four dynasties, one weekend

If there’s a Moroccan “Delhi Belly” equivalent, then I definitely had it this weekend, making our excursion to Meknes and Fes less than enjoyable. I won’t go into details, but suffice to say it was very uncomfortable.

This weekend was our Four Dynasties in One Weekend whirlwind tour of the cities of Meknes, Moulay Idriss, Volubilis, and Fes. We took a bus tour through Meknes, where we were the Tourists. It was very strange: I’ve spent the last few weeks trying not to look like a tourist, because I do actually live in the Medina in Rabat, for a while at least. We only got off the bus to snap photos (and cause one minor traffic accident) and then piled right back on. We stopped at Bab Al-Hamis (the Thursday Gate), Bab Al-Mansour (the Glorious Gate), the granaries of Moulay Ismael, and the mausoleum of Moulay Ismael.

Bab Al-Mansour

granary of Moulay Ismael

mausoleum of Moulay Ismael

Our next stop was the town of Moulay Idriss for lunch. This place was beautiful, but not big enough for our tour bus. Our driver must have had balls of steel to take that bus where he did; we nearly squashed townspeople against the walls of buildings we passed. Moulay Idriss is in the Middle Atlas mountains, situated in a steep valley right on the border between the rolling agricultural lands and the mountain slopes. It reminded me of Great Sand Dunes National Park actually, the way you could see it from miles away, cozying up against the mountains. Jess thought so too.

Moulay Idriss

After lunch at a restaurant I’m sure depends on the tourist trade, we lurched our way down a road more accustomed to donkeys than tour buses. Giant agave plants, sheep, and olive trees were scattered along the hillside. The agave plants sometimes serve as fences (or maybe boundary markers?) so lines of them march up the mountainside.

sheep and agave on the hills of Moulay Idriss

The Roman town of Volubilis sits at the foot of Moulay Idriss, on a slight rise about the rest of the valley floor. As our tour guide mentioned, the Romans really knew how to choose their sites: there are springs in the hills nearby that were accessed by aqueduct, the land is extremely fertile, and you can see for miles and miles in all directions.

a view of Moulay Idriss from Volubilis

Volubilis and the surrounding countryside

our guide in Volubilis

It felt kind of strange being able to scramble over a Roman town with no restrictions. Most of what you can see has been reconstructed by archaeologists from the ruins of the town (it was destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of…um…a long time ago), so some structures have modern bricks for walls, and column tops have been placed on the bases with no trace of the actual column in between. It was such a peaceful experience to be able to ramble about in the early afternoon. There were however, some pretty serious clouds bearing down on us and it did rain a bit. The whole situation reminded me of Spirited Away, and how there’s this abandoned theme park in a grassland, but at night it lights up and becomes inhabited by spirits. If you think I’m being weird, go rent the movie.

Back on the bus for the ride to Fes. It was the most glorious bus ride I’ve ever had. If you can imagine the green fields of Virginia unrolled over the Green Mountains, you can get some idea of how beautiful the countryside in the Middle Atlas is. Now I just have to think up a subject for my ISP (individual study project) that will allow me to hang around the Middle Atlas for a month. The white buildings and minarets of distant towns stood out against the verdant fields. This just reaffirms the fact that I’m not a city girl. I can’t wait for the rural homestay, and hopefully I can stay in the countryside for my ISP.

Once we got to the hotel in Fes there was a mad dash for the showers. I’m pretty sure we upped the per capita intake of water in Fes by 50 liters.

Dinner was at another tourist restaurant, but this one included an evening’s entertainment. When we arrived there was a small ensemble playing (traditional?) music, and after dinner was served there were dancing musicians, a dancer, a small musical ensemble with dancers, a magician who address the audience in four languages, a belly dancer who did things with fire, and a wedding reenactment. Several of us agreed that this smacked a little much of Orientalism.

This morning we had a walking tour of the Medina of Fes. It made me glad that we’re staying in Rabat. First of all, it’s a labyrinth: I would have gotten lost in probably ten seconds flat. The roads aren’t even wide enough for a tiny car, and some barely wide enough for a single person. It was like an urban Howe Caverns (Google it if you’re not from upstate New York). I liked it because every little space had been used, like some kind of 3-D Tetris.

Fes medina

Because cars can’t fit, people use donkeys and mules to get around the city, which means quantities of donkey and mule poo in the roads. People leading their animals yell “Balak!” in the street, which translates roughly to “Get out of the way or I will run you over with my smelly equine!” By the time a second “Balak!” is verbalized, it’s usually too late and you are under the mule’s hooves, or so our tour guide told us. I am happy to report that nobody in our party was trampled today.

Few is famous for its tanneries, which made me never want to buy leather ever again. We climber up into a (obviously touristy) store that hade balconies from which one could view the tannery. We were given mint leaves to sniff should the smell overcome us. I had the leaves practically stuffed up my nose, a.k.a. it was VERY SMELLY.

tanneries of Fes

The bus ride back to Rabat was pretty short, because I slept the whole way back, and I got back to the house at 6:30pm. Amine was on his way out, Soukaina was at a friend’s house, and I have no idea where Al-Hajj was. Anyway, Hajja made me “un petit repas” (a small meal) for dinner, including potato cakes, a fried egg, some cabbage-olive salad thingy, and cream puffs…and tea and bread of course. We chatted for a few minutes about my weekend, and then when Soukaina got home we chatted a bit more and previewed some of my photos. I’m not used to all this familial attention.

Something our tour guide Ahmed said today stuck in my head: “No Medina without walls.” More on that later.