Mar 30 – Marrakesh

We arrived in Morocco and did our usual routine for each new country – get money, find hotel, get SIM card for the cell and then plan an itinerary. We checked into yet another local hotel however this one was decent – clean, bathrooms with water and even a balcony overlooking the Marche Centrale.

Casablanca is nice but it’s just another city so we decided to catch a bus to Marrakesh where we booked into a hotel directly on Place Jemaa El Fna – a huge square filled with vendors, food stalls, snake charmers, story tellers, magicians and a fairly large number of crazies. It’s like an open air carnival just missing the clowns.

 

 

Behind the square is the Souk which is made up of tiny alleyways and covered streets lined with shops, the vendors pushing everything from beautiful copper lamps and wooden boxes to natural Berber Viagra. We sampled some of the local foods, Jacob tried some sort of natural herb that is supposed to cure his snoring for life and we basically spent the evening fighting off vendors and trying to find our way out of the labrynth of alleyways.

 

 

The local vendors are pretty aggressive. It’s virtually impossible to walk through the square without having someone put a snake or a monkey on your shoulder and then insist that you pay them a ridiculous amount of money – as a result Jacob has been doing a lot of arguing and a lot of bargaining. People just jump in front of you and start banging on a drum while twirling in cirlces and then demand payment. Of course I got suckered in by some old gypsy who decided to give me a henna tattoo without my permission – it should hopefully be gone in 2-3 weeks.

 

 

Although the square is chaotic, Morocco is a nice place with great food and a welcome break from the “other” Africa. Tomorrow we’re off on a camel trek into the desert where we will spend the night under the Sahara sky.