My family is Irish. This has lead to a lot of strange culture clashes between my husband and I, but I believe the most prevalent one is my mother’s ability to incorporate potatoes into every meal….and occasionally 2 or 3 versions of potatoes! One night, we were at my parent’s house for an impromptu dinner and my mom was doctoring up a frozen pizza with leftovers….heaven to an Irish kid because leftovers are fought for daily in our world, a little strange to my All-American husband who believes pizza comes with pepperoni and occasionally the addition of sausage if you’re feeling fancy.
My mother added some extra onions, some peppers, a bit of chicken, and the pièce de résistance: sliced, boiled potatoes.
He was shocked. Appalled even. And my mother turned to him with a smug smile and informed him that the pizza she ordered while in Italy had potatoes on it, so she was being authentic.
He was skeptical for years. To be honest so was I. It seemed like a ploy to get one more serving of her childhood staple however she could. And then we were served our dinner on the Italian airline en route to Rome. It was the usual suspects: pasta, bread, cheese…and a salad topped with heaps of boiled potatoes.
Driving in this country is quite a sight to witness. I’m writing this hours before we arrive in Rome, so I’m sure I’ll start to feel this road style is normal by next week, but for now I’m in shock. The road between Casablanca and Marrakech is fairly common. Dual carriage way, some tolls, a couple lanes for ease of passing. But as you arrive to either city, the real fun begins.
Traffic slows so you can take time to observe the surroundings. Taxis dominate the lanes and few of those cars hold less than 7 adults piled in. Motorbikes weave around the lanes in all directions and honk if you have the audacity to try to pass them! The motorbike also seems to be the “family car,” with dad driving, mom behind and the younger child wedged between the two. The older child, probably only 8 from what we saw, sits behind mom facing backwards and holding on to the underside of the seat for dear life. And then they pass you on the shoulder and honk…
Motor vehicles aren’t all that takes up the road. Even in the city center, the donkey pulled carts jar for space on the roundabouts. They a loaded up with goods and produce for the markets, or maybe heading back home with their shop for the week done.
Lanes are clearly optional in Morocco. Even sides of the road become a suggestion as you wind closer to the medina. Pedestrians are reckless–they don’t care that you’re a SUV with a green light coming at them at 40mph, they go when they want, were they want, and yell at any car, bike, or animal that doesn’t weave out of their way.
As you head into the Atlas Mountains, the road only get smaller and windier. The driving is exactly the same–motorbikes are king, lanes are optional, speed is the goal. I think the country is finally realizing the people won’t change and trying to upgrade the mountain pass to accommodate the reckless travel…but that progress has made the mildly tolerable roads in part into diverted dirt roads that stop the traffic for an hour at a time to blast rock from the side of the cliff and make a wider path. Luckily, the curves are lined with little shops to browse colorful pottery and jewelry–and I love any excuse to shop!
The real fun, however, came as we bounced our way out of the Saharan dunes. The car (which had 3 men lying beneath it not an hour before fixing some undisclosed problem I told myself was just a flat…) struggled to make it up a small sand hill. The wheels spun a few time and then the engine cut out. Our driver and guide have each other a side eye and rapidly spoke in Arabic. The the driver stuck his head out the window, stuttered the engine to a start again and slammed us into gear. Par for the course on a desert day? Apparently.
We love to buy art and trinkets for our house while we travel. It’s so much more interesting to look at memories of our adventures then something we picked up during college to fill an empty wall. We knew this long trip would mean shipping some things home along the way to continue this tradition and still contain our travel to the few backpacks we had. What I didn’t anticipate was that once we added a shipping line item to our Excel budget page, my husband would grab hold of the need to buy a carpet and refuse to hear reason otherwise. [ed. note: Yes. A carpet. I wanted one. Hmph.]
I have nothing against a beautiful, hand woven rug. And if you’re going to buy one, why not get it from the village it was woven in, right? My pause on this plan is the rug itself. We don’t own any. Not even a door mat. Our condo is 1,200-ish square feet of wide planked hard wood that is cold as hell on those icy January mornings that even the South is subject to on occasion. But my husband despises rugs. Any I owned prior to our marriage are tucked away in a storage unit awaiting I’m not quite sure what at this point… But He was convinced that a rug was a must buy in North Africa and once He’s on a mission, there’s no stopping it!
We arrived at the Berber village with the carpet co-op at lunch time, so all the women had gone home. The president of the co-op kindly opened the doors to us and showed us how they treated and spun the wool, then wove it into the designs. Each carpet took between 3 months and a year to complete and had a story told within the bold patterns and intricate designs.
As we walked into the showroom, the owner was pulling rug after rug off the stacks and fanning each out for us to touch and see. The carpets which were a patchwork of sheep and camel hair were my favorite, although reflecting back on this I think the camel hair would be rough to walk across and have me resorting back to wearing my ugly slippers as I always do, protecting me from the cold floor!
The language barrier was quite intense here and it took a lot of time and back and forth before we were able to have him tell us some numbers….and then the dream came crashing down. The carpet was 10 times what we expected to pay–before international shipping!! We huddled together and weighed the options…really there was only one. We left empty handed…and as the car wound on the road out of town, we watched the 3 tour buses roll in and park. I think we were almost swindled at a tourist trap!
While the disappointment settled in and we started plotting trying our luck bargaining in the Marrakesh market that night, I think our guide caught on to our plans and he offered to take us to one more spot in town. Fixed prices were the magic word here as neither of us had the time or patience for haggling an hour or more after the 9 hour desert drive. We roamed the 3 floor local shop in peace and when we were ready to see the rugs, they were patient and listened to our feedback—only showing the styles and colors we preferred and keeping every offering below the price point we had in mind.
When we finally get home in December, we’ll have Aladdin’s magic carpet awaiting us to be one of our Christmas presents!
For those astronomy buffs out there, there is a saying there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on earth.
Whoever said that has never been in the Sahara when it’s windy. The sand. Oh the sand.
The first night in the desert, we almost believed the saying. Once the lanterns were quenched and the bonfire died down, the world was pitch black and clear enough to follow the Milky Way all across the sky. We lay on the swinging mattress behind a dune and tried to remember more constellations than the Dippers and Orion. As city dwellers back in the real world, we could drive 3 hours in any direction and still not find a sky this bright. It was stunning and overwhelming all at once.
(Taking picture of stars is really hard….especially for someone who only graduated from a 4 week Intro to Camera class….so instead, here are the pretty lanterns…unlit…)
The next day, however, we experienced the Saharan wind. Early in the day, it was a welcome respite from the heat. We lounged in our shaded hut after the camel ride to eat, drink, and rest in a cooler area of the dunes than our main camp. Quickly around 1 pm the wind kicked in and blew swirls of sand across our faces. We wrapped ourselves up and waited for our Berber guides to come rescue us from this terrifying sand storm…only they didn’t come. As we cowered and coughed, we heard them still talking and laughing as before. Apparently, this too was normal, everyday life in the Sahara. So when in Rome and all that, we fashioned head scarves and turned our backs towards the wind and played a round of dominos as the sand applied our Jersey shore level spray tan…no one at home would recognize us with this golden glow!
For two kids who met living in Kentucky, our joint horse riding ability was next to zero. This fact occurred to me suddenly as our Berber guide coaxed the giant, lumpy beasts and checked the saddles made of plywood, ropes, and blankets. I peered around the other side of my ticket to the lunch camp an hour’s ride across the dunes and wondered if maybe I wasn’t that hungry after all.
There were not stirrups, no reins, and my new friend kept side eyeing me while curling his upper lip. I stumbled backwards, I was not about to add camel spit to my collection of desert grime–there is only so much a bucket and a bowl can really substitute for a shower!
The camels were lowered to a sit and thankfully the Berber had my husband climb aboard first and as soon as He sat, the camel shot up into the air and my already giant 6’4″ husband was towering 4 feet above me and looking at me with his phrase of the desert “WTF…”
As we moseyed along the dunes, my camel began to show his ornery side. He didn’t like to go up the dunes and he REALLY didn’t like to go down the dunes. The Berber coaxed and clucked and occasionally yanked him into submission and I simply held on for dear life!
Luckily, there was a car to take us home from lunch….
Let’s talk about Mr. Yum Yum. When we were in Antarctica, we had the opportunity to camp on the continent. This was too cool of an experience to pass up, so I pushed away my diva tendencies for a night and went for it. (He was a life long Boy Scout and all around bad decision maker in the name of cool experiences, so he would have gladly camped nightly if the ship let him!) To my relief, we were told there would be a bathroom on shore. I didn’t question how or what, I just happily drank my dinner wine for warmth and courage and bundled into ever SmartWool layer I could wear and still walk and took the little ride on the dingy to the camp area
…And then we were introduced to Mr. Yum Yum.
I don’t know what I expected for a toilet on the great white continent. I shouldn’t have believed there would be one at all. But there was…ish. The guides had dug up some snow and built a throne facing out into the Antarctic Ocean. And inside that throne was a bucket with a seat (and a lid, very important to keep the lid down so the seat didn’t freeze or we would have a very awkward recreation of the flag pole scene from “A Christmas Story”), a bag of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. And this went by the affectionate name of Mr. Yum Yum…I’ll leave you to figure out why on your own.
How does this Antarctic tale relate to our current Moroccan desert adventure, you might ask? Well, when we booked the 2 night desert camping, I was delighted to hear we had a private tent with a bed, a toilet, a shower, and electricity (what can I say, my previous version of “roughing it” was a Holiday Inn Express…). We figured out the electricity come from solar panels, but hadn’t paused to consider how running water would factor in for our bathroom. As we walked into our tent, it all made sense–behind a beautifully carved and painted screen sat our own personal Mr. Yum Yum!
Climbing sand dunes is hard. No, I’m not talking about crossing the boardwalk in Hilton Head to get to the beach, but the actual Sahara sand dunes that go on for 4 miles in any direction from our camp. The desert is simply beautiful, with clear sun rises and sunsets an artist would kill to paint. Unfortunately, these views were dotted with sand dunes as far as the eye could see, so in order to witness it in the full effect, you had to climb up the highest dune around. And in order to climb up the highest dune, a full 75+ meters high, you first had to climb every other just slightly smaller dune in your path. Up and down and up and down. Heading towards the sun set of course, so the reality is you are hiking in the desert directly facing the blazing Saharan sun.
The Berber guides know this is hard, so the offer a treat to lure you out there. Just before the highest climb, they set up a little lounge and serve cocktails. There you sit and you rest and you sip a cold beer and think, oh this isn’t so bad after all and ready yourself to enjoy the majestic setting sun from the carpet and cushions you are currently perched upon…
Only then do they point upwards and say “ok, we go?” And while you curse them and your spouse and yourself for this hair-brained life plan, that stupid little voice in you pops up and reminds you that you’ve already made it all the way out here so you might as well go just a little bit farther to see it right. But that little more is all the way uphill. And you’re still a little jet-lagged. And let’s face it, you work a desk job so you’re totally not in shape to be hiking in baby power fine sand that sinks a foot for every step you take.
Finally the Berber man takes pity on you and unwinds his turban to throw you a lifeline and yank you up the slope. As you huff and puff and he runs ahead with a smile and a song (because of course he sings as he runs through the desert sun, right?!), he turns back to your husband and demands he take a picture…
Maybe by the second year of marriage He will learn what my death stare means and put down the damn camera….
As I slowly woke up to the sound of birds chirping and the early morning sun peeking under my padlocked bedroom door, I had a moment or two of confusion while the jet-lagged brain cleared from 9 glorious hours of sleep. Getting to Marrakesh was a blur…we initially feared we were forgotten in the Casablanca airport, but when 2 men in colorful robes finally walked up, we thankfully followed them to their SUV and had a dozing drive along the Moroccan highway.
The walk to our riad was exhilarating….like stumbling through the stalls of Chinatown in New York, only instead of knock-off handbags and Tiffany jewelry, I was tempted by the aromatic pull of colorful spices sold in barrels and the twinkling Moroccan lanterns as large as my kitchen table I knew I must to find a way to ship home!
There was no time to stop and shop however–we had to keep moving deeper and deeper into the winding cobblestone streets, following the man and push cart holding all of our worldly possessions for the next 3 months. When he deposited us outside a small, tiled doorway and made motions for a tip, I handed the husband my wallet…I was much too tired to figure out currency today!
Breakfast was started with fresh squeezed orange juice…and chocolate cake. And while this picture isn’t of chocolate cake, as I’m a bad blogger and was jet-lagged, it is a representation of the breakfast theme in Morocco: CARBS. He theorized that the citizens needed to keep their energy up all day to combat the heat. I simply think that a culture based around saffron, cinnamon and cumin had such a sweet palate they thought nothing of juice, cake, bread, and honey for breakfast each day…with sweet meats and fruits as dessert and dates and mint tea as their mid-day snack!
We’re a matter of hours and one layover from our very first stop, and already the language barrier has popped up multiple times… Maybe it’s me, but more likely it’s just France! Leaving the plane, I tried to say a cheerful “au revoir” to the flight attendant at the door as she had wished the 5 passengers departing before me. But no, with a soft chuckle at my attempt, she corrected me and wished us “bye bye” instead. Oh well, I have a few weeks until we’re actually in Paris, I could practice in the airport now…
We entered the Air France lounge and when the attendant granted us access, I tried once more, a simple “merci” this time…alas, she laughed once again and said “no, no, please and thank you” and sent us on our way.
favorite wanderers 