I’m now back from my vacation and have jumped right back into the swing of work. This week, I’ll record a few of my favorite parts of the trip. You’ll note that the motorbikes in Marrakech will not be on this list.

My favorite places of the trip were the areas away from the cities and where I was either alone or with only my guide. There is something enchanting about large sand dunes in a moonlight glow. And a little off roading during hikes to waterfalls or up narrow slot canyons gives a walk a little more sense of adventure. I opted for a more physically demanding tour than most would choose, but even if you aren’t interested in hiking you will need to be ready for stairs when visiting most places in the country.

On the trip, I purchased a couple of Berber rugs. I saw a few that I liked and so I decided to buy them. Then it was a matter of agreeing to a price. It wasn’t the usual sort of dynamic with wild differences in valuation and I wasn’t eager to make it such due to the nature of the business as a cooperative. There was still some back and forth, though, done by writing numbers as a means of limiting the possibility of confusion. Then the call to prayer rang out from the mosque in the village. And that was that, with the price already more or less in the middle of where we’d started the discussions and the owner of the co-op making reference to the transaction being divinely ordained. We shook hands and that was that. I chuckle a little thinking about how the whole thing played out.

The two most memorable and enjoyable meals on the trip were the two meals where I did the least. In both instances, I just went exactly where the guide told me, sat down, and let the guide order for me. One was near the main square of Marrakech. The place was unassuming and I probably would have just walked past it, but Salam stopped and told me this was where I needed to eat lunch. The oven was actually built into the ground, and there were several lambs being cooked. I had both some lamb meat from this kiln style oven and tangia, a beef dish slow-cooked in a covered clay pot with all kinds of spices. I ate at a single communal table in the back of the restaurant stall alongside people of multiple nationalities and sprinkled the lamb with the mix of salt and cumin that was on the table in front of me. It was great, and the tangia was even better. The other was on the drive back into Marrakech on the last day when we stopped at a roadside food hall of sorts. There was one stall for the butcher and another stall for the cook, running two different businesses. It was Friday so other stalls were closed, but on any other day there would have been a place for drinks open and a pharmacy too. I had meatballs and Moroccan salad, but what made it special was sitting there on the plastic chairs being the only white person surrounded by people eating, drinking tea, and having a pleasant if late lunch.

My guide was also a celebrity in Morocco. Everywhere we went people came up to him and spoke with him or asked to take a picture with him. He started publishing videos during COVID and now has a few hundred thousand followers on the various platforms. It was funniest at police checkpoints, where the police would often stop him but only to talk; there was only one time where the officer even asked for his ID. The videos are all in Moroccan Arabic, but I actually took or recorded some of his most recent content. Links if anyone is curious: Facebook; Instagram; TikTok; and YouTube.