Long, long after we forget the taste of tagines and couscous; the smell of flowers and herbs; the eye candy of colored fabrics, rugs, and clothing; the sound of the Call to Prayer five times per day emanating from the minarets (beginning before 5:00 am); and the touch of the softest leather on earth — we will remember the terror every single time we stepped out of our riad, into the small/narrow/skinny/tiny/crowded lanes of the medina, fighting crowds of people just to walk through, and then — (Dramatic Pause) — having moving motorcycles suddenly behind us, beeping-beeping-beeping, and trying to get through when there is no room for people, let alone a parade of motorized vehicles! Twice, they hit Mike; twice, they missed Jan by less than half an inch. All the other medinas in all of the other Moroccan cities were pedestrian-only walkways. Here in Marrakesh, along with motorcycles, were delivery trucks (!), construction trucks, carts, full-size chicken trucks filled with live chickens, bicycles, and even donkey carts, all yelling at pedestrians to let them through. It made an already-chaotic place just absolutely ridiculous. We will never forget it.
We have to say, overall, that the Moroccan people are exceedingly sweet, gentle, and generous. They are quick to smile, quick to wave hello. That has made our time here so lovely. In many ways, though (and some people will think this is great, others not so much), the country is one of the least modern that we have visited. Credit cards aren’t widely accepted, overall — even in large sit-down restaurants, and we had to keep getting cash for that reason. Every taxi ride and every purchase was a negotiation. One day, we negotiated with a taxi driver to take us to a destination for 30 dirham ($3 US), which typically is more than enough to get you around town in any of the cities we visited. Returning from that same destination that day back to our riad (accommodation), we offered that same amount, and the driver looked at us as though we were crazy. He said, no, it will be 50. We countered with 35, and he used some choice Moroccan words and drove off in anger, leaving us standing in the street. There are several Uber-type businesses in Morocco, but not a single one of them ever worked for us. Most of the time that we tried these apps, a driver agreed to pick us up and then quickly canceled. After that, there would be a long wait for another driver to accept our ride…and then the driver would cancel. Since most taxi rides were $5 or less, we usually lost patience with the app and canceled it ourselves and found a taxi. Or we walked. Since most of the time we would have to walk the last five or 10 minutes through the medina to our riad anyway, walking to go back “home” was often the best option.
It is easy to get completely lost in Marrakesh’s medina, although GPS on Google Maps was excellent for directions to anywhere. (The city can be written as Marrakesh or Marrakech, with an S or a C, but spelling it with a C is French, while with an S is more authentically Moroccan. So we choose – S!) The favored language here, after Moroccan and Arabic, is French, so once again we are grateful that we have been studying French for three years on Duolingo. We have been able to read menus and signs even though we still can’t speak any French except for the courtesies and the simplest concepts, such as “left, right, yes, no, stop,”etc. In Tangier, due to its proximity to Spain, Spanish was the favored foreign language. Throughout Morocco, we sometimes had to use Google Translate to order food or ask for something, and it all worked out well.
We were warned that shopkeepers in Marrakesh would follow us around and drive us crazy, but that is simply not true. If you showed interest, they moved in to help, to bargain, to show you more. We stopped at one small stand to look at some items, but said we were just looking. We visited there the next day, and the young man said disdainfully – “Oh, you were here yesterday. Why don’t you just make up your mind? You’re not buying a car!” But nobody was overly aggressive at all. Food is very inexpensive. A tagine — food cooked in a portable clay pot that cooks in an oven (and also the name of the pot itself) — can be had for $4-7. It is a complete meal, with a piece of juicy meat in the center surrounded by soft, tasty vegetables – a beef tagine is reminiscent of pot roast with onions, potatoes, and carrots. You easily could pay $15-20 for this in the US. An extra-large, extra-cheese pizza is $6. Cans of soda are usually $1 to $1.20.
As for safety, there wasn’t a moment that we felt in danger. For a few seconds, a man tried to pickpocket Mike, but we moved away quickly and the man kept walking. We met a new friend from Mexico named Lola, who said that she and her companions were looking for a restaurant at night when a man offered to guide them to a good one. When they arrived, he demanded money. Lola gave him 2 euros, but he got angry and said that wasn’t enough. So they scraped together some more money, and she relayed that it was a little scary. We normally don’t venture out late, so we always felt fine. The vast majority of Moroccans and kind and friendly, so we didn’t find security here to be an issue whatsoever.
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