Friday morning saw us bid farewell to Madrid as we made our way to the airport to catch our EasyJet flight to Tangier, Morocco. Coming in to land at Tangier Airport is quite an experience as the runway almost starts on the beach. It almost feels as though you’re about to land in the sea!
We were introduced to the Moroccan penchant for bargaining almost immediately as we tried to find a taxi to make the two hour trip to Chefchaouen. We eventually settled with an old Mercedes Benz and an even older driver! Before leaving Tangier, we had to stop for the driver to get a permit – this involved the local transport police, a bureaucratic form, and small fee and our passports! As we couldn’t really follow exactly what the procedure involved, R. accompanied the driver and our passports to the transit office...I turned to watch them and saw the old taxi driver take R. by the hand and walk off down the street with him, hand in hand! How we survived the next two hours, I’m not entirely sure! Driving in Tangier was a crazy! The Moroccans seem to be quite taken with traffic circles, but haven’t quite figured out how they work. The result is that traffic appears to enter the circle from all directions, and drivers just drive and hoot, and somehow, everyone comes out the other side more or less in one piece. I thought that once we were out of the city and onto the quieter country roads, things would be a little saner – how wrong was I! I’m pretty sure I saw my life flash before my eyes several times before we finally reached our B&B. Our driver seemed to prefer driving on the wrong side of the road, and only swerving back into his designated lane in the face of oncoming traffic. He also appeared to have remarkable faith in his very Merc, and quite happily overtook slightly slower vehicles up hill, on hairpin bends and blind rises. Again, oncoming traffic didn’t seem to be an issue for him, and he’d merrily swerve back into his lane at the last minute.
We finally reached Chefchaouen, a town of 50 000 nestled high up in the Rif mountains. Our first impression was of a dusty, rural and fairly rundown settlement. We were dropped in the middle of the street outside the old medina walls, and were immediately accosted by youths trying to make a buck by guiding us to our B&B. We headed off through the gate, Bab Souk, hauling our luggage along the rough, cobbled streets. Once through the old city walls, the town is transformed! Chefchaouen has one of the most beautiful medinas, largely due to the “blue wash” that is used on the all the walls and buildings. We found our B&B up a little side street not far from the gate, and once we stepped inside the cool interior we felt as though we had been transported to another world!
Before dinner at the hotel on Friday night, R. and I took a walk through the winding streets of the medina – shapes, colours, smells and sounds were overwhelming!
We slept late on Saturday morning, dozing through the sounds of the muezzin’s call to prayer and the children shouting in the street below us. After a breakfast of delicious flat bread, jam and goat’s cheese, we headed back into the warren-like streets and made our way to the main square and the 17th century Kasbah. We haggled for carpets, drinking sweet mint tea as the negotiations progressed. We stopped for a lunch of lamb tagine and couscous, before heading back to the hotel for an afternoon sleep. As the evening progressed, the town became busier and busier as locals and tourists alike swarmed into the medina to buy, sell, eat, drink, see and be seen. R. and I sat at an outside table at a small restaurant close to the main square and watched the passersby. As R. has already mentioned, many of the passersby slowed to offer us “good smoke, good hash”, some a little more persistently than others!
Our last day in Chefchaouen was spent walking down to the river and watching as the locals gathered along the banks, and jumped in and out of the small cascades. Women arrived with baskets of laundry and children ran about touting garlands of yellow flowers. We walked slowly back through the narrow alleys that twisted and turned, going up and down steps and through archways. We eventually ended up back at the main square where we stopped for a cooldrink before heading back to the hotel.
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