Visiting Fes And A Few Other Things

As ever, access to secure web sites is blocked at the marina here in Rabat so I am keeping a bit of a diary and may get it up later on. My Mother is staying in a Riad (a private house that has been converted to a hotel) and they have good wifi though I feel it would be a bit of am imposition on their hospitality to start hogging their bandwidth by uploading photos.

We have been doing the tourist thing in greater earnest for the last couple of days. It was great to welcome my Mother at Rabat-Sale airport last Thursday. We duly got her delivered to the Riad and then retreated back to the boat. There is no public transport to the airport so we had our first experience of getting a grand taxi and experiencing Moroccan roads. Taxis here are not as straightforward as they might be. Basically there are two types of taxi: Grand Taxi are typically rather beat up Mercedes and do longer distances including inter city transport. They are licensed for up to six people and there are a set of fixed charges. Thus when a driver has six passengers for a given place, they will split the fare between them and away it will go. Petit taxis on the other hand are typically beat up fiats or Peugeots and are strictly for local work and behave like a European taxi. Their local nature is underlined by the fact that the blue cars of Rabat are not permitted to cross the bridge to Sale and vice versa for the yellow cars of Sale. For westerners, the most disconcerting aspect of riding in the taxis are the seat belts. No one wears them though I have noticed that drivers in private cars do wear them. The wearing of seatbelts has now become so ingrained in our driving habits that it feels very strange to be looking through a cracked windscreen knowing that there is nothing to stop your head adding to the cracks should the car suffer even a minor shunt!

Anyway, on Thursday last, we duly engaged a rather taciturn man in a taxi and agreed the 150 Dihram for the 8 Km to the airport. We didn't feel like sharing so forked out the whole lot ourselves! Mother's flight arrived OK and a much more friendly young man Abdel Kader brought us back. We deposited Mother in her Riad where she was welcomed effusively and we used Abdel to deliver us back to the marina.

The next day was of course a slow one though we gleefully unpacked all the goodies Mother had brought down for us – things like oil filters which we have not been able to get anywhere! We also of course bored her with all the photos which are not good enough to inflict on the long suffering readers of this blog and waved various charts showing where we spent this or that night weather bound or where this or that powerboat annoyed us with their music and jet skis.

Finally, the time for some real tourism had arrived and we took train to Fes (or Fez). Moroccan trains are quite good though not the best at being on time. They are cheap though and the nearly three hour journey to Fes cost us 180 Dihram each which is the equivalent of about £13. The only trouble was that the train up was completely packed and we all had to spend some or even most of the journey standing in the corridor which we found intensely frustrating. Still, we did all get seats over time and by the time the train left Meknes, I had got one as well.

Fes is a large and very ancient city and was the capital of Morocco under the Merinid dynasty in the twelfth century. As with all Moroccan cities there is a Ville Nouvelle built during the French colonial period outside of the old Medina and then the original Medina is left in tact outside the classical French feeling city. This enlightened style of colonialism was pioneered by the first governor – a guy called Marechal Luyteney who must have been quite an Arabophile. Thankfully, his policies outlasted his time and Morocco never seems to have suffered under the French as other of their colonies such as Algeria did.

The practical upshot of Luyteney's town planning policies in Fes is that there is a well ordered city with wide boulevards and then, some kilometres away, you find a bewildering array of Medina with their Souks. Being inland, the temperature soars and also, being Ramadan, the taxi drivers are all rather tired and fractious. Still, after a two rides, we did find ourselves outside the Medina and we scuttled into the shade of the Souk. We were quite close to the very famous Merenid Kairouan mosque. We even found it but as it is slap bank in the middle of the Medina, it is impossible to get a view of the outside of it though the time it takes to walk around gives you some indication of its size. We wandered around the Souk some more and marvelled at the donkeys walking through as they seem to be the preferred method of bringing goods in still. Then, having exhausted those amusements, we took ourselves out into the glaring sun while trying to decide what to do next.

Being Ramadan, all the restaurants and cafés were closed and the only alternatives seemed to be to either try and persuade a taxi that we wanted to see another souk or to retreat to a hotel near the station and get some lunch. The second option won out. We therefore found ourselves a less grumpy taxi driver who took us on a typically breakneck race back to the Station. We found an Ibis hotel and rather shamefacedly partook of their highly international (read bland) lunch and even had a couple of sneaky beers into the bargain.

The train ride back was a much nicer affair. We were in plenty of time so managed to get ourselves some seats. It was also a lot less crowded though it was more or less full after leaving Meknes. I found the scenery fascinating. Fes is locating on quite a high plain between the Rif and Atlas mountain ranges which explains why it was so hot – it was touching 40 all day. The plain continued as far as Meknes though they seem to be able to cultivate vines up there as we passed a lot though the primary crop seems to be olives of which there were endless groves.

After leaving Meknes the train started a long descent down to the coastal plain. There was quite a narrow valley initially and with a river running through the valley providing dramatic greenery compared with the dry and brown fields where a few sheep were grazing. I was intrigued to see that there were still quite a lot of entirely manual farms down the valley with people using scythes and donkeys. Later on, the coastal plains held much larger and more mechanised farms.

The other highlight of the trip was that just as we were pulling into a station, the sun officially went down and silence ruled except for the rustling of bags and a concentrated munching sound of people thankfully breaking their fast!