Posts
Chefchaouen, Morocco
March 29, 2014
This morning breakfast was light, compared to the 7 breads
from yesterday. Today, we had Berber
bread again (on request) and goat cheese and jam. We also had rose buds to put in the mint tea.
Mohammad picked us up in his van, and we started driving
south and east, into the mountains, in the pouring rain.
It took us about 2 hours to get to our destination, not because it was
so far away, but because we got caught in a traffic jam near a small village
when the king’s wife and her entourage drove through. It seems that when the royal family is on the
move, the rest of the world stops.
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| Waiting for the King's wife. She is not a queen, just a wife. |
The scenery increased in beauty as we continued south. As we drove, we looked up into the mountains and saw one small village after another, all with their own minaret peeking
through the landscape. This reminded me of seeing white steeples tucked into the trees and hills of New England. On the hillside
fields, we saw Berber women, dressed in the characteristic red and white
skirts, working in the fields, and herding cows and goats.
Later in the day, we saw these hard working
women selling their cheese on the sides of the roads. As both Aziz and Mohammad were fond of
saying, “Berber women are very hard working.”
No kidding. There was never a man to
be seen.
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| This Berber woman was herding goats through this Muslim cemetery. |
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| The women in the shed on the right are washing clothes by hand in the river water which is running through the laundry tubs. The men in the shed on the left, are sitting around and gossiping with one another. |
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| This was our view while listening to the multiple calls to prayer. |
We got our marching orders from Mohammad and set off on our own. It turns out that yesterday’s “free time” was
preparation for today. In all reality,
there is no way that Mohammad could drive his van through the Casbah, so we had
to walk. Fortunately we were prepared to
go it alone thanks to our training in Asilah. Mohammad pointed to the Hotel Parador, in the distance, and told us if
we walked downhill from where we were, we would get there to meet him in a few
hours.
Since it was still raining, we didn’t start walking
immediately. Instead, we went into a
café overlooking the laundry sheds and had some coffee to get warmed up.
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| View from the cafe. |
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| Since it was raining we were happy to sit inside while sipping our cafe au lait. |
Then we started
walking through the beautiful blue Casbah of Chefchaouen. Yes, the city is blue. Mohammad told us that in the summer the sun
is blinding on the normal whitewash that walled cities use, so Chefchouauen
discovered that tinting the whitewash blue eases the glare of the sun.
We walked, and walked. We enjoyed our walk but started becoming
concerned when we ended up at the very top of the city wall, instead of near
the bottom, and we had lost sight of the Hotel Parador entirely.
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| The view from the top of the Casbah was beautiful, but we lost sight of the Hotel Parador entirely. |
We ambled through alley after alley. We knew our time was up, and we should be
meeting Mohammad, but it was if we were lost in a maze.
We finally found the lower city wall only to
find we were way below our destination.
We asked a woman where the Hotel Parador was, and she pointed uphill. We slogged back uphill on the outside of
the wall. At last, the Hotel Parador!!!
Mohammad was in a panic. He had even called Aziz to tell him he had
lost us. We were only half an hour late,
but that was small consolation for our guide who hated telling his boss
that he lost those crazy Americans.
He led us back into the Casbah, for a late lunch, and then we
drove back to Tangier. The scenery was
just as lovely coming down the mountain, but as we got closer into Tangier, the
traffic became horrendous and it took us much longer to return than it did to
get to Chefchaouen. We felt badly that
Mohammad probably had other plans for his evening than to be with us,
but………………what could we do?
