Marrakech: Mint Tea and Market

4/4

So after little sleep, we woke up to rain and cold, but we weren’t about to let this hinder any of our adventure. We had a breakfast of mint tea, orange juice (freshly squeezed and so yummy) and crepes (for so cheap, just like everything here). We walked around the market some more, bought some CD’s, yes Moroccan CD’s, they are amazing, went to the train station to buy our tickets back to Casablanca because we decided to head back tonight instead of waiting until the next morning. We just didn’t want to sleep like that again and because we can’t go out at night there’s not much we’d be missing out on. And then shopping in the market became our mission for the day. We kept running into SAS people as we were walking through and Bobby pushed me into a man holding a monkey and the man grabbed me and put the monkey on me so I really had no choice. I got some great pictures but the man wanted 100 durham for it! So we had to argue and I finally just gave him $1 and walked off. Then a man harassed Perez because he claimed she took a picture of him and wanted money, but she really didn’t. We had to argue and one of the boys with us yelled at the guy and the guy walked off yelling “Fuck you!” -Funny the words that carry on to a different culture. But we saw the man later, when it was just three of us girls and we apologized and gave him some money and he was super nice and let us take a bunch of pictures with him (it’s the one that I put up on my facebook right now).

So there are five times during the day when they pray and each time it is signaled by a loud voice on a speaker all throughout the city. The call to prayer. It’s really fascinating; it even woke us up at 6 in the morning when it went off. Because the merchants can’t really leave their stuff they are selling they don’t actually stop at all, but we did see a bunch of people running to the mosque to get inside to pray. It was pretty amazing to see.

We wandered the covered tent once more, but this time searching for things we wanted to buy. It’s all about bartering here, even the merchants know it. One man even laughed at us when we walked off when he wanted 400 durham for a scarf and called us back saying no no this is how the game works- I say a price too high, you say one too low and we work through it. You usually end up at 1/3 or a half of the price they originally want. I got a great ring for 110 durham, a bracelet for 70, a scarf for 80 and these amazing shoes for 150. So a total of 410 durham, which is about $41. Such a great deal for what we got – it’s all so beautiful! Now since there are just three girls in our group (not 9 like there were before), we didn’t stand out as much and we were able to talk to a lot of the locals. They loved asking where we were from and the man I bought my shoes from flexed his muscles when I said California and I realized he meant Arnold haha it was awesome. The people are so friendly! It’s amazing how much English they speak also. It’s primarily Arabic here, but a lot of French is spoken as well. Perez wanted a shirt and the man wanted 150 durham for it but she literally only had 100 and he wouldn’t back down. She goes “well, how about a handshake” and he was like “how about a kiss on the cheek” so he got one from all of us and he knocked off 50 durham haha. I don’t know why because a kiss on the cheek in greeting like that is so normal to their culture but I guess from Americans it was worth something. Hell, if that’s all it took to knock off 50 durham, I’d do it more often! Just kidding… kinda.

We spent a full day walking through the tents, broken up so we could get some lunch at another high terrace in the market – this one had a view of the city and was stunning. We had more couscous and targine and mint tea, of course, and dessert of tangerines, stems and leaves still on, like it had just been picked. They were absolutely delicious. Before we knew it though, we had shopped the whole day and it was time to get to the train station.

Three hours later and a conversation with some locals in broken English and French (which Perez speaks really well) and we were in Casablanca. But this city scares the crap out of us so we just jumped in a taxi that took us straight to the ship. I wanted to run I was so excited to see our home! We took a long, hot shower (we hadn’t showered our whole trip, it wasn’t much of a shower and we were worried about the water) and got in comfy sweats and lounged freely on our beds. It’s times like these when you realize how great we have it and how much we take for granted. How much we now appreciate a shower, warm water, CLEAN water, a warm room, a clean bed- it’s ridiculous how quickly we forget to appreciate things like that!

Today was a much better day- the first day I felt unsafe and I was scared the whole time. But today I felt much more comfortable and really enjoyed talking to the locals and learning more about the culture. I really like Marrakech, it was beautiful in a very different way and a place I never thought I would see. It was really incredible but I was ready to leave. Glad to be back on the ship.