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• Today marks nine months since I left Seattle. I've gone through 15 US states and 19 countries so far. Hopefully more this summer. #fb #

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By the time Jane and I set off from Chefchaouen, we had stayed a night longer than expected both there and our first stop, Asilah. We did so once again in our next destination, Meknes. During our time together, we had several conversations about the difference between tourists and travelers – both falling into the latter category. We (like others I’ve met who self-identify as travelers) tend to be interested in kicking back and getting the feel of a place, a slower pace which often lends itself to staying longer than expected.

While in Chaouen, we got to pick the brains of Terry and Suzanne (our guesthouse hosts and long-time Moroccan expats, as mentioned in my previous post) about things to see and do while in Morocco. We’d been considering a visit to Fes, but they indicated that it’s quite the tourist trap – worth a day trip at most – and that we might want to stay in Meknes instead. We already wanted to visit Volubilis, the 2nd century Roman ruins about 40km north of Meknes, so decided to heed this advice.

On arriving, we pulled into the main parking lot and figured out that we could leave BOB (my trusty steed, short for Big Orange Beast) there for 20dh per night (about $2.25). Then we were faced with the somewhat daunting task of actually finding the riad where we’d reserved a room, given that it was deep in the heart of the Medina. While I set to the now too-familiar task of unloading all of our gear off of BOB, Jane set off with the somewhat dubious assistance of one of the local touts, who abandoned her to her own devices with a dismissive “that way” wave once she’d made it abundantly clear that we weren’t interested in his services as a Medina tour guide after we’d settled in.

A while later, she returned with Samir – cheerful, charming and mostly toothless, he’s one of the brothers who own the place we were staying. He helped us enlist the services of one of the many fellows who make their wages pushing carts of luggage, goods and so forth through the Medina, and off we went.

Meknes was my first experience of an expansive Medina – at first, seemingly a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. We enjoyed wandering aimlessly within its walls and close alleys, peeking our heads down this passage and that, seeing what’s just around the next corner. We didn’t enjoy the steady stream of young men attempting in vain to entice us into their restaurants in the Place L’Hadim, just outside the Medina and across from the famed Bab Mansour gate, considered one of the finest Berber-style gates in Morocco.

Some highlights of our time in Meknes:
– Upon approaching a crowd gathered in the plaza, Jane was singled out and drawn inside the circle to act as assistant to the cheerful fellow performing magic tricks. He drew lots of laughs from the crowd with his running commentary, mostly in Arabic but with bits of French when talking with Jane.
– Exploring the food souk – vendors of all sorts of olives, preserved lemons and pickles; many butchers, where you could buy chickens, rabbits, beef and lamb, even a whole cow’s head if you were so inclined; spice merchants with huge colorful mounds of cumin, ginger, turmeric, prepared mixtures of spices for tagine; lots of breads, little colorful sweet pastries; dried figs strung together like delicious rosaries, raw and roasted almonds, dates of many different qualities.
– Man, sometimes it seems like everyone wants to sell you something. The most awkward and amusing of these was the guy who walked up to us as we were engaged in an intense conversation, gesturing at us with three or four live chickens in each hand. No, thank you, we don’t want to buy a chicken right now. No, really.
– Sampling local Moroccan wine! This entailed visiting the Marjane – a Morocco-wide “hypermarket” chain, and one of the few places to buy alcohol (remember that Morocco is an Islamic country, and as such alcohol sales are heavily controlled). Domaine Rimal, Bonassia and Cuvee du President were all pleasing choices – if not particularly refined or complex – available for around $5-6 per bottle. Apparently if you step up into the $15-20 range there are some very impressive wines available, but I haven’t yet made such top-shelf selections.

For me, the main attraction of our visit in Meknes was the day trip to Volubilis. While it is primarily thought of as a Roman ruin, its history extends back before the Roman incursion into North Africa. Covering an area of 45 hectares (about 130 acres), Volubilis – known to Moroccans as Oualili – is a very impressive spot, and well worth the visit. We hired a guide, and were both very happy that we did. He was an older guy, and had spent most of his life in Volubilis in some capacity. He began spending time there as a youth, when his father was hired as a cook for the French archaeologists who were excavating and restoring the site, and eventually knew enough about the site to begin working as a guide. He told us much about the site’s history, expounding on the public areas, olive oil production, waterworks throughout the city, homes of wealthy merchants (some as large as 800 sq m, or about 8800 sq ft), and even the local brothels.

After our time in Asilah, Jane and I headed on to Chefchaouen. A lovely everything-painted-blue town in the Rif Mountains, and apparently one of the hashish capitols of the world. When we stopped in town to try and figure out where our guesthouse was (quite a ways out of the main part of town, and a challenge to find), we were offered “best-quality, double-A” several times within about ten minutes. And it didn’t really let up the whole time we were there.

Again, we spent several days here – one day exploring the city (and then getting rather lost trying to walk home again after dark), and another doing a day-trip into the mountains, in hopes of hiking into a theoretically-beautiful gorge. Sadly, we’d gotten a late-ish start, and then stopped for a leisurely lunch – food being a big bond between us – resulting in us realizing we’d be hiking back down in the dark if we tried to make it all the way up to the gorge. A lovely day nonetheless.

Despite its out-of-the-way location, our guesthouse was fun. Owned by Terry and Suzanne, a witty Scottish expat couple, it felt more like staying in the home of new friends than my previous guesthouse experiences. They’d recently begun experimenting with making their own hooch – it being an hour drive to the closest spot to by alcohol – with water, sugar and some super-high-octane yeast. We tried it with juice, lemons, tonic – but my favorite creation was mixing it with hot black tea. Sort of a poor man’s hot toddy. They were also big fans of the aforementioned local agricultural products – you can imagine that with this combination there was lots of humorous, rambling conversation.

Actually, backing up a bit: as we were leaving Asilah, Nabil mentioned that we should stop at one of the roadside barbecue stands on the road to Chaouen (as the locals call it). We did so. It took a little while to orient ourselves, what with the multiple hanging carcasses, big open grill area, a butcher-shop window and a separate restaurant area for “other” – salads, frites, drinks, etc. We ended up ordering 200g of lambchops, 200g of viande hachee (ground meat, again lamb in this case), a salade marocaine (diced tomatoes, onions, cucumber), fries and a bowl of olives. None of it was outstanding, as you might expect, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable roadside dining experience.

[riding two-up]

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.

Greetings from Morocco!

I’ve gotten the question “Why haven’t you been posting?” a couple of times lately, and I don’t have a solid answer. Mostly, I’ve just been enjoying being present in my travels, and haven’t felt inspired to pull myself out of that state in order to reflect and write about my experiences.

That said, I’m currently importing photos from Italy and Morocco from my camera onto my laptop (the only photos I took in Barcelona were with my phone), so hope / intend to post some of those in the coming days (after some time spent on photo processing, of course).

I do appreciate those that have asked – it’s nice to know I’m missed. More soon(-ish).

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States – a day of family and too much food and sometimes, hopefully, a bit of reflection on what brings value and meaning to our lives. To that end:

I give thanks for my health, my wonderful families – both blood and chosen. For my freedom and fortune to be able to pursue my dreams. For everyone who has encouraged and supported these pursuits, no matter their own personal interests.

I give thanks that the world is filled with so much beauty and grandeur. That there are beautiful cities to explore, cultures to learn, culinary delights to savor, music to lift the heart and move the feet.

I give thanks for love – both the immense amount of love I am surrounded with now and always, and the wonderful powerful magical people who allow me to share my love with them. Love is what it’s all about, people. Never forget that.

I give thanks to many brave people – in the streets and parks across the United States, in Egypt and Syria and Yemen, in numerous countries in Europe – struggling to make the world a more free, just and equitable place for all, with their lives and their beliefs and their voices.

I give thanks for sunrises and sunsets and wind and rain and dust, for this wonderful earth in all its glory, sustaining us despite such gross mistreatment.

I give thanks for art and science and the fantastic intersections between the two.

I give thanks for today, for this moment right now, for my heart beating and my chest rising and falling with breath.

I give thanks for you, who have taken the time to read this. I love you.

… la France.

Wow, I’ve really loved my time in France. I’ve been all over in the last month: Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, Lyon, Medoc, Nantes, Mont Saint-Michel, Paris, Tours, Dijon, (back to) Lyon, Grenoble, Gap, Digne-les-Bains, Aix-en-Provence. Currently I’m in Cassis for a couple of days, then on to Nice for a week.

Such a diverse country in terms of landscape, regional interests and cultures, culinary styles … of course, love of food and wine are seemingly universal here.

And I’ve met great people all over (particularly in the last ten days or so, as I’ve mostly been CouchSurfing since Tours).

I like it so much. I’ll be sad to leave, and though I don’t yet know when, I’m definitely coming back.