Day 10 & 11 Marakesh
Mick Thomas got it right when he said, “there’s no point writing postcards on your bad days”, which is why there’s no post from yesterday.
The first rule of travel is that change happens. The second thing is that it’s difficult to leave everything behind when travelling.
Had we started our travels in Marrakech, I’m sure I’d be writing about how it”s a bustling, exotic and amazing location, full of life and good food. After 9 stunning days in the rest of Morocco, Marrakech is quite disappointing. It’s crowded, confusing, full of hustlers wanting to bargain over everything, men who want you to come look at their wares, often either with a soft grab of the arm or by standing directly in front of you. Marrakech is a big, populous city, and it has all the things that come with that. And after 9 days of being away, seeing the best of Morocco, disrupted sleep patterns, the annoyance of my knee and some occasional gum pain, and possibly even just wanting a bit of space (L and I have barely been 10 metres apart for the entire journey), I had a bit of a meltdown.
It kind of started on the night of day 9, where the riad, though quite fabulous, wasn’t quite as good as previous lodgings. And there was a French family/group staying, with a horde (4 or 5, we never got a proper headcount) partied and ran around and screamed in high pitches until rather late. In other words, just doing what kids generally do, expecially when on holiday in a location where they can’t exactly go outside to play. Riads, however, are great for carrying noise, the big walls are on the outside and the lovely open atrium in the middle is a great sound chamber.
The internet has also been intermittent, and our room doesn’t get a great signal, meaning it will drop out at inconvenient moments. Again, first world problems and Murphy’s Law.
Slept eratically, woke at various times, didn’t end up feeling refreshed. Breakfast was fine, other than the kids cranking it up again, doing as kids do.
Our guide showed up, and promised to take us to see all the sights of Marrakech. Mohammed, a nice enough fellow, and I”m sure it was not intentional that every place he left us to stand and look at stuff was in the sun. And everywhere we walked was in the sun. My water consumption hasn’t been great, so getting hot and sweaty wasn’t too good. And being a little tired and cranky wasn’t being helped either.
And little frustrations were getting to me, Moroccan ATMs only dispense 100 and 200 dh notes, but when some general purchases of 10-30 dh, no one ever seems to have change, and they look at you and ask if you have anything smaller. After a while, walking around with 100s and 200s makes you feel like a leper, simple transactions become drawn out affairs. Even just buying a bottle of water can be a complex exchange, and it isn’t even the language barrier that is the problem.
The day was okay, Mohammed took us to some really interesting places around Marrakech, some old tombs, an old palace that was gutted when a new king decided he wanted to move the capital. As king’s do. Then it fell off the maps, only rediscovered a few hundred years later. It’s a neat concept, it would be like a new suburb turns up in the inner city that folks have just forgotten about.
Mohammed took us to a fairly decent place for lunch, but I was looking for something different, having had my fill of tagines and cous cous (also having had some really good ones early on, that many just weren’t stacking up). Went with some meatballs and chops on the grill, was okay, tasty, grilled meat.
The afternoon was spent touring the souks, where I made the rookie mistake of stopping when someone yelled “hey you”, stopped to listen to him when he said he’d lived in Perth, and completely failed to read the early warning signs of starting to be taken for a ride. The dude do some massage, and knew his herbs, and claimed to be a healer, but I think he was just a creepy guy who knew some stuff. Fleeced us for far too much after basically saying we needed to lose weight and drink water — thought it funny that for all the mumbo jumbo mixed up reflexology and stuff he sprouted, he completely failed to notice I had the compression bandage on my knee.
So after being fleeced by the charlatan, I felt a bit of an idiot, too. He mentioned that I think to much and should let things out sometimes, but I was really thinking that this guy was taking me for a ride and letting it out to his face would probably have been rude. So I bottled in when I really wanted to yell a good fuck you and the horse you rode in on.
Wandered through the big main square, the place they always show on documentaries, and the place is a pretty big, interesting place. Problem is, everyone knows that everyone knows it’s an interesting place, so it’s flanked by cheap tacky and pushy touristy shops, and pricey cafes (costs extra for drinks in the upstairs terraces). The square also has its fair share of folks trying to make a buck, whether by draping snakes over you (this one was a little more awake and didn’t like me much) or waving fairly skanky looking chained up monkeys at you (didn’t have anything to do with these folks).
Basically, it’s hard to walk more than 10 metres in Marrakech without someone hassling you, good natured or otherwise.
Got back to the Riad, tired, a little cranky, a little stupid, and a little sore. Fired up the internets and checked my banking to find a rude shock with some TP stuff (the usual story, the folks you need to pay you need to pay now, the folks who you sell in bulk to take 2-3 months to pay you, so there are short-term short-falls that involve a little account juggling). So while I’m trying to sort out the banking stuff, Murphy has the internet dropping in and out at all the worst times. I head downstairs to where the signal is better, and the little munchkins are in full party mode, dropping stuff off the balcony, squealing, and having a good time. After a few more things came over the balcony, I started doling out the death stares.
I started melting down. The highlights include telling one of the hotel managers that I hate children, and later on at the market getting into a confrontation with a waiter who didn’t understand what I was pointing at, who then got offended when I didn’t want to pay for what I didn’t think I’d ordered, and generally not being the most gracious traveller on the block.
If you can only go to one place in Morocco, Marrakech is a great taster of all the country has to offer. If you can go wherever you want in Morocco, do a day trip to Marrakech and spend the rest of the time experiencing the amazingness of the whole country.
Today I’m a little less cranky, thanks mostly to the wonderful understandingness of L. Made it mostly through the absurdity of dealing with the post office, where the guy served the person ahead of us, then wandered off to have lunch or something. We waited 30 minutes, including taking some pics of us waiting. Then we wandered up the road to a dodgy looking hotel, and I almost cried to see something different on the menu, their take on pizza. Had the four seasons: meatballs, zucchini, aubergine and cheese. Was pretty good, and made a big change.
After lunch we headed back to the post office, where our helpful staffperson had just returned from his lunch, and he was very helpful in getting the lamp boxed up and shipped home. We did some other shopping, bargaining, for all the usual touristy stuff, and a bunch of dodgy CDs that may or may not reflect current Moroccan tastes, tthen dinner at the square and an early night.