Morocco originally placed its capital in Fes until the French eventually moved it to Rabat, where it stayed. However it illustrates the importance of this city in north of the country. The city had an old part that was known as the medina: a warren of small alleys often linked by covered passages that variously house shops, residential housing, restaurants and some manufacturing such as leather tanneries and textile production.

Our morning started with meeting up with a new local guide – Hafeed who had excellent English and a sense of humour. He led us for the day around the medina and initially the mellah. The latter is where the Jews lived until their departure to Israel. After wandering through this selection of streets he did comment they’d all gone long ago! Going back to the Middle Ages Judaism was a more popular religion than Islam but at some point many converted to Islam. Frankly, the chance of that happening today seems unconscionable.

Beside the old town was a new settlement built by the French and it was here that our hotel was located. It’s worth now adding that whilst G Adventures curated a historic tour it was a shopper’s dream with many opportunities to browse and procure. All transactions in these shops were in cash. Also you couldn’t buy dirhams outside of Morocco. Inevitably all this enforced money changing meant all sort of little currency bureaus making a nice ‘drink’ on converting cash. You could use plastic in more upmarket establishments such as some bigger city hotels but it meant we and the rest of the party were spending time changing money. I mentioned the uncertainty of knowing whether the prices were value for money as you haggled but restaurants and cafes were ordinarily at tourist prices. These prices may be cheaper than the UK or North America but not by much. Also, frankly, the food was mediocre and the choice limited throughout. I sympathise with G Adventures selecting more expensive restaurants as they wanted guaranteed hygiene levels and inevitably many restaurants were near tourist attractions or en route. However, as in all purchases if you pay over the odds and it’s of good quality you don’t care but otherwise you do and whilst it is a small complaint I did develop the view that we were ‘there for the taking’ as you entered establishments. I would add that the average salary in Morocco was $9,500 pa. Frankly, if that’s the mean average then the mode ie. most widely received salary would be far less, so which Moroccan would pay $15 for a tagine? (The minimum hourly rate in Morocco is $1.80.)

We had a busy programme and I’ll let the photos tell a story:

The medina in Fes was vibrant, colourful, busy and interesting. A key observation was how do these traders make a living with such small businesses and, in many cases, how did they ever shift all this stock? a lot of the product looked well made and by now the prolific shoppers in our party were hitting their stride with the purchase of table cloths, leather bags, leather coats, scarves, ornaments and the like.

Exhausted by the heat, culture and emporiums we were deposited back at the hotel with the party left to make their own dining arrangements. We were getting tagine’d out and fancied a pizza. A restaurant was found, a seat was taken and a pepperoni pizza duly placed before me. Error. Pork isn’t eaten by Muslims because they don’t eat animals that eat other animals and pigs eat anything… apparently? So I have no idea what the salami substitute was in my pizza but it was awful and I picked it out and shoved it to the side of my plate. Anna and I had slipped off from the party, which made us feel a little mean. Whilst they were a good bunch I was working on making ‘absence make the heart grow fonder’ as 9 hours, from an early morning start until drop off, with them absorbed my full pleasure quota.

The tour necessitated long distances to be covered in the bus to get to the next hotel or interesting site. The bus was comfortable, well driven and the stops were frequent for comfort breaks and refreshment. Often a toilet would have a female attendant maintaining the facility sat outside. She needed tipping. That was only an issue in finding the necessary small coins to pay. If you didn’t have any change you felt underhand slipping in and out! This brings us to the manning of most hospitality venues: there always lots of staff. They must have all been paid little as I think the businesses couldn’t stretch to serious wages. The guide always emphasised that tourists were helping to support these people by their generosity.

As we entered the Atlas Mountains the poorer the people appeared. Free education was now available but as a child got older and possibly more helpful to the family it wasn’t certain they would stay in school. Healthcare has improved over the decades but was still inadequate. Our guide, Ridouane, a man with a couple of degrees and fluent in three or four languages had been one of 12 children. He was a Berber and said his home was in the mountains. Horrifically his parents’ first six children died as infants. He reflected that some would have survived today with the current availability of Moroccan healthcare. All this emphasised that Morocco was on a steep trajectory as a developing nation with much achieved but a long way to go.

After seeing and hearing about this struggle it made me muse that the illegal immigrants, often from countries to the south of Morocco who entered Europe didn’t stop in Morocco because they were unwelcome/not allowed but passed through to cross the Mediterranean. Northern Europe must seem like Eldorado with its personal freedoms including free legal assistance to remain, free subsistence money, free welfare, free healthcare, free shelter and their preceding countrymen to join. The comparison with their own countries would be unrecognisable. Clearly Europe was struggling today with the sheer numbers, welfare costs, cultural incompatibility, fear of violence and growing national rejection of the movement of these peoples that had political consequences for governments. It may even be the most highly debated issue throughout Europe now.

The landscape of Morocco can be coastal, attractive arable or grazing lands, forests, barren plains and mountains of enormous height and beauty. It was on occasion ravishing. It’s little surprise that Sir Winston Churchill took time during WW2 to paint these mountains from Marrakech.

Our stopping point for the night was to be Merzouga close to the Algerian border. This was a tour highlight for us all.

The present Mrs Ives was desirous of a trip to Morocco and booked a week with G Adventures. We’ve done two previous bus tours with this Canadian operator: Sri Lanka and New Zealand and this time chose their National Geographic option. Their position in the market is entry level pricing but a focus on the local culture, peoples and terrain. In a country like Morocco even though the price was relatively low it still meant excellent hotels. Also, for us, a major attraction was the usual absence of Brits in the guest party. This tour was no exception; amongst the 11 were a selection of Canadians (their birth countries included the Philippines, Jamaica, India and China.) Our ages spread between 21 and 75. I was not the oldest, thank you very much!

Frankly, my curiosity of North Africa was up there with wreath making and the laws of lacrosse but I gamely tagged along with an open mind and absolutely no idea of the itinerary apart from a vague idea of where we were going. My own curated foreign trips are an intense collation of arrangements, research and planning. It was a nice break to sit back and see what unfolded. Anna scolded me for my laid back approach! First up was a flight from Manchester to Lisbon and then onto Casablanca to meet up with the leader and other guests. These were my seventh and eighth flights this year and it was only April! We got to the hotel five minutes before the ‘welcome introduction’ and then followed a group dinner at a local restaurant for our first tagine. A tagine is a dish that’s cooked on a ceramic plate that requires a ceramic conical lid. The food can be partially cooked before going on to be fully cooked in an oven using the inevitable steam to cook the contents.

The first night and walk brought home that we were in a Muslim country. Women in hijabs, mainly men in ‘front facing’ jobs such as waiters, drivers, guides etc., lots of laws and rules that derived from the Koran and demonstrations of the faith in buildings, flags, pictures of the King and explanations of the history of the country. Our wonderful guide, Ridouane, was also very much a practising Muslim with no doubt discrete absences from the party to fit in his five prayers a day. Personally I never shook off my concern that a heavy underpinning religious belief is no way to run a country in the 21st century during our week but I did gain a bit more of an insight into the faith.

One repetitive theme of Ridouane’s explanations was that Morocco had a Jewish population and that Morocco was more tolerant than other Muslim countries. Yes, but according to Wikipedia only 1% of the current population of Morocco is Jewish. I imagine they are more tolerant but without taking up too much space here then with the creation of Israel in 1948 and the end of French colonialism, when the country gained independence in 1956 and the Jews presumably lost France’s influence and protection, a mass migration took place to Israel.

We breezed out of Casablanca the next morning and the first thing that is obvious is the investment in infrastructure in the main cities. Our road was first class and progress was swift. In Casablanca, the night before, our taxi had made a Herculean effort to make progress on busy streets where seemingly there were no rules other than you were either ‘quick or dead’. Later in Fez and then in Marrakech the Russian roulette danger of crossing the road on foot was unnerving. There were zebra crossings but it seemed to serve as a trigger for motorists and motorbikes to accelerate should you be stupid enough to step onto one! Despite the quality of bigger roads there were occasional check points where the bus would be halted by policemen for some reason. This smacked of third world bureaucracy. We never had any problems clearing these stops but a man halting your bus clutching a semi automatic rifle seemed unnecessary despite the obvious clear and present danger of your occupants being Canadian. 

The large cities were in stark contrast to the rural areas. The populations in the cities were better educated, more wealthy, probably less religious, younger and occupying more Western contemporary jobs eg. automotive assembly, finance and mining (phosphates mainly.) However, 45 percent of the population is employed in agriculture; much of it seemed subsistence as we drove past laden donkeys and folk bent double with hand held implements although a cursory glance at your UK supermarket labels will denote vegetables grown in Morocco. This produce must be grown in intense environments to hit pricing levels making these items attractive to major overseas markets.

Past Casablanca we came to rest at Meknes where we visited a music museum, 17th century kasbah (fortress), mausoleum, shop with intricate metal jewellery and ornament making and royal palace. The beautiful weather was a fabulous backdrop for a Moroccan delight: the ceramic tiles. Always patterned and in primary colours.

The trip offered many opportunities for the shoppers in the party to indulge in retail therapy. I was generally staggered that at every stop someone would buy something! Labouring under a 10kg luggage airline allowance made our interest was limited. Of course as the party was ‘special’ the prices, often only obtained by enquiry, would enjoy a 10% discount! Haggling was the name of the game with various start and finish points. Personally I could have only ever been bothered to get into this wearying palaver if I’d genuinely wanted the item. The main challenge about the pricing was that you had little idea about what was the correct finishing point for the haggle. As I say if you really wanted it then the price mattered less. You can take the boy out of Yorkshire but you can’t take Yorkshire out of the boy…

From here we visited a Roman site at Volubilis. This settlement was on the edge of the Roman Empire and had lain covered and untouched until the pesky colonialists, the French, had exposed much of it in the late 19th century. In doing so they had found some stunning mosaics that inexplicably the Moroccans had subsequently left exposed to the elements. At other Roman sites I visited in Europe such gems would be under cover and movement through the site less of an obstacle course of trip hazards.

The site had no safe walkways and few explanatory graphics. It was a sad treatment of an exceptional historic treasure. Coupled to this was our poorest local guide of the trip who gabbled his explanations in heavily accented English to the extent that no one had much idea about the site afterwards. I looked at Wikipedia in the bus when we departed to gain any information.

Onward we had a meal at a women’s cooperative. Welfare is a thin thing in Morocco especially if you’ve achieved a divorce or are widowed. I say ‘achieved’ as Islam frowns on such a status especially if you’re a woman. The empowered women were often single mothers with few sources of meaningful income. The money raised went into ‘projects’ that included healthcare, education and training for mothers and children alike. This cooperative, comprehensively supported by G Adventures, provides some dosh to this kitchen and restaurant in M’Haya and other locations. Here we had our second tagine of the tour – chicken and lemon. It was heartening to learn of this charity initiative and we contributed via a donation over and above G Adventures paying them for the food. Afterwards we motored into Fez. Where we stayed in an upmarket hotel in the centre. We were here for two nights.

Generally the guide was quick to give advice on safety. We never felt any danger. At night on the dark streets, of all our stays, there were women and children unconcerned about their own safety around us. Of course we didn’t wear jewellery or fail to secure any money out of sight about our person but I must speak as we found. By ourselves in the cities the language spoken was Arabic but most spoke French and restaurants or shops usually spoke English.