Paranoia

The bus ride from Fez to Chefchaouen was fairly uneventful….the usual lunch stop in the middle of nowhere where you can’t quite figure out what there is to eat but you know that there must be something because there’s men carrying around giant cow ribcages.

There weren’t too many winding mountain roads until the end, so there were less people vomiting into bags than usual. After about the first hour, the rain started, sliding down the windows of the bus for the whole rest of the trip.

We got off the bus to Chefchaouen in the middle of the pouring rain and were greeted by something unheard of in Morocco…no taxis. The other tourists from the bus hiked off into the rain while we huddled around our tiny Lonely Planet map and decided we probably needed a taxi. We joined forces with two Korean girls and hailed a minibus that we assumed was either some kind of taxi or some kind of guy willing to drive us for money.

He seemed to have no idea where we wanted to go, although it’s one of the main gates to the Medina and one of the Korean girls actually spoke reasonably good Arabic.

But we arrived at the right place, passed through the ancient gate where foot traffic only is allowed and tried to figure out the directions to our guesthouse. Every local man we passed asked us where we were staying and a few took a wild guess and claimed they were from Riad Baraka and would take us there. It was tempting to believe them when we were standing in a new city, hungry and cold. But we’ve been in Morocco too long now, so we told them to get lost and hiked up the street with them trailing behind us…. And actually found our guesthouse easily.

The owner of Riad Baraka, who is English, confirmed that the gate scammers are of course lying, and will take you on a half hour walk to your accommodation, via their friend’s carpet shop, then obviously demand money. The hilariously ironic part is that the scammers like to yell “paranoia” at you when you ignore their offers of help…we wondered if they would appreciate the Enemy of the State quote ‘it’s not paranoia if they’re really after you’.

The guesthouse would have to be the nicest we’ve stayed in here, with some amazing views from the roof terrace.

The town itself, apart from when you first enter the Medina, has a lot less hassle than Marrakesh and Fez, and the most famous feature of the city is its blue walled buildings, which make the Medina quite beautiful and unique.

We spent two days wandering around, getting mildly lost and enjoying watching people go about their lives.

(We also spent two days feeding our left overs to the dozens of scabby cats that hang around in the square and beg for food under the tables of the cafés. We took a particular shine to this little guy who reminded us of our cat Watson who is always trying to snatch things from our dinner plates – josh)

The other famous part of this region is the Talassemtane National Park, which is (kind of) within walking distance, although the best bits are a good drive away.

We attempted to hike up through the forest to a village, but despite the careful instructions from our hostel owner, we were pretty sure we had taken the wrong road. Josh thought my comment summed it up….”I don’t think this is the way… but it’s a way… to somewhere”. Either way, we turned around halfway there because it started raining.

(My wife has seen, but is unaware that she’s paraphrasing Bill Murray’s second best movie of all time, Groundhog Day – josh)

We got some great views of the town the next day…

…but you can’t look up at the sheer mountain cliffs too much because it gives you vertigo.

We also got offered a lot of drugs as this area is apparently home to the largest acreage of cannibis cultivation in the world. Josh noted that the number of tourists here with dreadlocks is not unrelated to this.

(Actually I’m sure the fact that 42% of the world’s marijuana comes from here is just a coincidence and all the hemp pant wearing hippies are just here for the strangely reasonably priced candy bars and tins of Pringles – josh)

Now after our very pleasant few days we’ll be getting on our last bus to go back to Casablanca to fly to Dubai