Category: Marokko 2014
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Much Ado About Nothing (or: To be, or not to be)
‘This is not really Morocco, you know?’ I’m surprised to hear the man sitting at my restaurant table say it at all, let alone out loud in a public place, let alone at a border crossing. It could get him in a lot of trouble if the omnipresent Moroccan police hear it. After a short…
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Staying high and dry (‘s more trouble than it’s worth)
Not another one! The ocean is as relentless as I am helpless. Wave after wave comes in, and I’m floating around, holding on to my surfboard like a shipwrecked sailor to a piece of wood. Just paddling into the surf has exhausted all my upper body strength. Now that I’m in the right place, I…
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Ramble on
Could it be possible that I’m not the world’s clumsiest person after all? Ingrid, one of my walking buddies in the Afella Ighir gorges, and I leave Tafraoute together. Joining us in the private taxi are two Englishmen. One of them is Ian, who works at the British embassy in Rabat, making reports about Morocco…
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Between a rock and a dry place
The second, unguided part of the walking tour takes place some 30 kilometers South of Tafraoute, where the real desert begins. The guide agency drops me off at Aït Mansour, a village at the beginning of a narrow, winding gorge in the bone dry landscape that has an oasis running through it. The narrow line…
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A short guide to rock(s)
‘I like rock music, like Nickelback, Thirty Seconds to Mars, and the Backstreet Boys.’ For a few seconds, looking out the window and concentrating very hard on the mountainous desert landscape passing by is all I can do to stop myself from laughing out loud and insulting my new friend, Marouan. He got on the…
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High and dry
As we descend, the temperature rises again, but the trees and greenery don’t return; it’s still stony fields and tiny scrubs all around. I’m absolutely amazed by the sparseness of the landscape, the way the mountains turn into plains with zero vegetation, which turn into blue-purple mountains again on the horizon. I hadn’t expected this…
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Here we are now, entertain us!
I can’t turn around. I can’t move forward or sideways either, for that matter. The train’s seats are all occupied, and the pathway is too narrow; adults, children, suitcases, backpacks, and cardboard boxes full of tradeware are all jammed in there with no space to move; for a while, there’re even people hanging out the…
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The calm between the storms
Our first few minutes in Meknes are spent wedged into a tiny Isuzu minivan, probably from the early eighties. Bernhard, Lorena and Casey sit in the windowless back, while I’m next to the driver, whose XXL figure is comically oversized for a car like this. The chassis seems to have been repaired – poorly -…
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We don’t need scorpions here
Screw Fes. In fact, screw Morocco. I’m sick of the chaos, I’m sick of the heat (it’s 23 degrees here in Fes, while just two days ago I was walking in the snow), and most of all, I’m sick of the hustlers, none of whom are really my friend, even though that’s what each and…
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Mowgli and the monkeys
On the first morning of my four-day trek in the Rif mountains, I meet up with my guide, Amin. He’s 40 years old and has been guiding tourists for the past 20 years (after deciding that smuggling cannabis to Spain was too risky). His father was a Berber from the mountains, while his mother is…
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Feeling blue in the blue town
The morning of my departure from Tanger starts badly; on the toilet, for an hour and a half. Thankfully it turns out to be a case of agitated bowels not yet being used to the Moroccan cuisine, rather than a virus that would leave me toilet-bound for days on end. Once my bowels have calmed…
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Led Zep, Arab Reggae and the CIA
The mad dash through Europe has hit me harder than I thought; the morning after my arrival in Tanger, I have a bit of a cold. This isn’t made much better by me staying in bed and not eating or drinking enough during the day, so by the end of the afternoon I decide to…
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