Morocco Travel Information

We left Geeta's place in London for Morocco at a chilly 3.30am and walked across the sweltering tarmac in Marrakech at 10.30am. We then lined up for what felt like the rest of the day to get through immigration. I honestly still cannot work out how it took that long - the small consolation was that the ineptitude was not exclusive to foreigers, as the locals queued for just as long and were just as grumpy about it.

Luckily, the bus into town was waiting outside so we managed to avoid haggling with taxi drivers who come to the airport keen to pick up green tourists and charge them vastly inflated fares. We managed to then find our hotel, albeit it in a roundabout way, and escape the roasting midday heat for a while in the peace and cool of our riad courtyard.

Marrakech's medina is quite big and fairly busy, centred around the action on the main square, Djeema el-fna. This big square is a bustle of orange juice and dried fruit vendors during the day, but comes into its own at night, when countless food stalls and entertainers fill the place, and once the sun goes down and the air cools, it absolutely teems with people. There is music, dancing, storytellers, snake charmers, women in veils wanting to paint you with henna, hundreds of vendors trying to charm you into their food stall. It's a bit of an assault on the senses, with all of the noise, crowds, smells. There are a lot of restaurants and cafes around the square, and from the roof top terraces with a cold (non-alcoholic) drink or mint tea in hand, it's a great way to observe the whole spectacle. What I liked was that the crowds of people watching the entertainers were predominantly locals, so you didn't get the sense that it was all just a bit show for the tourists. Perhaps the snake charmers and the guys with the dancing monkeys are, but they just made me sad for the animals so we didn't linger.

In our four days in Marrakech we visited a former palace, some gardens, wandered through the maze of souks, got better at haggling with taxi drivers, and spent a lot of time relaxing in the shade in the middle of the day to escape the 40 degree plus temperatures.

Next, we wanted to see Ait Benhaddou, one of the best preserved kasbahs in Morocco. We were on a bus for 5 hours to get to the town of Ouarzazate, famed for its movie studios, where we chartered a 'grand taxi' (battered old Mercedes that take 6 squashed passengers and depart when full to set destinations, like a bus service of sorts) to Ait Benhaddou. The kasbah is in amongst desert, and through our bus and grand taxi travels we got to see some of rural Morocco - donkeys laden with sacks of grasses, men and women working in the fields early in the morning to beat the heat and dusty little towns. The kasbah itself was very impressive, baked red buildings built up a hill, surrounded by sands and a trail of green where the river runs during the winter.

We only spent a night there, and then it was back to Marrakech for our connecting bus to Essaouira. Big travel day. We arrived in Essaouira, a seaside town, in the evening and were delighted to find the temperature about 10-15 degrees cooler. We stayed for three nights - eating fresh fish at the port, sampling Moroccan pastries, drinking cold beer in the courtyard of our chilled hostel, walking along the beach and watching locals play soccer, and eating the best Moroccan food we've come across in our time here. It was a great place, and a nice respite from the heat and craziness of Marrakech and Ait Benhaddou.

Reluctantly, we left Essaouira for Casablanca. Casablanca gets a bad rap from guide books, apart from its incredible mosque, Hassan II, which is one of the only Islamic sites open to non-Muslims. We only scheduled a day there to see the mosque and didn't expect much based on what we'd read, but it was interesting to see the commerce districts and modern developments in the city sitting side-by-side with the old medina - a starker contrast than we'd observed in other cities. The mosque itself was impressive for its scale, and it was interesting to see inside given how many we'd only been able to observe from inside, but it's only just over 10 years old and was a bit sterile feeling because of its touristy nature.

After Casablanca, we headed to Meknes, another of the imperial cities. It's smaller and less hectic than the others, and we enjoyed the laidback pace and very authentic feel of the city - petit taxis always used their meters (a rarity in other cities for tourists), we weren't harrassed by touts every few steps, and outside our hotel was a snack place that heaved with locals and served up the best ever fried potato dumpling sandwiches for less than $2. We ate one on each of our three days in Meknes. We also took a grand taxi, squashed in with four locals, to Moulay Idriss, a hilltop town with a busy market and a major pilgrimage site as it the burial site of Moulay Idriss, a descendant of Muhammad. Over three of the nights we were in Meknes, we could hear music playing just outside our window - only the last of the three nights, it was loud and went til the sun came up. We later discovered it was part of a wedding celebration - as had been the musical procession that had marched by our window, accompanied by a bull, on a previous afternoon.

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