Blanca & Ian's Travels

Morocco

Trip Report - 2013
 

Morocco . . . Rough around the edges

Marrakech, Skoura, the Draa Valley, Chegaga, Taroudant & Essaouira

April 26 - May 12

Taroudant

At this juncture of our trip, we sadly said goodbye to Said, our driver & companion of the last 4 days.  I highly, highly recommend him as a driver for adventures in Morocco. He drives for: Desert Majesty

Why Taroudant?

With our brisk itinerary - over the mountains & through the desert – which turned into one more day of travel that I hadn’t originally anticipated – I decided that we needed to rest somewhere before continuing on to Essaouira.  A holiday in the holiday.  We didn’t want a city, so Agadir was out.  All of the other places I looked at had inferior lodging for our style of a rest hotel or the towns were really small.  I booked with the assumption that we would veg for a day at the riad & go to Taroudant for ½ day & this is what we ended up doing.  It sounded like a nice small walled town with several souks for shopping.

As mentioned above, the Riad Ines Jnane sits on the edge of a dingy village.  It is essentially rural, surrounded by fields with miscellaneous livestock.  We were welcomed & whisked to our room by the ever-efficient Fatima – their only English speaker & somehow connected to the family as we were to find out.  Our suite was on the top floor with a private terrace above it.  I could see the Anti-Atlas in one direction & I could just make out Taroudant & the High Atlas in the other.  A non-functioning tile Jacuzzi was also up there.  We actually never asked if it could be fired up, so I don’t know if it worked.

We finally showered & relaxed with a cocktail on our veranda.  Unfortunately, an uncomfortably cool breeze picked up at dusk & this prompted us to move inside.  Btw this riad is totally dry.  They don’t sell any wine for dinner but you are welcome to bring your own.  We did.  Down for dinner, the kitchen hummed & we were served promptly by a rather stern man - who appeared to handle food & beverage for the riad.  A nice touch:  The tablecloths, napkins & all dishware were always a color & pattern matched set.  And they had several different colors that they used so each meal was an adventure.  Well done!  The food was very good as well.  We were the only guests at dinner except for a family with a little girl.

A very full day.
 

Day 8

When I closed Day 7 with ‘we slept well’ I was chuckling thinking of the next morning.  It was Friday & I was awoken just before 5am by a not-too-distant call to prayer.  And 10 minutes later there was another call & so on & so on for an hour.  Every 10 minutes.  Now this was a new crinkle that I hadn’t experienced in any other Muslim community before.  But it was Friday . . .

I surfed the net in the lobby, edited pictures & posted stuff to boards etc while I waited for the house to wake up.   I was rewarded with a coffee when they did around 7:30.

We had breakfast outside on the wonderful patio between the pool & the garden which was really, really pleasant.  The same stern man but a different color & pattern service.

This is a good time to do a minor rant about breakfasts in Morocco.  Everywhere we went, every riad in every town served exactly the same breakfast.  It is as if there is a Moroccan breakfast law that riads must follow.  Coffee or tea.  Fresh orange juice. There was always a basket of stale round bread cut it quarters or eighths.  Fried flat square dough things. Very thin crumpet-like breads.  Usually all plated separately.  Accompanied by jams & honey to spread on all of the above.  As a treat, yogurt was sometimes included & we had an egg option in one riad.  Actually the stale round bread accompanied EVERY meal.  Thankfully, the quality of bread took a major leap forward in Essaouira.  But how are they all the same?  A puzzler.  We discussed this with other travelers & they were all as mystified as us.  End rant.

After breakfast, Mustapha burst on the scene.  A friendly high energy man, he was the owner & the riad is his labor of love.  Once again, my French skills were put to the test with this very nice man.  He showed us around describing the building of it, the Berber craftsman he hired to do all of the doors & woodwork especially the wooden ceiling of the front room off of the atrium which was his pride & joy & reminiscent of the wooden ceilings in Marrakech.  He explained that all of the rooms were named after a family member & our suite – Mazza – was named after his grandmother.  His kids & various family members made up the staff.   His wife oversaw food preparation & 2 girls – nieces (?) helped serve & made up the rooms.  Certainly a family affair. 

I should make mention here that our hot water disappeared after my tepid shower in the morning.  We told Mustapha & Fatima & they reassured us that a technician would have a look at it.  By night, it had finally returned to the warmer side of tepid which is how it remained for our stay.  They offered us use of the hot showers in the hammam downstairs if we wished.  They also didn’t make up our room this day which was odd but I guess they assumed that since we were staying around the riad all day that we didn’t really care.  We didn’t.  And there was the empty Jacuzzi.  These & other little things around Morocco in general spawned my subtitle:  Rough Around the Edges.

The rest of the day we did . . . nothing.  We lounged up in our private veranda.  We had a nice lunch by the garden.  Afterwards we lounged by the pool, took a dip, baked in the sun, watched the birds swoop in to drink from the pool etc.  Between 1pm & 2pm, the mosque kicked in again with a one hour reading from the Koran or something similar.  Other than that it was very peaceful & we appeared to have the whole riad to ourselves except for a skeletal staff present on their holy day.

In the evening the cool breeze kicked in again.  Hmmm.  Was this a pattern?  I asked one of the porters (nephew, son-in-law???) if it was a regular occurrence.  Just about every night was his answer . . .
 

Day 9

We had breakfast outside again.  Beautiful day.  We felt sorry for the staff who have to lug all of the dishes back & forth.  This day’s place setting was a repeat of our first dinner but it matched again - as did all of the ones yesterday. 

We asked Fatima for a taxi into town.  A beat up old ’82 240D Mercedes Benz sedan was our chariot with a crusty cabbie who I conversed with in French.  Taroudant looks very cool from outside the walls that encircle the whole small town.  Obviously due to their age, some walls are newer than others but they give a very neat appearance – totally at odds with what you find inside.  It is not a pretty town.  It makes the medina of Marrakech look very good.   He drove us into a small square/intersection right near the big municipal souk – the Arab one - Souk Jnan Jamaa.   A carriage guy immediately hit on us – I think I was still paying the driver as he approached.  In English.  We said no. 

We set out into the nearby souk.  It is a real disappointment unless you are shopping for cheap bags, Chinese clothes & household goods or foodstuffs.  It is obviously a town souk with for every day shopping.  And lo & behold, the carriage guy popped up in the souk to pitch us again.  Twice.  We hit a bank machine & then went into the nearby Berber souk.  Its goods mirrored the municipal one with the addition of carpets, some leather goods & one place with metalwork – which ‘we’ were searching for.  My wife wanted to come home with some Moroccan lanterns for our porch.  We went in the metal shop.
 

What occurred next is one of those strange travel things that happen that you question afterwards.  The shop was seriously smoky & we looked at the goods through a haze.  The young owner appeared & his eyes were flame red from the smoke or . . .  After 3 or 4 minutes of gasping in there we left.  And we both swear that we were a bit high.  I don’t know if it is just our imagination but maybe it wasn’t only incense that the metal guy had in the air.  Maybe he had just flamed a huge pipe bowl before we walked in & we got the second-hand.  He certainly looked high. 

Anyway, we hit the busy street outside the souk to wander somewhere/anywhere & there was the carriage guy again.  Yes, really.  He pitched us again.  80dhs for a 1 1 /2 hour ride?  Why not?  We walked to his carriage near the Arab souk & gratefully got in.  He nattered on as we toured a bit of the city & went outside to go around the walls.  It was actually really pleasant just sitting there enjoying the spectacle of Taroudant. 
 

And then he insisted that we needed to visit the old Jewish quarter. We ambled into a gate & through some winding streets into a seriously dumpy area.  We saw sheep & goats eating garbage.  And there were more piles of garbage heaped elsewhere.  We stopped in a square with a small Berber market & we didn't know what to make of it - it was a seriously mess.  The carriage guy suggested a Berber co-op, so we left the carriage were led through some alleys to a . . . carpet shop . . . of course.  The owner was working a couple & gave us a little of his very abrupt time.  In less than 5 minutes we left.
 

Back to the carriage we went to find the guy’s young teen brother holding the horse.  And he was coming along.  OK?  Well, not really.  Despite the bright sunshine, our weird-out meters were in the red now due to our uncomfortable surroundings.  But we cautiously said sure.  We announced that we were hungry & what restaurant would he recommend?  Moroccan or tourist?  Tourist, we both answered simultaneously.  We needed a teeny bit of security now.  No real reason except that we wanted some grounding.  We rode over to the main square Place Assarag, where he pointed somewhat disdainfully to the tourist restaurant of the Hotel Roudani at the back in the sun.  We settled with him & parted ways.

The staff, the menu & the washrooms were all pretty bleak but we had some other tourists around us now for comfort.  They were all French.  I had yet another chicken brochette & we both had fries.  It was cheap & tasted it.
 

We had had enough. 

The town was miserable or at least WE couldn’t find a speck of charm anywhere.  And the shopping was a major dud from what we saw.  And we both agreed that there was no way we would come in again at night for dinner.  I had learned from the net & Fatima confirmed it, that cabs were acquired just outside the city walls by the Bab Zorgane Gate.  Small white ones flitted around town but we needed a blue one or something.  This taxi pen was a major holding area with white cabs, blue cabs & the green Big Taxis as well as a stack of tourist buses.   We found it outside the gate & through a small decrepit field.  The appearance of an ‘English’ created a stir & I was grateful that I had the hotel’s card with a map.  A small crowd grew around me as supervisors & drivers studied the map.  No one knew where it was or could figure out the map but a driver (blue taxi) finally figured it out & gruffly agreed to drive us.  A 240D again with no AC vents, no handles on the roll up windows & several big rock dings in the windshield.  It was a really beat-up car.  He warmed up immensely when he saw our riad & he pitched us to let him drive us anywhere we wanted to go later or the next day.  Fat chance, I thought as I took his card.
 

We chilled by the pool for the rest of the afternoon.  Today, the riad got somewhat busy as other guests checked in & wandered around.  I surfed the net for a restaurant option that didn’t involve going into the town.  This is one of the problems with staying at a semi-remote hotel - going anywhere involves effort.  I chose another riad that seemed to have decent TA reviews & I asked Fatima if she would arrange a taxi.  A little later she came back & said that taxis were too difficult & that Mustapha – the owner – would drive us & pick us up.  To go to a competitor for dinner?  Really?

And that is precisely what happened.  He kindly drove us to the Riad Dar Zitoune for dinner.  They were midway between the Jnane & the town.  Seemingly a junket-like hotel that aimed squarely at the French tourist market.  French-style menu & wine – with a cheese course offered.  We had roasted lamb shoulder & a bottle of wine.  A very nice change from tagines & brochettes.  The pool & grounds looked quite good as well – and they had a bar - but I preferred the more intimate Jnane Ines from what I saw.

Mustapha arrived on cue to provide transport – a true gentleman.
 

A Note about the pictures . . . For High Res Versions of the photos on this page go to:

Taroudant Pictures

And keep clicking the magnifying glass in the lower right corner