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!

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.

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.