Impressions of Morocco

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The dunes of the pre-sahara, located in Merzouga, in the eastern extremities of the country, meld into the surf of the Atlantic beach of Essaouira. Double exposure on Kodak Gold film.

After a long winter and a damp spring, by April, it was finally time for a holiday and the chosen venue this time was Morocco. For me, there is a particular allure to leaving Europe and vacationing in a new continent and I have barely scratched the surface of Africa so far in my life. Furthermore, the decision to travel to Morocco was further spurred on by the fact that Ryanair flew to several destinations in the country for less than $40, which is certainly a price that can’t be argued with! Amongst those options, my friend and I chose to fly to Essaouira, a small fishing town on the Atlantic coast, about midway down the length of the country.

I found the town charming and in retrospect, a perfect introduction to the country. It had a small but pretty casbahCasbahs also exist in other countries such as Algeria.

, which are the historic centres of Moroccan towns, separated by castle walls, which often have battlements and towers which used to protect against invaders. In our time of mass-tourism, these places are usually full of street vendors trying to flog their trinkets and other traditional, though surely made in China, souvenirs. Essaouria was no exception but we later found the larger city of Marrakech to be so much worse.

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The casbah of Essaouira extends right out to the rocky beach. The harbour is behind us and the seagulls are awaiting the return of the fishing boats.

One delight of the town were the numerous small restaurants in the centre. I found moroccan-style breakfast, usually shakshouka and cafe au laitI can’t vouch for the authenticity though!

to be delicious. Waking up and eating under the stark blue sky was a nice change from the drab, dull colours of northern Europe at this time of year as well. Upon leaving the casbah, one would become acquainted with a more realistic vision of ordinary life in the country. One of heaving street markets, with vendors selling freshly-caught seafood, fruit and spices. The streets were dusty and chaotic with backed-up cars blaring their horns while scooters weaved through the traffic. All in all, I think this is a pretty standard picture for most markets in industrialising countries but I nevertheless dearly enjoy the energy of these places.

As evening fell, we had our first dinner in Morocco. This consisted of harira, which is a traditional soup made from tomato, lentils and chickpeas with a tangy, citrus flavour to it. As a second course we had tagine. In fact, over the course of the holiday we would eat a lot of tagine; which I did enjoy every time, though I will admit that I would have liked a little more variety towards the end of the holiday.

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A view of the roof-tops of Marrakech with the Atlas mountains faintly visible in the background. Down below the streets are narrow, labyrinthine and stink but are nevertheless welcome respite from the hot sun.

Apart from surfing, which we tried one day, there is not so much to keep you in this town for long. Therefore, we continued our journey east and took a bus to Marrakech, which is only about three hours by road. In my opinion, as a dumb tourist, Marrakech is a truly awful place. It is obscenely busy everywhere and the winding streets of the casbah make you feel like a mouse walking into a snake’s lair, with everyone there trying to sell you stuff. Of course, they know exactly who is a tourist from one quick glance and immediately they will pounce by being faux friendly, forcing their objects into your hand and guilt-tripping you for refusing to buy anything. If you withstand this, luckily the narrow alleyways of the bazaar all empty out onto a large main square. Here you can find the snake-charmers and dancing monkeys if that’s your thing.

I did enjoy taking the city bus around the city which felt authentic. In fact, taking the local public transport is something I try to do whenever I visit a new city because I get a feel for what it’s like to live in the city, not just visit it. Marrakech also has some beautiful sights such as the jardin secret with intricate mosaic tilings, which are seen all over the Islamic world, in places such as Seville, but never fail to disappoint me.

One of my primary motivations for the trip was to see the Sahara desert. Therefore, after a day in Marrakech, we headed east on a trip to the far eastern corner of Morocco, a town called Merzouga. Although this isn’t technically yet the Sahara, which lies still further east, to a lay-person, it was convincing enough. The closer we got, the more martian the landscape appeared, with nothing but flat rocky terrain and telegraph poles in sight. Every now and then, you would see a makeshift shop selling fossils, though this seemed to be something the previous generation was more interested in, as these places were almost always deserted. Moreover, these ads for these places were usually in French, which is nowadays second-place to English as the language for tourism in Morocco.

After many hours of driving, I was beginning to lose hope that I would see the majestic sand dunes that you see in movies like Lawrence of Arabia. However, it was only when we came in spitting distance of Merzouga, did the huge dunes begin to impose themselves on the horizon. It was truly a bizarre sight–we had been driving through miles of glass-flat terrain and then suddenly these enormous, organic and undulating shaped monoliths begin to tower over the horizon.

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The dunes of the pre-sahara in Merzouga. Past here it's just sand-sea and rocky plateau for over a thousand kilometres.

In Morocco, the tourist track is very well-tended, so we got out of the van and immediately met our Berber contact, who introduced us to our camels and we rode off into the sand-dunes to stay the night in his desert camp.