Meknes and Fez

Click here to see our entire Meknes and Fez album (51 pictures)

We left off last time arriving in Meknes to meet up with Sabine and Red. We stayed at the beautiful and lovely Riad Amazigh in the Medina. It has the most unassuming front door, and an exquisite interior! You can see here, including the giant door to our room and the balcony to the main sitting area.

We really enjoyed Meknes. We spent the first day exploring the medina which is an endless maze of small roads. It was much less touristy than Marakesh. The market areas were all meant for and busy with locals doing their errands and bustling to and fro.

We saw many neat things like barrels of gooey black soap and sugar cones. The black soap was very common and we tried it out at the riad. It has a very gooey texture. The sugar cones we'd seen in pieces in the desert broken into pieces for tea. But here we saw the full cones which Red had been telling us about.

The most unusual thing we saw though was at a butcher's shop just around the corner from our Riad. The butchers in Morocco like to keep their choice cuts of meat out on the counter for you to see, despite not having refrigerated counters. We saw this everywhere we had been, and were quite used to it. This particular butcher however wanted to stand out even more from his competition. He did this by having a camel head on display at the corner of his booth. It definitely helped us from getting lost in the maze of streets when we were trying to get back at night, we just looked for the camel head and made a left! It took us until the last night to get the courage to ask him if we could have a picture.

We really enjoyed the more relaxed atmosphere and the feel of the city. In the afternoon we hired a local guide recommended to us by the Riad to take us to some places we might not have found. He took us to the garment district, to meet some weavers, and to a museum where we saw some interesting artifacts. He then took us to a series of shops where we got most of our souvenirs from Morocco. Having Red with us who was from Morocco and who spoke Arabic, made a lot of the transactions go more smoothly than when we had tried to bargain for things on our own. We bought a plate from a an artist who specialized in silver damascene which is special to Meknes. It involves scratching steel and then embedding fine strands of silver into it to make patterns.  Red also helped us get a great deal on our rug. You can see both of these in our Packing list post.

You can see the detail of the damascene in this close up view

The next day we headed off to Fes. We saw some really interesting things there. We visited the University of Al-Karaouine which was founded in 859 and is in the Guinness book of world records as the oldest running university in the world! It had the most intricate and beautiful stone and wood carved details in the courtyard we were in. 

Just outside of the school was the ancient water clock known as Dar al Magana. Which was built in the 1300s and had a complicated mechanism of using water and weights to keep track of the time. It was dismantled at some point, and there are efforts to restore it, but it is not an easy task.

We found a young man who offered to take us around the city and show us some sites. He was very good and told us some history, but had to go somewhere and so passed us on to his friend who wasn't nearly as good and just walked us around without saying much, and tried to take us to shops which we had told him we weren't interested in. Out final stop was tea at a little cafe with a view of the blue gate or the Bab Bou Jeloud which is another beautiful example of the craftsmanship and architecture of the area.

Click here to see our entire Meknes and Fez album (51 pictures)

Gorgeous Gorges

Click here to see our entire Gorgeous Gorges album (92 pictures)

After our desert adventure we split up with Sabine who went back to Marrakech to meet up with Red. Jerome and I went with the driver and drove all the way across the center of Morocco up to Meknes. It was a two day, 400km journey through the High Atlas mountains which is a very beautiful and often winding route.

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We started the day by going to a famous old casbah which had been heavily restored to its 14th century glory. It was set up a bit like a museum so they had many old artifacts that they told us all about. Some of the really interesting ones included wooden locks and keys, a traditional bread oven, and olive presses. It was very informative and neat to see. The casbah itself is pictured on the old 50dh bill, which I can't find online. We drove past a big golf course which felt very out of place in the dry and brown surroundings. We drove through a palmerie where the trees were giant and they made very interesting fences and things out of the palm leaves. We then drove through the Valley of the Roses. Unfortunately it wasn't the right time of year for all the roses to be in bloom, but when they are it is apparently breathtaking.

One of the great things about doing this journey was that we got to see two famous gorges in Morocco - The Dades Gorge and the Todgha Gorge. The Dades Gorge is a very famous mountain pass with high walls, and an extremely winding section of road leading to it. The picture at the top of this post is of that road. It can be seen in car commercials. We walked along the bottom of the gorge, and drove along the valley for quite a while. There is a river flowing along the middle of the valley so that is where all the crops are grown. It is very beautiful with the tall red rocks on each side of lush green crops. We  then stayed over near Tinghir at a really great casbah called Chez Pierre. It was really awesome especially for seeming to be in the middle of nowhere. And the food was great! They also had a swimming pool that was excessively cold!

The next day we set out really early since we had the longest stretch ahead of us, and the driver was feeling nervous about finishing the drive before dark. We started the day by going out to the Todgha Gorge which is another big and well known gorge. It was just as beautiful as the Dades Gorge. It is very well known by rock climbers and we saw a whole pack of them scaling one of the faces! The rest of the drive was a succession of beautiful vistas as we drove up and down and around in the mountains. At one point we came across a huge lake which was gorgeous and felt transplanted among all the rock. and in the middle of the mountains.

We made it to Meknes before dark and without any problems. We saw some interesting vehicles on the way too. Many farm trucks seem to have been modified to double deckers and are used to transport sheep and people back and forth!

Click here to see our entire Gorgeous Gorges album (92 pictures)

As a final note, here are a few Cadillac commercials that show you the interesting roads that we drove through. Don't worry we went very slowly and didn't do any of this crazy stuff. But the views you get of the roads from the helicopter give a great sense of how crazy the roads are.

Second Night in the Desert

Click here to see our entire Second night in the desert album (78 pictures)

Our last post left us in M'hamid after our first night in the desert and camel ride. We headed out in our 4x4 to Erg Chicaga which has some of the largest sand dunes in Morocco and is fairly close to the border with Algeria. This took place on October 6th and 7th.

View Jerome and Laura's Trip to Europe in a larger map

Our first stop on the drive was a water source where we waited for another group to head into the desert. It was a neat little oasis area, with palm trees, camels, a friendly donkey, and frogs in the stream that seemed to appear from nowhere. Along the way we saw many signs of the rains from the night before in the form of interesting cracked patterns in the sand and very large puddles.

With the other car joining us, we headed out into the sands. It was interesting as there were no signs or markings, and so the drivers must have known the routes from experience and memory. We had to take a few detours though due to large areas covered in water, and ended up getting lost. We stopped at a few nomad camps to ask for directions to our camp. We finally arrived only to find that the storm the night before had collapsed all the sleeping huts, and so we were directed to another camp further on. Our driver was getting fairly anxious at this point, as he didn't know the way to this new camp and the sun was setting. But we met up with the final car from our group who knew the way. We got there with no problems, except one of the trucks getting stuck in the mud and having to push it out. Not a common occurrence in the Sahara it seems!

Upon arrival at the camp we took a quick hike up through the tall dunes to catch the last of the sunset, and then had an interesting time finding our way back in the dark. There was singing around a big oil lamp while we waited for dinner to be ready. Jerome and I went to a nearby dune and watched the most spectacular lightning storm I've ever seen in the distance in the pure dark of the desert. We watched the storm get closer, and dinner was served inside, just as the rain and wind hit the camp. It was a very impressive sight with the driving rain and wind being illuminated periodically by big flashes of lightning and rolling thunder. We were all quite happy to be huddled together in the concrete building. 

After dinner, the storm moved away, and the clouds cleared to reveal an impressive array of stars. With no lights in the vicinity you could see so many more stars than we're used to in the cities. We brought out some carpets and blankets and set up a little area along the side of the building and layed stargazing. We saw several shooting stars including one extreme one, that left a trail across the whole sky for several seconds. We eventually fell asleep out under the stars and had a lovely sleep until one of the guides came over to let us know that if we got up we could see the sunrise over the dunes. And so we did! We walked along the dunes which were lit by the low red light, and took many pictures of the sun rising over the dunes, and the neat shadows they made. We hiked for at least an hour enjoying the peace and beauty. Along the way we came across some impressive mud puddles with super fine mud that was almost impossible to get off you. Jerome played in several of the puddles. We also found some neat silvery ants and some interesting plants and birds. 

When we got back to camp, we found that breakfast had been made and our share was left at the table sitting up on a dune. We ate up, and then had to pack up and head out. Some of the other guests were rather annoyed about the storms and that the trip wasn't quite the hot, sunny, dry experience they had envisioned. We on the other hand felt very lucky to have been there, as these were the first days of rain in the area in 6 years! Needless to say all the locals were very happy with the rain. The drive back to M'Hamid was interesting as there were huge areas of sand which were now covered in water and so we had to navigate carefully to avoid getting stuck. There were even reports of a big bridge nearby being flooded out. We made our way back to the Hotel Riad Ouarzazate where we had stayed before leaving for the desert. One the way we stopped at a local pottery shop which had interesting wares, and then had lovely warm showers to try and get all the sand off of us, did some laundry, had a nice dinner, video chatted home and joined our parents' enjoying their thanksgiving dinner, and then made our plans for the next few days which I'll post about soon!

Click here to see our entire Second night in the desert album (78 pictures)