One drunken Thursday night myself and Flo decided that we fancied a wee trip to Africa and without much thought or planning we booked a mid-week vacay to Morocco. The return flights from Madrid to Marrakech were an absolute bargain, so props to drunk Kate and Flo because lets be honest, that could’ve been an absolute disaster. By the end of the week we managed to convince our mate Nina to tag along and the three of us set about roughly planning our African Adventure. Neither myself or Flo had ever visited Morocco before, but Nina had been there the previous Spring and looking back I don’t think we would have survived on our own. The two of us are pretty laid back kinda gals, but we probably would have had a fit trying to manoeuvre ourselves around the incredibly chaotic streets of the Medina. Lost tourists wandering aimlessly from street to street definitely became an everyday sight and even though we did our fair share of this, I can just imagine it being ten times worse without the help of our wee German Geographer.
As soon as we left the airport we were bombarded by different men trying to usher us into their taxis. These men didn’t turn out to be the actual taxi drivers, but instead the kind of middle man in the whole process. Their job was to negotiate the price and then drop us off with their partner who then brought us to our destination. However, there seemed to be some sort of misunderstanding along the way about the price. I don’t even remember the amount or anything because it was over six months ago, but basically the driver wanted to charge us more that the agreed fare. He got a bit aggressive, but that didn’t faze us in the slightest. We had agreed on a fare and we were sticking with it or heading back to the entrance where there were many more men to choose from. I think he was a bit shocked by how feisty we were and as soon as we stepped out of the car and demanded our bags back he backed down and finally agreed on the original amount. I think the best advice I could give to anyone going to a country where they haggle is to simply walk away. At the end of the day, they want to make that deal as bad as you want that cashmere scarf or that silver teapot and usually they give in and take your offer before they loose sight of you.
Basically it was like entering a completely different world. We definitely were no longer in Europe, but it was a good different, an exciting different. The streets were hectic as hell and the only way you’ll survive is sticking with a local, even though at times you think you’re about to get run over by a moped, a donkey and cart or even a car. Let’s just say there were little to no pedestrian crossings and Flo’s hands legit started to peel from the stress of it all. Like everything else, we only really got used to it when we had to leave.
The cultural differences were extreme but as I said before this made the whole experience more intense and intriguing. We did so many exciting things, visited some amazing places, shopped till we dropped (literally) and ate enough tagines/couscous etc to last us a life time. Instead of including it all in this post, I’m going to do separate posts on the things I enjoyed the most and those that I didn’t enjoy at all. As a whole, I adored Marrakech, even though I spent the majority of the three day trip with my mouth hanging wide open in awe/shock/excitement. As our stay was so short, we didn’t get to venture to the sahara or see the atlas mountains but without a doubt I’ll be back one day.
Wanderingthemap94 