The Heart of Africa: Mountains, Mopeds and Mint Tea in Marrakech, Morocco

After staying in Marrakech for a few days last weekend, and in the knowledge that a lot of the students here have been, or are planning to go, I have taken the liberty of compiling a list of the things that every visitor to this African city should know:

-Beware of horse and carts. They do not slow down for any pedestrian on any account, even on the narrowest of streets. Not only did I end up half squashed against a wall on various occasions, I also haven’t got enough fingers to count the number of times I almost died an early death from these vicious contraptions. One time, I hadn’t noticed the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves racing towards me and it was only after several Moroccans started kicking up a bit of a fuss that I turned round to be greeted by a horse’s face within millimetres of my head. Needless to say, after that I was a lot more careful, treating everywhere as if it were a road (people do actually keep to the right-hand side of the streets in general).

-Acquire a taste for mint tea. It is one of the country’s delicacies and it is often, although not always, offered free after a meal. It is also served impressively on a patterned silver tray, a beautifully formed silver teapot and an exquisite miniature coloured or patterned glass. Added to this, the waiters pour the tea from a great height into the glass, never missing once. Mint tea was served to us on the roof terrace in our hostel in the mornings after breakfast, which was extremely welcome considering that breakfast wasn’t served past 10am and before this time it was bitingly cold. During the days, however, the sun shone and the temperature was close to perfect. A quick word of warning, though: take sun-cream, even in February, as the sun is stronger than you might think – sunbathing in the park for a couple of hours resulted in an extraordinarily red nose, highlighting even more than my blonde hair the fact that I was a tourist.

-Accustom yourself to early mornings. The first call to prayer of the day is at 6am. It will wake you up and it will feel like someone is leaning over you wailing into your ear with incessant persistence. Although, saying this, on our third day we slept straight through this harrowing howling, which was nice, as our sleep remained unperturbed, yet also worrying that we could sleep through something that loud (the speaker was in close proximity to the roof terrace so that the noise echoed throughout the entire hostel, or riad). This does baffle me slightly: I can’t wake up to a call to prayer, but I can wake up instantaneously to my little alarm on my phone, which chimes gently for a minute or so before falling back into silence.

-If you’ve read my blog about road rage in Spain, take everything I said, multiply the described carnage by at least 50 and apply it to Marrakech. Horses and donkeys share the roads with cars and taxis, and mopeds weave dangerously in and out of the various vehicles, sometimes coming within centimetres of them, which made even me, a passenger in a Moroccan taxi, on my first day, without a seatbelt and amid all the general chaos of this strange place, cringe every time this happened and brace myself for a collision. In Marrakech, it’s not as though zebra crossings aren’t provided or are ignored by vehicles, as they are in Spain – the pedestrians there just prefer not to use them for some reason. Instead of utilising these devices designed for road safety, Moroccans choose to risk life and limb by crossing into the oncoming traffic and weaving in and out of it until they reach the other side, somewhat surprisingly, in one piece. I witnessed only one close shave, when a boy misjudged the speed at which a car was travelling and almost ended up not making it to the pavement – my heart genuinely skipped a beat – luckily the car came to a halt just in time and the boy was fine – better than fine, in fact, he laughed and waved an apology to the driver who waved back – no beeping, no shouting, nada. Very different to Spain indeed, where the cars beep at each other sometimes for no reason whatsoever.

-If anyone offers you a Berber carpet ‘demonstration’, say ‘no’ and run in the other direction. Unsure of what exactly can be demonstrated with carpets, we were dubious of this activity anyway, yet still got sucked in, in order not to appear rude through refusal. The demonstration began well, with a five-minute or so explanation of what the carpets were made from and how long it took to make them, etcetera. From there, it all went downhill. The following hour, although it felt like three, consisted of the man trying to flog us hundreds of expensive carpets that we couldn’t afford, let alone fit in our hand luggage, which was more than slightly awkward. We also ‘happened’ to be in the back room of the house, which added a wonderful sense of being trapped, which I feel really complemented the awkwardness, which was by the end also teamed with a growing agitation and a certain desperation. On the bright side, I did learn something new – never before had I realised that so many negative feelings could be crammed into just one hour.

-If you go on the waterfall excursion, it’s probably best not to attempt to cross the bridges. Trust your instincts: they look rickety, and they are rickety. On the car journey to the waterfalls, we commented on how weak and unsafe the bridges looked – and this was verified by the fact that the next ‘bridge’ that we saw was almost fully submerged in the river, half-dangling and half-lying in a hopeless manner across the rocks.

The great thing about the waterfall trip is that it takes you up into the Atlas mountains, the stunning backdrop to the city. These beautiful snow-capped peaks were one of the first things I noticed on arriving at Marrakech, and set against not only palm trees but also a cloudless blue sky, they created an astounding landscape that resembled something out of Planet Earth.

 

It was an unexpected but welcome surprise; something to contrast the absolute chaos of Marrakech’s roads, and main square, where there are snakes, story-tellers and music galore, as well as marquees full of street food, where you can eat for 5 Dirham, or the equivalent of 50 cents, and souks or the markets, which boast an impressive array of brightly coloured clothing and knick-knacks. As well as being lucky enough to see the Atlas mountains every day for the three days we were there, we also got to climb them. However, we’d been told that we would be taken up to the waterfalls in the mountains by a 4x4, so we were a bit confused when we were told to leave the vehicle, which had stopped in a decidedly flat and un-mountain-like car park. It turned out that we were expected to climb the mountain ourselves – which would have been fine if we hadn’t have been wearing boots and carrying heavy handbags. Watching us girls trying to scale the mountain in little boots with no grip and handbags must have been quite a treat for the locals. For us, not so much. I slipped more times than I can count, grazed my knee through my jeans and on the way down, resorted to slithering rather than descending in a more suitable (or mature) manner. The guide had also told us that the climb would take about 20 minutes. Twenty minutes?! It took at least an hour (although maybe he meant that it takes 20 minutes for normal, sensible people who wear trainers and bring rucksacks to these sort of things). This reminded me of when we went to go and visit my Nan in Paphos back in 2005 and she suggested that my mum and I take a leisurely walk down to the baths of Aphrodite, reassuring us that the heat wouldn’t matter too much as it was only 10 minutes down the road. I’m not kidding when I say that we only reached the baths two hours later, after following the straight path (and the massive hill at the end, just to rub it in). When we arrived dying of thirst in the 40°C heat, the lady on the door was so shocked that we had walked, saying that everyone drove because it was so out of the way, that she gave us free drinks. Thanks, Nan. Bless her, we didn’t mind too much, but really, whose ability to judge distances is that bad?!

Anyway. To sum up, Marrakech was brilliant. Chaotic, but brilliant, and I can now definitely see why so many of the Erasmus students here choose to holiday there. If you ever get the chance to go, do it – it is an experience not to be missed.