Marrakesh

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Marrakesh

A full day today, but I’ll start with last night’s dinner at Dar Moha, a converted private residence.  We sat at the edge of a beautiful indoor pool.  Here are Joyce, Leah and Jalil, our guide:

There was live music:

The video is dark but you can hear:

The meal began with fourteen appetizers!  Here are some:

We had a lovely time.  This morning we began at the Bahia Palace, commissioned in the late 19th c. by Ba Ahmed, vizier of sultans Moulay Hassan and Moulay Abdelaziz, and featuring spectacular decoration.  Here are an entrance and a ceiling:

We then went to the Tiskiwin Museum, the collection of a single individual featuring Berber and sub-Saharan artifacts.  Here are a beautiful saddle bag and a reconstructed Berber tent (with occupant):

 Marrakesh is an old city with a beautiful 13^th c. minaret:

After walking a good part of the city we took a carriage to lunch:

After lunch we saw the Jardin Majorelle, a beautiful bamboo and cactus garden constructed and maintained by Yves St. Laurent, who left an endowment for its preservation:

Finally we went to the Medina, where we walked through the souk, which is more than twice as large as the one in Fes.  Amazing!  We ended at the El Fna Square, the very famous and incredible center of this city.  How to describe it?  Full of all kinds of exotic people and things, it’s where one goes to find the wild, the weird and the unusual, from snake charmers to jugglers to henna painters, etc.:

We found a henna painter who did a lovely job on Leah:

We also found a snake charmer who charmed Leah (but not with the cobras he had at his feet):

The “dentist” simply extracts teeth (see the pile on his table):

The Berbers wander and pose:

We’re off for a final and farewell to Morocco dinner, then four flights home tomorrow—Marrakesh-Casablanca-Paris-New York-Rochester.  It’s been a great privilege to share this adventure with Leah!

High Atlas and the Road to Marrakesh

Friday, February 21, 2014

High Atlas and the Road to Marrakesh

We left Ouarzazate this morning and began the drive over the High Atlas Mountains on the way to Marrakesh.  The road is very narrow, very winding, and climbs up and up and up to over 7000 feet.  The drive is very scary, with long drop-offs on the side and minimal railings in some of the places; none in others!  Even more scary are the drivers who pass on curves with no idea if someone is coming the other way.  Some are totally crazy and accomplish nothing, because they gain a few hundred yards and then are slowed by the next sane driver.  We made it.

On the other side we came to the “factory” for Argan Oil.  Never heard of it?  Neither had we.  This is the oil of a fruit, which is eaten by goats.  When the nut comes out the other end of the goat, it is washed, and opened one by one:

Then it is ground by hand:

It is made into products which are for eating (the oil) and into cosmetics, the labels of which claim to cure anything from acne to eczema to psoriasis.  Needless to say the things are very expensive.  Needless to say, both Leah and Joyce just had to have some.

Shortly after we stopped for lunch at a lovely small roadside restaurant which had a resident Barbary Ape (not in the photo):

We then left the main road for the afternoon activity, a hike in the foothills of the High Atlas for all of us but Leah.  For her it was a mule ride:

The path was absolutely lovely:

We came to a school:

I was not allowed to take photos in the 6^th grade room we visited, but I’ll try to describe it.  The room was about 20 feet by 20 feet, rather dark with one light bulb.  The male schoolteacher was at the front, there were 13 students at individual desks, six boys on one side of the room and seven girls on the other, all facing the teacher. There was total decorum, total attention, no wiggling or any motion except rapt attention to the teacher.  They were doing math; multiple quadratic equations were on the blackboard.  Algebra in sixth grade!  (“Al-jebra” is Arabic for “the counting”).  Leah was very impressed with it all—the respect for the teacher and the level of the work in a truly backwater very rural school.  So were we!

We continued our hike/ride:

Towards the end, after about two hours, we crossed a small river, and on the other side saw women with bags of laundry heading to the river to do the wash:

 We continued to Marrakesh where we are now, and will have dinner in the Medina tonight.  Our last day is tomorrow when we’ll tour Marrakesh.

Ouarzazate and Gladiator

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Today was a relatively light-intensity day with time for relaxation and shopping.  We’re in Ouarzazate, once one of the crossroads of Morocco on the camel caravan route between Timbuktu and Marrakesh.  Today Ouarzazate is famous as the location of a spectacular Kasbah which has been the site of filming of a number of very big movies, from Lawrence of Arabia to the recent Gladiator.

We began our day with a two-hour walk through the fields along the oasis where farming is as it was hundreds and hundreds of years ago:

At the end of the walk we climbed to the roof of a restored Kasbah which is now a restaurant to get a view of the city.  Next door is a mosque with a stork and nest on its minaret:

The city is on a large river which is totally dry now, although it is usually very full at this time of year.  There’s been a major drought, and the farmers are suffering:

We then traveled to the Ait Ben Haddou Kasbah and walked through it.  There’s a movie being made there now by an Australian company called Queen of the Desert (but not Priscilla!).  Here’s the site where much of Gladiator was made:

We had lunch and returned to the hotel where we spent some time looking at the large number of sets and props from some of the movies which are now decoration at the hotel.  Here’s Leah in the Pharaoh’s throne from The Ten Commandments:

The weather is spectacular, with brilliant sunshine and temperatures in the high 60’s, which made Leah want a swim in the unheated pool.  She froze and didn't stay in long:

Tomorrow we follow the caravan route over a pass in the High Atlas Mountains and will arrive in Marrakesh tomorrow late afternoon.  More then.

Sunrise in the Desert; Todra Gorge

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

We were awakened at 6:00 AM (as if we were in a restful sleep) with the temperature in our tent at 45 degrees.  I have no idea what the outside temperature was—at least a few degrees colder.  At least the wind had stopped and the sky was a brilliant sea of stars and a very bright moon as Leah and I began our ascent of the dunes on our camels.  Joyce elected to stay wrapped up in the blankets back in our tent:

The sun rose as we sat on top of a dune and watched:

We then went back to our camp for breakfast:

  

We were picked up by our Land Cruiser and brought to the road where we met our driver who took us to the oasis of Tineghir where we took our morning hike amid the fields:

 The alfalfa harvest is done by women and by hand:

The almond trees are in bloom:

Our local guide made Leah a camel of palm leaves:

We walked among the fields for a couple of hours, greeting the farmers as we went.  We then went to the Todra Gorge, a 900-foot deep rift in the desert floor cut by a river:

The vertical walls of the gorge are a favorite place for climbers.  Here’s a guy free climbing; note the blond Mohican:

Leah began up but then prudence took over (along with some guidance from her grandparents):

A long drive to Ouarzazate followed where we checked into our truly lovely hotel, the Berbere Palace and had a lovely buffet supper which included Leah’s favorite—pasta!

Leah of Arabia in the Sahara

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

An amazing day.  We began our day at the medieval walled city of Rissani where we learned about Kasbahs.  These are self-contained tribal homes containing many related families.  In Rissani there is one after the other after the other, a few hundred yards apart from each other.  Here’s our guide Ali (a Berber) leading us to the entrance of one.

Inside there’s a great resemblance to the SW USA, and the construction of the older Kasbahs is of adobe:

When the family expands due to marriage, the bride goes to live with the husband’s family and a new portion is added.  These days it is built of cement and rebar:

The Kasbah of the governor contains a mosque:

We visited the mausoleum of Moulay Ali Sherif, the father of the Karan and Alouite dynastys.  We then walked through the fields between the Kasbahs, and wound up at the town market, some of which is open every day and some of which is weekly.  Here’s the donkey parking lot outside the market.  The sounds of many braying donkeys is unforgettable.  Leah is practicing the sound and has it down!

Here’s the weekly goat and sheep market:

One of the fruit and vegetable markets:

One of the spice markets with some totally covered women shopping.  Some leave just one eye exposed:

Ali is a Tuareg, of the “Blue Men” who are Berbers who were nomadic and also were the hired guns who protected the camel caravans which crossed the Sahara.  We visited his home and were served tea in an elaborate ceremony which rivals the Japanese tea ceremony for complexity.  Note that the tea is made over a charcoal fire which is blown with a bellows, charcoal supposedly giving a different (and better) character to the tea than a modern propane flame:

After lunch we began our trip deep into the Sahara to get to the astonishing sand dunes.  These, the largest in the world, stretch over 35 km. long and 9 km. wide, and are known as the Erg Chebbi.  We drove about 45 miles into the rocky Sahara in a Toyota Land Cruiser; there were no roads but lots of vehicle tracks:

Ultimately we approached the dunes which looked like mountains:

The weather was chilly and windy as we came to our camels which would take us up onto the dunes and then to our tents:

We formed a mini-caraavan:

As we got to the top of one of the large dunes, our camel driver pulled out a snowboard:

And down she went, three times!:

As sunset came we were led to our tent:

By now the temperature was 48 degrees and the wind was blowing.  We put on our warmest clothes and went to dinner:

The local Berbers serenaded us in front of a fire with song accompanied by drums.  Leah was taught how to be a part of the group:

Finally at 8:30 we went to our tent.  My travel clock has a thermometer, and as we went to sleep to a spooky Edgar Allen Poe story on my iPhone, it registered 49 degrees inside the tent.  That’s cold.  This is being written on Wednesday, and when we awoke it was 45 in the tent.  FROZEN.  More later.