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. 

Taking the Long Cut

One last trip before returning the rental car: les Cascades d'Ouzoud, or the Ouzoud waterfalls. The two hour ride from Marrakesh takes us four hours due to, um, let's call them "cartographical issues." However, once there, we enjoy ourselves, walking through meadows of wildflowers (the poppies here are used for red dyes in everything from carpets to pottery). The pool below is filled with colorful hand-made rafts, and of course this being Morocco, we do not sign any waivers or get waterproof ponchos with "Maid of the  Mist" logos emblazened on them. We simply pay a guy a few bucks and get paddled as close as is humanly possible to the base of the falls. An ice cream on the way out, and despite taking the long road here, we can call Ouzoud falls a success.

 

On the ride home, however, Anthony comes down with the second raging migraine of his life (the first was at the sand dunes in Ica, Peru about ten years ago). This means that I have to drive, which isn't such a big deal except that it's dark and too late to return the car to the airport, as was our plan. Frankly, we don't even know where the airport is. Since Anthony is eyes-closed in the passenger seat, desperately waiting/hoping for the Moroccan migraine pain reliever we've just bought to kick in, I don't have a navigator. That means that we'll have to drive back into the heart of Marrakesh's old medina to the parking lot we already know. Or, to be more precise, I will have to drive back into the heart of the medina....

Last night, Anthony was the one who drove us into Marrakesh, using his cell phone GPS to wind through the medina's labyrinth of progressively narrower and narrower roads (think alleys, with pedestrians, cars, and motorbikes...). Anthony drove very skillfully, confidently, and quickly, and the girls and I were somewhere between cheering like it a was a roller coaster and white-knuckling on the door handles. Finally, the road got narrower than the car, so we parked and had to walk the rest of the way. Before we could get too far, however, somebody noticed we looked out of place and stopped to help. Indeed, it turned out that the GPS had automatically changed the address from a "derb" (alley) to a "rue" (street) and directed us to the wrong part of town. We were so far off, we had to get back in the car, with our new-found Moroccan friend getting in and guiding us. He led us to a parking lot, and from there we walked about ten minutes through small alleys to our hotel, which we would not have found on our own in a million years. After giving our ersatz guide a big thank-you tip, we breathed a sigh of relief that we wouldn't have to drive through the medina again. If I had known that I actually would have to drive in here -- myself -- I think I would have been nervous all day. At least I'll always feel better about driving in NYC from now on.

Besides getting lost on our way into our Marrakesh hotel and the Ouzoud falls, we also got lost finding our hotel in Skoura (just outside town, with a little hand-painted wooden sign for the turn-off into what looks like desert wilderness), finding our kasbah hotel in Erfoud (we forked left out of town, when we should have forked right), finding the Cedar forest (going the wrong way at several roundabouts and having to backtrack), walking through the date palms of Skoura, and in the alleys of Fez. So, we actually have been lost in the (funky cold) medina, at noon at the oasis, and while rocking the kasbah. We did not get lost in the desert on a horse with no name, however, nor while riding on the Marrakesh Express, though we did get lost while riding into Marrakesh from the expressway, if that counts.

And for the record, Moroccan migraine pills, which contain codeine and are sold over the counter for a huge box for about $3, are effective.