Majestic Morocco

by Charlotte Temple, Framingham, MA

Morocco is a country filled with history, fabulous food, incredible scenery, warm, friendly people and a little bit of mystery tossed in for good measure. I spent an exciting three weeks (Nov. 3-23, 2011) enjoying the sites of Morocco with a group of 13 other women.

This was my 13th trip with Overseas Adventure Travel (Cambridge, MA; 800/955-1925), and it ranked as one of the best. OAT trips are adventurous and provide a good understanding of the people and the country visited, both geographically and historically, and our warm, wonderful tour guide, Mohammed, made it much more than a sightseeing trip.

Chefchaouen

My odyssey began with a pre-tour extension in Chefchaouen, located on the slopes of the Rif Mountains near Morocco’s northern coast. All the houses and small shops of Chefchaouen are painted in various shades of blue, a tradition that has been carried over from the Chefchaouen Jews.

According to Judaic tradition, the Jews must dye a thread of their prayer shawls with a natural blue dye made from a specific blue shellfish, the idea being that when they looked at the blue thread, they would be reminded of the commandments. While I don’t believe there is a large Jewish population left in Chefchaouen, its residents still follow this tradition, making this small village even more beautiful.

After four days in Chefchaouen, we traveled to Fès, one of Morocco’s oldest and most exciting cities. The Medina of Fès is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is a “not to miss” attraction. Some of the labyrinthine streets are so narrow that trash pickup can be accomplished only by donkey, the trash gathered and loaded into the saddle bags on either side of the donkey and then walked out of the medina.

The tanneries in Fès have operated there since medieval times, and the process has remained basically unchanged. If you have a strong stomach, this is the place to see how sheep, goat and camel skins are processed to make the slippers that are sold all over Morocco.

The skins are cured, stretched, scraped and dyed in the city’s many vats. A pungent mixture of pigeon droppings, acids and cow urine is used to make the hides supple. I was quite thankful for the sprig of mint that was given to me (as well as to the rest of the visitors) to make the smell a bit more bearable.

To the Sahara

On our way to the Sahara we visited a seminomadic group of women, who invited us into their home and offered us warm bread and olive oil. Since they are seminomadic, they spend several months in the dwelling, moving to the desert when it gets too cold. When they return, we were told, they find their dwellings just as they left them.

The women were dressed in their traditional, very colorful attire, their overskirts tied on the side if they were single and in the front if married. We found this in many of the traditional places we visited.

We saw huge swaths of green in the middle of the sandy landscape and drove through this oasis, Morocco’s largest. Locals own or rent sections of the oasis on which they plant tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, cabbages and other vegetables. Usually, the men do the planting and the women do the harvesting.

We finally arrived in the Sahara, a vast desert about the size of the United States and covering parts of several African nations, including Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sudan and Tunisia. Sand dunes make up only a small portion of the Sahara; the rest consists of rocky plains and mountain ranges covered with stone and gravel.

The Sahara is home to the Tuareg, also known as the Blue Men for the indigo robes they wear. Originating in Timbuktu, these nomads have inhabited the Sahara for thousands of years.

We rode through the desert on camels until we came to our tent site, our home for the next two nights. Since the sands shift constantly, no permanent tent site can be erected.

Our tents were very basic (no electricity and no running water), but the view of the dunes made up for any temporary lack of comfort. As the sun set, there was nothing but bright-orange sand as far as the eye could see — no noise, no pollution and no one else for miles and miles.

That evening, Mohammed and our Tuareg chef conducted a cooking demo. They prepared a lemon-and-chicken tagine and it was wonderful.

The plan for the next day was to wake before first light and climb to the top of the dunes to see the sun rise. The sky was still black when we got our early-morning wakeup call at 5 a.m.

As the sky lightened, I saw tiny scarab beetle and desert mice tracks. The sand was very soft, and it was difficult to get a foothold as we began to climb. It was one step forward, two steps back. The dunes looked insurmountable.

Fortunately, the local Blue Men arrived to help us with the climb, which proved to be a tough one, even with their help. As we got higher, we saw nothing but desert in every direction.

We climbed to the highest dune and drank a champagne toast to our success. From the top, our campsite appeared no larger than a speck of sand.

Going down the dunes was much more fun than trekking up them. We slid down with some help from our Berber friends, who grabbed our feet and pulled us down the dunes (called Berber sledding).

On our last stop in the Sahara, we visited a nomadic family. This family consisted of the 43-year-old wife, the 55-year-old husband and their nine children, who move from place to place in search of food, water and grazing land, according to the seasons. Their lives are very simple, and they consider themselves Saharans rather than Moroccans.

Marrakech

Our tour also featured a visit to Marrakech. After a ride in the traditional horse-drawn caliches (carriages), we toured the city’s souk — a shopping experience that is not to be missed, with literally thousands of tiny stalls each offering “the best.” There was very little pressure to buy, and everyone seemed to have a good sense of humor about buying and selling.

The main square, Djemaa el Fna, teemed with snake charmers, storytellers, fortune tellers, monkeys on leashes, water boys and enough other sights to cause sensory overload.

Returning later that night, we saw quite a transformation. Food courts appeared where there were none before, filled with every kind of food imaginable. We had dinner at a lovely restaurant, Dar Es-Salam, which was featured in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

In Marrakech, some of us opted for the optional “Mystical Morocco” tour for an additional $90 (which I thought was pretty steep). We walked through windy, narrow streets to a home where we would see Sufi mystics.

I would not recommend this tour as offered. It was filled with hokey magic tricks in unpleasant surroundings, and I felt it was well below the standards of OAT. This was really surprising because everything else on this trip was top-notch.

The Majorelle Garden, created in the 1920s and ’30s by French painter Jacques Majorelle and later renovated by fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent, is a lovely, peaceful space with lots of bamboo, succulents, dwarf palms, a cactus garden and lily-covered pools surrounded by vibrant blue and yellow pots. It was a wonderful respite from the bustle of the city.

Moroccan cuisine

The food in Morocco was outstanding. I especially enjoyed the tagines and the pastillas. Tagines are stews cooked at a very low temperature, resulting in tender meat with aromatic vegetables and sauce.

Traditionally, they are cooked in a tagine pot, with a conical cover and knob-like handle which stays cool when the meat is cooking. Tagines use less expensive cuts of meat and often combine lamb or chicken with olives, apricots, raisins, dates, honey, saffron, cinnamon, preserved lemons and any and all of Morocco’s wonderful spices.

In the three weeks I spent in Morocco, each tagine dish was delicious and always just a little different.

Another favorite was chicken pastilla, a savory pie filled with shredded chicken, cinnamon, powdered sugar and other spices. The Moroccans also make a dessert pastilla with many layers of the phyllo-type dough filled with a mix of yogurt, honey and pistachios between the layers.

Mint tea is served not only at mealtimes but throughout the day. It’s also a drink of hospitality and is served whenever there are guests. It is poured from a distance above the cup to aerate the tea and produce a foam.

In Casablanca, the final city on our tour, we met for dinner at Rick’s Café, a fairly new restaurant. I had a salad with figs and goat cheese plus stuffed peppers with risotto. This was one of the best, among many terrific, meals of the trip.

The details

OAT specializes in small-group trips for active seniors. There are no more than 10 to 25 travelers per tour. We had 14 in Morocco.

In their brochures, OAT provides a very helpful section called “Is this adventure right for you.” In it, they describe in detail the physical requirements for travelers on a particular itinerary plus information on the climate and terrain, pacing, transportation, accommodations, group size, leadership and cuisine. We have always found that they are very accurate in their trip descriptions.

Because OAT does not charge a single supplement on land trips, it makes the trip more affordable than many others are for a single person. The land-only cost for the 14-day base tour is $2,295-$2,695 per person, depending on departure date. The 5-night pre-tour extension to Chefchaouen and Tangier costs an additional $895. A 4-night post-tour extension to Essaouira and Casablanca ($795) is also offered.

If you’re looking for an exotic trip to a warm, friendly country, I recommend Overseas Adventure Travel’s “Morocco Sahara Odyssey.”