Marrakech: The Sweltering Sky - April 5 - 8
Compared to all the excitement of our first day in Marrakech, it really quieted down.
We had a few days to wander the city, seek out the various sights, and enjoy the sun. We
asked for directions to the city’s only Cybercafe, and were elated to discover it was
a mere 2 blocks from our hotel. Yay! Email from home. We were unable to connect directly
from our computer, as our ISP doesn’t have a connection in Morocco yet. So we tried
to coincide our time in the café with the city’s siesta, as it was hard to justify
time spent inside when there was so much to do and see. But hey, we need to pace
ourselves, right?
We did quite a bit of walking, some of it by accident. We kept getting lost and seeing
parts of the city that weren’t highlighted on our tourist map, but gave us a better
impression of how people lived. According to our map, the Yves Saint-Laurent-owned Jardin
Majorelle was pretty close to our hotel. Yes and no. It turned out to be physically close,
but we ended up getting lost for a couple hours within a subdivision trying to find it.
The schools, houses, and children we saw there turned out to be almost as interesting as
our intended stop. We could easily imagine how beautiful the Majorelle garden was when it
was designed back in 1922, but now the place seemed faded and a bit neglected. The flowers
paled in comparison to the bright orange giant goldfish—they held their color quite
well! We thought the name Majorelle Jungle might be a more apt title for it; when we
looked at it as a jungle it suddenly seemed more impressive.
The second spot we attempted to find on foot was the Jardin Menara. We were so busy
watching the goats and sheep, and trying to stay clear of the donkey carts that we
didn’t notice we had stumbled into in someone’s private-gated farm. After we
finally found someone to ask for directions, (the owner, as it turned out) we were kindly
escorted out by a very nice farmhand, who led us on a ten minute walk to the outset of the
correct garden path. Oops! The Menara Garden is surrounded by rows and rows of
olive trees. A pavilion forms the center, and it is surrounded by a huge pool of water. We
were hot and dusty from our walk, so we were prepared to jump in. Unfortunately, it wasn't
that type of pool.
Near the Djemaa el-Fna lies one of Marrakech’s most famous landmarks, the
Koutoubia Mosque. It was constructed in the 12th century and features the
oldest and best preserved of the Almohad minarets. The next stop on our tour of the sites
was the Palais el-Badi, a huge palace built back in 1572. At the time of construction, it
had a reputation of one of the most beautiful palaces in the world with marble from Italy
and precious materials imported from as far away as India. Unfortunately, we were about
300 years too late to view it. In 1695 the new king depleted its resources for
"building supplies" to construct his new palace in Meknes. It was still pretty
interesting to view, as the grounds were quite extensive. The palace contained all sorts
of nooks and crannies to explore and provided a full afternoon of fun for us. The remains
of the palace wall structure resembled huge, perforated graham crackers. We even got out
our flashlight to check out some of the dark tunnels in the catacombs (we assumed they
used to be prisons) and also climbed up some of the rock formations.
Enough of where we went. More interesting was what we saw, heard, and smelled outside
of the gardens: chaos, honking, and diesel fumes. Morocco’s second largest city was
comprised of new and old, high-tech, low-tech, and no tech. The streets were full of
everything from zillions of motorcycles, over-crowded buses and small carts pulled by
ratty-haired donkeys. Many women wore the traditional jellabas (think choir robes) and
those who didn’t seemed to wear extremely tight western-style clothes. Eventually,
you'll find more on our impressions in the Musings section of this site.
After a couple of days in Marrakech, we felt our lungs were filled with diesel fumes to
their full capacity. Easily solved. We decided to jump on a bus to Essaouria, a quaint and
relatively-unknown beach town on the coast. We heard it was a favorite with independent
travelers, so off we went.
