A Month in Morocco

If you’re following me on twitter or facebook, you probably know by now that I’ve been touring Morocco for the last month. Currently I’m enjoying a reasonably warm, sunny day in Rabat (after several days of foggy-clammy-cold), as I await a transit visa for Mauritania.

I’ve spent most of this month traveling with a companion, for the first substantial length of time since leaving Seattle nearly nine months ago. I met Jane, a wonderful Australian woman, in Italy in October at a Burning Man inspired festival called Italian Burning Weekend, and we spent the following week together exploring Rome and Umbria. After she returned to Australia, we kept in touch through the magic of the intertubes, and eventually she asked me if she could join me in Morocco to travel and spend more time together. After discussing logistics and challenges, we decided to forge ahead with this plan, so she met me in Tangier a day after I arrived, and we embarked on a wild gallivant all over this diverse and glorious place.

We started our journey in Asilah, a small Atlantic coastal city about 25km south of Tangier. We stayed for several nights at a nice guesthouse (where I had my first experience parking my motorcycle inside the house!). It was a short walk to the medina, lots of restaurants and the local hammam (public baths). We spent our first full day there in a pleasing meander through the medina and up onto a seawall promontory poking outside the wall, and then through the chaotic streets of the city. We enjoyed the first of many coffees and mint teas. We ate boiled snails (or rather, I did – they weren’t to Jane’s liking) while out and about with Nabil, the charismatic (and well-known amongst the locals) manager of the guesthouse.

For me, one of the highlights of Asilah was my first visit to the hammam. I had little idea what to expect, so I paid for bath & massage, shed my clothes, entered the steamy interior and did my standard routine of observing what the locals do. Sat down on the warm, water-slick tile floor and started pouring buckets of hot water over my head and body. After a few minutes, a young guy came in and filled up several larger buckets and positioned them next to me. Next thing I knew, he gestured for me to lie down on the tiles, which I did. He then proceeded to scrub me all over with a rough mitt and an odd black soap. Flip over? Okay. Rinse. Flip over again. Now for the massage. Imagine a combination of the wimpiest deep-tissue massage ever and somewhat rushed, inexpert Thai massage, on a hard tile floor. Despite this (or, perhaps, because of it?) I felt quite invigorated afterwards, so I sat and enjoyed a few more buckets of hot water. Odd but enjoyable, and for all of about $4.

The next few posts will capture other stops in Jane and Stuart’s Whirlwind Tour of Morocco, with observations scattered in along the way.