Hammam

I knew I couldn't leave Morocco without visiting a hammam, or public bath house. A tradition from the days when not everyone had running hot water at home, the neighbourhood hammam is where people would go to bathe, with a little socialiaing thrown in for good measure.

The main hammam in Chefchaouen is open in the afternoons to women. You come armed with a special exfoliant glove, a type of vegetable oil-based gooey black soap, as well as your normal shampoo and body wash. I'd never been, so instead of washing myself, I opted for a massage and gommage for my first time the the resident bath attendant lady.

Who ever would have thought that sitting there half naked, being scrubbed and exfoliated and massaged and having buckets of water poured over your head in a big communal steam bath by a toothless lady would have been so great? Skin like a baby's is a cliche description, but it's an apt one.

I bought a glove and some black soap to take home with me, but unfortunately the hammam lady couldn' t come with me.

Chefchaouen - Akchour and stuff

When you travel alone, if you're doing it right, you're never actually alone unless you want to be.

I knew that just outside the city walls of Chefchaouen's medina there was a trail that led to an abandoned mosque on the mountainside. But walking alone in the woods didn't appeal to my sense of fun or of security. I'd seen a girl drinking coffee alone in a cafe in the town square, and figuring she was another solo traveller, decided to introduce myself and see if she'd be up for the hike to the mosque. And she was!

Myrthe was Dutch and had been travelling solo through Morocco for 6 weeks. She'd done and seen it all--the desert, all the major cities, and lots of smaller villages. As we had breakfast and hiked up through the medina gate and out of town, she answered my questions about a bunch of the seemingly baffling local customs.

The mosque was on a hill with a spectacular view of the blue and white of Chefchaouen's medina. As we wondered out loud as to how old the mosque was and why it was abandoned, Lamia, a Moroccan girl from Marrakech on vacation with her mother and uncle, stepped in to tell us the history of the building. [It was built by the French during their occupation of Morroco, but the locals didn't trust their colonialists' intentions in building them a house of worship, so no one would go, and so they were forced to board it up.]

We got to chatting with Lamia, and in a perfect example of Moroccan hospitality, invited us to come with them that afternoon to visit Akchour, a nature park 30km outside of Chefchaouen.

The plan was to drive to the entrance of the park, then hike up to the Pont de Dieu, a natural stone bridge connecting two mountains that's supposedly quite striking. The drive into the countryside surrounding Chefchaouen took us through the green hills of the Rif mountains, the road winding through small villages. More than once we came across kids who had to herd the family's goats or chickens off the road so the car could pass. Our soundtrack was a tape of Emirati Arabic pop music.

But about two kilometres before the park entrance the road abruptly ended. Heavy rains this past spring had brought on a mudslide that had destroyed 50 houses and cut off the road. The group of men lounging under trees with their dogs at the end of the road told us it was still possible to get to the park, but we'd have to do a few more kilometres on foot.

We set off, first climbing through the rubble of the landslide, walking on top of destroyed houses and ducking under downed powerlines. We then got onto a path with gorgeous views of the river valley below. But by the time we got to the park entrance, we only had time for a glass of mint tea from a stand just inside if we wanted to be able to complete the hike back before sundown. Le Pont de Dieu will have to wait for my next visit.

Chef Chaouen Day 1

Morocco is in some kind of weird time zone, which means while it gets dark relatively early, the sun is beating down by 9am. So getting up at 6am to catch the 8am bus to Chef Chaouen felt like much later. I had breakfast- Moroccan pita bread, cheese and mint tea- in a hole-in-the-wall roadside cafe on the way to the bus station while chatting with Ikbal, a computer science student waiting for the bus to the university. He translated my order from French into Arabic for the waiter, and also let me try some of the bread he was eating, which seemed to be made from couscous then grilled. Mmm.

Four hours of winding mountain road later and I'm in Chef Chaouen, pop. 40 000, sleepy mountain village-cum-tourist town. Let's see how well this town walks the line between welcoming to tourists and tourist trap.

And now I'm off into the winding streets of the Medina to find an excursion into the Rif mountains for tomorrow.

Fez Pt.1

Sunday evening seems like a calm and quiet time to arrive in a new city. But not Fez. Sunday's not the day of rest here, after all, and this fact was obvious from the buzz of activity in the streets of Fez's Ville Nouvelle as I made my way from the bus stop to my hotel. As night fell there were errands to be run, walks to be taken by couples and families in the Jardin Public, dinner to be eaten in the open-air restaurants along the main drag. And of course, the call to prayer from the nearby mosque that periodically punctured the air and sent streams of men in its direction.

Though I'd planned to leave the next morning for Chef Chaouen, three soldout busses meant a change of plans and an extra day in Fez. I'd been planning to come back to Fez after Chaouen anyway, so it was just something to take in stride.

A day to get my bearings in one of Morocco's most ancient cities. I started off wandering around the Ville Nouvelle, the modern new city, before heading to the winding streets of the Medina.

But first I had to cross the street. Many times in fact, and the seeming absence of stoplights meant that I had to stealthily wait with old ladies on the curb without their noticing and then follow the, across the street as cars whizzed by on either side.

I wandered up and down the wide and elegant Blvd Hassan II a bunch of times, getting my bearings before deciding to jump into the medina. Without a guide. Or a map, really.

Before you get to the medina, you have to cross through Fes Al-Jdid, the old Jewish quarter. I seemed to get there at some kind of rush hour, or better put chaos hour. Busses, motorbikes, pushcarts, animals, jaywalking pedestrians and bicycles jamming the narrow street; horns honking and people yelling at each other; street vendors blasting Arabic pop music to entice passersby to take a closer look at the dried fruit, or cushions, or raw sheep's wool, or plastic brooms or fake Nikes they were selling. A definite "just in case you hadn't noticed, you're now in Morocco" moment.

The Medina almost paled in comparison. But more about that later...