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.

Tree of Goats

You probably think this is a random posting title meant to grab your attention. But no, it's quite literal. On the three-hour ride from Marrakesh to the seaside town of Essouira, I suddenly punctuate the silence by yelling out, "There are goats in that tree!" One person behind me calmly translates this into French for his wife, and a couple people on the correct side of the bus look out the window with some mild interest. Meanwhile, I am lunging from across the bus to get our camera from the overhead rack and end up cursing my husband (and not silently, mind you) for not responding to this photo op with the same sense of urgency I feel. Except I don't say it quite that eloquently. I am now completely appalled that a) I have just seen a tree full of goats and have no photo of it and b) nobody else seems nearly as amazed by this as I am. What the hell is wrong with these people? How many trees full of goats have they seen? And I don't just mean goats around a tree, goats near a tree, or flocks of goats eating low-lying tree-like bushes. I mean something that looks like a child's drawing of a tree absolutely dotted -- from the bottom branches to the top -- with goats. It's like an apple tree, or an orange tree, except it's a goat tree. It's as if somebody has photoshopped a flock of goats onto a tree. Do you get the picture? Good. Because I don't!

To explain: my father worked for Kodak virtually his entire career, and we actually referred to the Eastman Kodak Co. as the Great Yellow Father. Cameras, photography, and getting the picture (or in this case, getting the f***ing picture!) are rather important. We might have just had major surgery and be limping with crutches while still partially under the influence of anesthesia, and the next second will suddenly be scaling a mountain to the get the right angle for a shot.

Here is the obligatory family photo of another family member taking a photo. By family law, there's one taken on every trip; in this case, of P taking a photo of the Green Wok Thai restaurant sign where we eat dinner once when we break down and give in to the girls who cannot handle one more night of cous-cous tagine.

I am profoundly disappointed about this missed goat tree photo all afternoon, and it doesn't help that we end up having a dreary, freezing outdoor dinner. By now, cold and completely dispirited, I am having a "bad traveler" moment, until we decide to walk to the fishing docks. The universe works in mysterious ways, indeed, because it is at this point that I suddenly stumble on what may be my favorite non-desert photo of the entire trip.

Cheered up rather considerably, I resume my normal enjoyment of the trip, and of taking photos, which sometimes means wresting the good camera out of Anthony's hands. Here's the same shot the next day, when I return to the scene of the crime, and others of the docks.

 

 

And some of the town's famous blue doors:

 

But it's not just the missed shot of the goats that gets my goat. It's also the fact that so many of the Moroccans don't like to be photographed. This is especially true of the more traditionally-clad folks -- women in burkas and men in djellabahs -- who are, of course, the ones I most want to capture. So it becomes a sort of personal challenge to get my camera ready, then try to look like I'm talking to Anthony or the girls, and surreptitiously take a photo from the hip. Usually, the results are not what I'm dreaming of:

 

 

 

I have better luck if I can take the photo before they look my way and notice. Just after the click, I get scolded frequently. I have yet to figure out why this young man is offended that I take a photo of his bread. It's bread.

 

 

After days of playing my personal game, I am finally rewarded with one not-award-winning-but-at-least-acceptable, from-the-hip shot of a burka-clad woman. Anthony calls me culturally insensitive, but given what I said to him on the bus, I can hardly claim offense.

A few days later, on our return bus back to Marrakesh, you better believe that I ride the whole time with a camera in my lap. Of course I don't really expect to see the tree of goats again; lightning doesn't strike twice. But unbelievably, there they are -- trees of goats. It turns out they love the argan trees here, and they climb up to munch. Whether the leaves taste better up there, or they just enjoy dinner with a view, I don't know. I can't ask them; they're goats. And so, while it is shot from a moving bus and may not be the best photo I've ever taken (heck, it's not even the best photo on this page), it is one of the most satisfying. Anthony asks, when he sees it, if I'm disappointed there's a tourist in the photo, taking pictures of the goats. And I can honestly say I'm thrilled both to have the picture and to see that there's at least one other person out there who thinks a tree full of goats is one unusual and memorable Kodak moment!

Old/New, Right/Left, Whatever

The cliché would be to say that Marrakesh is a land of contrasts. And the truth is that in a city that's been around and evolving for almost a thousand years, there's bound to be some old against new. These photos below kind of say it all. But I'm going to say more anyway.

 

An example of the ancient: the El Badi Palace which, frankly, would be more awe-inspiring if Moulay Ismaïl hadn't plundered virtually everything but the mud walls themselves at the end of the 17th century. The holes in the wall come from inserting the scaffolding in the mud as they create the walls. Then they leave the holes so that future renovations can use them. Generously, Ismaïl did not abscond with the holes.

An example of ...the ancient. When was the last time you saw so many (or any?) pay phones?

And more of the legitimately ancient... In this case, Bob is not your Uncle, but rather the way you pronounce "Bab" which means gate. The mid-12th century Bab Agnaou is the prettiest of them, leading into the Marrikesh medina, but the most fun to say is Bab er Rob. The Bab Agnaou gate leads you in right next to the beautiful Saadian tombs, which were built in the 16th century, walled-in, and then subsequently lost until World War I pilots spotted them from above. How you lose something this big, in the middle of a populated city, is a mystery; it's not like it's a Mayan pyramid overtaken by the jungle.

And here, a view of the 12th century Koutoubia minaret in the center of the old city, with a colorfully-clad Berber water-seller in front of it.  

My personal favorite of the old sites: the Ben Youssef Medersa. Built in the 14th century, it is no longer the largest Koranic university in the Maghreb (Northern African region containing Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria), but it remains just as stunningly beautiful as it ever was. The former students' rooms are small but look out onto this gorgeous courtyard. I've seen worse places to live in 21st century Paris.

Here you can see the embodiment of the national dyslexia. This sign clearly point to the right and say that the Majorelle Gardens are 200m to the left. Around 75% of the people we've asked for direction through the country have pointed right and told us "left" or vise versa. I actually looked up how to say these words in Arabic, thinking perhaps it sounded similar in a confusing way. But no, "left" is yaminan in Arabic and gauche in French and "right" is shimalan in Arabic and droit in French. So we have no explanation for this pervasive phenomenon.

The place itself is something of a contrast -- a garden first built by French artist Jacques Majorelle, then purchased and revived by Yves Saint-Laurent, who also opened a fashion musuem here. It's a haven from the honking and hubbub of the streets. Other than the swarms of tourists inside, that is. Very refined with an Occidental sensibility (it feels a little like being in a Monet painting) yet distinct Moroccan influences.