The train from Tanger to Fes was fairly quick and painless, not to mention cheap as dirt—only around $15. Julie and I boarded with time to spare and set to finding an empty compartment. We had hoped, foolishly, on having a cabin to ourselves. Within 5 minutes of sitting down, the four remaining seats were filled by Moroccan students talking loudly amongst each other. They were speaking an odd mix of Arabic and French, which was more than enough to make my head spin.
For those of you who have traveled a bit in countries where you don’t speak the language…doesn’t it always seem like other languages are spoken at a much higher volume and with more aggression than English? It becomes all the more apparent when you meet someone who speaks English as well as say, Arabic, and who often switches back and forth between the two. Just something I have noticed over the months…
Anyways, these students were like that. Their conversation was very loud. Add in a laptop playing the latest Moroccan pop charts and you have yourself a very interesting train ride. To be fair though, after a few hours the music died down and the conversation slowed to a point where communication was attempted. They were nice, offering us a snack and some helpful advice about Fes. We all got off when the train finally came to a stop at the Gare du Fes. It was raining.
I had made plans with our host, Hassan, to meet at the train station near the ticket booth.
“I’ll be the one with the huge bright blue backpack,” I had told him.
“I know what you look like, I have seen your facebook, I will find you,” was the response.
Fair enough. I don’t really think we could have blended into the crowd had we tried.
We waited for about 5-10 minutes with no sign of Hassan. I thought he would have been waiting for us, as our train was late. I was about to go look for a pay phone when a slim fellow about my height wearing a white and black striped sweater walked up to us and enthusiastically introduced himself. Conversation was slow to start as we made our way to the petite taxi stand. As expected, we were waved off as Hassan attempted to get a ride on the meter. Although illegal, it is very common for petite taxi drivers to refuse service on the meter if there is a good amount of tourists in the area.
We walked 1km or so to a parking lot full of larger, tan, taxis that were headed to Sefrou, a small but large city about 30km from Fes. We through our things in the back of the old Mercedes, I paid the driver in advance and went to climb into the backseat through the door opposite where Julie and Hassan had entered. As I reached for the door handle, my eyes met with a face staring back at me. It was not Julie. It was not Hassan. It was the face of a Moroccan man.
“Ok,” I thought, “I guess I’ll go sit in the front seat.”
I took another step and reached for the passenger door handle. Two more faces peered out from the passenger window at me. I can only assume they were as confused by my actions as I was by their presence in my taxi.
I looked up, the driver was smiling and waving me around to the other side of the car, to the door Julie and Hassan had entered moments earlier. There was a mixed look of warmth and urgency about the wave. I obliged, circling around the vehicle to the open door. I looked in and discovered Julie and Hassan contorting their bodies to make room for me as the fourth body in the backseat.
“Seven in the car,” Hassan explained the obvious.
I closed the door snugly against my hip and got as comfortable as possible. The engine started and lively Moroccan music began to drift from the ancient car stereo, I smiled at Julie. We pulled out of the parking lot and began the short but long (when you are one of four in a backseat) trip to Sefrou.
Upon arriving at the Sefrou taxi stop, we retrieved our bags from the trunk and immediately transferred to another 7-man taxi headed to Bhalil, Hassan’s hometown where we would be staying for a few nights. Before we even reached Bhalil, Julie and I had begun to look at each other with a similar sort of excitement. We both knew the exciting reality of our current situation: we had finally gotten off the beaten track.
We arrived in Bhalil, mounted up, and began the climb. It was a small village set in the hillside of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. The “streets” of the village were primarily steps with cement ramps for any wheeled contraption daring enough to attempt an assent.
After what seemed like an eternity—a 35 lb. bag on your back and another 20 lb. bag on your shoulder does wonder for your perception of time when climbing stairs—we reached the entryway to Hassan’s home. It was directly opposite the entrance to one of the village’s mosques. Julie and I looked at each other again, both dreading the possibility of the fabled 5 A.M. call to prayer.
Hassan lives in what is known commonly as a “cave house.” That, obviously, can mean a variety of things. In this case, it means that he lives in a house that has 2 sleeping chambers carved into the mountainside—one on top of the other—with a front room/kitchen built onto the front of the mountainside which also serves as the front façade of the house. Kind of hard to imagine, but here is a picture of the primary “cave” room where we slept every night.
The day after we arrived, Hassan showed us around his village and took us on an amazing hike over the mountains and down into Sefrou for dinner. The landscape was breathtaking.
On our hike, we stopped in a complex of man made caves, carved from sandstone, that were used by shepherds to shelter their sheep in the event of a sudden rainstorm. While we were there, there just happened to be a rainstorm and, sure enough, the sheep and cows began to appear.
The following day we took a day trip back into Fes to see the world famous tannery—the oldest and largest in Africa—and to pay a visit to a Berber pharmacy and surrounding souks that Fes is known for. The medina of Fes is said to have over 900 streets. I believe it. Without Hassan as our guide, we would have been hopelessly lost 6 times over. We got a bird’s eye view of the tannery from an enormous leather shop in the heart of Fes.
"Moroccan Adidas"
We exited the leather shop, Julie with a couple of purchases, and headed a few doors down to the pharmacy where we were given the grand tour but a very enthusiastic/entertaining shopkeeper. After 10 minutes, my wrists smelt like everything that smells like anything and the bottles and creams seemed endless. The guy was really going through the whole song and dance for us, tea and everything. I felt bad because I knew I had no use for any of his wares, except an amazing chunk of musk (which I almost bought), but I didn’t want the show to end. Thankfully Julie bailed me out with several purchases of various spices, including a 5g baggy of the illustrious Safron.
Back out into the streets of Fes. People were everywhere and anywhere, selling everything you can imagine. The sights and sounds, the smells, it was a lot to take in at once but I loved every moment.
We stopped in a small local eatery with a terrace and had some dinner before exiting the walls of the medina and heading back to the peace and quiet of Bhalil.
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Stay tuned for the next installment of…Le Chronicle du Maroc.
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