Mystical Moroccan Magic: The Mystery of Marrakech and Merzouga

If you like us, live for a morsel of adventure in life, Morocco is just that place, a strong contender for one of our favourite spots due for a return on future travels, the sliver of land bordering the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean is a celebration of life. As the minivan we were on climbed the winding lanes up the ridge, we foresee this trip being a trial to how weathered we are as seasoned travellers. Just the previous night when we were led out of the car by our airport driver, the street we stood on was dark, skimpy and had not the slightest of signs or symbols to differentiate this street from the next. Losing our bags for a second time (more on that next time) wasn't going to go down on my watch; each turn we took in the labyrinth-like alleys of the Medina, we braced ourselves for the worse before we found refuge in the strongholds of our Riad.

To the right of us, the wheel barely inches from a sharp incline that was a twenty-second slow-mo drop to the base of the Atlas Mountain, it is easy to convince ourselves that accidents and incidents like these only happen in the reel life, but our driver just had to one-up by drawing out the absolute scenes when a bus tipped over the edges the previous month with his free hand. Ah… but the Atlas Mountains, it was just the kind of place you would spend your time going “ahh” despite it being right smack in the pits of summer. Remote little Berber villages would rise up only for a short moment before disappearing back into the sandy landscape. You see elderly Berber women taking their regular eight-mile water run by the side of the road and you start to feel for them. We were then told the Berber nomads do not have access to fresh water nor electricity in their remote villages, but they kept their gait steady on as our van raced by.

Our first stop, the Ait Ben Haddou, an ighrem (fortified village) found out by Hollywood from early on in the 60’s, naturally was heaven on earth for the film aficionado in us since the city was the backdrop for a few films of our childhood - the walls of homes were decorated with frame stills by proud citizens who rubbed shoulders with Hollywood’s who’s who. There was the arena in which Russell Crowe and Djimon Hounsou pummelled masked crusaders in the Gladiator and the red earthen clay gates of Ait Ben Haddou which marked the once-slave city and citadel safehaven of Yunkai for the Queen of Dragons in Game of Thrones. Another story sticks out after our guide recounted the befriending of a certain Mr. Nice Guy, whom he shared the company with while shooting 2006’s Babel. I won’t name names but it is rhyme and rhythm with *Prad Bitt*.

On tours like these, comfort is a secondary consideration and justifiably so, the first night on our desert adventure stopped short of being respectable at best, cooped up in a lodge that had dodgy pillows and a lack of towels. To be fair, had it not been for the wonderful company over dinner spent dissecting the diverse genres on ‘Heads-Up’, or socially-canoodling with our newly-made friends on the tour about our lives back home and of the many shared interests, this story would be drastically cut short.

The next day, another eight hours in the front seat to the tune of traditional Moroccan music and an in-depth introduction into our driver’s life (no no, women are not traded for camels in Morocco, and no, polygamy is neither commonly practised there), we set foot in Merzouga, which we briefly associate as the city in which the dust never settles. While Leanne got a little overly excited seeing the rolling wind tunnels of sand and dunes in the Sahara, the city boy in me cringed at the thought of pellets of sand getting where they should not get into and clutched my Tuareg turban a little tighter to my face.

Obviously much has to be said about the hour-long dromedary ride into our desert camp. In between the hump of my dromedary (which I had taken the pains to name: Electron) and I, it was raw skin on skin action which my bum can speak for - yes 'camel bum' absolutely hurts more than it ought to - but the experience of watching mirages flit in and out of vision and the dunes shifting to the touch of the wind on a dromedary’s back is unrivalled. It helped that our trek into the desert was timed to perfection and we caught the sun ducking behind a dune just before touching base at camp.

Oddly enough, I thought I would not bode well with the lack of connectivity to the outside world. The struggle of seeing our network bars reduce from four, three, two to none was unnerving, no google maps, no spotify, no emergency calls to family back home. It was a rudimental back-to-basics experience that meant we had to live in the one true moment of now and phones and devices aside, we partook in a dinner of batbout and dips in the company of friends, deadly thick-legged spiders (and a few scorpion corpses we found buried in the sand).

After-dinner plans were spent sullying our bare feet in the sand, laying face-up on cushions to the stars above, huddled for warmth around the fire. And when the beat of the traditional village drums started and the pentatonic choral of folk oral traditions next, we joined in dance, interpreting the music as a celebration of life. When I asked for the toilet at the end of the day, the berber guide motioned outwards and (I kid you not) announced “the world is your toilet with the stars”.

Back in the city, it was a sampling of another Moroccan way of living: in the true lapses of luxury. Checking into the Palais Sebban, the room we pitched our tents in was a page off the dated luxury that predated the decline of Moorish architecture: the usual arches, domes and a rooftop terrace that we spent most of our time lazing on. Right from our swinging doors, a mini courtyard with elegant mosaics of tradition and an intricately-tiled fountain sprouted the sprinkles of life from the early mornings. Back-pedalling in history a little, we learned that the courtyards were conceptualised with the influence of Muslim traditions of the Moors, women could not leave their homes unsupervised and a garden indoors kept their faith, modesty and (we think) sanity in place.

For dinner, we turned down a cushy meal of French cuisine by the pool for an adventurous jaunt through the Djemaa el Fna, the local market with rows of stalls and charming vendors trying their hand at getting tourists to stop, "Why you run so fast like Ferrari?" or how about a "5-year no diarrhoea guarantee"? Satisfied with vendor no. 32's glib promise for sturdy bowels for the road, we bit into some of Morocco's finest flame-grilled lamb sausages and took freshly-squeezed orange juice to go as we traipsed past the open area. The madness doesn't seem to stop in the square and it takes on a different personality past six in the evening as the crowd gathers around the frosty lamp and dingy stringed instruments to hear the many oral traditions of their past.

On our way back to the hotel, we cautiously slip past the fortune tellers, snake charmers and apes chained to the ground soliciting for a quick dirham (or fifty). But alas, no trip to Marakkech is complete without a swig of that good ol' swindle. Yes, we sometimes play with fire but that still did not stop us from playing like putty in the hands of our slick mastermind. Oh, the irony. We'd rather not go into details, but leaving Morocco 200 dirhams lighter and with a bottle of "Morocco's finest olive oil from the hills" in our carry-on was some experience.

#Morocco #Marrakech