Taroudannt is sometimes called Little Marrakech. And while we hadn't been to it's big brother city yet, we thought that a visit to Taroudannt might give us some idea of what all the fuss was about without all of the, well, fuss and hassles that purportedly go with a visit to Marrakech.
We spent quite a bit of our two days there just wandering around or sitting up on the balcony outside our hotel room.
The wandering was mostly around the ancient city walls and the newer town inside them. Moulay Ismail (of Meknes fame, one of the more moderN if not moderATE) sultans, destroyed the entire town in 1687 in retaliation for its residents having resisted his rise to power, but he left the thirteenth century walls and gates standing.
It was very nice to just spend some time in a Moroccan city that was largely (though not entirely) unaffected by tourism. (In the souq we did end up getting badgered into buying a pair of shoes that we were kind of interested in, but would really have liked more time to comparison shop for. Upon reflection I really wish we'd just told the guy that his pushy attitude had lost him our business. But I guess the proof is in the pudding that at least sometimes being pushy is the way to make a sale).
We also had an absolutely, 100% untouristy visit to a local hammam (public baths). We'd spotted one during our wanderings through the Medina and returned there in the evening, complete with a couple of small tubs filled with savon beldi, traditional semi-solid Moroccan olive oil soap that looks like nothing more than thick axle grease. We went in our separate entrances to warm, tiled rooms where we each waited around, hoping for someone else to come in and demonstrate the correct procedures, etiquette and even attire for the place. In the men's section you kept your underwear on while bathing (glad I brought a spare pair!) and with my black cotton briefs on I was still the least modestly attired of the half dozen guys in the bath, several of whom were wearing full on swim trunks. In the next room, which was warm and steamy enough to qualify as a cool-ish sauna, I was largely ignored by the other bathers as we filled our buckets (provided by the hamam) with water mixed from the cool tap or the scalding hot tap, and lathered up with beldi soap. You'd then sit and sweat, letting the pores open up to admit the olive-scented beldi before rinsing off, perhaps followed by a quick visit to a small private stall to wash the bits covered by your swimsuit or undies. Then it was back to the first room to dry and re-clothe (again done very modestly, using strategically placed towels so no two men ever saw one another nude, even for a moment). Apparently it's also common to have a good exfoliating scrub with a camel hair brush, administered by either a friend or a hammam employee, but I didn't see anyone getting the treatment during my visit.
Another fun cultural experience was sitting sipping coffees on the main square, watching crowds of Moroccans surrounding traditional storytellers and musicians for their afternoon entertainment. Nearby the square we also attempted to post the aforementioned shoes. From the outside the Moroccan post offices look pretty slick and modern, so I'd thought this would be straightforward. However on saying we weren't just there to buy stamps, we ended up filling out a form and sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of Moroccan clients for twenty minutes before we just gave up and left.
In another turn of disorganisation, we went for a coffee at a fancy hotel. The double-normal pricetag for the drinks, paid at the front desk as you entered was effectively an admission fee to its grounds, in a seventeenth century palace. However it turned out that there was no coffee available (in a country where every third building in commercial areas is a café!) But the palace itself was (both figuratively and literally) cool, so it was nice to sit and sip our orange juices in its gardens while the sun baked the walls outside in (hot for early March, if not for Taroudannt generally) 31 degree heat.
Speaking of oranges, while we'd recently learned to love Moroccan orange juice, we actually purchased our first Moroccan oranges (mandarins actually) in Taroudannt. And while they may or may not have included the best individual mandarin I've ever eaten, they were definitely the best kilo of mandarins I've ever had. And they cost less than NZD 0.30! After we finished the first kilo with our dinner of bread, olives and fresh hot peppers I felt compelled to go out and buy a second one!
Moving on from Taroudannt took us back to Inzegane and then up the coast again to the small city of Essaouira. It's got a history as a tourist hotspot stretching well back into the twentieth century, with such luminaries as Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway and Jimi Hendrix having visited. But the main attraction for us was that we'd be meeting my sister Melanie, bro-in-law Ka-Hung and Nephew Dante there.
It was a short walk from the bus station to the square in the Medina where they were staying. As we turned the corner into the little plaza we were greeted by a couple of souvenir shops, six cute little restaurants and two big hugs from Mel and Dante.
They showed us into their home a lovely four and a half story Riad that had been arranged by their (now also clearly our) friends West and Julia, who had already been there with their son Levi for almost two weeks.
Essaouira does have a lot of charms. A broad, beautiful beach. Good wind and waves for surfing (or boogie boarding, which Dante and Levi did, or kitesurfing, which West and KH were going to have a go at after we left), a pretty, fun, bustling souq. And a high density of tourist-focussed but chilled-out, low pressure shops and restaurants.
We spent time at all of these, but my favourite parts of Essaouira were at home. The Riad had a lovely rooftop terrace where we spent many an afternoon sipping coffee or OJ, or trying out more varieties of Moroccan wine and beer (for which one had to go into a nondescript little shop outside the old town and order from behind the counter, receiving the illicit goods individually wrapped in newspaper).
I played several games of trivial pursuit with Dante and Levi, who made very creditable efforts to unseat the self-declared master.
We watched the boys play football with EVERYONE, from neighbourhood kids nearish to their ages of 12-13, to impressively skilled teenagers and young men on the beach, to the guys selling trays of “space cakes,” and hash cookies on the beach, who didn't even put down their trays to join the games.
We made several yummy dinners, including a memorable one of grilled fish and charred, smooshed eggplant ooked on the charcoal burning base of a tagine in the alley outside our riad.
Our final night in Essaouira was a Friday, the day that Moroccans usually gather with family for an evening meal of couscous. As we were a big family ourselves it seemed entirely appropriate to go to a nearby restaurant (located simply by asking one of our Moroccan neighbours where to go for couscous) and join in on the tradition. I was amazed that we managed to finish the massive pile of couscous, lamb chops and veggies, even though there were eight of us working at it!
From Essaouira it was almost time for us to depart from Morocco. We'd planned to leave ourselves a day or two in Marrakech before our flight, but we'd had such a lovely time with Mel, Dante, KH, Julia, Levi and West that we'd stayed with them right up to the last possible moment.
We took a bus to the big city and on the way spotted dozens of goats up three large argan trees. It was super fun to see them, but as there were almost the only arboreal goats we saw during our week or so in Argan country, and as they were on a major tourist route neat Argan oil shops I can't help but wonder if they were somehow induced up the trees…
In Marrakech we had just enough time for a quick walk through the Medina and a coffee in the famous Djemma al Fna square. As in Fes, the much talked about pushy or irritating salespeople, fake guides and scam artists didn't really seem to appear (not even the high-pressure henna artists in the square!)
Indeed, if anything our experience in Marrakech went the other way. Having run the tourist gauntlet we were walking up the street, trying to confirm that we were on the bus route to the airport and to find out where we could get aboard. A tuktuk driver stopped and, when told that we only had ten dirhams left (enough for the bus but not much else) spent a good ten minutes flagging down share taxis and trying to confirm them to take us to the airport roundabout for that. This would have been a fair fare, but when the drivers saw we were foreigners they wouldn't have a bar of it. So it took a fair bit of convincing on OUR part that we were really okay with taking the bus before he was willing to drive us a few hundred metres down the street and leave us at a stop.
At the very pretty and modern airport we sneakily drank our traditional airport beer outside (Stork: Best Quality!) Before heading through security.
Our time in Morocco had been great, most especially the time with friends and family in Essaouira. And we'd left huge swathes of the country untouched, including the snowy High Atlas mountains and the sandy dunes of the Sahara. But we made plans for a return to Spain, timed just right to catch the fabulous fiery Fallas festival in Valencia, which is where we'll pick up our narrative next time.
Thanks are due once again to the fabulous hosts who gave us such a warm welcome to Morocco: Anouar and his family in Fes, Gareth in El Jadida and, once (and deservedly) again, Julia, West, Levi, Dante, Mel and Kahung for sharing their holiday with us.
P.S. One really fun bit of Morocoana that I forgot to mention is how everywhere I went Moroccans, mostly young men but everyone at various times, would smile and say/yell “Ali Baba!” as I passed by. Apparently “Ali Baba” is what Moroccans call anyone (other Moroccans included) with a big beard. So Ali Baba can join Karl Marx and Francisco Pizarro as a nickname my beard has garnered me.
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