirt read “Today Is My Day.” By the look on his face, it looked like it was. Children everywhere scooted along the cement pavement in colorful, if battered, little plastic cars. These were battery operated. One looked like a Model T, another like a fairy princess carriage or a dump truck. They wove in and out as music crackled and blared out of a speaker the size of a gallon jug. It had seen better days. It's a small world after all, and If you're happy, and you know it, clap your hands rose into the air mingling with Moroccan drums and flutes and symbols being played by local street musicians. A young girl stood with virtual reality googles clamped over her burkha, gazing into another, virtual world. Everywhere, I thought, American culture influences the world.
(Photos - Chip Walter)
We meandered along the dish-like cove toward the Atlantic. Small restaurants clustered on our side of the dock. French, Italian and Spanish cuisines were on the menus along with pre-made kiosks with families lined up to buy ice cream, teas or cakes.
On the other side of the inlet lay a broad beach where people languidly soaked up the last rays of summer sun. In the channel, little blue wooden boats are strung out all along the docks. As many as 10 men members of a family pile in and its captain, oars in hand, hauls away toward the sea where he will shortly circle back and re-deposit his cargo to pick up another group. It’s a kind of working man’s gondola. They seemed to have no particular place to go, but they are having a good time doing it. Back and forth they plied the still waters, the sounds of laughter echoing around the wharf.
The people of Rabat seemed quite content.
After awhile, twilight set in and we walked back toward the end of the inlet, opposite the sea. Just beyond the setting sun, lay the gargantuan battlements of yet another old, but renovated, Portuguese fort. Its big stone jaw jutted out like the ones we had seen outside of Tangier and Tarifa. Scores of local tourists strung themselves in ant-like lines walking its breastwork, unaware of the battles fought there hundreds of years ago.
We swung back into the medina and found our riad. There would be more to see the next day — a huge jewish cemetery, clustered with hundred upon hundreds of monuments and tombstones, an odd site in a muslim country. A fisherman standing on gargantuan rocks, his long pole extended as the Atlantic crashed around him. Local families on a broad sandy beach wading into the waves, with a Moroccan flag whipping in the wind. And back at our riad, Chip’s exciting hammam experience. (Look for a separate article on that! Just what the doctor ordered after marinating in this remarkable land.)
Departing Rabat for Tangier again - Day 260 - June 13, 2022 81°
We said our goodbyes to Zachariah, Alexii and Rayna at the the Riad Kalaa and found a blue cab awaiting us across from the Portuguese fortifications. This time, no problemo, and we arrived at the train station 12 minutes later. An hour after that, we were speeding through green farms and cooling temperatures riding the Morrocan rail systems ONCF train to Tangier. Our first class coach was spotless, roomy and comfortable. We would arrive in Tangier in an hour and 20 minutes there to grab another cab where we would drop our bags at the El Minzah Hotel for a night; the place where we had begun our Moroccan journey three weeks earlier. Full circle. The next day we would sweep by ferry toward Gibraltar and begin to wander Andalusia, and the south of Spain which for centuries was controlled by the the muslim empire. More adventures!
Look for those stories soon.
In the meantime … crack on!
C-squared
Heading to Tangier, on the ferry to Spain wearing the shirts Youssef so kindly gave us before departing Marrakesh, and behind me, Spain.
(Photos - Chip Walter)
This is Dispatch XXXIV 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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| Miles Travelled | 21,200 |
| Ferries | 9 |
| Transatlantic Ships | 1 |
| Trains | 14 |
| World Heritage Sites | 15 |
| States | 30 |
| National Parks and Monuments | 18 |
| Beds | 99 |
| Keys | Way more than four octaves |
Morocco Recommendations
If you’re heading to Morocco or you’re shopping for ideas for your next excursion, we wanted to share our recommendations. Feel free to leave your own suggestions too in the comments below! We want the thousands of other vagabonds who have joined us to know about the places you’ve explored and about your own experiences in Morocco (or anywhere in the world, for that matter). Here are a few suggestions. Visit our Recommendations page to get ideas and suggestions from around the world!
“Expertly planned Morocco journeys for culturally curious travelers.
Cobblestone’s founder, Michael Diamond, has been named to Travel + Leisure's A-List on Morocco Travel for the last 7 years. Conde Nast Traveler named him as their 2016 Top Travel Specialist for Morocco.
With nearly two decades of experience designing private travel to Morocco, we want to share our excitement and passion for this unique destination with you. We want to enchant, challenge, and inspire curious travelers. Let us design a customized itinerary that reflects your interests but also, hopefully, surprises you with unforgettable experiences that only we can arrange.”