Planes, Trains, a 4X4, & a Camel - the Journey from Marrakech to Fes!

On a 10-day trip to Morocco, I decided to close out with a journey to Fes.  Fes is the 3^rd largest city in Morocco, located in northwest Africa just above the High Atlas Mountains.   It is famous for Fes el-Bali, the oldest walled part of the city and the oldest degree-granting university in the world, Al-Karaouine.  The Fes Medina encloses mosques, fountains, squares, and souqs (open-air market or bazaar or flee market).  However, I was interested in visiting Fes because inside the medina (old city) is a leather souq, the oldest leather tannery in the world!

With 5 new friends in tow, a driver and an English-speaking guide, we set out from Marrakesh to Fes - in a 4x4 jeep, I might add.  We journeyed thru Berber villages and across the Tizi-n-Tichka Pass, which literally means difficult path because it has so many switchbacks; thru the door of the desert - Ouarzazate (Wah-zaz-zatt) and across the Sahara Desert on a camel…a camel that I had to name!  We drove between the Dadès and Todra Gorges and thru more sand dunes to finally arrive in Fes! 

Berber Village

Tizi-n-Tichka pass

Ouarzazate

Meet Hanjee!

Sahara Desert

Todra Gorges

We all hugged and promised to stay in touch and my friend and I went on to our Riad, a traditional Moroccan house.  Our room was beautiful!  It was furnished with antiques and local crafts; it comfortably overlooked a lush courtyard garden and a pool.  Our staff was quite attentive.  Upon arrival they served us mint tea as we filled out our hotel documents.  Mint tea is the national drink of Morocco.  This green tea is brewed with lots of mint leaves and loads of sugar and is offered for every occasion – breakfast, rug shopping, or as an icebreaker to lure you into a shop and have a look at their goods!  We quickly settled in quickly then headed to the Hammam, a steam room where Moroccans go each week to catch up with friends and follow long rituals for cleansing their bodies.  As Moroccan people are very kind – tolerant to say the least, it was on the way here that we met a local that would guide us on a quick city tour the next day. 

Fes is the world's largest car-free urban zone and the city infrastructure is not necessarily prepared for tourism, especially English speakers.  It houses some 1,000 narrow, maze-like, passageways and dead-end alleys filled with people and donkeys and shops and more people and scooters and mules transporting goods to the many merchants, as trucks cannot fit.  The crowds are chaotic and each step is on cobblestone.  The adventures of walking thru the souq was like maneuvering thru rush-hour traffic on the busiest and most congested freeway in the United States – the I-405 in Southern California.  

Streets of Fes

Cobblestone

Oops! a dead-end alley! 

Walking alongside a donkey!

Finally, we arrived to the leather tannery!  We walked up step after step and passed floor after floor of beautiful handmade leather items.  We were heading to the terrace for a view of the dyeing process.  As we climbed to the top for a look, we were handed handfuls of mint to put off the smell of the rotting animal’s flesh and skin.  Here we saw numerous stone vessels filled with dyes and odorous liquids.  Men worked in unbearably hot conditions skinning animal hides and standing in the vessels manually soaking the rawhides in diluted acidic pigeon poop and vinegar then transferring them to other vessels with vegetable dyes.  The hides are then dried on the roofs of the Medina and cut into patterns and stitched into a final product.  Minus the smell, I was in heaven!   Where does a girl begin?  Slippers, bags, clothes, knickknacks…if you could describe it, they could make it – in any color – with a maximum of 1 day’s timing. 

After combing thru each floor, we both decided on a few items.  As Morocco is predominantly a Muslim country, women have a more conservative role than Westerners.  Knowing this, we set a strategy before entering the stalls that I would hold the calculator, thus the final say!  As the stall owners were not prepared to negotiate with a woman, I had more time to determine a fair price while looking at the goods uninterrupted.  Now comes the fun part – negotiation!  After close to a half hour of punching numbers into my calculator – converting from the MADirham to the Dollar and even walking towards the shop’s exit several times in order to get them to my price, we finally agreed and shook hands on a price for the goods.  As you consider buying goodies in the souqs of Fes, here are a few market bargaining tips that have worked for me:

1. EVERYTHING is negotiable!  Ask for the discount.
2. The “final offer” is hardly ever the final number; however, be willing to walk away if necessary.
3. Be patient, but firm! Don’t rush the process.  
4. Sometimes bargaining takes a little more time and effort. 
5. Cash is King and minimal cash is Queen!  It’s tough to persuade shop owners to give a discount when using credit; there are additional fees for those transactions.

Morocco is the kind of place one could visit a few times and it always seems like the very first time!  The equivalent of a 10-minute chair massage at Brookstone on the sales floor – in the airport!  It’s enough to immediately trick your back into believing the kinks are gone but then realizing on the next leg of the flight that you’ve got to go buy that chair!  As I board my train to the airport, I can’t help but think, “When will I return?”