Horseback Pirate Happy Cookies

The seaside town of Essouira is known as a pirate town, but besides the canons at the fortresses, this is the only evidence of piracy I see.

It's a fishing town (fitching™ town?), with a hefty dose of "alternative" tourists (the ones who want Waikiki head up to Agadir) and historical remnants. It was a Portuguese stronghold in the 16th century, then Morocco's main trading port and link to Europe, then a French protectorate in the early 20th century till independence in 1956.

But by now, after nearly two weeks of cultural enrichment, the girls are a bit ho-hum about tourist sites and are thrilled just to play in the sand. It's not as perfect as the Sahara, but it makes for much better sand castles. You can see the architectural effect of our trip on their creation, which is 3 parts kasbah, 1 part ksar, and 1 part skala (coastal fortress).

The laid-back vibe and soft sand turns out to be ideal for perfecting an acrobatic street act. It becomes a huge gymnastics/cirque-du-soleil free-for-all which, if you know my girls, is just about heaven on earth. They're torn between staring and showing off their own tricks.

 

It's the kind of town where people come up to us repeatedly with trays, trying to sell us cookies and cakes. One asks if we want "Happy Cookies". I can't tell if he's trying to make them sound cute for the kids, or if they're laced with something, and he thinks all tourists are degenerates who would feed spiked cookies to their young children. After all, this is known as a kitesurfing town...

To round out our trip -- now that the girls have ridden their first camels, donkeys, mules, and even recently elephants -- we sign up for a horseback ride on the coast.  G has gone horseback riding before, but never in a setting like this, and it is P's first time ever. She is allowed to ride by herself only for a few minutes, and only Anthony and I are allowed to trot and canter, despite the fact that we barely know what we're doing. We're going slow enough on our scenic ride that we are accompanied the entire time by two mascots: a dog and the world's cutest lamb (thereby ensuring G will never eat that, either).

And the very last thing we do on our trip, as in India, is to get henna tattoos. In this case, we bargain down from 80 dirham
(8€) for one tattoo to 60 dirham for all three. They take about half the time of the hennas in India, and cost twice as much, but they turn out much darker and last much longer. That, and the sheer delight the girls get from them, make them well worth it.

Naked Family Togetherness

On our last day in Marrakesh (also spelled Marrakech [officially, especially in French] or  Marrakesch [German]. It's the Hannuka/Chanukah of Moroccan city names), all G wants to do is visit a hammam. Traditionally, these are like the Turkish baths, and there are public ones all over the country. The problem with these is that the men and woman are always separated. The other problem is that while there may be some lovely, huge ones somewhere in the country (I'm hoping/assuming even nicer than the one I visited in Paris), the local public hammam is small, dingy, and generally smells/feels like a gross junior high locker room. With more naked parts sharing the same benches.

So after a little looking around and making the decision to fork over tourist prices (around 200 dirham [20€] per adult and half that per child, instead of 15 dirham [1.5€] at the public hammam), we end up at the Koutoubia Spa, where they start us off with the ubiquitous, obligatory sweet mint tea. Then, up in a small room on the rooftop, we all get naked and, in turn, a woman uses black soap to scrub us down for our gommage, then coats us with a light layer of mud and has us sit till it's our turn to be washed off. Clearly, to work here the women must be modern Muslims, since our lady is scrubbing Anthony's naked body along with the girls and me. The scrub is on the edge of painful, but the good thing is that it does get all those dead skin cells off. She must go lighter for the children, because they don't complain. Or maybe I'm a wimp.

Then we are wrapped in big robes and towels and brought downstairs where there are three massage tables. The girls share a table, and a masseuse, who can do each tiny back with one hand. They rub argan oil -- the local tree extract that's increasingly touted in Western beauty products -- and give us  lovely massages. By the time the lights come back on at the end of our half hour, little P is snoring away on her table, much to the amusement of all. It's just so darn cute.

Cameras aren't allowed in this -- or any -- hammam, so this is all I get -- a picture of the sign in the alley, next to the entrance door. Even then, I have to snap it quickly, as I walk by, because the person standing in the door doesn't want me to take the photo. Perhaps because it's such a risqué job?

If you're ever in Marrakesh, I recommend this hammam for somebody who wants an interesting cultural experience without having to get too authentic, if you know what I mean. 

1001 (dollar) Arabian Night

We are spending one night in the desert, and not just any desert but the Sahara, and not just any part of the Sahara, but the Erg Chebbi, meaning an area of huge shifting sand dunes. This is the stuff of legends, of Lawrence of Arabia, of Ali Babba --the exact image you picture in your mind when you think of the Sahara.

 

In order to get there, we have to leave our rental car in the village of Erfoud, where we are picked up by a 4x4. In theory, we could drive ourselves there if we had rented a 4x4, but once we see what the drive entails, we're quite happy to be passengers. Given how much we've been lost on the regular roads (already about four times, and we only rented the car a day ago), and how there are no signs or indications of where to go out here in the desert, we almost certainly would get lost. It's basically an endless expanse of dry ground, with various car tracks going into unknown direction. The driver does not simply follow one track; he mixes, he matches, and sometimes just makes his own. And then there are the areas of soft sand, in which we get a bit stuck. Better our driver, who is completely unfazed by it, than us.

 

We are driven to the Xaluca hotel at the edge of the desert in mid-afternoon, where we are given mint tea, and taught how to wrap our scarves -- specially bought in Fez for this purpose -- into turbans. Sure, white would be more Lawrence of Arabia. But why buy white, when we can buy blue, purple, and green, with orange and metallic silver stripes? I'm sure this is what Berbers of old would have worn if they'd had the choice. Or, if they'd been little girls from San Francisco.

Once the day cools off a little, we get on our camels for a private two hour sunset ride, led by Ibrahim. He takes us up, up, up into the dunes, where we get off the camels and play for a while in the sand and watch the sunset. They wake us up around 5:30am the next morning for a brief sunrise ride, too. So that's two more camel rides than I've ever done in my life. The camels lumber along slowly, rocking us from side to side. The scenery is unbeatable. The weather, too. We've lucked out; we're told that as of a couple weeks ago (early April), it was still cold without the sun. And then in about two more weeks (so mid May), it will be in the mid-high 30s (that's 90 to 100°F). And in the summer, it regularly reaches 120°F and higher and can get up to 170°F! For us, it's just perfect right now. Warm enough to be comfortable in a T-shirt and to walk barefoot in the sand, but cool enough to wear pants or cover up from the sun.

 

 

Here is our obligatory "Water! Water! I need water!"-I'm-pretending-to-be-dying-of-thirst-in-the-Sahara photo. Seriously, you are not allowed to leave the desert until you have taken a version of this photo. If you don't take the photo, you will be left there to slowly desiccate and/or decompose in the dry sand after -- ironically -- you actually do die of thirst.

 

 

Look! Tiny scareb beetles and their tiny tracks. This is the only living creature we see in the dunes.

Anthony is practically giddy with the joy of how awesome this is. In fact, we all are. It's like living inside every desert movie you've ever seen. We grin the whole time ear to ear, and the girls thoroughly enjoy the most "hunormous" (P's word), perfect sandbox in the world. They tirelessly run up and down, up and down the dunes ("dooms" according to P).

 

 

Thank God we have camels to take us back to our tent. And oh, what a tent it is! We have a full bathroom, beds, and all lined with exotic fabrics and rugs. It cracks me up that I worry about sun coming in our windows in San Francisco and fading our Oriental carpets, and we take our shoes off in our house to make them last longer; here, they've lined the desert floor with Oriental carpets sitting out for who-knows-how-long in the Sahara sun and sand. And they look beautiful.

 

It's not just a tent but rather an entire bivouac. There are two other couples staying at the same hotel bivouacs, but they are each in their own section, so we seem to have it to ourselves. Well, us and the amazing staff who absolutely love kids. They are taken with our girls, who keep adding more and more Berber words to their vocabulary, and in turn they keep taking our girls. Whenever we go to look for P or G, who they call respectively "Fatima Cous-Cous" and "Aisha Tagine", one or both girls are out with a staff member -- playing in the desert sand, getting henna tattoos in the kitchen from Zahora, dancing, singing. We have private concerts, private meals, and a private spot to view the velvet black, perfectly clear nighttime skies chock full of brilliant stars.

 

 

They serve us an exquisite meal, with the most hunormous chicken/vegetable/cous-cous tagine I've ever seen. We eat only a small portion of it, and I would feel bad about the waste, except that we realize afterwards that the staff eats what we leave over -- in this case plenty for the half-dozen staff members, guides, and musicians that seem to be here just for us. Breakfast is also plentiful and delicious, and they go out of their way to make us eggs along with many customary breads, fruits, and yogurts, since the girls have said they missed eggs for breakfast.

 

Which bring me to the title of this posting. This is luxurious decadence, indisputably. And add to that the fact that's in the middle of the desert, so they know they've got us. There are a few other bivouacs, possibly cheaper, but a) we didn't feel like doing all sorts of research, and this one came heavily recommended and b) when we see the other bivouacs in the distance, they're walking out to the desert instead of camel riding, or going in large groups. We're very happy with our complete and utter hedonism for the night, especially because this was the original idea for the splurge/gift from Anthony's inheritence. At the time I arranged this (at Anthony's urging: "When else are we going to be in the Sahara desert riding camels?! Let's go big!"), of course I did not know about the spontaneous carpet purchase Anthony would also attribute as his parents' gift. Yes, we will have those carpets forever, but I have to say that our trip to the desert is also something that will stay with us for life. It is just a breathtakingly perfect 24 hours.

The Bill for a Legendary $1001 Arabian Night:

Round-trip 4x4 chauffeured ride to the desert                                       90€
Supplement for additional 2-hour sunset camel ride                             80€
2 adults and 2 children, one night, staying at the bivouac in the
     desert, meals and sunrise camel-ride included                                540€
Guide tip and supplemental beer/bottled juice fee                                 25€
Long distance phone fees to figure out why our credit card is
     being rejected (flagged because of the carpet purchase...)               5€
Rental car sitting in the parking lot at Erfoud                                        30€

For a grand total of                                                                               745€ or... $1001.