Chefchaouen, Morocco (Post #53)
Wednesday, September 28th, 2005As always, if you are shy and don’t want to post a public comment but would like to contact us, please do so at– mikeandmichelertw at hotmail.com (of course the ‘at’ should be replaced by an @)
We write…
On the morning of Sunday 25th of September we took a “Petit Taxi” to the CTM bus station in Fes to subsequently proceed by bus to Chefchaouen. First, we had to figure out how to board the bus. Here we encountered a new, more formal way of checking luggage on a bus. In the station some employees weighed our baggage, charged us 6 Dirham (about 80 cents) for our two baggage claim tickets (based on the luggage weight) and motioned for us to enter a waiting room. We left our bags with them and went to sit down. As the departure time approached we wondered where we would be boarding. We could see two busses through the glass door but one was apparently unlabeled and the other was in front of a sign which indicated Casablanca. Just as Mike was asking someone behind a ticket sales counter where we should bem some employees unlocked to door which lead to the busses. After some confusion about which numbered seats were ours, we were seated and ready to depart. The next challenge would be to get off the bus at the appropriate stop. This is often more difficult than it sounds because there are no announcements when approaching stations (this goes for the trains as well) and the signage at stops/stations is generally poor. We usually go by expected arrival time but we had received differing reports about the length of this trip. When we attempted to ask the driver what time the bus would arrive in Chefchaouen, we gathered it would be around noon. Fine. The bus stopped 2 times along the way for what were apparently tea breaks and each time we questioned the driver to make sure we had not yet arrived in Chefchaouen. The second time, he assured Mike it would be at noon and gave Mike a pat on the back. None of these people we were capable of more than about 50 words of English so these conversations are not so straightforward… often a mix of English, Spanish, French and Arabic…
We arrived in Chefchaouen at about 10 minutes after noon. It was clear that it was a bus station and Mike had spotted a sign on the ride through town which read Chefchaouen. After gathering together our baggage we asked a “Petite Taxi” driver to take us to Plaza Uta el Hammam. It was a short ride but the driver wanted what seemed a little excessive, 20 Dirham. Oh well! It’s only 2.25USD! Almost before we got out of the Taxi, a local tout claiming to be an official guide was in our face. We couldn’t figure out what he wanted to sell us be we THINK it was a tour of the mountain trails. No thanks, we’ll have a look around ourselves. So, we broke away and found our intended target hotel — Pension La Castellana. We checked into a small room upstairs with shared bathroom and a second sink out in the open. For this we pay 150 Dirham per night (17USD)…
The La Castellana pension is just 1 minute off the main, Plaza Uta el Hammam in the heart of the medina. This Medina is much smaller and more manageable than the medina in Fes and at least 30% of the people walking around or eating in the street cafes are tourists. The majority of these seem to be from Spain as the second language is definitely Spanish here. This is good for us becaus Mike has managed to retain a fair portion of the Spanish he learned in high school… At least enough to communicate some basic needs and make simple conversation with some of the Spanish tourists.
After making some basic preparations (some water and light food) Sunday night, we headed to the Rif hills and mountains flanking the North and East of Chefchaouen at around 8:30 Monday (Sept. 26) morning. We encounter many people from the village in the mountains who are heading into town. They are walking with large sacks on their backs or riding or pulling donkeys carrying loads of produce, clothes, etc. (probably to sell in the town markets). After about an hour of hiking we encounter a man, “Hola!” he yells out. “Hola!” we say back. He asks us where we are from (in Spanish) and Mike tells him (in Spanish). He then asks us if we would like to buy some tea. We say “sure” (in Spanish). We go with him to the village of maybe 20 scattered houses on the hill. His house looks much like a shack. There are chickens and a donkey in the yard. We enter the house, which has concrete floors covered with dirt. There is no electricity and we later learn that water comes from a hose that is inserted into a well up on the hill. We go into a room that is a traditional Moroccan living room. The room does not have a door and it is rectangular shape with a table in the middle and benches lining the walls. The benches are covered with coushins and pillows. It is obvious that this is also where the family sleeps. There is a battery on the floor (like a small car battery) that is charging a cell phone and a candle on the table that is their light at night. A small boy is there who is very dirty and his nose is running. The man’s wife is in the other room trying to quiet a baby. After several minutes of broken Spanish between the guy (whose primary language is Arabic) and Mike, the wife brings us sugared coffee and mint tea. She smiles, and like many Moroccans, has about half her front teeth missing. While drinking the tea and coffee, which we offer to pay 20 dirham (about $2.25 – probably 10 times what it cost to make it), we notice a goat in the other room who is chewing on a plastic bag. After a few minutes we thank the man and his wife (“Shukrun” – thank you in Arabic). The man and Mike do a fake kiss on each cheak. This is what men do here in Morocco. He shakes my hand, which is what a man would do when saying goodbye to a Western woman. We go on our way and are very grateful for this experience! We then hike for a bit more and find the bright white village mosque and one room school. It is all alone and beautiful, set against the background of the Rif Mountains.
Later in the evening we are walking through the 15th century town Kasbah (north African castle) where we climb to a lookout tower that overlooks the main town square. We hear music and shots being fired and it seems it is getting closer and closer. We stay in the lookout tower and see a parade of sorts and all of the local Moroccans gathering. The men march in a circle, firing their muskets (very loud!), and people throw money and gifts in the center of the circle. Of course we have no idea what is going on but we have a great view from the kasbah tower. We later learn that these are the “rain men”. They travel from town to town and perform their ritual to bring rain to the town. People throw money and gifts in the center of where they are marching in hopes of bringing more luck or hope for the rain to come.
Yesterday (Tuesday, Sept 27) we set out for another hike in a different direction. At 8:30am the rain men gathered in the town center to perform a parting ritual before moving on to the next town. We were eating breakfast and have a close up view and had no problems hearing the ear piercing gun shots that they fired. After breakfast, we walked through the maze-like media to try to find one of the town gates (this is how you get out of the medina). Just after leaving the medina through the gate at Bab Suk (all the gates have names), we met a man supervising construction work outside a relatively large, multi-story building just outside the Medina. When he began to speak to us, of course we were skeptical this guy wanted to sell us something but we were to be very pleasantly surprised…
After settling on English as the language through which we would be comunicating and telling this man we were from the U.S., we learned that he was a retired Colonel in the Moroccon Air Force and had spent several years in the United States (mostly around Texas). It turned out the building he was supervising had been in his family since many years before he was born (about 1930) and he was building additions and reonnovations so as to open it as a hotel. He invited us to a great panorama of Chefchaouen and insisted we come inside the under construction hotel. This should be one of the nicest hotels in Chefchaouen when it is completed in the predicted 2 years. As is true with many hotels in Chefchaouen, it is built around an open air atrium it its center and the doors to the rooms open into this center. One can look down from the rooftop terrace into the atrium 6 floors below. This man showed us nearly every room in the hotel (none were close to being completed of course) including the “family” rooms. These are like apartments with a kitchen, 2 bathrooms, and two large rooms – one bathroom and large room for the father and the other bathroom and large room for the children and mother. After he shows us all six floors of the hotel, we go to the roof top for some beautiful views of the mountains, ville nouvelle (new part of town), and median (old part of town). Before leaving, however, he tells us that in Morocco, when you invite someone in, you must show them your entire house. O.k…
so we follow him to a different part of the hotel and he opens a door – WHOA! We set foot in the most luxurious house ever! It is clear this man is quite wealthy. He has a beautifully decorated home with Italian and Spanish furniture and display cases of silver and glass serving pieces. His house is painted in a variety of blues and whites with soft flowing fabrics between rooms (no doors) and detailed rugs. We meet his grandson who is 8 years old and is studying in his own bedroom and then see the library and toy room followed by the kitchen, also beautifully decorated. We leave after more than an hour, telling the man what a great honor it was that he invited us into his home and showed us around the hotel.
After leaving the wealthy man’s house, we start hiking up a trail to go up a different mountain (i.e., different than yesterday). During our 2 hour hike up the mountain, we were offered hash and kif (marijuana) numerous times by people who seemed to appear out of no where. We continually say, “La, shukran” (no, thank you). You see, here in Chefchouaen, selling hash and kif is a means of making money for the village people in the mountains. Our guidebook tells us this is tolerated because it is one of the few profitable crops, if not the only, that can be grown in the Rif mountains.
Later at night, we go out for a feast of harira, a thick soup made from lamb stock, lentils, chickpeas, onions, tomatoes, herbs and spices. This is followed by pastilla, a dish made from pigeon meat and lemon-flavored eggs, plus almonds, cinnamon, saffron, and sugar encased in layers of pastry. For our desert we have yogurt, mint tea, and cookies. All of this cost us $11 each.
Tomorrow we will take a bus back to Fes, spend one night there, then head for Marakesh, in central Morocco. See ya!
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Michele Harmon