Morocco page 16

We're on the road to Meknes. It's not going to be a long drive, probably less than an hour.
There's not a lot to see along this road, some old village ruins, at least I think they're ruins, they didn't look habitable even by Moroccan standards.
There's lots of bushes, scrub land and quite a few trees, a lot more greenery than what we've seen in the last few weeks.

No mountains around here, however there are lots of rolling hills. From atop several of them you can see parts of the city, population about 750,000.
The photo to the right doesn't really do justice to the real size of the city.

This region was inhabited by the Romans about two thousand years ago, and there are many ruins that was once the city of Volubilis. The bulk of these ruins are about a thirty minute drive north of Meknes.

In the ninth century Tunisian Berbers settled the area a bit to the south and built a fortress, which in time became Meknes.

We drove around the outskirts of town looking for a camp ground, it didn't take long to find one.
We checked in, set up our site then we headed to the inner city, looking to have lunch and to find the Medina.
We found this one rather quickly. We parked near the gate, and as soon as we were out of the car some kid was on us immediately.
He wanted to be our guide into the Medina.

I was talking to Mel about something so I wasn't quite sure just what the hell happened next, but Eve and this kid started having words, obviously something about money.
This kid was really pissed off at Eve. He was spouting off angrily at her in Arabic, and as he was, he poked his finger in her chest; he did this twice.

Oh oh, he's stepped over the line, he's in deep fucking shit now man.

All of a sudden Eve's face got real red and she started flipping out on him. She started spouting off right back at him in a very loud and angry tone, all the while shaking her finger at him.
She told him in no uncertain terms that, "if you poke me one more time, I'll break that fucking! finger off your hand and shove it up your fucking! ass".

The kid may not have known exactly what she was saying but he understood her anger, and everyone, even if you don't know the language, you know what fuck means when used in an angry tone; you better be ready to fight, or fuck off.

I pretty sure he realized rather quickly that when fighting with this white woman and her face goes almost blood red and she's yelling angry fuck shots at you, you know you've lost this battle.
He made the smart move and immediately fucked off.
Way to go Eve.

We decided to venture into the Medina on our own. This Medina was laid out differently than the ones we've seen so far.
The alleyways are quite narrow and on a bit of a downward slope. The further in you go the deeper and darker it gets.
It was a little unnerving but fun and exciting at the same time.

It's laid out like some kind of mutant spider web.
The main alleyways for the most part run to a single point somewhere deep in the Medina, with even narrower alleyways running somewhat perpendicular as well as angular to the main ones.
But none of them seemed to be in any real organized manner.
As you can get disorientated very quickly we decided not to go too far in.

We checked out lots of shops; many were as small as a closet. Navigating the alleyways was a challenge at best as there were so many people, as well as goats, donkeys and fucking mopeds; Grrrrr.

We decided to do some of our own cooking to reduce costs, so we bought a little one burner gas cooker, very similar to a one burner Coleman stove, good for making coffee or heating soup. We also got some coffee mugs, plates, flatware and a couple of pans.

We left the Medina and went for a drive around the city, unhappily encountering many fucking! insane moped. I think it was here in northern Morocco where the term 'road rage' came from.
Anyhow, Meknes is a pretty cool looking town, but the inner city streets are so narrow it makes the driving extremely difficult, even impossible at times.

After we got back to the compound Eve and I went to a store and got some things for dinner. We got eggs, beans, ravioli, bread, butter and wine.
We're going to cook everything on our little gas burner; it took quite awhile, but worth the wait, it was good.

Tonight is a really cold night man, and we're not equipped for cold weather camping. It was too cold to sit out, so we all went to bed early.

We're up early the next day. Al's making coffee on our new burner, and it was pretty good, better than most of the coffee we've had in the last few weeks.

We're running out of smoke, we need to re-supply. Mel and I went for a walk outside the compound fence, we didn't have to walk far.
There are always locals hanging around where the hippies stay. We were approached by a guy who had some dope to sell.
This guy had pot, we were hoping for hash, but sometime you have to go with what's available.
It looked okay, but that's certainly no indicator, however, it was dirt cheap. It was a large white envelope stuffed full, we paid the guy, took the pot and split right away.

Of course it wasn't as good as the hash we had been smoking, but it was still okay and it'll keep us in smoke for awhile.
It's actually the shit part they throw away after the hash making process; it's referred to as kif, but it still gets you high for real cheap.

Moroccans knew that Europeans and North Americans mostly smoked pot, and
they just didn’t understand why anyone would smoke leaves and buds when you could smoke hash.
We had mentioned a few times that in North America hash is very expensive, pot is cheaper, more readily available, and a bigger bang for the buck...... but it still ain't as good as the hash.
In Morocco, even the poorest of the poor can afford to smoke hash, it’s cheaper than food, and food is ridiculously cheap.

The cost for many things in Morocco is much cheaper than in North America; just another thing about life in the west they didn't know about or understand.


I had gone for a shower later in the morning and ran into a guy that noticed the Canadian flag on my jacket.
His name was Alan. He was from Ottawa and asked where I was from, I said Brantford. He said he was travelling with a guy from Brantford and we should come over to their site for some smoke and a chat.

A bit later we went over to see these guys. The guy from Brantford was John.
We smoked some joints and had a beer.

During our conversation it turned out that John's brother Joe is a friend of my brother Paul, and Joe and Paul used to hang together and drink beers at the Squires Court.
I couldn't believe it man; this was another one of those what are the odds moments, another mind blower.
It really is a small world man.

We hung out with these guys for awhile, and It was great to see other travelers from home, but now it's off to the Medina again.

When we got there we were again approached by another guy who wanted to be our guide. This guy wasn't a really young kid, he was about eighteen or twenty, and not a fucking little prick like yesterdays guy was.
We settled on a price and in we go.

He took us to many out of the way shops we would never have encountered on our own, they were quite deep in the Medina.
One of the places we saw was an old building that was once a Muslim school {madrasa} eight or nine hundred years ago.
Many of the oldest buildings in this country that are still in use are well over a thousand years old, but many more of them have unfortunately been allowed to fall into ruin.

Seeing all of these old buildings was quite the buzz for us. Until we came to Morocco we had never seen anything older than a maybe a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old, and they were few and far between.

All of this ancient historical architecture was just blowing my mind. It amazed me as to how some of these places could even be built with little or no construction equipment.
The only high-end construction equipment we saw were two guys with shovels and a wheelbarrow.

We went into a shop that had a wide variety of hash pipes, jewelry and other small souvenir items. In talking to the shopkeeper Mel expressed an interest in buying larger quantities of products.

The guy invited us into the back of the shop where he had more products. He served us mint tea and put on some music we were familiar with to make us feel more comfortable while we looked at his wares.

He and our guide stood several feet away and spoke to each other in an almost muted tone, a mix of French and whatever; strange we thought, as they both speak English quite well.
Because we were within hearing distance, maybe they didn't want us to hear what they were saying.
If that was the case, they had to be aware that we might think they're behavior would cause us to be somewhat suspicious of them; any reasoning person would surely think that.

As they were talking they would pause periodically and glance over at us for a few seconds, then continue talking again in a muted tone.

All of a sudden I'm not liking the vibe here, not at all. Al was closer to these guys and was trying to pick up on some of what they were saying.
He told us he thought they might be setting us up for something, and maybe not in a good way, but he wasn't all that sure. So now we're all feeling a bit uncomfortable. Our gut feeling was telling us it was time to leave;  better safe than sorry.

We told the shopkeeper we had to go to an Exchange to get money, and we would meet them back at the Medina at 6 pm.

They were both trying to get us to tell them where we were staying, because they wanted to meet up with us after we we got money changed, then we could all go back to the Medina together.
We said no way man, we're not going to do that, and stated firmly, we'll go to the Exchange and would meet them back at the shop at 6 o'clock. They had no choice but to agree.
At this point all we wanted was to get away from here; the 6 o'clock meeting was an appointment we had no intention of keeping. We all felt these guys were going to mug us once we got the cash.
Out of the Medina, into the car and back to the campground we go, safe and sound.

We cooked dinner on our shitty little burner; again it took quite awhile, but it was good, and we're home safe.

It's really cold tonight, colder then last night. This cold shit is really harshing our buzz man. Mel and Aileen were going to sleep in the car and Al is going to sleep with us in our tent.
It was a tight fit, but we managed, even a bit of additional body heat would help keep us a little warmer.

In the morning it was still quite cold. The sun is coming up slowly but surely. I'm hopeful its going to start warming up soon.

We're going to leave today and head west to Rabat and Sale' which are on the Atlantic coast.
By the time we got all our gear together and packed in the car and paid up, it was mid morning.
We hit the road out of Meknes.

Just as we were leaving town Mel turned onto a side road where there were several gardens that we wanted to see, and they were absolutely beautiful.
Many unusual plants and shrubs, pools of water with small pebbled walls built around them and stocked with small fish, some were built right into the side of hills. Everything was perfectly manicured.
We walked around for quite awhile looking at all of the gardens, they were absolutely beautiful.
Pictures just do not do them any justice.

It's now time to leave, we have a 160 Km drive ahead of us.

Next stop, Rabat and Sale'.