Rivers & Roads

To get to Fez (as you may know from my last post), we flew from Barcelona to Sevilla on Monday night landing at about 9:00p.m. A group of about 20 of us just roamed the streets, finding the few restaurants and bars that were still open until about 4am when our bus was picking us up.  From Sevilla we drove about 2 hours to Algeciras to get on the ferry which would cross the Strait of Gibraltar. I had always wondered if you could see Morocco across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, and guess what... you can! They are only about 9 miles apart, but this takes at least 2 hours by boat. Even though I was only running on two hours of sleep, I stayed awake the entire time on the ferry because the views from the deck of the boat were amazing. Once we crossed the strait and docked in Tanger we got back on the bus for another 5-6 hours to get to Fez. A common theme you will find throughout these Morocco posts is the small/large things my program, ISA, really should have done better. For example, we learned once we were on the bus that a large group of ISA students bought plane tickets from Barcelona straight to Fez for 22 euros and arrived at the same time as we did but did not have to spend their whole day traveling. ISA could have saved themselves and us so much money if they had just had all of us buy our own tickets to Fez. But either way we arrived at our hotel, which was surprisingly nice, at about 6. Dinner was included at the hotel and was very delicious (or so we thought...details to come in the second post). They had rice, couscous, chicken, fish, and lots of fresh fruit and veggies that we were not supposed to eat because they are washed with the tap water which we were told very strictly not to ingest. 

The next morning we woke up at 7 to get to the main medina in Fez by 9. ISA did not really prepare us for what we were going to be doing here in the medina (Fun fact: 250,000 people currently live in the medina in Fez). We knew we would be walking around and shopping but we did not know that our tour guide would be taking us to specific shops where we would get a long tour and explanation, which was great until a group of men would corner you in a small room and practically force you to buy something. I have very mixed feelings about what we did in the medina. On the one hand there is no way I would have ever been able to find my way around the maze of tiny winding streets to find a store for scarves or jewelry but I also felt because we were American we were almost required to buy something in every store we went to. In total we went to a carpet store, a jewelry story, a spices/cosmetics/herbal store, a scarf store, a leather store, and a ceramic store. Everything in each store was so beautiful, the colors and the materials were so entrancing I wish i could have bought all of it but the prices were not as low as I had expected them to be. We were told to barter as much as possible but it was a strange feeling bartering with these people who put their whole lives into these crafts and are selling them for what in the United States would be considered a very cheap price but because we are in Morocco it is considered way over priced. But then there is the question of whether what they are selling us is real. Are these carpets really made of silk? Was this scarf really dyed from a poppy flower or saffron? Is this bracelet real silver? It is so hard to know at the end of the day whether or not you are making smart purchases and our tour guide who was supposed to help us was very clearly getting some sort of commission from whatever we bought, so he was only encouraging us to buy.

After about 4 hours of shopping we got to eat an amazing lunch. It was similar to our dinner with platters of rice and vegetables and then chicken that was probably killed out back about twenty minutes beforehand. The freshness definitely made this the best meal we had the whole trip. After our lunch we made our way back to the bus as little kids followed us the whole way out, grabbing onto our arms trying to sell us jewelry and candy. As I sat on the bus, looking out the window watching all of the locals watch us I could not help but think how insane and how fortunate I am to have been born into the life I have. I know it is incredibly cliche to be saying this, but its true. I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I had been born into a family living in Fez or a tiny town in the middle of the desert. It really makes you question and appreciate the life you have.

 In the end I am very happy with what I bought, and the whole exposure to Fez and seeing the way these people live was a really eye opening and beautiful experience overall. Here are some photos: