Ouzoud Waterfall and Camel Riding

November 6, 2024October 18, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

After a great day at Ait Benhaddou, we had planned a second excursion to Ouzoud Waterfalls. They are also located outside of Marrakech, but seemed to be slightly closer than Ait Benhaddou. For this tour, we went with a company called Marrakech Desert Trips. I definitely wouldn’t recommend them as much as I would Click Excursions. There was no dedicated tour guide, which was fine because you have a local guide once you arrive in Ouzoud, but more concerning, the bus did not have AC. It is so hot in Morocco and everyone in the bus was quite cranky as it felt like we were being forced into a baking tin can for several hours of driving.

The tour guide meets you right at the bus when you arrive in Ouzoud. It’s optional, but I recommend just taking advantage. They only ask you to pay $2 each for their services for the entire day, so please tip them a little more generously! Our guide shared some fun facts with us about the area, but mostly he just ushered us around the attractions. We started with a view of the falls from the top, where there we’re a ton of monkeys hanging around. They looked a lot more like baboons to us, but we did some research and confirmed that they are in fact, monkeys. You can buy peanuts to feed them from the local kids, but honestly, just take your photo and avoid feeding them. This kind of tourism is never good for the animals and I appreciated that our guide advised us as such.

We hiked down to the falls through some of the local Berber villages and learned that Morocco is one of the biggest exporters of olives and olive oil. There are olive trees everywhere that are tended and harvested by the Berber families. We stopped at a nice viewpoint for photos before finishing the walk to the base. At the base, there are several options. You can pay a few dollars to take a “boat” ride up to the falls, or you can just explore on your own. We were much more interested in swimming, so we decided to forego the boat ride and went for a little dive into the pool instead. The water is actually pretty cold, but not too cold for us Canadians!

The waterfall is quite beautiful. I wondered if going all the way to the waterfall was worth it for one view, but it was a pretty low key day and I actually ended up enjoying it quite a bit (aside from the bus ride). After a refreshing swim, we climbed partway up the cliffside to a restaurant with fabulous views of the waterfall to enjoy lunch. We finished by climbing back to the top and hitting a few more viewpoints (and getting some ice cream), and then we packed aboard the bus again to return to Marrakech.

On our last day in Marrakech, I really wanted to go camel riding. I know it’s a bit cliché, but I’ve never been anywhere that camels are native and I really wanted to cross it off my bucket list. Emily was much less enthusiastic (she has a fear of horses, which she has confirmed extends to camels), but fortunately she agreed to accompany me, while reminding me it was a one time thing!

Emily was more interested in visiting Jardin Majorelle, so we decided to do that in the morning and go for a short camel ride outside the city in the afternoon. Unfortunately, our planning wasn’t great. Jardin Majorelle is a major attraction in Marrakech and we didn’t realize it had timed entry. None of the other sites we visited had timed entry and we arrived at the park to realize that we wouldn’t be able to enter for several more hours, meaning we didn’t have enough time. So unfortunately, we had to skip the attraction, but learn from us if you ever go to Marrakech. It looked really cool and we were sad to miss it.

Emily confirmed that her fear of horses does extend to camels, but she was a trooper and I had a great time on the camel ride! We went 30 minutes outside the city with a small group for a 1 hour camel ride. Going in the afternoon wasn’t the best idea because it was really hot, but I still enjoyed the experience. There was only ~6 of us and we walked around the Palmerie. An hour was honestly a bit long and I was pretty bow legged afterwards, but it definitely ticked the box for the experience. My camel’s name was Scooby-Doo and Emily’s camel was Olivier. We were served cold water and biscuits afterwards before driving back to Marrakech and overall, I thought it was a nice experience.

But that pretty much concluded our time in Morocco. In hindsight, 5 days in Marrakech was a bit too long. I think I would have preferred to have more time, but to explore more of the country. I’m sad we didn’t have time to visit the Sahara, or other cities. I preferred to have a central base because I was a little bit nervous about traveling to Morocco, but I would feel more comfortable returning in the future. The busy-ness of the medina felt overwhelming at times and I didn’t like being out after dark, but otherwise, I never felt unsafe in Morocco. I would definitely love to return to tick sand dunes off my bucket list in the future, though if Emily is involved, I did promise no more camels!

Ait Benhaddou

October 30, 2024October 18, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

We had 5 days in Marrakech, so we planned several day trips outside of the city. The first of which was to Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO world heritage site and cultural landmark in the country. It’s a 3 hour drive from Marrakech, so unfortunately it required a very early rise for our bus shuttle.

We booked our trip with Click Excursions and I would recommend them. Day trips in Morocco are quite cheap, but there are a lot of options to choose from. Most people just pick one off of Get Your Guide, which is by far the most popular platform in Morocco. It can be hard to know which companies are best, so just make sure to read a lot of reviews. We booked directly with Click Excursions to cut out the middleman and it was cheaper that way.

We had a dedicated guide for the day and the first 3 hours of the trip took us through the Atlas Mountains, which are still in the desert and very barren, but beautiful. We had lots of breaks in the morning to pick up food and water and stopped at a few of the mountain viewpoints. One thing I liked about this tour is that we seemed to be one of the first groups to arrive at Ait Benhaddou, so it was not busy (and overall it seemed to have less traffic than other places we visited). This might be due to the fact that we visited in early June, which is not peak tourist season. It get’s really hot in June, but our tour bus had AC, which was really essential.

Ait Benhaddou is basically a very old, fortified village that is maintained using all the traditional methods of adobe house construction. It was originally settled in the 11th century and was a key location on the caravan route between Marrakech and the Sahara Desert. Most people actually visit it on the way to the Sahara, but we didn’t do the Sahara on this trip because of time constraints. It became a UNESCO world heritage site in 1987 and since then most of the families who used to live in the village have moved to the modern town across the highway.

We were met by a local Berber guide whose family grew up in the village and he explained that since they’d received UNESCO status, they had to maintain all the traditional construction methods and can’t change anything in the village. So all but 5 families have moved out of the village to enjoy more modern comforts, but they all continue to maintain it and opt to keep their world heritage status because of tourism. Unfortunately, parts of the village were destroyed in the 2023 earthquake and they are waiting on financial assistance from the government to re-construct. So even though many of the Berber families don’t live in the village proper, there’s still a great sense of ownership and heritage. Make sure to tip your guide and participate in commerce while you’re there because it’s one of their main sources of revenue.

The other main revenue source is the film industry. Ait Benhaddou features in many films and the locals often participate in constructing the sets or as extras. Some of the more popular films shot there include Gladiator 1 and 2 (they were really excited about this one because Gladiator 2 comes out this Fall), and Game of Thrones.

To get to the village, you have to cross a small stream and a large dry river bed. Our guide, Mohammad, told us that it hadn’t rained in 15 months! We walked through the village and started climbing up towards the top, stopping for a break in one of the buildings to learn about some of the local artwork techniques. Historically, the Berber people in this area would use tea to send secret messages to each other, because when you write on parchment with tea, it is invisible, but when you pass the backside of the parchment over a flame, the tea burns onto the paper and becomes legible. The tea is no longer used to pass messages, but artists have adopted the practice and use saffron and indigo to paint landscapes of the city.

It was extremely hot out, but we persisted to climb to the top of the hill to see the view. It is quite a beautiful place and we marveled at the expanse of the desert. We had tajine and skewers in a local restaurant for lunch and then continued on to Atlas Studios in Ouarzazate. I booked the tour to see Ait Benhaddou and didn’t really read up on the rest of the tour. I thought we were going to the city of Ouarzazate, but we were actually going to the film studio outside the city. It seemed super random to us, but it was interesting enough.

We had a very energetic and eccentric tour guide at the studio and he was definitely passionate about movies. He told us that Atlas Studios is one of the biggest studios in Africa – I don’t know how it could compete with the film industry in Nigeria, but from a Western perspective, it’s definitely a popular place for Hollywood movies with desert scenes. Many movies have been filmed there, including The Mummy, Prince of Persia, Gladiator, Cleopatra, Kingdom of Heaven, Aladdin, and some TV shows like Game of Thrones and Prison Break. They have a ton of the movie sets and props preserved, and while we didn’t recognize most of them, it was still a cool experience.

The most unbelievable thing that happened is that while we are on the tour, it started to rain! So after 15 months of no rain, it rained on the one day we visited. It only sprinkled while we are the tour, but then it poured for about 15 minutes on the bus, before completely clearing up again. It felt like a long bus ride back to Marrakech, because we did it mostly in one shot, arriving in the city around 7pm. It’s definitely a full day event. We went out for a quick dinner and then returned to our riad to relax in the pool.

We’d planned another day trip for the next day, but it fell through and we were happy to take it easy in Marrakesh instead. We returned to the markets and made some purchases, but focused more on visiting some of the local attractions. We picked 3 for the day: Medersa Ben Youssef, le Jardin Secret, and the Bahia Palace.

Medersa Ben Youssef is a historic Islamic college that is now a UNESCO world heritage site. It was my favourite of the 3 sites because of the beautiful colours, design, and architecture throughout the building. There’s a large main courtyard and prayer room in the centre, and then it’s surrounded by small rooms for the students.

The Bahia Palace was much more extravagant, but both spaces no longer have any furniture in them, so it’s hard to get a sense of how the space was really used. The Palace also has really beautiful colours and architecture, but it felt a lot like I was just walking through empty room after empty room. The history of the Palace was less apparent as a result, but still a neat experience and there were many beautiful courtyards and gardens.

Finally, le Jardin Secret was the smallest site, but was one of the best spaces from an educational perspective. The garden is really just a restored riad, but it’s very old and large and would have been owned by someone quite wealthy when it was first constructed. It fell into disrepair over the years and was bought by a private owner around 2008 and restored for the public. It didn’t receive any funding, so it’s just the entry cost that pays for the refurbishment.

What makes the space so unique is it’s hydraulic irrigation system. Water was piped to the garden from outside the city, and is dispersed throughout the entire garden using hydraulics and gravity fed channels. It’s a really cool feat of engineering and I’m glad the new owners recognized it and included a lot of information about the system. The water engineer in me definitely geeked out!

We finished the day with another really nice rooftop meal in the medina. I’m not sure what Marrakech is like in peak season, but in June, it’s really easy to get into pretty much any restaurant and we had some delicious meals while we were there!

Exploring Marrakech

October 23, 2024October 18, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

I paused my posts about my trip to Portugal and Morocco to post about some summer backpacking trips, but it’s time to get back to the Morocco part of my holiday in June! After a week in the Azores, we kicked off the second part of our trip, a week in Marrakech. This was my pick for the trip. I’ve wanted to go to Morocco for a while because it seems quite different than anywhere else I’ve ever been, so we decided to spend a few days in Marrakech and the nearby attractions. Morocco could easily have been a whole trip on its own, but we just did a little taster.

Unfortunately, it was a long day getting there. We left the Azores in the morning and then had a long time at the Lisbon airport before our flight left for Marrakech. We flew with Easyjet and they only run a few flights a week, so it was cheap, but it didn’t leave until evening and ended up being delayed several hours.

I’ll admit I started to feel a little bit weary waiting for our flight. I realized that it was my first time travelling to an Islamic country and we had not packed the appropriate clothing. While waiting for our flight, we read that it’s polite for women to cover their shoulders and avoid short skirts and shorts. It ended up being a bit of a moot point because most of the tourists walked around dressed however they pleased (which is honestly fine), but we didn’t want to attract attention as two women. So I wasn’t quite sure what to expect and we seemed to be the only group of women on the plane.

It all ended up being totally fine. For the most part, we felt safe in Marrakech. I was expecting to witness some petty street crime, such as purse or phone snatching, but we didn’t see any. We did keep our shoulders covered and tried to wear dresses that went to at least our knees, but we didn’t get many comments aside from the odd marriage proposal (which I experience when I lived in Malawi as well). The only thing I didn’t like was the location of our riad.

We arrived in Marrakech pretty late. Our riad sent a car for us, but it was after midnight when we arrived. We stayed in the medina, which is the central part of the old city of Marrakech. The old city is walled and dates back to the 11th century, while the new city is a lot like any other city you’ve been to. The medina is quite chaotic in the daytime, with lots of vendors and tourists, but at night it’s pretty quiet. The medina is filled with riads, which are small hotels with a series of rooms centered around a small garden courtyard. Our riad was central, but it was down a side street and required walking through a few narrow alleys. We didn’t have any incidents, but as two solo females, I would definitely be more cognizant to book directly on a main road in the future.

We immediately went to bed and slept in on our first day in the city. The breakfast from the riad was excellent and we ate it around the small pool in the courtyard. The riad has lots of outdoor space and a little rooftop lounge, so it was a nice place to hang out after dark.

One of the things that immediately surprised us about Morocco was the language. Moroccans speak a lot of languages. I knew that Arabic was the official language and most people speak Moroccan Arabic, also known as Darija. What I didn’t know is that a lot of Moroccans also speak French due to the period of French colonial rule between 1912 and 1956. On top of that, a lot of people also speak English, as well as some form of Moroccan Berber. We were able to get by mostly with English, but it was really nice to have our French to fall back on for a change.

Our main plan for our first day was to go on a walking tour and to find some cash. Our walking tour met at Koutoubia Mosque, which is one of the most central places in the city. By law, none of the buildings in the city can be taller than the mosque, so you can see it from pretty much everywhere. Like the city, the mosque is over almost 1000 years old, though it has been rebuilt several times and sustained damage in Morocco’s most recent earthquake in the Fall of 2023. It only recently re-opened, but we couldn’t enter as it’s used strictly for prayer.

Our guide took us around to many of the central attractions, including some of the many souks. A souk is basically a market and there are all kinds of them all over the city. There’s meat markets, spice markets, and textile markets. We walked through the Kasbah and the Jewish Quarter, and past the Bahia Palace, which we later re-visited. One of the most well known attractions is the Jemaa el-Fnaa market, which is basically a huge square in the medina for commerce, and is recognized as a UNESCO world heritage site. In the day, it seemed to be mostly fruit drink vendors, but it expands a lot in the evening with small restaurants and performers.

I seem to have had bad luck with money this year, because after a very challenging time finding cash in Argentina, we had similar bad luck in Morocco. Similar to Argentina, it’s not possible to get Moroccan currency (the dirham) in advance of your trip. But unlike Argentina, this is because it’s a closed currency, rather than a volatile one. There’s not the same problems with conversion rates, but some of the banks do charge hefty transaction fees. We read that the only bank that doesn’t is Al-Farid Bank, so we were keen to find an ATM.

We did exchange a little bit of money in the airport to tide us over. There is an al-farid bank right in Jemaa el-Fnaa, but we were dismayed to discover that one of the ATMs was out of cash (it was a Sunday), and the other was rejecting transactions. I was even more pissed to discover when I got home that the bank charged me for 2 cash withdrawal transactions, even though the ATM never dispensed any money. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around through the market, but not purchasing anything, until we finally found another ATM and were able to put our money woes to rest.

Shopping in the medina is definitely an experience. If you’re going to shop there, you have to haggle, and it can be a bit of an overwhelming process. I used to haggle in Malawi all the time, but I was a poor student back then. I’ve gotten more and more uncomfortable with it the older I’ve gotten and the more financially secure I’ve become. It seems stupid to haggle with someone over $1 or $2, when it will really make no difference to me in the long run, and potentially make their lives easier.

But you can’t be a pushover in Morocco. The gulf between an item’s starting price and its worth is quite large. We read that whatever someone starts with, you should aim to pay half, and therefore you need to go down to a third of the price with your first counteroffer. This seemed somewhat accurate to our experiences, although we weren’t great at negotiating the price in half and generally ended up somewhere closer to 60-70%. It just feels so insulting to try and negotiate the price down so low, and the vendors always act insulted too. It’s all part of the dance, but it’s exhausting. Definitely don’t ask someone the price of something unless you’re ready to barter, because once you express interest in purchasing, the vendors are relentless.

Our very first experience was probably the worst, the seller was extremely pushy, and we worried the whole experience would be that way, but fortunately most vendors would back off after some light negotiation if you want to walk away. The most useful advice I read is to never buy something if it doesn’t feel right. It’s easy to get pressured into a sale once you start to engage, but it’s still your choice and you can always choose to walk away. You don’t owe anyone anything.

While Jemaa el-Fnaa is a central location, the entire medina and beyond seem to be one big market, broken into smaller souks. We spent a lot of time in Souk Semmarine, which is the textile market, but also explored down towards the Bahia Palace. We didn’t buy much on our first day, but we scoped out what we were interested in. Later in the trip, we ended up each buying a purse, I got some pants, and we both got a lot of knick knacks, like painted dishware. Some things were weirdly expensive (likely we got the white person rate), while other things were really cheap.

We picked a nice rooftop restaurant for lunch and had probably the best meal of the trip. The food in Morocco is delicious and extremely flavourful, although it does get a bit repetitive after a while. The most common dish is Tajine, which is basically different types of meat, and sometimes vegetable or egg, cooked in stoneware. Meat kebabs were also popular and it was pretty easy to eat vegetarian if you wanted, but the meals seemed to be either very meat heavy, or have no meat at all. At this restaurant, I had a chicken tajine where the chicken was cooked with caramelized onion, fig, pear, walnuts, cinnamon, and it was sooo yummy.

The timing of our trip, during the first week of June, was definitely not ideal from a weather perspective. Morocco is in the desert, so it receives little rain, but it gets really hot in the summer. It wasn’t as hot as it would get, but it was still mid 30’s most days, so I would definitely recommend going a bit earlier in the Spring. Most days, we returned to the riad in the late afternoon for a dip in the pool to cool down before dinner.

I think I’ll end the post here for now as I’ve covered a lot of information about the city. After the first day, we did a few day trips outside the city, so check back for that!