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Written by Penny Kitchen, 2006   
“We need a week away from it all, somewhere sunny and interesting,” my friend suggested in January. Her Expedia trawl turned up a 4-star hotel with a kasbah-sized pool in Marrakech and BA flights from Gatwick.
We might be going to spend our week haggling in the souks for bargains, but she reckoned that a budget airline scrum and flea-pit accommodation were definitely out.

Setting off in the last week of March we were astonished to find our plane was full.But as we began our descent three-and-a-half hours later and caught a glimpse of the beautiful pink city below, with its backdrop of snow-capped mountains, we began to understand why. And believe me, unless you are completely unadventurous, Marrakech just gets better and better once you’re on the ground.

As both of us had lived in the Middle East and are pretty well travelled, we were mentally prepared for the onslaught on our senses that is North Africa, and for the need to keep our wits about us. Even so, we paid twice the going rate to the taxi driver who took us the 15-minute drive from the airport to the hotel. Lesson one: ask for a price, then offer half. Or, do as we did, chalk it up to experience and find out the going rate at the hotel. Don’t get into a taxi before you have agreed the price– there are no taxi meters in this town!

With the citrus trees, bougainvillea and thousands of roses in bloom, our first impression of Marrakech was of heady perfume. Walking the first morning from our hotel to the old walled city (medina) took us past lines of waiting horse-drawn calèches – a great way to see Marrakech, by the way – through shady public gardens, and past the famous Mamounia Hotel which harks back to the 1920s and was Winston Churchill’s favourite.  

Vision in pink

In contrast to Casablanca’s white buildings, Marrakech is pink ochre, the colour of the surrounding rocks and earth. Because no building other than a mosque is allowed to be higher than a palm tree, it is easy to get your bearings from the town’s minarets, particularly the Koutoubia mosque which is situated alongside the enormous Gemaa el Fna square. This is a particularly good marker in case you get lost in the souks, which you inevitably will.

For the price of a mint tea and a pizza, we watched the daytime ‘carnival’ in the square from the upstairs terrace of the Glacier Café. Orange juice sellers and straw hat peddlers vie with laden donkey carts, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians for right of way. Herbalists and dentists plied their trade, sitting cross-legged on the ground.

“Gemaa el Fna is the sink-hole around which Marrakech swirls. Seemingly, whichever way you walk you always end up here,” our Time Out guidebook said. “...Gemaa el Fna is nothing less than bedlam.” How true. One evening we went back there to experience the bedlam for ourselves. We found that the central area of this historic former parade ground (prior to the arrival of the French, executions were carried out here) had been taken over by hundreds of cooking stalls. Trestle tables were surrounded by benches for diners and, in the middle, frenzied cooks and waiters served the customers.

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The souks, with their miles of narrow alleyways crammed with shops, merge together in the area north of the square.
Some proudly proclaimed sheep’s head on the menu, which we passed on, given that my friend is vegetarian. Others served traditional Moroccan tajines of couscous and lamb and vegetables, plates of olives and aubergines. Smoke drifted upwards with the cooking smells and the whole scene was lit with strings of lights.

We were cajoled from all sides to “Eat our Number One food, the best!” We sat down and enjoyed a wonderful meal that cost less for the two of us than a tasteless pasta for one had cost in the hotel the evening before. And we weren’t alone – lots of other foreign visitors were doing the same. (See our recipe feature Eat Healthy, Eat Moroccan).

As darkness fell, hundreds of people continued to fill the square, laughing and chatting. Flutes, tambourines and drums provided the manic soundtrack to snake charmers we glimpsed feeding them live scorpions and mice, egged on by circles of onlookers. We hurried past. There were acrobats, groups of roaming musicians, Berbers in outlandish colourful costumes, little long-tailed monkeys performing for tourists and locals alike.

Shouts, laughter, music and the usual honking horns filled the air that was smoky from the cooking fires. And, this wasn’t a special evening – apparently it is always this way! We could see the camera flashes from restaurant terraces on the perimeter of this melée, but I doubted any still photo could have captured the scene.

Good-natured haggling

We spent hours in the souks, just wandering along doing our best to avoid being run over by donkey carts, scooters and bicycles, buying a basket here, a child’s embroidered dress there, and enjoying the good-natured haggling. The guidebook advised not to worry about getting lost – there are miles of these shop-lined alleyways, but somehow we always found our way back to the square.

Invitations to buy marked our progress from one unnamed alleyway to the next. I’m sure I heard, “Hey lady, you want good Asda price?” Well, you have only to look out at the rooftops dotted with satellite dishes to know Marrakechis are fast lapping up our ‘culture’.

There aren’t many tourist attractions in Marrakech, which means there are few coachloads of trippers, but those there are head for the beautiful Majorelle Gardens owned by Yves Saint Laurent and open to the public. Even the crowds didn’t spoil for us this oasis of lush planting, where turtles bask beside the water-lily pool and the extraordinary blue house (housing a small exhibition of Islamic art) guaranteed great photos.

Our foray into the Atlas Mountains proved the highlight of our week. Our driver-guide headed our ‘cat-cat’ (French for 4x4 or quatre-quatre) towards the mountains on a straight smooth road, before turning off on to the ‘piste’. From then on we bumped and climbed up mountain mule tracks, stopping to take pictures of the staggering scenery stretching out below and above us.

We saw Berber villages that blended into their inhospitable terrain, their walls and roofs constructed from the surrounding earth. Having only minimal electricity, the women still wash their clothes in the cold water of snow-melt rivers. The cloudless sky and hot sun belied the fact that here the night-time temperatures drop to freezing. Almond trees were in bloom and the cultivated terraces green with young wheat, but the winter snows had not long receded.

After a delicious traditional lunch in a beauty spot known as the Setti Fatma the six of us, with a Berber guide, spent the afternoon doing a poor imitation of mountain goats. Never have I been so scared – or exhilarated – as we climbed up precipitous rocks and across rickety bridges to eventually reach a viewing point for the first of seven cascades tumbling down into a steep gorge.

By the time we reached the top, our guide was hauling me from foothold to foothold, his answer to my wails of “I can’t do this!” always a smiling, “No problem, lady, no problem.”  It was a strenuous climb made even more difficult by the fact that neither of us was wearing trainers.

“You went up the cascades?” asked the incredulous girl back at the hotel, looking from one to the other of us, and then eyeing our footwear. We confirmed we certainly had, but that perhaps she had better warn future clients ‘of a certain age’ to opt for the gentler excursion option!

Further information

Marrakech, Essaouira and the High Atlas (Time Out £12.99). An excellent and readable guidebook.
Moroccan National Tourist Office, 205 Regent Street, London W1B 4HB, tel: 0870 3309333, www.visitmorocco.org 

 
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