Marrakesh Heat and Tea
After a long bus trip inland we find the municipal campsite which is another car park. But with hardly anyone there as the locals are on the coast and the tourists in hotels. Marrakesh is the classic Moroccan city with big square, crowded medina and towering minarets. The attention we’ve had since Tangiers has been a mix of friendly interest by Moroccans wanting to find out about us and half hearted attempts to get our cash. Marrakesh folk are relatively tourist hardened and see us as a get rich quick scheme, although after a while once they realise we really don’t have any money the guys are friendly enough and chat away in broken english or in our even more fractured french. It’s always guys as girls can’t be seen chatting to decadent westerners. Marrakech has the largest traditional market (souk) in Morocco and also has one of the busiest squares in Africa if not the world, Djemaa el Fna. The square bustles with acrobats, story-tellers, water sellers, dancers and musicians. By night food stalls open in the square turning it into a huge busy open-air restaurant. OK, I admit that that last bit came from Wikipedia which has a much better memory bank than mine, probably because Wikipedia never actually visited the main square in Marrakesh (or kech as it seems to be known now). I guess it did remind me that the medina is the old city and the actual market is the souk although often one and the same. Yes, the square was fairly bustling but Simon and I couldn’t understand the story tellers and avoided the water sellers. We did gorge on figberbers known by Baloo as the prickly pear. And do they have prickles! Small nasty little blighters. The sellers have hand carts full of them and pick them up with leather gloves, slice through the ends, not enough to sever them completely then slice along the fruit and peel back the skin with their knife. You then grab the succulent fruit and down in one never mind the pips or dribbling luscious fresh fruit and ask for another. To wash these down there are countless mint tea sellers. They have their ritual too. Tea, basically mint leaf hot water and sugar, is brewed in big pots and when ready a gaggle of punters gather round. The tea is extravagantly poured from on high into a glass. Don’t touch! Very bad form. The seller can’t serve it boiling hot so to cool it down they will pour between two glasses making a big deal about how far the drop is. Obviously the longer the drop the faster the cooling and the quicker they sell the tea. Although the main fascination is watching them at work. The sweet mint tea is very refreshing although it probably heats up as it goes through the air given how hot it is in the unforgiving square. Time to move to shade. We just about make it to a shady square with a few brave trees. Hotter than Third World’s album it must be 120 degrees in the shade. Real hot, in the shade.
Simon seeks shade...
... leaving me in the scorching sun to take his picture
Recovering from our heat induced musings we find further shade in the souk and wander around getting lost and found. Especially by people who seem to think we’ve so much dosh we need extra leather wallets. As the sun starts dropping we venture back to the main square to see those acrobats and dancers. Can’t remember too many of those but there are a lot of blue men - apparently Berbers who come in from the Sahara to trade leather from which they get their hue as part of the intense dyeing process. Also snake charmers which is extremely impressive and something we only thought existed in Carry On films. My memory is packing all this into a day but we probably drew it out over a few and spent time chilling outside the man made fibre oven in the car park, our nylon home. Putting into practice the souk type bartering at the camp site I swap my shorts for a lovely patterned blanket. Shorts are in short supply in Morocco and not surprising as no one wears them which was one reason for getting rid of mine. The guy who got them was happy but I bet my old shorts haven’t lasted as long as his blanket which although getting a bit holy has warmed me on many a Cornish night next the camp fire. In it’s pristine state with my beard and Simon’s straw hat I was the spit of Clint Eastwood looking moodily into the camp fire.
New lamps for old, or new blanket for old shorts in my case. Bargain!