Cue the Chaos: Day 1 in the Hustle of Bustling Marrakesh

May 12 (Sunday)
Chefchaouen, Morocco

I just got a gommage in Chefchaouen, which is basically a full-body black soap scrub. More on that later - just a tantalizing preview of things to come.

Now, our adventures in Marrakesh, city of hustle. Hustling back and forth to tourist stops, getting hustled, repelling hustling. General hustlage (new word; nouveau mot).

We left Rabat for the first time on May 8, about five days into our trip. I doubt very few tourists spend 4-5 days (or any days) in Rabat. But we had a friend there we wanted to catch up with, and Becca made it easy to get our bearings, get settled and generally start to figure things out in this new country before we set out on our own.

We headed to the train station to buy tickets about a half hour before the train left, but it first class was full, so we had to wait for the 2 pm train (successfully navigated this transaction in French – feeling good about that, since most of my pre-trip French training was based around Duolingo, which, as awesome and free as it is, perhaps is not so practical. Examples include: “Les elephants sont rouges” – ‘The elephants are red.’ Work that into a conversation. Eddie Izzard has already made this joke about le souris, le chat et le singe much better than I and I’ll let him do it). Second class tickets were available, but the way the man at the ticket window said that I got – French or no French – we did not want second class tickets. Ducked into the rail station café and had some coffee and tea, chilling out as long as we liked (see Random Moroccan Cultural Notes Vol. 1).

Our train was southbound from Morocco’s coastal capital of Rabat, and the view gives you an idea the landscape we were heading into (desert). It was about 99-101 each day we were there, but the lack of humidity and occasional breeze made it more bearable than Charleston in August:

We got into Marrakesh, ran through a wall of cabbies offering taxis, and finally got taken up by one. We had written down the name, address and phone number of the riad with our reservation, but given how many of them there are (200+ in the medina of Marrakesh, we are told) and their size (three to seven rooms) and the nature of the streets (winding, narrow, and often unnamed), getting there was going to be half the fun. Lonely Planet at least accurately braced us for this part of the trip. We ended up in a narrow alley crammed with women on mopeds, mobs of teenage boys, vendors of all kinds and motorcycle repair shops. We had to get the cabbie to call the place twice before he found it, and even then the riad manager had to come out and get us (most taxis cannot make it into the back alleys where most riads and restaurants are). The cab driver demanded 100 dirham for each of us ($12), which is a laughably absurd price. We had gotten too used to the metered cabs in Rabat, and were not used to negotiating prices before getting in the cab. We ended up paying less than 100 total though, with Thierry, the riad manager, sticking up for us and saying 100 is absurd. Lesson learned, we headed to our very nicely appointed (and cheap – about $60/night) riad, following Thierry down a winding back alley:

View from the second floor balcony, facing a flowering vine in our Riad Dar Palmyra.

View of the Dar Palmyra courtyard, looking down from the second floor (Thierry, our host, facing toward the camera).

My room. Ridiculous! I like the lavender banners, don’t you? Feels very medieval, very regal. Notice the carved copper lanterns on the bedside. I find these very cool, very pretty. There was also a basket of lavender in the room, so I think this really in many ways was the “lavender room.”

That evening we headed out to the (in)famous Djemma El-Fna, the enormous central courtyard of the old city, which has been a hub of entertainment and commerce for centuries. This is the place where you really probably get a lot of images of North Africa: snake charmers, musicians, acrobats, story tellers, henna painters, artists, charlatans, thieves and liars. Obi Wan (nerd alert!) is close but not quite right here: “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” You certainly have never see anything like it before. At night the plaza is a constant cacophony of competing drum circles, magic shows, and wailing singers. All the while the scent of roasting meat wafts over the crowds. I can’t really do it justice. Photos:

Evening falls on the Djemma el-Fna. This view is from the Djemma, facing west toward the Place de Foucauld (tree line to the left of the photo), with the impressive (and incredibly useful navigational tool) Koutoubia Mosque minaret to the center right of the photo. Things are starting to heat up in the crazy plaza. Drum circle to the center right, foreground.

From the Djemma, facing west-northwest. Henna painting women in foreground. The incredibly bright fluorescent white lights to the right are from the massive complex of outdoor barbecue stalls (more below).

Northern side of the Djemma, market stalls. Everything is always for sale in the Djemma. Noticing a lot of these photos have blurry images of people in motion, which feels about right: the mass of humanity hardly pauses in its swirling and seeking.

Dinner! The bright white lights are from the barbecue stalls, all of which have very similar menus, and very aggressively charming (emphasis on the aggressively) promoters who try to get you to stop and eat there. Free mint tea! Free bread! Lots of joking, ribbing other competing food stalls, mocking Moroccans, etc. They really get into it. Wild Cockney accents, dropping slang terms, cultural references, threats, insults, whatever works. The kitchen sink approach. Each one has about fifteen seconds to get you to stop and pay attention, eventually so they can lure you into their tent to have dinner. Some memorable lines from these barbeque pushers are “Two years guaranteed – no diarrhea” (not the best hook, but a memorable line certainly) “Hey, man, chillax!” Also: “Is [Saumya] the boss? Does she run the show? We don't let them do that here in Morocco!” Absurdity ensues.

We do eventually have dinner, picking a busy one (food must be good? or at least safe?). We are told to be skeptical of the hygiene of the cutlery and so eat most of our food with bread, instead of the fork that was dipped for three seconds in a tub of sketchy sanitizing liquid. The food is quite good, actually, and at a very fair price. Here’s proof we ate dinner:

Fruits and spices are for sale in these enormous stands (in the Djemma and throughout markets and souqs in Morocco). The vendor has a little hole he comes out of to fetch you what you want. I think these are really pretty comic. Looks like they are waist-deep in a ball-pit of spices and dried fruits, or that they have an enormous skirt of culinary accoutrement spread out all around them. Shades of the Muppets or a game at Chuck E Cheese?

Horse drawn carriages whisk through the Djemma after our dinner, and contribute to the lingering stench of manure that had me checking my shoes several times.

Same photo as Photo 1, basically, but at night with the sun set.

It was a wild first day in Marrakesh. Little did we know the city was just getting warmed up. Day 2 would hold more swindling, more tourist sites, some pigeon shit vats and getting lost in a medieval tangle of back alleys in one of Morocco’s most perplexing souqs.