MORE rocco???

 FRIENDS!

As promised, a smidgen more Morocco! I am taking a break from prep for a Very Important To Pat conference here in Spain next weekend (big whoops to proposing a workshop and a research presentation without realizing they could both be accepted, double big whoops ahoy!!!) because I love all you squirrels and chipmunks far too much to leave you without at least a monthly update in the limp, struggling attempt to catch up to the present day with this blag. As such: time for Asilah and Marrakesh!

So, it's been long enough since this trip that I totally forgot that the above video was where most of my Asilah footage ended up; I mentioned the town in my last post, but should reiterate: this place was LOVELY and remains maybe my favorite stop along the trip. Lots of reasons for that (friendly people, low-key selling vibes, great food, wonderful atmosphere) but one of the many reasons is that quite simply Asilah isn't really in peak season around the New Year, whereas a lot of the rest of Morocco is. Which takes us to Marrakesh...

 

Marrakesh, I've come to learn, is very much a European long-weekend mainstay, and the New Year is high, high season here given how many countries are more or less shut down between Christmas and New Year's. (Here in Spain things don't really get going again til after Kings Day, January 6th.)

As such, Marrakesh was really overrun. What's interesting about that is that, as with most overrun places (Venice comes to mind every time this comes up), you can absolutely find your way out of the tourist-choked thoroughfares. Here, that often means leaving the medina (the old town, devoid of cars) and wandering some of the public parks and cultural institutions in the new city. Yeah, you'll still come to clusters of tourists at e.g. the Marjorelle Gardens (the instagram age makes this inevitable, as does the incredible self-importance of tourists who will wait exactly five seconds for you to take a photo before irritably telling you they're trying to take a selfie where you're standing, tourists are great) but many areas are much more easy to explore without feeling you're on a commercialized death march.

Even within the Medina, there are some fabulous gardens and tucked-away places to explore that tend to be less overrun. My sense is that the vast majority of tourists to Marrakesh want to wander the street, buy a bunch of stuff, eat food, and go home, so anything with an entrance fee, whether a museum of woodworking or Le Jardin Secret (which I extremely recommend for a relatively calm, very pleasant, and culturally-enlightening space) tends to be a bit less slammed. Which is funny, because there's a kind of tourist there that you can learn about by reading any glossy travel magazine or listening to a certain kind of travel podcast - the kind where every "exciting new destination" roundup includes a description of where the Ace Hotel has opened a new location, because the tourists they're talking to only want to move in a kind of local-color-inflected bubble; these are not people who lack for money, but they're likelier to end up at the totally-without-appeal-to-me La Mamounia than a garden with informative content teaching you the principles behind Islamic garden design.

You can also avoid tourist crowds by going to the corners of a city (tho I think this is Fes, pretty sure) where the markets are geared toward the locals and NOT tourists! You'll see a different kind of life for sure.

One of the elements that I regret not getting to partake of in Marrakesh was the hammam; these baths, from scruffy local styles to extremely posh only-westerners-and-oligarchs-are-gonna-be-there spas, were very appealing to tired Pat, between what I'd read about as vigorously abrasive scrub-downs to pummel-you-into-a-puddle massages, but since I was on the mend from shingles, I didn't wanna bring my skin into a space like that. Now that I'm Spain based, there are very good odds I'll make my way back and give it a whirl, but I gotta just dream about it til then.

As with Fes, one highlight here was the riad in which I stayed. Riads are the traditional merchant-housing of Morocco, built as a kind of enclave around an internal courtyard with a fountain. They're like little mini gardens, peaceful and quiet off the chaotic streets of the city, and my best recommendation for anybody heading here is to invest in a really nice one. Doesn't have to be luxurious or expensive, but having a retreat that is peaceful, where you can read a book on the rooftop or linger over a breakfast or dinner, is entirely worth it. If you find the right spot, they'll also be on the ball to organize things for you - whether tours, visits to shops, finding a translator for an outing, transportation... again, if you take some time to email and get a feel for the people, it can feel like more doors are opening for you.

Other doors will remain DECORATIVELY CLOSED!!! (PS apparently at some point I decided to move my SLR Morocco photos to Flickr, then deleted the account when Flickr got a little "we want to mine your data even if you're paying for the service" so we are working from a LIMITED LIBRARY here. Videos still got the juice, but photographically we are... lesser, at the moment. FORGIVE!

 

I feel a bit conflicted about Marrakesh and the trek into the Sahara that followed, as this was the phase of the trip in which I most felt like a walking ATM, as friends had similarly told me they felt in their time there; more a sales target than a person to connect with. It's a gorgeous place, and I certainly met some people who were lovely, but I feel like I really missed out on a lot of layers, both as a consequence of being there during peak season (imagine being on Michigan Ave in Chicago at Christmas time trying to make small talk with people who work there and you get the idea) and as a consequence of being, well, an affluent white American. It's hard to fault anybody who sees a dude like me in a country that has been so exploited and economically oppressed (even in the nominally post-colonial period) and sees me as a purely commercial proposition; and in a way, it feels gauche to even want to find a connection to the culture when such disparities exist. It's something I continue to wrestle with, as life since this trip has kept my travels to European contexts - not just what do I want out of travel I want to make to places like India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Colombia, etc., but what is it fair or reasonable to expect out of those travels, and how to arrange them in a way that minimizes exploitation and disparity?

IS THIS A FUN WAY TO END A POST ON MARRAKESH?? Well it's the ending we got! Big sorry to people hoping for better, but it's time for Pat to get back to conference prep, with the hopes of post-presentation/workshop day bringing a little more spare time to wrap up Moroccan posting with a too-fast whirl down and back from the Sahara. Stay tuned! Be kind to yourselves! Eat an entire personal pan pizza! You earned it!!