Marrakech is different though. I'm wandering around the Medina and the souks a few days a week. I've been in my own home now for a couple of weeks but am still passing by the hostel for tea and meeting new people and heading out with them to explore the city from time to time. I'm also taking time to just chill out and watch Channel 2 - the movie network that shows english language movies with arabic subtitles. 'Friends with Benefits' did not help my arabic in the slightest.
So it's tough for me to come up with a story, or to wrap my head around what I want to say about this particular experience. I'm still experiencing it. So you'll hopefully forgive me if these next few posts seem to meander more than the alley ways of the old Medina. At least I won't be jumping out, grabbing your friends arm, hauling you both into my shop, and asking you why you don't want to buy something from me.
Not yet anyway. Wait till I finally get enough hits on this blog to add the ads and then who knows what will jump out at you from your gmail, or facebook, or whatever 'free' service you are using. Hopefully not penis enlargement pills. If that happens then I've clearly gone off the mark with my writing.
You know though, as I think about it, having just written 'penis enlargement pills' (now twice) I'd be curious to know if that does show up for anybody in all of their spam ads and visual detritous that invade our virtual lives on a daily basis.
And yep, that's what you're in for now. Digression AND meandering. We'll both be amazed if we get out of here before dying of scurvy.
On with it then.
I rolled into Marrakech about 8am on a Wednesday morning and immediately paid probably double what I should have paid for a cab. And that's with a warning beforehand. Incidently, two types of cabs in Marrakech. Little ones, and grand taxis. Little ones are little tan hatchbacks, that have a meter, and, even if they don't want to use them and negotiate a flat rate with you, are generally cheap. Cheaper than what? Cheaper than a grand taxi. That is a tan Mercedes four door sedan, and charges you a flat rate that is much higher because, afterall, they are grand. All that said, paying double what I would have needed to still amounted to maybe $5.00 more Canadian. Not the end of the world. You can't sit in a cab for less in Toronto.
Well, the taxi deposited me near the hostel. Near because Waka Waka is in the Medina and while there are lots of roads in that chaos where you can fit a cab, there are plenty where you cannot. And the hostel was on one of these roads, that was off another non-cab-sustaining road. The driver did an excellent job of gesticulating me in the right direction, his french being excellent and his english being poor, and my english being debatable, but my french being non-debateably virtually non-existent.
Conveniently a clairvoyant shop-owner, with just one look at me, knew exactly where I needed to go, and gesticulated to a man passing by to take me there as he was obviously (to the clairvoyant anyway) passing that way. So the man kept walking and I was shooed off to follow along in his wake. Now, I'd read about this sort of thing. He was going to show me where it was and then he was going to ask for money. This is pretty normal, and in fact it's recommended that if you're looking for help, just negotiate terms up front and then get on with it. If they tell you its free, and no worries or don't say anything, but then ask for something afterwards, then you're in your rights to politely say no and move on with your day. So, as I'm walking along I am preparing myself to 'just say no'.
10 dirham later I was knocking on the door of Waka Waka.
You might as well get a tour of the place now as it was my home for close to ten days, and continues to be my home away from home away from home now.
Around that central space are a few rooms on the ground floor, and a few more rooms here on the second floor.
After that you get to the rooftop terrace, where there is plenty of whatever the weather-du-jour being served up is, and where there is also plenty of space to idle away the day reading a book, chatting with new found friends, or napping.
Many choose to sleep up on the rooftop, a choice which has become less popular these past couple of weeks as Marrakech along with the rest of the south of Morocco, endures more rain than it has in over 50 years.
This is me trying to be arty and look for the story in the photo and failing brilliantly in the process. It's also just a look down from the terrace into the riad.
This is tea. Berber whiskey would be the nickname you hear alot. There is always tea. Tea is the social thing you do. You are welcomed into a home with tea. You are invited to shops to have tea, and then perhaps purchase a carpet but that is another story. There is alot of tea going around.
The tea most commonly served up is a mint tea, which is actually a green tea base with mint leaves added to it at the timing of steeping. It usually comes already sweetened, though you can get it straight up with cubes on the side, with not much of a weird look. While sugar is used alot, and my friend Abdul told me the other day that he is sure Moroccans per capita consume more sugar than any other country, the traditional sweetener for Berber whiskey are dates. And I've had it sweetened by dates, and it's a totally different type of sweet. And don't get me wrong, it's still crazy sweet, it's just not going to give you diabetes as quickly.
This is a tortoise, or perhaps turtle I still don't know the difference, that lives on the terrace at the hostel. I have named him Picard, as, to my mind anyway, he looks like Patrick Stewart.
So that's the place in a nutshell, but then again, it's not.
Given my poor research skills I'm not sure how I've gotten along so well so far, but for the most part, the hostels I've stayed in have been pretty chill. Nice, relaxed, quiet late at night. Happy drunk people yes. Stupid drunk people vomitting on you in your sleep no. I've had the opportunity to visit a few other hostels along the way as whoever I've met on whatever walk needed to pop by and pick up a jacket or whatever, and the atmosphere has been totally different. And the vomit story? Not nearly as uncommon as you would like it to be.
Waka Waka is not a crazy hostel. It is however the most social and active hostel I've been at. And sometimes when I was trying to sleep and the sound from the common area came through at 3am because there is no such thing as a regulated quiet time, well sometimes that kinda ticked me off. For the most part though I didn't care. I had headphones. Headphones are my friend.
Waka Waka has played host to some of the most fantastic group of people I have met thus far. You'll meet some of them over the next few posts. It's also got Hussein and his team, all of whom are wonderful, kind, helpful people. And I cannot speak enough about how great Hussein is. You may remember him hooking me up with his cousin for the tour writing gig. That kinda great.
Right, so that's the beginning of the Waka Waka part. What's the walk about part? Was I captured and made to travel by a rowdy group of Australians? No, though it's inevitable if you're travelling to not spend some time with those from down under. Did a dingo eat my baby? Not to my knowledge.
When I arrived the first thing I did was have tea, and eat some breakfast. They had me sit down and put it in front of me, so that's what I did. The next thing I did was start answering some questions from people around me. The usual questions of where are you from, where have you been, when did you arrive in Morocco, how long are you staying for, and that sort of thing. No names yet. Names tend to be one of the last bits of information you get from someone. Usually when they're leaving and you decide to be FB friends so you can perhaps meet up later in the day, week, month, life, whatever. The next thing I did was walk out the door with four people I had just met to discover what there was to discover in the snickleways of Marrakech.
And this became the pattern for a couple of weeks. Get up, eat breakfast, meet some new people, and walk out the door with them to explore something. Sometimes familiar places, sometimes new ones. So this is how I figure it'll be best to share Marrakech with you. One walk about at a time.
Later though, right now I'm gonna go make a tagine.
And then I'm gonna find out the difference between a turtle and a tortoise.
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