Madness in Marrakech

Marrakech was a definite change in pace for us. We’d come from sleepy towns and small medinas into this crazy, bustling city where at any moment, you could be run over by a motorbike or end up with an animal of some sort dumped on your shoulders.

In the main square, Djemaa El-Fna, snake charmers play their flute music to raise the heads of their cobras, while others drape snakes across the shoulders of unsuspecting passers-by. Embarrassingly I was frightened enough when a vendor shoved some wooden snakes in front of my face hoping for a purchase. He giggled when I let out a little scream! Josh and I later got sucked in to having an actual snake draped around us though I have to say Josh was a tad more scared of the real thing than I was.

<Photo courtesy of snake charmer!>

There are others trying to dump monkeys in nappies on your shoulders. There are henna tattooists, musicians with dancers spinning around the tassels on their Fez to the beat and men covered in gold bowlsand multi-coloured conical hats made out of wool hoping to get their photo taken for a price. There was also a man with a hawk, a hamster and a hedgehog. I’d heard about the man with the hedgehog from Bruce, and I went on a massive search to find him. The first night he’d packed up and gone home, but I found him on the second night and gave him some dirham to feed his hedgehog.

In the morning, Josh and I were the only two who wanted to get the early bus into town, so we explored the city together. Palais Badi was our first stop – old palatial ruins with palm trees and moss-covered water.

We then visited the Tombeaux Saadiens (tombs),

followed by Palais Bahia, which was more ornate and better preserved than Palais Badi.

The next day I visited the Merdersa on my own and was lucky enough to share it with only a few other travellers at the time.

I also did some shopping and ended up with a Fez with a spinning tassel and the most amazing old Berber shoes coated in metal and with a serious curled up metal point at the front.

Two purchases I didn’t make were the ‘Bush chasing Osama’ railroad game and a set of false (or real!) teeth.

The Djemma El-Fna starts to change at around 3/4pm. Performers tend to replace some of the vendors, telling stories and playing music, and a massive ‘hook the ring around the coke bottle’ game comes to life in the centre.

Street vendors start setting up their food stalls and plumes of smoke begin to rise from their stalls.

The orange juice vendors are a constant and at 4 dirhams (about 50 cents) per glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, it’s hard not to have several throughout the day.

All of the ‘interesting’ food though, only comes out after dusk. A few of us went on a hunt for the exotic, but started out quite tamely with snails.

Then the fun started. The boys ordered a sheep’s head which promptly got cut in half before they started devouring it – cheeks, tongue, brain, and the eyeballs. Shaun and Guber had an eyeball each and struggled to keep it down! After a few minutes to breathe in between, we headed for a stall with cow’s tongue, and somehow I ended up being convinced to try some. It actually didn’t taste bad at all; it was more just the thought of the cow’s tongue touching my tongue that grossed me out the most!

The boys went on to eat tripe and also struggled to keep that down, whilst the rest of us had some ‘normal’ food at another stall. Surprisingly though none of us were ill the next day.

One experience I didn’t share was going to Pacha nightclub which some of the boys did. It’s meant to be based on the club in Ibiza, and it’s also meant to be the largest in West Africa. As it turns out, it was a very expensive venture – 200 dirhams (in off season) to get in and the cheapest drink was 100 dirhams. Many of the women there were also ‘for sale’ – you can tell as apparently they all say their name is Sarah!