Tales from the Trail

My Moroccan odyssey is coming to an end. To be honest, I didn’t have many expectations before I arrived here, but I have been pleasantly surprised with what Morocco has offered (apart from the food, but more on that later).

I have been travelling with Intrepid Tours, my first organised tour in 20 years. All in all it has been a positive experience – I could not have covered the sort of distances and seen so much variety in just 2 weeks if I was travelling independently. That being said, days were long, and routines more organised that I had been hoping for, but all in all I figure not a bad way to travel in this sort of country with limited time.

So, onto Morocco – it really is a land of contrasts. City and country, rich and poor, high snow covered mountains and the flat Sahara desert – it really does have it all. Not to mention the chaos and fun of walking around the narrow streets of the medinas. The one thing that really impressed me more than anything was how safe the country feels and how friendly the locals were. Sure, you still have to be street wise, and yes, there are still scams and offers of ‘Moroccan whiskey’ (mint tea) only to be lured into a carpet buying hustle, but overall the locals are very friendly and easy going.

So, onto the food. I really was looking forward to the whole Moroccan food experience, however the food in many of the villages outside the cities is not very varied, and there are only so many tagines, cous-cous and chicken skewers that you can eat on one trip. I also picked up some stomach bug on about day 4 which just insisted on staying around. Without going into details, it wasn’t too pleasant for either me or my roomie. I eventually got to a hospital a couple of days ago and they put a drip in me and filled me with antibiotics and other drugs and I am on the mend.

Now – onto a few photos – from Casablanca to Fez.

One of the entrances to the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca. It’s the largest mosque in Morocco and can hold 25,000 worshippers inside and another 80,000 outside. The mosque was completed in 1993 and I was struck by the level of detail and craftsmanship used on such a modern building

Inside the mosque (unfortunately a bit blurry but hopefully gives an idea). One of the main features is an enormous carved cedar wood roof which retracts to let in fresh air and light when the mosque is full on the holy days

More detail inside the mosque.

The ablution room – a cavernous room under the mosque where worshippers prepare for prayer

The old town wall of Rabat

The old granary ruin in Meknes where they stored the grains

The Meknes medina

Meknes medina

Inside the medina

One of the main gates to the Meknes medina

The ruins of Volubilis. It was one of the Roman empire’s most remote bases. The main structures remained intact until they were damaged by an earthquake in the 18th century.

Volubilis

Volubilis

Volubilis

Roadside stall

Overlooking Fez medina

The narrow streets of the Fez medina

Dyed silk

The Fez tannery. Not a place for the faint hearted, although the smell wasn’t as bad as I had heard. The men work for hours in pretty poor conditions processing and dying the animal hides.

Drying the goat hides

Shopping in the Fez medina

Peering inside a mosque. The Fez medina has at least 365 mosques within its walls – one for each day of the year.

Time for some contemplation

Moroccan architecture

The old man

Trying on some local costume

Hand making the Moroccan rugs

Moroccan rugs

Moroccan mosaics