Morocco

Our next stop was Tangiers, Morocco. On this day, we chose to take a Holland America excursion to Tetouan (pronounced tet-wan), an old city 45 mintues from Tangiers. On the bus ride, our guide gave us a snapshot of the history of Morocco which was interesting since our knowledge of Morocco was mostly from the movie Casablanca, none of which (not a single second as our guide put it) was filmed in Morocco.

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The king of Morocco had recently been to visit Tangiers from his summer palace in Tetouan. So, the flags of Morocco were flying everywhere in the city and along the road. Our guide was quick to point out that the the flag has a six pointed star, not the 5 pointed star of David associated with Judaism. Morocco is a predominantly Muslim country with small minorities of Sephardic Jews and Christians (mostly Catholics). According to our guide, they do not practice Shirah (sp?) law the society is quite tolerant of the religious minorities.   

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The countryside between Tangiers and Tetouan reminded both of us of Israel in topography and vegetation. It had clearly been dry so the only green was where there was irrigation. The structures on the hill side must have been to control and capture the rainfall. There was herds of sheep and cows grazing in the fields. 


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As we entered Tetouan, we picked up a required local guide, an undercover policeman who was there to protect us (or so they said) and a man who was there to be essentially be our herder. The reason for that will be clear in a bit. He was called the "sweeper."

Our first stop in Tetouan was at an arts and crafts school whose mission is to training students in the ancient arts of Morocco. We saw beautiful woodwork, calligraphy, metal work, mosaic tile, and other arts. The students were off for the day (it was Saturday) so all we really saw was the exhibit of their major projects. The work in the picture is a conveyance of a bride to her new husband. Arranged marriages in Morocco are now illegal and the minimum age for marriage is 18, but in the past (and in the remoter villages today) arranged marriage was standard. On the day of the wedding, the bride would be seated in this enclosure and conveyed by hand or on the back of a mule to her husband where she would start a new life. It is hard to see the scale, but a 5 foot adult would probably not fit without scrunching over. 

Street

After that we headed into the medina which is their word for the "old town." Another word we learned was kasbah which means fort. I was hoping the medina would be a "funky cold medina" because it was a hot day, but it was more like a funky hot medina. The medina was a maze of narrow alleys with one (that we saw) small square). We were instructed to stay together and our sweeper made sure that nobody strayed from the group. Because we didn't stop much in the little streets, it was hard to get good pictures, but here are a few we took on the fly while we walking.

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The Tetouan equivalent of Ace Hardware.

Sardines

There were lots of Sardines being sold.

Chickens

You could buy eggs and chickens. These would be FRESH chickens since they would have been killed and, I assume, plucked on the spot.

Olives

One of the many olive sellers. We wanted to stop and buy some olives, but our sweeper would have shooed us on to follow the flock.

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We stopped in a little cafe for a drink, a couple of cookies, and a "water closet" break. We were treated to some local entertainment. This man was dancing with a tray of candles on his head. There was a band that played for him and two young men pounded on a drum and danced. It isn't clear how authentic it was, but there was no doubt that the main object was to get tips.  Here is a short movie of one of the dancers.

After that we stopped at a rug store and local crafts store. We were a captive audience (not necessarily by choice) for a Moroccan carpet sales pitch. They rolled out 25 carpets extolling their virtues. They were beautiful carpets, and well made with an alleged certificate of quality. Because we are contemplating building a new house, we thought one would look good on wood floors. So we seriously considered buying one. The starting price was $7,800. Our guide, who pushed us hard to buy it, said a price around $3,500-$4,000 would work. That is clearly a lot of money and of course made us think twice. But, in the end, what made us say no was the uncertainty of where it would go, would it match other things, and not knowing what it was really worth. There was no way to check what a true market price would be. It might have been a great bargain; it might have been a huge ripoff. They were persistent salesmen, following Caroline out the door lowering the price as she left. 

This was followed by a stop at a pharmacy where we were subjected to a sales pitch for Moroccan oils and other cosmetics. This was annoying to us. Think about paying to watch an infomercial on TV in a hot, stuffy room with bad reception. We were happy to escape and get back to our bus.

The show that night was an all male performance. None of the female performers were present. It was mostly music, and lots of fun. Here are two short clips from that show.

The steel guitar player with the country band was incredible.

Garrison loves to sing with band(s).


We ended our evening at the Italian restaurant on the ship where we had a very nice meal with our good friends, the Memphis mafia.

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Dinner was punctuated by a beautiful sunset.

In Cadiz the day before, the ladies had purchased "fascinators" and they all wore them to dinner. They looked ready to attend a royal wedding. I believe they started  trend board ship.

the ladies
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As we went to bed, we saw a lit up rock. Upon inspection with binoculars, it was indeed the Rock of Gibraltar. I took a picture with the telephoto lens. A long exposure and a gently rocking ship made for a blurry picture.


© Charles Eklund 2012