Americans in Morocco — December 29, 2007

Hi All –

We left our little shangrila in Skoura — complete with private terraces and lounges and views of the palmeries (oasis areas that you see along river beds) — in the middle of nowhere and began what we anticipated would be a simple drive to Marrakesh.. about 3-4 hours as everyone told us. We bid adieu to the owner and manager of Les Jardins de Skoura and chatted a bit about her difficulties running the place as a female in a male dominated culture. She handled the entire renovation herself with 25 workers over a two-year period, and now has been operating the auberge for about 11 years. She’s pretty feisty – from Normandy. Just fell in love with the area and decided to make a life change. (Quite a life change, I’d say.) She says that the women she’s hired have needed to be trained to do most any task, including cleaning, making beds, etc. They have remained with her for many years and appear proud of the new skills and elementary language skills they now possess. The chef is male and he says it’s a female-dominated auberge (and is not certain this is a good thing!)

From Skoura (out the 4 km of dirt road with many many obstacles) and a short stop at the local kasbah, we drove to Oaurzazate (pron. Whazazate) which is apparently the Hollywood of Morocco — both because many movies have been made here and because many movie stars choose to visit and purchase houses. It’s like Disneyland, complete with a hotel called “Hotel Oscar” that has life-size statues of the Oscar out front flanking either side of the grand entry. There’s a film museum and a lot of money going into the town.

Since the King of Morocco is coming to this area, all roads were covered with police and army for about 50 miles (I suppose the threat to this king would  be from the far right Islamic)…

The drive was a bit more than we expected.. about 6+ hours of mountain driving, one lane in each direction and more hairpin turns than I have ever seen. This went on for more than 100 miles. Needless to say I was getting nauseous and Mike was totally tense as the driver. We kept thinking it would end, but it just kept going.. Just as you’d descend into a valley and think it would be smooth sailing, the road ascended and ascended… A definite white knuckle drive. The odd thing was that noone mentioned this.. Everyone just said it was a good road and that it would take about 3 hours, maybe 4… Can’t even fathom it taking that short a period of time.

I guess this is the way that they decided to connect the country. Seems like there must have been better ways… especially since there isn’t anything along the way.. no significant towns at all.

We arrived finally in Marrakesh. Drove to the airport to return our SUV that we had actually come to rely on…. Finding the airport was the first adventure.. hardly any signs… We stopped to ask and people gave very complicated routes.. Eventually some guy on a motor scooter whizzed up alongside us and said to follow him… He sort of “piloted us to the airport” and of course asked for some money for doing so. The system for returning the car was a bit unwieldy at best.. more like no system.. We eventually decided to park the car and then go inside the airport to figure out what to do. Just then we (actually me) spotted a guy in a suit jacket that had a “Budget” lapel insignia. We jumped out and tried to understand the next steps.. Turns out that was it.. He took the key and off we went to the taxi stand.

Taxis don’t really know where all these little riads are, so there’s a lot of stopping and asking other taxi drivers… We did however have a phone number so we called ourselves and then the taxi driver talked to the hotel person. Then of course you only get as far as one of the “gates” and you need to walk to the riad.

We are at Riad Mabrouka, which is conveniently located, but alas a bit of a disappointment after all of our other fantastic hotel selections.  It’s very small and they try hard.. It’s rather simple (which is fine, since many of the others are totally over the top).. Six rooms. The problem is that two rooms are on the first floor. We unfortunately are in one of those first floor rooms  — off a central sitting area and not quite as private as we would like.. We’ve asked to switch, but given that there are only five other rooms it’s unlikely. They have promised we can get the upstairs room on our last night, which might not really be worth the trouble… But we are hoping that they can switch us tomorrow. For now we have reconciled that this is it… Especially after spending all morning today (Dec 30) trying to find another riad or even a hotel. We phoned more than 15 riads — none had any openings. This is high season.  We then decided to go outside the medina to see what the larger hotels were like, so we visited the Sofitel.. Quite a difference from being in the medina… They have 250 rooms.. When you enter the hotel you go through a metal detector, like at the airport, but they have decorated the metal detector to fit the decor of Morocco… Anyway, even if we wanted to stay there, which we didn’t, they didn’t have any rooms either… We walked around the lobby, hoping to get an International Tribune (no luck)… and checked out who is staying at the Sofitel (whose prices start at $450 night for a basic room)… Mostly Arabs, some French, some Spaniards…   People were lounging at the pool, dressed rather scantily in the lobby; not very Moroccan.

Oh – one place got back in touch about a room — It’s the Riad Fenn… owned and operated by Branson’s sister (Branson of Virgin Air).. Apparently it’s a charmer, with every detail considered. She grows all the food and everything is organic and perfect. The basic room started at $600/night.. We decided not to do this.. Can’t imagine why not. In fact our little Riad Mabrouka was looking better and better.

From the Sofitel we made our way back to the medina… It’s a very different scene from Fes… much more chaotic, noisier, lots of motor bikes that seem to take precedence over those of us walking… Big square in the center, with constant chaotic activity.. morning, noon, and way into the night… It changes throughout the day… shopping souks until mid day.. lots of snake charmers, acrobats, etc…. then at around dusk the food vendors wheel themselves in and set up… More than a hundred of them.. with all sorts of grills and other food specialties.. Actually that’s where we’re having dinner tonight… just strolling through the square.. (We have reservations tomorrow night at the number one restaurant in Morocco – Dar Yacout, so we thought simple and casual was good for tonight… Just hoping this isn’t a bad decision for our stomachs)