Travel by Map #5: Morocco
Morocco
February 27 to March 31, 2015,
In Morocco, we travel approximately 2,500 km by car, rail, bus & camel.
Filtering by Category: morocco
Zoe's Top Ten Tips for Tweens Travelling in Morocco
Hello, from 30,000 feet above France.
As we are leaving Morocco, I wanted to share my...
Top Ten Tips for Tweens Travelling in Morocco
1. Don’t touch carpets unless you want to end up in the basement of a carpet seller’s shop, drinking tea and haggling over a carpet that you did not even want in the first place. Also, never believe the ‘just for looking, just for looking’ line; it is always a lie.
2. Tagine is good, but try to eat other foods when you can. Because once you get out of town you will eat nothing but Tagine.
3. When shopping for souvenirs in the medina, if the shop your at does not have exactly what your looking for, go somewhere else. If you are in the Fez or Marrakech medina, or any other big medina for that matter, there will be a shop selling exactly what you want. You just have to look for it. :)
4. If you go to a local Hammam keep in mind that its not a spa, it’s a bath house. So, people are dressed as you would be if you were taking a bath, and any idea you had of keeping your towel on will disappear the moment you enter the main room. ; )
5. In Morocco there are two kinds of taxis, Grand Taxi et Petit Taxi. Petit Taxis can hold three people, no more. It is illegal to have more than three people in a petit taxi.
6. When haggling about taxi fare, if the guy you’re talking to won’t give you a fair price, walk away. He’ll either give you a fair price or you can easily find someone who will.
7. Go to Fez last, if possible. It’s called the arts and craft capital of Morocco with good reason, you can find any souvenir you want with a better price and quality in Fez. Because we are trying to travel light, we would rather carry souvenirs for the shortest time possible. So it makes more sense to go to the place with good souvenirs last.
8. Camels are much more comfortable for long periods when ridden side-saddle, just hold on VERY tightly when going up sand dunes. (trust me, I almost fell off)
9. It’s necessary to bring a varied wardrobe when your travelling in Morocco. You’ll be freezing in the mountains one day and sweltering in the desert the next.
10. Take lots of pictures, there are tons of interesting things to see in Morocco and even more things to take pictures of. From little shops in the souks, to stunning panoramas, Morocco is an extremely picturesque country.
The Roads To & From Marrakesh
March 13 to 30, 2015 / Marrakesh, Imlil & Merzouga
We never planned on spending so much time in Marrakesh, but given some unsettled, late-winter/early-spring weather, it proved to be a good hub for seeing some cool parts of Central Morocco.
Below are a few highlights and pictures. Please click on any of the thumbnails to see them in a larger, Lightbox format.
Snakes on a Dwayne
From Chefchaouen, we travelled by bus to Rabat for a two-day stopover, before hopping the train down to Marrakesh.
Marrakesh's main square, Jeema el-Fnaa is where all the action is: story tellers, snake charmers, water sellers, monkey-con-artists, henna/con-artists who apply the black dye to your hands unbidden and then ask for money, amateur boxers....you name it. It felt like a North African version of Time Square minus the giant flashing billboards and the fat Spiderman.
There is a constant noise of drums and oboes, and when you can't stand the din any longer, you can duck into the medina alleyways for a bit of respite -- that is, until you happen to be accosted by a carpet dealer..."Looking is free." Yeah, right, but once you've drunken the mint tea, there is no going back...
Every town in Morocco has its own colour for the petite taxis (local trips / maximum: 3 passengers) and grande taxis (further afield / max: 4). In Marrakesh, the petite taxi's are "ochre" (a dull-brown-red that I think was popular in suburban Canada in the 1980s, or was that "dusty rose"? but I digress..). 95% of the buildings in Marrakesh were also the same colour of ochre, which made navigation kind of tricky.
We had a welcome break from all this medina-ochre-ity at the Jardin Majorelle, the botanical gardens designed by Jacques Majorelle and later bought by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé, who in turn gave it back to the city of Marrakesh. I'm really liking that blue, and think we'll paint the house that colour when we get home.
Atlas(t), Mountains
From Marrakesh, it was is only a 2-hour grand taxi ride to the Atlas Mountain hiking haven of Imlil. Originally, we had thought about going on a 1 or 2 night trek with a donkey and a guide.
But when it snowed on the second day, we decided to just do some day-hikes and enjoy returning to a warm-ish guest house each night. We hiked up to 2,500 m at one pass, and enjoyed some amazing vistas every morning. But by 2 pm, the clouds would roll in and it would rain and/or snow again.
The valleys around Imlil have a network of well-maintained terraces where farmers grow barley, wheat and vegetables. The town itself is full of guest houses, second-hand-mountaineering gear-shops, and local restaurants with exactly four items on the menu: tajines (stews cooked in a clay dish), couscous, skewers of meat, and Spaghetti Bolognese (only made with cumin, much to Isaac's delight...). It was all fine, but after a month of this, we were hankering for something else to mix up the menu.
Been There, Dune That.
Some more unsettled weather meant we hung out in Marrakesh for a few more days before taking a guided tour out to the Sahara Desert. It was awesome to cross the Atlas Mountains with someone else driving so I could snap pictures) and to see a kasbah (fortresses) where they had filmed a number of Hollywood films. And we even enjoyed a nice French-Moroccan dinner (i.e. small amounts of artisanal couscous artfully arranged on empty plates). But our main objective was to ride.....camels.
Well, technically, dromedaries, the kids would pipe in. Only one hump, don't you know. Camels have two, I was told. Repeatedly.
We set out from Erg Chebbi at the northern edge of the Sahara, just before sunset. It was an epic journey of, well, maybe an hour, but that was probably enough for (our) posterity.
The hardest part of riding a camel, apart from the hump that makes an indelible impression upon your posterity, is getting up. To ride a camel you must:
- Climb on its back as it lies down on the sand;
- Sit on on a blanket-saddle,
- Grab on to the metal saddle-horn with a white-knuckled grip,
- Watch as the handler tssks, cajoles and slaps the camel urging it to rise up;
- Watch as the camel hisses back, indicating that it has no intention of doing so
- Watch as the handler repeats Step 4 and the camel grudgingly complies
- Lurch forward until you're parallel to the ground as the camel rises part way up;
- Hold on tighter to the saddle-horn so that you don't fall on to its neck,
- Lurch backwards 180 degrees in reverse when the camel, sorry, dromedary stands up.
- Look around gleefully when you realize that you haven't taken flight and that you're now 8 feet off the ground on a camel in the middle of the desert. How cool is that?
The actual sitting on the back of a walking camel part is not so hard, apart from the excruciating discomfort, but you eventually get the feel for it. It was easy to imagine myself starting out on a 52-day caravan trip to Timbuktu...apart from the excruciating discomfort that made it impossible to think about much else.
After a 45-minute, arduous journey, we finally arrived at a Berber-styled camp where I got reacquainted with my leg muscles. After a meal of, you guessed it: tajine, we slept for a few hours in a tent and got up early to ride back at sunset.
The whole experience felt a bit touristy and rushed, but it was something that we couldn't do on our own -- not having our own camels, after all.
CloudAtlasMountains
Imlil, Morocco / March 2015
Coming down a steep, scree-covered slope, my left foot suddenly gave way and I slipped, falling back on my butt. Apparently, my left knee and/or my nerves aren’t quite what they used to be: going up is no problem, but coming down, I'm a klutz.
Back at the guesthouse, I found that the “crunching” sound in my backpack was my glasses’ case imploding. The right arm of my specs had been sheared off from the frame, but the lenses were just fine. At least it wasn’t my camera….
We’re two hours from the nearest optometrist in Marrakesh, so a dorky duct-tape job is the only thing allowing me to see where I’m going.
Buckingham, Quebec / July 1996
The first time that Tricia and I tried mead was on a farm in rural Quebec after a exhausting day biking into head winds. The morning’s optimism of leaving for a week-long ride in the Laurentian Mountains had turned into an evening’s frustration with cross-cultural cartography and prevailing winds.
“Ah, non,” said the farmer pointing at the map. “The “camping” icon only means that there is a campsite somewhere within the parish. But it’s no where near here. You'd have to go 20 km back south down that road and to the east.”
Seeing our pained expressions, he offered us a spot in his yard to pitch our tent and pointed to a depanneur down the road where we could buy food.
After a one-pot supper of feves, he brought out two glasses of home-made, eight-year-old honey wine. “You’re supposed to drink this during the month of your honeymoon.”
We'd already been married for about a year, but we didn't argue. The mead spills, however, necessitating some spot cleaning of my sleeping bag and then a tumble in the farmers’ clothes dryer, which then melts a hole in the lining. Zut alors!
250 km later via Mont Tremblant, Mont Laurier and a night at the Black Sheep Inn, Trish expertly patches the sleeping bag with a scrap of red plaid flannel from one of my old shirts.
Maun, Botswana / August 1991
“Okay, you’ve got a stove, a pot, a tent….and oh, here’s enough pula to hire a plane if you can find a pilot who will take you west towards Namibia," says David, the director of the trip.
I was travelling with a group of 30 Canadian students had been touring Botswana for three weeks as part of the WUSC Development Seminar. As a way to dig deeper into local issues, each had been researching a topic related to poverty and development. I had chosen to look into the plight of the Basarwa – San or “Bushmen” – hunter-gatherers whom the government had been classified as “Remote Area Dwellers” and shoved into even more remote areas.
David shakes my hand and says, “If you strike out, just come and find us in Chobe in a few days.” With that, he drives east-and-north to join the rest of the group.
My task now was to head south-and-west into the desert, and find a local contact who would take me to a group of San people living there. But the pilots all refused to land on the soft airstrip out there, so my Plan B was to hitchhike down the main road south, and then find some way to head out west.
After two more days of futilely waving at cars, I hitched out to the government garage at dawn, and told God that I’d take the next ride wherever it went.
“We’re going east, towards Francistown.” Said the guy in the first pick-up. “20 pula.”
Joyfully, I abandoned Plan B and bounced down two hours of dirt roads until the Francistown-Chobe junction. A second ride on tarmac roads with panoramic views hooks me on the joys of hitch-hiking.
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania / 2001
“Her parents couldn’t make the wedding. They need some Mzungus to stand in for them. Can you do it?”
“Sure,” I say, and we dutifully sit in the front pew. It’s Sharon and Rama’s Tanzanian wedding, and Trish and I do our best to act the part of the parents of the bride. We shuffle Anglo-Saxonly through the dancing processions, and I do my best father-of-the-bride speech in klunky Swahili to welcome Rama to our family.
We stay in touch with Sharon and Rama after we’ve all returned to Canada. They even drive from Perth every Sunday to attend Ascension.
Istanbul / December 2014
“I guess that caught you at a bit of an inflection point, eh?” said Stu as we walked through the terminal. Stu, a former housemate, had emailed to say that his flight from Kathmandu had been delayed, and that he would now have some extra time in Istanbul if we were free.
Unfortunately, It turned out that we were scheduled to leave for Dar es Salaam only 2 hours after his new flight would be arriving, but we staked out the Arrivals level at Ataturk International just in case.
For 45 minutes, we scrutinized every passenger with Nepalese souvenirs and/or hiking gear as they scaled the escalator.
We were just about to give up, when I spotted him. “Hello, Mr. Thompson.”
Stu used his mega-traveller-titanium-bigshot airline card to sneak us into the Turkish Airlines lounge for some free snacks. It was great to see him again, even if only for 30 minutes.
Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania / 1999
John, another former housemate, peered over the edge of my bed, wearing his best trust-me-I’m-almost-a-doctor’s face as he rifled through his portable pharmacy.
“Well, I can give you some of these pills for the diarrhoea, and these for the nausea, and you might want to take some diomox to ward off altitude sickness.”
He had clearly mastered the art of improvisational prescription writing during his internship at a hospital in Malawi. And now that my nasty stomach parasites were threatening our hike up Mount Kilimanjaro, he’d come to my rescue as well.
I took the handful of pills as directed, said goodbye to Tricia – who had decided to stay “sensibly at sea level” -- and proceeded to hallucinate my way on the bus from Dar es Salaam to Moshi. I could have sworn that I watched a video about a hopping, homicidal Chinese vampire who is kidnapped over Botswana and parachuted down into the same San community that had once caught a Coke bottle…but that was probably only John’s prescriptions tripping me out.
Departing the next day from Moshi, with an Armstrongian dose of performance-enhancing drugs in my system, we proceed pole pole up the trail and cram into a small wooden hut with a couple on their honeymoon. Awkward.
Much to my surprise, John pulled out a sleeping bag with a red-plaid patch on the inside.
“Where did you get that?", I asked.
“Oh, I found it at the apartment after you guys left for Tanzania.”
Nkotakota, Malawi / 2002
Our matola ride down the western coast Lake Malawi peteres out halfway there when our driver refuses to go further. An argument ensues, and Ms. Wind prevails. He arranges a ride for us on another pick-up truck heading south.
Trish is six-months pregnant with what-will-turn-out-to-be-Zoe, so she is given the prized seat in the cab. I get to ride in the back with the corn. But no worries: this is the best way to hitchhike.
A few minutes later, God flicks off the sun, and I realize that the truck we’re on has no head-nor-tail lights at all and there are transport trucks roaring past. I pull out an LED key fob and flash it meekly off the back, praying that some bleary-eyed driver might see us as we sputter up the hills.
Two hours later, we arrive at the junction for Nkhotakota, only to find that the place that we’re staying is another 10 km south and 4 km east. We pull out the Lonely Planet, and flip through our options by the fluorescent light of a storefront. All of the places to stay are in town, and we don’t have enough kwacha for a taxi.
Eventually, a guy named Christopher finds us a bar/bordello with rooms for 1 USD. We decide to leave the covers over the bed, lay our sleeping bags on top, take our mefloquin with Sprite and hope that the music from the competing night clubs will eventually turn off. That never happens, but the rain on the sheet metal roof eventually drowns them out.
We awake early the next morning, and hitch-hike to our destination. Over a full English breakfast we agree not to tell our parents this story until after the baby arrives.
Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park / July 1993
Before I started graduate school, I decided to attend an environmental conference in California and then bike North to Vancouver. When I started researching the ride, however, I found the prevailing winds go South and nobody ever rides North. So instead, I decided to:
- UPS my Peugeot from Hamilton to Vancouver,
- Fly to San Francisco for the conference,
- Take a 24-hour bus ride up to Vancouver to pick up my bike, and then
- Cycle back south to San Francisco, but taking the long-cut by going North to the Sunshine coast, West to Vancouver Island, and then South down through Washington Oregon and Northern California.
(It kind of made more sense at the time).
It had been five years since the car accident, and I was keen to prove to myself that I was back in shape. But I over did it on a 19-mile climb up Hurricane Ridge and blew out my left knee. I managed to get by for the rest of the five-week trip, even as I’m climbed up some fairly steep mountain roads in Oregon and struggled around some windy headlands in Northern California.
Five weeks and 1,500 km later, I arrived in Palo Alto: skinny, wind-burnt and hooked on bike touring. I stayed with a fellow cyclist who’s dad was the Canadian consular general, and then I flew back to Toronto.
Perth, Ontario / December 2010
I borrow my friend Haig’s jacket to be the pall-bearer at Sharon’s funeral. She had died after a long fight with what started as skin cancer on her foot.
Gary, our priest at Ascension, asks me to play Bruce Cockburn’s “Closer to the Light” during the service.
“Gone from mystery to mystery.
Gone from daylight into night.
Another step deeper into darkness.
Closer to the light.”
I choke up when I see Rama and his son, Baraka, at the front of the church. I only just manage to keep playing.
Kananaskis, Alberta / August 1997
"I wonder why we need to rope up to the next hiker", I said to myself. This was my first time crossing a glacier and I was about to find out why.
Voomp! Suddenly I was up to my chest in snow, my feet stopped by who-knows-how-little-snow-over-who-knows-how-deep-a-crevice.
"Oh, that’s why”.
The hikers in front of me fell forward with their ice axes in the self-arrest position so that I wouldn't fall down the crevice. However, I can't get up: I'm wedged in like Winnie-the-Pooh in Rabbit's doorway. Tom’s colleague, Al, reached down and hauled me out. I'm cold, wet and embarrassed, but at least not deep down in a glacier.
Sengerema, Tanzania / 2000
The line up for the last boat over Lake Victoria to Mwanza is long and its getting dark.
“There’s no way that they’ll let us on this last ferry,” Pallangyo says. “We’ll have to spend the night here”.
“Can’t you just tell them that you’re VIPs?” I joke. “I mean, we’ve got a doctor, a priest and a veterinarian in our group.”
“Right…. And you’re the Ambassador of Canada!” he retorts.
We all laugh and head back to our cars and think through Plan B.
Just as I’m speaking Swahili with my colleague, Margaret, the ferry guard leans over and peers through the window. “Yeye ni Mbalozi ya Kanada,” he says to his buddy.
Oh no! Someone actually told them that.
I quickly switch to English and they wave our cars under the barrier. The guard then brings us a VIP-tray with a flask of chai tangawizi (ginger tea). Moses, my other colleague who is built like a cop, swaggers up to our car and salutes me, a big grin on his face.
Crossing Lake Victoria, I’m sweating bullets wondering how much time I’ll spend in a Tanzanian prison for impersonating diplomatic personnel. But we make it without anyone calling us out.
I eventually confessed to the real High Commissioner to Tanzania, albeit after he had retired to live in Perth.
Toronto / Christmas Eve 1987
For Christmas, I gave her Farley Mowat’s biography of Diane Fossey, the primatologist who studied gorillas in Rwanda. She gave me a red-plaid, Eddy Bauer shirt. I packed it along when we went skiing at Blue Mountain a few weeks later.
Ruaha National Park, Tanzania / Christmas Eve 2014
Ralph and his family had come down from Geneva to spend Christmas with Rama, Baraka and the four of us. He brought a sack-full of German stolen and Swiss chocolate so the kids could have something resembling a “normal” Christmas, even though there were elephants dashing past our banda. It was really hot in the government-camp chalets, but we lit the candles anyhow.
“Let’s sing the Huron Carol”, Zoe said. It took three notes to agree on the key, but soon enough we've converged: “’Twas in the moon of wintertime when all the birds had fled…”. We sweat our way through verses about snow, wandering braves and furs of beaver pelt, rejoicing in stories and bonds that ripple across years and continents.
Imlil, Morocco / March 2015
“Turn around,” said Zoe, pointing up the valley we had just hiked down.
I saw this:
This was the first time during a day of hiking in the High Atlas Mountains that we’d seen the summit so clearly.
It just shows that it’s good to look back from time-to-time see where you’ve been.
12 Essential Family-Travel Gizmos
A more efficient way of carrying the weight of the world....(Image from La Routard guides)
Back in the day, I once hitch-hiked around Ireland with my buddy, Mike, carrying only an MEC backpack with a tent, a sleeping bag, a thermarest sleeping pad, a stove and fuel, water bottles, two pairs of trousers -- even a pair of jeans! -- some other clothes and raingear, a big old SLR camera with a zoom lens and spare 35 mm film, and a set of bongo drums (long story -- but hey! Mike had a ukelele and I couldn't leave him unaccompanied).
Travelling as a family is certainly different. Somehow, we have ended up carrying a massive stack of books for road-schooling, two diving masks and snorkels, a pocket Scrabble game, a bag of neglected but somehow still-oh-so-essential-dad! LEGO, and a deck of playing cards for our epic euchre games in bus stations.
If only someone would have told us what to bring on a year-long trip...
Cue the Inevitable List
Most of the family travel blogs that I looked at before we left Canada started out with The Gear List: a detailed inventory of every item that they were taking along during their trip.
Usually, these were written by the gear-head Dad of the family, who is inevitably an "S" on the Myers-Briggs personality inventory and probably closet software coder. Invariably, the follow-up blog post ends with "and we ended up buying another suitcase to carry it all".
I, however, resolved not to write such a blog post for two reasons.
- It seemed like TMI for my long-suffering readers... and
- In these days of social media and because we tend to stand out wherever we travel, it also seemed a stupid idea to tell any potential, internet-savvy thieves exactly what we're carrying.
But in the interests of helping others learn from our experience, and as a middle-aging man who is stretching beyond the boundaries of his INTJ-ness, I present the following 12 Essential Family Travel Gizmos -- some high-tech, some no-tech, but all oh-so-essential...
....drum roll please....(Honey!....where are my bongo's?...)
1. iThings: Always in use, and thus, never fully charged. It's a guidebook, map, email, arcade, camera, cinema, jukebox, videocamera, library, social connection, compass....heck, the smaller one even makes phone calls. That both devices have survived this far is a miracle of LIfeproof cases and duct tape.
2. A Spidermonkey Compact Aluminum Four-Way USB Hub: Such a cool name! Spidermonkey! And it's great for hotel rooms where you have only one electrical outlet and you have multiple iThings to charge. This one also has the swappable, international heads that let you plug into the outlets in Africa, Europe and North America. Unfortunately, the charger took a nasty zap somewhere in Tanzania, and much smoke ensued. It was only by the great skills of our friend, Philip, and a local fundi in Mwanza, that it could live to charge again.
3. A Cocoon GRID-IT Organization System: Really just a mess of bungee cords strapped on to fabric-covered cardboard, but it is really super helpful for organizing the various cords and charger paraphernalia that keep everyone wired and happy (see #1). I also tuck our grids into a small, waterproof-ish-i-hope Coleman envelope that keeps the dust out.
4. Osprey Ozone Convertible Wheeled Luggage: It converts into a back pack when necessary -- i.e. cobblestone streets in Istanbul -- but its big honking wheels make towing it a pleasure. So much so that the kids often ask to pull my bag instead of theirs. I wish that we had splurged on these for everyone, because I don't think their rolling suitcases will make it through the year.
5. The Trail Wallet App: A great expenses-vs.-budget tracking iPhone App that lets you record what you're spending in five currencies at a time, and that admonishes you when you go over your daily budget. It also produces full-colour pie charts (pie charts!) and geek-out-worthy-exportable Excel spreadsheet reports to review during quiet nights in rural Tanzania. Actually, this App has probably been a trip-saver, heck a marriage-saver, as it helps balance our different ways of budgeting. (Hint: I'm only half Dutch). Available on OS, Android and smarter phones and traveling husbands near you.
6. Stuffed Animals: Vital even for big kids: Instant home. Just unpack and hug. Prone to hiding under beds when leaving a rental apartment, however. Be vigilant.
7. An AeroPress Coffee Maker: I have owned an embarrassing number of coffee makers in my time on this earth, some of them professing to be portable, and others protesting too much to work well. But I finally took my friends' Shawn and Eric's advice and bought one of these this great plastic syringe-like, reverse-Bodum, java makers. With the optional metal screen, it makes a passable cup of joe out of almost any grounds. It also helps to work your triceps...which brings us to....
8. The TRX Suspension Training System: A very portable gym made up of adjustable webbing straps and handles. You can anchor it to a tree, overhanging beam or over a locked (!) door and then use your body as the weight for resistance training. Even if you don't use it regularly, the extra 3 pounds in your luggage surely contributes to burning more calories. Stand back, I'm going to flex. (It also makes a great clothes-line in a pinch).
9. Petzel headlamps: Great for hiking out to see sunrises, reading in hotel rooms when you're kids are (supposed to be) falling asleep, and for finding your way during power-black-outs in Tanzania. Very geeky looking, however, if ever worn in visible light. Fortunately, it normally blinds any viewer who might comment.
10. Leatherman Multi-Tool: For its weight, it is very useful for emergencies like opening wine bottles and unlocking bathroom doors with children behind them. Still needs a Robertson screw-nail-driver head, but this is not so needful outside of Canada.
11. A Football (a.k.a. Soccer Ball) and pump: Instant sport: inflate and kick. Guaranteed to keep any just-9-year-old boy happy; not so much, his sister. She prefers ultimate frisbee. A football is also a great cross-cultural communication tool that Isaac has used on 4 continents now.
12. A larger MEC rolling-bag to help carry all of this stuff. Sigh.
Your Turn
What would you add as essential family-travel gizmos?
Photography Déjà-Viewed
Today, Zoe and I visited the Maison de la Photographie de Marrakech, a great collection of vintage black-and-white and autochrome photos from Morocco. Looking at these historical pictures got me feeling nostalgic, and I started thinking about my own experiments in photography. I’ve always enjoyed taking photos, especially when I’m travelling. It’s a great way to experience and interpret a new place, and my memories of every trip are framed by the camera I was using at the time....<insert Wayne's World Flashback sound effects>
It wasn't exactly like this one, but close....
Voigtlander /
Kitchener 1981 -1989
My early forays into photography were with my Dad’s ancient Voigtlander – a classic Deutsch Kamera with a standalone light-meter, a rather good, fixed 35 mm lens, and a old-school, leather strap that I still use. (*No, you can’t have it, Brent).
Because of the technical limitations and the costs of processing the film, I was very methodical in taking each picture: read the light meter, adjust the shutter speed and/or aperture, compose the shot, focus, click! and advance the film to the next frame.
Once you finished the film, you then had to rewind the exposed roll, take the canister to the lab, and wait for a week to see what you had captured. Often I couldn’t wait until I got home and I opened up the envelope before I left the mall.
Of course, half of the pics I got back were junk, but I organized the the rest chronologically in 3-ring photo albums. How retro.
Canon AE-1 / Elmira 1990
When I was around 20, my parents gave me a re-furbished Canon AE-1, a semi-serious / semi-automatic, single-lens-reflection (SLR), film camera. You still had to focus the image manually, select the aperture OR the exposure, and advance the film yourself, but the picture quality was often excellent.
That camera also helped me land a great summer job.
“And bring your portfolio,” said Bob the Editor, hanging up with a bang. Editors always hang up with a bang. Just like in the movies.
“Oh, no,” I said as I listened to the dial tone. I had just landed an interview for a summer job as a reporter-photographer with the Elmira Independent – a quirky local weekly just north of my hometown of Waterloo that once a month included a “national edition” on social justice and environmental issues.
I had written out of the blue to ask for a job, starting with what I had hoped was a killer lead: “Spring has come, and a young man’s mind turns to thoughts of summer employment….”
Apparently, it worked. But now I had just one day to create a portfolio of writing and photos ex nilo to clinch the position. I scoured my photo albums and dredged my floppies, and hastily compiled my best “work” into a 3-ring binder.
I started the next week.
Working at a small-town paper means that you do everything: interviews, writing, taking photos, dark-room, story editing, proof reading, and in those days, pasting up your stories on to page-sized proofs that were re-photographed and then printed on a press.
And at the Independent, we all had to work a week when we'd take the police-radio scanner home. It could squelch at any hour of the night, and I'd have to groggily turn up the volume and figure out if the emergency was within our readership’s area. If so, I’d pull on my clothes and race out to the scene, Peter-Parker like, with my trusty AE-1.
One day after driving the paste-ups to the printer in Bloomingdale, I heard an alert about a barn-fire near Breslau. Big news for a small-town paper! I checked the map, turned the mighty Chevette around and like a streak of light, I arrived just in time. I flashed my press card to the firefighters, got as close as I dared and snapped what turned out to be a multi-photo feature.
It was a great, if sometimes stressful summer job, and I learned a tonne about writing, photography and rural Wellington County. And it was certainly sweet taking pictures with someone else’s film.
Canon AE-1 / Vilnius 1992
Before going through security in Vilnius, Lithuania, I handed over a bag of colour slide film to Steve to take back to Canada while I went hitch-hiking in Ireland.
When Steve saw me again on the plane, he blanched. “Oh, no, I left the bag on the X-ray machine!”
It was an honest mistake; he had asked them to hand-inspect the film to save it from being zapped by Soviet-era technology. But the flight attendant wouldn’t let us go back for the bag or send someone to retrieve it.
Three-weeks and 20 rolls of pictures: gone.
I remember putting on my sunglasses so that Steve couldn’t see how angry I was. And funny enough, I barely remember that trip -- probably because I didn’t have any pictures to remind me. Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away indeed. Sigh.
Canon AE-1 / Hamilton 1993
I finally took a formal photography course at Mohawk College. It was a nice diversion from the joe-jobs I was doing to pay for grad school.
Working in a dark-room affords a second chance to take the photos . With just a wave of your hand, you can dodge and burn the light before it hits the photosensitive paper, changing the exposure, highlights and shadows.
But real magic was dipping the exposed paper into the trays and watching the image emerge ghost-like before your eyes. I still remember the sharp smell, the red-light and the focused silence of the dark room.
Canon EOS /
Eastern & Southern Africa 2002
The AE-1 served me well until it succumbed to the humidity and salt air of Dar es Salaam. I made do with a stand-in point-and-shoot for a while, but then it also broke during a trip to South Africa.
Trish and I did the math and realized that the dollar-to-rand exchange rate plus the VAT refund made it a great deal to just buy a new camera in Capetown. We flew back to Dar with a new, auto-focus (!) Canon EOS with a telephoto lens. Sweet.
We later took that kit on a 3-month sojourned in Southern Africa before Tricia and I and our proto-mtoto, Zoe, returned to Canada in 2002. This time, I also managed to personally carry all 30 rolls of colour, print film back to Ottawa.
Several days and a small fortune later, we picked up a pile of envelopes from Black’s and sat down in the food court to review our last pre-kid trip: Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Swaziland and Namibia. Very sweet..
But something was wrong. The sand dunes from Souslesvei were just not orange enough. Not at all like we remembered them.
We went straight back to the store to speak with the technician.
“Oh”, he said, “that’s quite possible. The machine sets the colours automatically. Let me take out two degrees of cyan and we’ll see how it looks”.
He reprinted 20 pictures, no charge. The orange was now perfect.
Canon EOS (Rebel) Digital /
Ottawa 2004-2010
Our first child turned out to be very photogenic, so I switched to a digital version of the Canon EOS that would still work with my old analogue lenses.
Taking digital pictures was so much easier:
- you could immediately see the results on the back screen,
- adjust your composition and exposure,
- re-take the shot,
- delete your mistakes, and
- save the photos on your computer.
Printing still required trips to the pharmacy, but at a fraction of the cost and time.
This camera, unfortunately, did not fare better than its predecessors:
- It short-circuited (under warranty, thankfully) in a light drizzle while hiking in Kejamakujik National Park,
- The re-purposed telephoto lens then suffered a nasty mac-and-cheese-in-a-backpack encounter (it could happen to anyone….); and
- The camera body ultimately died an untimely death when our second very photogenic child demonstrated his growing interest in photography....
Sigh. At least my sister-in-law later would be able to use the telephoto lens (after they got the cheese sauce off….).
Olympus Stylus Tough 3000 /
Durham 2013
When Zoe was nearly 10, I figured that she was now old enough for her own camera, so I tracked-down a great deal on a water-proof, extra-tough, child/me-proof camera. It was her one present that Christmas, and I was hopeful that I’d finally found a camera that would stand up to the wear and tear of travelling during our upcoming sabbatical year.
How wrong I was.
“Daddy! Daddy!”, said Zoe, waking me up one morning at my parents' place. “Is it bad if the door-thingy is open?”
“What?” I asked groggily.
“I mean, if for example, you were putting the camera in the pond?”
Apparently open-cardslot-underwater-photography doesn’t work. Who knew? Certainly not my budding Jacques Cousteau.
And despite some emergency dry-rice-in-a-jar treatments and Frankensteinian surgery, the now-wet-inside-algae-laden-camera never completely came back to life.
Sigh. My apple hadn’t fallen far enough from the tree.
Nikon 1 v2 / Colorado Springs 2013
Due to our two-children-too-tight budget, I got by for a few years with a VISA-award-points-and-shoot Canon. It was fine for outside shots, but I was always hankering for a better kit.
After researching the different options, I cross-border-clicked-and-shipped a second-generation Nikon camera to Trish’s brother in Colorado Springs. The duty-free sticker price, with telephoto lens, tripod, remote, and other accessories, was the same as just the camera in Canada, and that was before adding the HST. And since we were going to be in the US for close to a month, the cost would fit within my duty-free allowance.
Sweet.
But this time, I almost didn’t get a chance to break the camera myself.
“Have you got it yet?” I asked my sister-in-law, Amy, on the day I received the delivery confirmation. “No?! Uh oh.”
I double-checked the order form. Doh! I had somehow entered the address of the car-rental company. Sigh.
A few panicked calls and a five-kids-in-the-minivan-emergency-trip-by-my-very-gracious-sister-in-law later, the rogue camera was secured and waiting for our arrival the next month.
It was fun to break-in this new Nikon 1 v2 on the multi-hued rocks of Colorado and Utah. It’s a compact or 4/3rds camera that unlike a traditional Single-Lens-Reflex (SLR) camera it doesn’t have a physical mirror. Instead, it exposes directly on the sensor. The smaller size makes it great for travelling, and for most situations, it has worked really well. It even shoots decent video. So far….
Nikon 1 v2 & iPhone 4S /
thataway 2014-15
This year-long trip has provided many great photo-opps. Turkey, Tanzania, Spain and now, Morocco have been great settings for taking pictures. I’m forever hanging back while Tricia, Zoe and Isaac wait patiently for me to take yet another picture of them walking through an archway. And it's gotten to the point that whenever I call their names, the kids turn around, pose and smile, even when I don't have a camera in my hands.
And apart from having to replace the 10-30 mm lens in Istanbul (long story), the Nikon has worked out really well. Given my track-record, however, I wonder if it will make it until the end of our trip…
The best camera, as they say, is the one that you have with you. And I’ve been surprised how well my old iPhone 4S has worked for panoramas and discrete street photography. And since it is protected in a water-dust-and-apparently-red wine-proof cover (phew!), it has so far evaded the murky fate of my last iPhone …..(Don’t even ask).
Longer-term travel photography has presented some new challenges, however. Shooting digital is certainly better than schlepping umpteen rolls of exposed film. But downloading, editing, uploading and backing-up ....uh, currently, um, 10,000+ photos ….takes a lot of time. It is also using up most of the memory that I have along with me, and we’ve still got 4+ months to go.
Photographic developments
Looking back at my personal chronicle of photography, I realize that:
- 1. I’m really hard on cameras. I mean, seriously. This is embarrassing. You never want to lend me your camera. **
- The technology and process of taking and making pictures has completely changed since I started 34 years ago. Now anybody with a phone can often take a great picture.
- It is now super easy to control the post-production of your photo on a computer, or right away via Instagram. With this tech, you can often make even lousy shots look retro-cool.
- Sharing photos is now so simple that we barely pay any attention to them anymore. Even a great shot is just another image among hundreds that we see online each day.
But does the ease of taking, making and sharing photos now make them less important? Is a picture still worth a thousand words? Or even worth a few Likes?
And what happens when the sunspots, the Toryists, and/or the aliens shut down the Internet and we lose all of our photos? Then what? Will I be able to remember anything?
Perhaps not, but that won’t stop me from taking more photos tomorrow. Provided that I don’t break my camera.
**And this list didn’t even include what happened when Mike dropped my Dad’s telephoto lens in Ireland or how Trish and I helpfully put Stu’s camera in a water-proof bag ….with a leaky waterbottle….
The Wind's Blue in North Africa...*
March 5-11, 2015 / Chefchaouen, Morocco
As I've always said, "when travelling, any friend of a friend of a friend of mine is a friend of mine ....".
Which is how we ended up in Chefchaouen, a funky town up in the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco: Dave & Nikki, another vagabond family whom we met in Turkey, put us in touch with their friend, Mohammed, who in turn, graciously helped us find a hobbit-sized apartment just off the main square at the bottom of the medina (old pedestrian city).
Chefchaouen is a bit of a tourist magnet for two reasons:
- It is a post-card-pretty town up in the hills with a medina that stretches across a hillside and lots of great day hikes in the nearby national park;
- Many of its buildings have been painted blue -- apparently a practice started by Jewish refugees who once lived here, but now a key feature of the town's identity.
(Being the capital of kif production in Morocco probably doesn't hurt their hippy-tourism rating either, but that wasn't why we were there).
Chefchaouen is a lovely a town to wander in, whatever your state of consciousness, and between all the blues, the architecture of the hillside medina, and the clear mountain light, its perfect for making pictures.
Here are a few that Zoe and I took (click on each thumbnail to enlarge it). Listen to this as you view them.
Did I mention that it's blue? Yeah, okay, you're get the picture. But it is super cool when you're there and the light hits the stucco just so.....you just gotta click a pic.
And it did get me thinking about how we might paint all the houses on our street the same colour...perhaps orange?
* Last night I couldn't sleep
Lessons Learned on the Road - Episode 2
"Please, let this be a normal field trip!"
With these kids....? No way!
As "road scholars", we're trying to learn from the environment, cultures and sites all around us by mixing the good-old-fashioned 3R's (reading, writing and 'rithmetic) with the experiential learning 3R's of research, reconnaissance and reflection.
As I listen to Trish and Isaac practice Arabic greetings in preparation for our travels in Morocco, I thought it might be interesting to list all of the "educational" field trips that we've gone on since we left Ottawa last year.
It is turning out to be a long, and admittedly eclectic list that has the kids (and us!) majoring in geography, social studies, languages, history, archaeology, ecology and the occasional experiments in physics (if you count roller-coasters and hot-air balloon rides). It has also been fun to note where the different cultures and empires that we've seen -- Greek, Roman, Ottoman, Spanish, Swahili -- have intersected and influenced each other.
Here is a partial list of the museums, national parks, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and experiences that were just-too-cool-for-school.
Canada
As I wrote back in July, we started our road schooling as "Tourists in Our Own Town" by taking advantage of some of Ottawa's world-class museums. But we continued learning as we hit the road in Southern Ontario and Quebec.
- Museum of Science & Technology (before the attack of the mold closed it down)
- Museum of Civilization (before the Conservatives made civilization "history")
- Museum of Nature - a perennial favourite for us;
- Point à Calliere -- Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History, with a fascinating exhibit on the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal and à propos exhibition on Marco Polo;
- School House Museum, Deep River (ironically, we ran out of time to visit the Clock Museum)
- Royal Ontario Museum - Toronto - with Tricia's dad
- The Hodgson-Terry House of Wonders - Meaford, Ontario
- HMS Strider's Nautical Adventures, a 3-hour sailboat tour with Captain Suzette & First Mate Brent, Georgian Bay
- Making butter tarts with Grandma and then translating the recipe into French;
- participatory experiments in physics: gravity, momentum, centrifugal force and nausea at Canada's Wonderland
Checking out the Aya Sofia with the book and an audio guide
Turkey
Turkey is deeply-steeped in history -- archaeologists have found signs of human habitation as far back as 12,000 years -- and everywhere you go you are standing on one or more levels of Hittite, Lycian, Greek, Roman, Seljuk, Ottoman, or Turkish ruins and architecture. There are a gazilliion museums and historical sites, of which we visited the following:
Isaac Wind, Road Scholar, channelling Indiana Jones at Ephesus.
Zoe and Isaac at the Sultanahmet Mosque
- Hagia Sophia Museum (a.k.a. the Aya Sofia), a cathedral turned mosque turned museum;
- Sultanahmet Mosque (a.k.a. the Blue Mosque)
- The Basilica Cistern -- an Ancient Roman water system under the city of Istanbul that helped it withstand sieges;
- Istanbul Modern, a contemporary art museum that had a great exhibit on sounds and sights in Istanbul;
- Topkapi Palace Museum, Istanbul -- the first home of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire
- Rahmi M Koç Museum of Science & Technology -- a very kid-friendly museum with a hands-on mathematics exhibit and an awesome soap bubble maker;
- The Canakkale Museum, an Archaeological museum with many artifacts from Ancient Troy;
- A guided tour of the Gallapoli War Memorials & Battlefield, where Turkey's eventual first President held off the combined forces of England, France, New Zealand, Australia and Newfoundland.
- Kadifekale (Castle). Izmir, and old Ottoman fort on the top of the hill.
- Greek-Roman Ruins in Izmir (Smyrna),
- Ephesus, the ancient Greek / Roman city made famous in the Book of Acts, and the follow-up hit, the Paul's Letter to the Ephesians;
- Çesme Castle, a Geonese then Ottoman then Crusader castle on the Aegean Sea;
- A private model ship museum in Boranova (no website just yet, it seems).
- A personal visit to one of the Levantine Mansions in Bornova
- Muğla Fethiye Museum, with a great collection of Lycian artefacts
- The Lycian Tombs in Fethiye
- Abandoned village of Karaköy, formerly home to a mixed Muslim and Christian population prior to the population exchanges of the 1920s;
- A day hike along the Lycian Way
- Visits to the Ancient Greek towns of Letoon, Xanthos and Patara
- Knidos -- an ancient Greek, fortified town at the end of the Datça Peninsula
- Hiking in the Ilhara Valley near Cappadocia, the site of hundreds of small churches and monastaries cut into the rock walls of the cliffs.
- Hot-air ballooning at dawn over Cappadocia;
- A pottery-making lesson and a tour of a Turkish carpet factory in Avonos;
- A visit to several Caravanseries (overnight hotels for caravan traders) in the Cappadocia area
- Two underground cities in Cappadocia area: Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, where populations of local Christians hid from invading armies for up to 6 months ;
- The Zelve and Goreme Open Air Museums in Cappadocia
- Two weeks volunteering on an organic farm (mostly en français) near Antalya;
- Antalya Museum of Archaeology
- Kaleiçi, the Old City of Antalya
- A visit to the Safehaman Hammam, a 13th-Century Turkish bath in Antalya.
Tanzania
Because the people of Tanzania tended to build with biodegradable materials (e.g. wood, mud, thatch), there is comparatively less "built-history" to see. As well, post-independence Tanzania has not had the resources to document its history and culture to the extent that you see other places. But still, it was very interesting to learn more about the culture, development issues and of course, the ecology of the area:
- Stonetown, the old city of Zanzibar, made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
- Ismilia Stone Age Site, near Iringa, with flint tools from a long, long, time ago...
- The National Museum of Tanzania, Dar-es-Salaam;
- The Village Museum, Dar-es-Salaam, with examples of traditional housing found throughout the country;
- Vipaji Foundation Art Gallery, Dar es Salaam, a gallery set up by our friend, Jean Pruitt.
- The Sultan's Palace Museum, Stonetown, Zanzibar.
- Cultural Heritage, a gallery of pan-African and Tanzanian art in Arusha
- Going on wildlife safaris in:
- Ruaha National Park, now the largest national park in Africa...
- Serengeti National Park, where they shot the Lion King movie....
- Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area
Zoe outside the Museum of Design in Barcelona with the Torre Agbar in the background.
Spain
Okay, it's imperial and largely built with stolen loot from the New World, but during our brief visit to two cities in Spain, we saw a fascinating mix of Moorish, Andalusian, Spanish and modern architecture and history. Barcelona also seems to have a museum on every block, and i hope that we can return there to see a few more. But so far, we've seen:
- Museu del Pardo, Madrid, Spain's largest museum and home to Goya, El Greco and other Spanish masters;
- Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's Moderniste masterpiece of a basilica;
- Cathedral de Barcelona, a Gothic church with flying buttresses and soaring vaults;
- Picasso Museum, which houses many of his earlier works -- the later paintings and sculpture are in Paris, I understand;
- the 1 Dia / 1 Foto exhibit 365 photos of life in Barcelona in 2014 at the Centra de la creativitat, Arts Santa Mònica;
- the Museu de les Cultures de Mon, a kind of old-school anthropological museum;
- the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, another massive collection of Spanish and Western European art;
- the Maritime Museum of Barcelona, which included a huge Spanish galley;
- the Museum of History of Barcelona for an overview of the development of the city from a small, Roman village to a city of 1.6 million;
- the Caixaforum, where we saw an exhibit celebrating 25 years of Pixar animation;
- the Museum of Design where we saw a temporary exhibit of 99 Projects for the Real World.
- Palau de la Música Catalana Barcelona -- where Zoe and Dwayne saw a performance of Bizet's Carmen
- Camp Nou Stadium to see FC Barcelona play Levante UD
To Be Continued
So, that's a summary of some of what we saw and did during our first seven months of this year-long trip. And best of all, we've still got five more months to see some more cool places in Morocco, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Spain. So please be sure to check back in a few months for Episode 3....
Chez Nous à Fès
February 27 - March 5, 2015
After arriving from Barcelona, we passed my office (“Douane”), cleared immigration and then completed our now compulsory, cross-cultural-arrivals procedure:
Intrepid wife works the phones to get us home....
- Opportunistic taxi driver demands an exorbitantly high fare;
- Multilingual wife protests profusely before giving up with rolled eyes and guttural grumbling – presumably that was Dutch;
- Taxi driver careens through streets before dropping us off at not-quite-our Air Bnb apartment;
- Intrepid wife locates SIM card and calls Air BnB host as children slump over luggage on the side of a busy street;
- Host arrives and leads us, luggage-clattering over cobblestones to our new home.
Interior of the first riad that we stayed at in Fez.
In this case, “home” was delightful riad or open-air-courtyard within three stories of guest rooms looking down on a fountain. The interior walls were covered in tile, carved stone, arched wooden doors and coloured-glass windows. A rather striking combination when you put them all together.
We gratefully gulped down some very sweet, mint tea and commenced our move-in procedure with military precision:
- Unpack just enough clothes and leave the rest in the luggage;
- Deploy the toilet kit to the bathroom;
- Start recharging the iDevices;
- Check to see if the WIFI (“wee-fee”, en Français) works;
- Play video games until parents notice;
- Restart road-schooling assignment as parents told you in the first place;
- Plan out what’s required for the next meal: go out, shop and eat in, or just skip it and go to bed; and then
- Check the guide book again to find out where the heck we’ve landed….
You Are Here
In this case, we had landed in Fez (a.k.a. Fès), one of four imperial cities in Morocco.
Pop Quiz: Name the others… Answers below*.
Fez’s medina or the old city (established 808 AD) is the largest pedestrian-only neighbourhood in the world – a labyrinth of small streets, alleys and courtyards covering 30 km2 and reportedly home to 150,000 people. A five-metre-high wall runs 19 km around this medieval city, enclosing a hazy sea of flat roofs, balconies, clothes lines and satellite dishes.
Fez medina from a nearby hill. University in the foreground with the green roof.
Most of the medina’s narrow streets are covered by the upper stories of buildings and/or bamboo lattices, but it is always well-lit nonetheless. Vendors in narrow shops spill out into the alleyways selling handicrafts, food, household goods, pirated DVDs, sides of beef, bread, spices, soap, leather products, carpets, shoes, cigarettes, clothes, etc. It’s all business, all the time…except on Fridays when most of the shops close by the noon prayers.
As you jostle through the crowds of locals and bag-clutching tourists, you sometimes need to make way for a man pushing a hand-cart or a donkey laden with cooking-gas canisters. You are constantly being welcomed to “just step inside and see” or to eat yet another meal for a “good price”. After a while, I got tired of saying “no, merci” and just ignored the touts.
There are something like 9,000 streets, alleyways and corridors in this medina, and you can quickly find yourself entering someone’s private riad if you’re not careful. If you do get lost, however, you can just follow the flow of people to one of the two main streets and head back up the hill.
There are also approximately 90 mosques in the medina, as well as two Koranic schools (medersa), and what is reputedly the oldest university in the world, Kairaouine Mosque and University. Unlike in Turkey, non-Muslims are not allowed to visit most mosques in Morocco, although we are allowed to visit some of the mausoleums. But in case you’d ever have any trouble finding religion in Fez, you’ll be sure to hear the call to prayer five times a day. When it is blaring from every mosques’ outdoor loudspeakers, it sounds like you are in the middle of a speedway.
A Public Service Announcement:
We also learned that a medina in Morocco typically provides five public services:
- water fountains or taps for both humans and animals;
- communal ovens for baking bread;
- Koranic schools for children;
- mosques where the faithful can say their prayers and hear sermons from the iman; and
- hammans or “Turkish” baths, since most houses would not have hot water.
Many of these facilities are provided in grand style with tile, carved wood, marble or plaster and Arabic calligraphy -- quite amazing when you consider that these were really just public utilities. Imagine if designers in Canada put that kind of flourish on a light stand, bridge or public building?
Tourism is now one of the major sources of income for Morocco and the current government is investing a lot of money in restoring some of the older sites, including the famous Chaouwara tanneries that you’ve probably seen in any Google search of “Morocco”. Now the dying pits are a construction site, so I didn’t manage to get the money shot. No worries; I don’t lack for photos. And it gives me an excuse to come back.....
Of course, not everyone can live in the medina, and Fez also has other more modern and open neighbourhoods with palm treed, car-jammed boulevards, large mega-malls and sprawling suburbs where the remainder of the city’s 1 million residents live. We enjoyed a good Italian meal there one evening while watching football highlights on Arabic TV.
But it was really more fun to hang out in the medina where people are living in much the same way that they have for 1,200 plus years – albeit now with cellphones, satellite dishes, cheap plastic goods from China and fancy espresso machines in every restaurant. Nothing stays static.
Some Pictures....
Click on the images to enlarge them to a "lightbox" size.
Get Out of Town!
After spending a few days poking around the Medina, we rented a car to go south for a hike near Azrou and Ifrane – reputedly the Switzerland of Morocco, and it does look straight and orderly. The kids were thrilled to be able to run in a cedar forest, to see Barbary apes up (too!) close, and to roll down some spring-skiing-snow-covered slopes.
The next day, we headed north-west to Volubulis, the most preserved Roman ruins in Morocco. Having toured a few similar sites in Turkey and Spain, it was cool to see some of the same Greco-Roman staples here: underground sewers, heated baths, cobble-stone roads with chariot tracks, the agora or marketplace, large patrician houses, basilica’s, forums, arches, floor mosaics depicting Greek myths, and even public, open-stalled toilets where the Romans conducted their “business” together.
Volubilis was eventually taken over by the great-grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, Moulay Idriss, who brought Islam to Morocco. He was buried 5 km up the valley at the town that now bears his name, and his mausoleum is now the fifth holiest site of Sunni Islam
Pop Quiz: can you name the others? Answers below **
A few more pictures...
Yusef, a guide who found us as we pulled up to the wrong parking lot, said that five visits to Moulay Idris is considered the equivalent of one visit to Mecca. Who knew?
Before our rental car pumpkined, we made a short visit to Meknes, the second of the four imperial cities founded only relatively recently in the 17th Century. There, we fought our way through the rush hour traffic to briefly see the Bab el-Mansour gate and the mausoleum of Moulay Ismail, one of the other holy sites open to us infidels.
We then high-tailed it back to Fez to return the car and get ready for the next leg of our journey.
Sunset at the fort above the medina, Fez.
Insha’Allah
Morocco, so far, has been beautiful: sunlit, cultivated and colourful. The people we’ve met have been mostly mellow and extremely hospitable.
They are also quick to follow any statement in the future tense with “Insha’Allah” – God willing. For example:
ME, trying to get away from a tout:
"Nous avons déjà mangé, merci. Mais, peut-être nous retournerons chez vous un autre fois."
TOUT, knowing full well I’m lying, but gracious all the same:
“Insha’Allah. Soyez bienvenue.”
We are managing fine in French here -- we even enjoyed two days of parlez-ing with a family from Avignon – although we sometimes need to make the occasional foray into broken English, sputtered Spanish and/or even our 1-2 words of nascent Arabic. It’s good to travel with a polyglot, that’s for bien sûr.
Mais, jusque maintenant: so far, so good. I think that we’ll enjoy our month in Morocco…. Insha’Allah!
The Answers, for those of you playing along....
* Four imperial cities of Morocco: Fez, Meknes, Rabat and Marakkesh. Each were established by different regimes over the centuries, but all have royal palaces still today.
** Five holiest sites for Sunni Islam (some may contest this…):
- Masjid al-Harram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
- Al-Masjid an-Nabawi in Medina, Saudi Arabia
- Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem, Palestine/Israel (choose two)
- City of Kairouan, Tunisia,
- Moulay Idris, Morocco – although Wikipedia put the current exchange rate of 6 visits here = 1 visit to Mecca. Must be inflation. Nothing stays static.