No Regrets!

Just before getting on the bus to leave Aït Ben Haddou, I offered some of my festering leftover food to a couple of stray dogs in front of our hotel. The first one was enthusiastic and got jumpy as I approached with a food container. She got the remains of a chicken pastilla and absolutely loved it. The second dog looked just as hungry but scampered off any time I got close, so she missed out. The first dog became my best friend and wanted to follow me back into the hotel and onto the bus.

The drive to Marrakesh took us through the Atlas Mountains, a mix of igneous, metamorphic, and intricately layered and folded sedimentary rock. Several sections of road have been closed off due to what looks like recent rockfalls, maybe due to the earthquake last September. There’s no snow here during the summer, but Mohamed says there’s lots in the winter.

At the highest point of our journey, a section of road at 2260 meters (7400 ft), we stopped for a panoramic and blustery view of the mountains. Even there, souvenirs were for sale. And even there, empty water bottles littered the ground. The number of empty water bottles produced by this country is astronomical, and the number that appear on the ground in the Sahara Desert and Atlas Mountains and everywhere in-between is unfortunate.

Another stop for a pee break and souvenirs. A cosmetics and oil shop sucked in all the ladies. While I waited, I rubbed a sample of argan oil into my hair, which I guess made it shiny and smell good. Lindsay got it for me and splurged on a selection of oils, finding her happy place again. Gas at this stop cost the equivalent of USD$5.64 per gallon.

At around noon, we rolled into Marrakech. It’s not run down and dusty like Casablanca and Fes. It looks cleaner, greener, and newer, and the architecture is crisp and creative, with most construction complete.

After a quick stop at our hotel, we were on our own for lunch. Looking to change it up from Moroccan food, Lindsay and I found nice restaurant called Little Italy a few blocks away. Fancy house music played as we sat at our cushy table near the bar. Definitely a stylish place, but I started to winder how Italian it really was when I requested chicken parmesan and the waiter looked at me sideways. I asked him in two different languages, but the waiter had never heard of it before.

I decided to treat myself to a Coke. I took pause when the waiter opened the can and started pouring it into a tall glass with ice cubes. The ice cubes are most likely made with Moroccan tap water. I was aching for some refreshment, so I decided to gamble. If I drank the Coke quickly, I could outsmart the little water germs and enjoy my drink before they had a chance to escape from the melting ice. So I did, and it was delicious.

Perhaps it was coincidence, perhaps it was the germs from the ice, but within minutes, a serious situation had developed, a code brown, and I was running to the bathroom. I immediately felt the anguish of a gambler who had bet everything and lost.

I regrouped enough to join the rest of the group for our walking tour of the Marrakesh medina, also heavily damaged by the earthquake as the epicenter was quite close to Marrakesh. Then Bahia Palace, the Jewish quarter, and a “pharmacy”, a shop selling a variety of medicinal teas and lotions, described in detail with a presentation from one of the shop’s hosts. Highlight was when the host presented the group with a lotion that was good for herpes and I did a quick head turn toward Lindsay in front of everyone. Lots of laughs.

After navigating out of the medina, our walking tour was over, and I had to poop real bad. All the heat wasn’t helping. I desperately asked Mohamed where I could find a toilet, and he suggested I retrace my steps back into the medina to a place called Cafe Glacier. He reassured me that they had toilets in the basement. I waddled my way there as quickly as I could, made my way past all the coffee drinkers and cigarette smokers in the cafe, and found a little dish at the top of the stairs requiring payment before going downstairs to use the toilet. Precious seconds were wasted as I fumbled through my pockets, but coins were retrieved and thrown into the dish. I shuffled down the stairs and found most of the stalls locked before swinging one door open and throwing myself down on the toilet. Just as I was about to unleash fury, I turned and noticed that there was no toilet paper. Like, not even a wall mount where toilet paper is supposed to go. Nothing. It took all of my abdominal strength from 25 years of baseball to keep the bomb bay doors shot as I pulled up my shorts, jumped out of the stall, and frantically looked around for toilet paper. A local woman emerged from one of the other stalls to wash her hands and noticed my distress. “No toilet paper,” I said. “C’est un problème.” She gave me a knowing eyebrow raise and nod. I limped upstairs in the hopes that I could find napkins or anything else to wipe with. At the top of the stairs, I was relieved to find a box of tissue. I pulled a handful, flew back down the stairs, and finished my business. This was a very close call.

With some free time to shop in the medina, Lindsay visited a flurry of merchants and storefronts, adding to her already extensive collection of Moroccan dresses. As we navigated around the alleys, we dodged scooters zipping by at alarming speeds. I wonder how often there are tourist-scooter collisions in the medina.

By the time we got back to the hotel, I was exhausted. Poop emergencies and a whole day of walking around in the heat had completely knocked me out. I gathered up as much energy as I could to join the group one last time for a group dinner, where I struggled to keep my eyes open. Then back to the hotel for a few speeches, handshakes, hugs, and final goodbyes. We were officially done with our G Adventures tour.

• ma’a salama – good bye, I leave you in peace

We had one more activity booked through G Adventures, a sunrise hot air balloon ride. Up at the crack of dawn, we hopped on a bus to a field just outside Marrakesh and joined dozens of others for morning tea and pastries while they fired up the balloons.

About 20 of us piled into an enormous basket, and we floated up into the sky at dawn along with a dozen other balloons. The sun poked out above the Atlas Mountains in the horizon, and with some altitude trickery, our pilot was able to give us multiple “sunrises” before we peaked at 1050 meters. While aloft, a man next to us proposed to his girlfriend, and she accepted with a round of applause. The degree to which the pilot could ride the high winds out towards the mountains, the low winds back to our base, and the precision with which he was able to land very close to where we took off was impressive.

After all the coming and going and hikes and shopping and heat and gastrointestinal distress, we headed back to the hotel for some much-needed downtime. Our hotel is pretty nice, especially since we are using the old fake-key-card-in-the-slot trick to keep the AC in our room going all day long. One quirk about this hotel is that we hear a sound resembling a muffled lion’s roar every minute or two. Lindsay thinks it’s from toilets flushing in other rooms and stressing the entire plumbing system, and she may be right.

After a nap, Lindsay and I found chairs by the hotel pool and enjoyed the club music for a few minutes at a time, as Bluetooth glitches kept taking it offline. We ordered mojitos (without ice) to add some chill to our afternoon.

Relying on trusty TripAdvisor again, I found a local restaurant called Pointbar for dinner. Still needing a break from Moroccan food, I decided to go for the burger, despite the fact that I haven’t seen a single cow in Morocco. The food was good, but it was the ambiance of the place that made it special. The retractable ceiling revealed the evening sky above, and we especially enjoyed the groovy lounge beats DJ was spinning as we ate. After dinner, we stayed for another drink at the bar and then headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

We woke up this morning somewhat refreshed and ready to spend our last day exploring Marrakech. Our first stop was the highly rated Jardin Majorelle, a historical botanical garden in the city center. I secured tickets online, rode with the friendliest taxi driver ever who wanted to hear all about our trip, and arrived at Majorelle right on schedule for our timed entry.

Security does a good job managing the flow of visitors around the marked path and keep things orderly at some of the popular photo opps, while other staff are working constantly to keep the place clean. After a leisurely, shaded stroll with a call to prayer in the distance, we sat down at the cafe for a break and some refreshment. I was really craving the iced tea offered on the menu, but I chickened out and settled for fruit juice and crepes. According to a waiter, we just missed Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Michael Jordan, who visited a few months ago.

After Majorelle, we walked up and down the adjoining cobblestone street, where Lindsay could not resist shopping for more dresses. With more confident negotiating, she added a few more to her collection. As Lindsay shopped, I beat the 103° F heat by ducking into air-conditioned souvenir shops and getting a pistachio ice cream.

Then one more stroll through the Marrakesh medina, where Lindsay wanted to pick up a few final shopping items. The medina is truly a barrage of colors, smells, sounds, sales pitches, and scooters.

Last stop was Madrasa Ben Youssef, an Islamic college much like one we had seen earlier in the trip. More beautiful, intricately carved walls and ceilings, though this one had dozens of “student rooms” that were tiny and window-less and felt like prison cells. Must admit that all of this Muslim architecture is running together for me and starting to get a bit repetitive.

Overall, Marrakech is pretty but a slight disappointment for me, given the high expectations. Aside from the relative green and clean compared to Casablanca and Fes, there’s not much to it and not much unique about it. I think Fès, with its impressive historic medina and delicious local chicken pastilla, is my favorite Moroccan city overall.

For dinner, we went with another TripAdvisor recommendation, a dinner club called The Mix, just around the corner from our hotel and down semi-sketchy street. It indeed looks like a hole in the wall from the outside, but we walked inside and past two sets of velvet curtains to find an exquisite, spacious interior.

The place was empty when we took our table, but the club music was already bopping. After some friendly and patient bilingual back-and-forth with the wait staff, we had an app of coconut chicken satay and then a glorious dinner of chicken and beef tagine, perhaps the best tagine I’ve had in Morocco. The place remained empty until about 10pm, when locals and tourists started to file in, including smokers who forced us to change tables. Turns out it was salsa night, and as the music transitioned, a few couples took to the dance floor. Lindsay was itching to dance, but I reminded her that even without gastrointestinal distress, I am a very mediocre dancer. I encouraged her to dance with one of the locals, and she did, and she had a blast.

I think we’ve made good use of our time in Marrakech and have hit most of the highlights. Tomorrow, we have a day trip booked to Essaouira, a fishing town a couple of hours away. It will be our last full day in Morocco.