Chefchouen

I had loved the blue-walled Kasbah of the Udayas so much, we decided to head to the high Riff Mountains. There's a lovely town there called Chefchouen, and the medina is known to be awash in shades of blue.

This is the lovely part of unplanned traveling. You go where you want, when you want.

We were trying to stop in a notable bird preserve on the coast called Moulay Bousselham, but it ended up pouring rain for a few hours and the visibility was crap. Plus, I had not a single waterproof item in my pack. Ah well. Sorry birds.

The Rif Mountains are kind of a sketchy place. I wouldn't have wanted to break down in them, or stop for food or a pee break.

You see, about 1/3 or the world's marijuana is grown in these mountains. It's the ideal climate for it, and it grows, well, like weed tends to do. It's everywhere. So one thing that was noticeable right off the bat is that the people here seemed to have a bit more money and means than, say, the villages in the Atlas mountains. Despite being completely remote, there wasn't as rampant poverty here. Although it is illegal to grow and sell, a blind eye is turned and the trade is tolerated, as these mountain villages have a long history of being exempt from Moroccan law. The majority of product gets processed into hash and smuggled into Europe by boat. So there is a drug lord presence here- Spanish, Italian, and French. We got a whole lot of mistrustful glares and bad vibes from the locals.

The area was beautiful though. It rains quite a bit more here than the rest of the country, and there are still old pine forests on the hillsides. There was constant pockets of fog and low clouds giving the place an otherworldly appearance.

Finally, Chefchouen.

The light fades fast in the mountains, and the color blue doesn't photograph at night, so we woke up early to take advantage of the gorgeous light hitting the medina.

The sunrise was spectacular. Worth getting early up for.

The medina here was amazing. Not only was everything painted one of three shades of blue, but the streets were narrow twisting staircases that wind up the side of a mountain.

It seems like this cat got into something.

A good navigational hint is that if the ground is painted blue, the street will dead-end. I didn't even have a map of the medina. It was great fun getting lost, and when you wanted to find the main square, you just go down hill until you can't anymore.

It's one of those towns that gives you quite the workout just to get around. We saw a lot of elderly, with canes, making their way with their shopping bags up the steep stairs. I really felt for them.

Aside from Arabic, they speak Spanish here more than French. This area was traditionally held by Spain. I had a conversation with a shopkeep where I asked questions in French, he answered me in Spanish.

Obviously, there were no cars or motorcycles in the medina here. They used donkeys to get goods to the top of the hill.

Or you just have a very strong back.

The old Kasbah near the town square had the best views of the town.

While it gets quite crowded here in summer, in January, we had the town pretty much to ourselves. We were the only ones staying in the hotel that we had booked.

We were offered hash quite a bit, but never aggressively. No one hassled us. The only other tourist we saw were some hippie types wearing clown pants and scraggly dreadlocks.

Not only was it a picturesque place to stroll about, there were lots of fantastic little shops as well. Spices, soaps, cosmetics. The good stuff.

I took advantage and stocked up.

Especially on the spices.

Moulay Idriss

The sheep, being brought home at the end of the day. Traffic on the road can be held up for quite some time in the early mornings and late afternoons.

Not far from Volubis is the hilltop town of Moulay Idriss. It's a sacred place for Moroccans as this is where the first seeds of Islam were planted in area. Most of the sites here are to be seen by Muslims only, but we were just really hungry for lunch and didn't care so much about being unwelcome.

We got there just as a big storm cloud came tumbling over the mountain, giving the place a much moodier glow than it should.

Workers were coming in from the fields, their donkeys laden with Olives.

But ah, what is that smell? Whatever it was, we wanted it.

It ended up being lamb kebabs.

For about $20 USD, we had lunch for 4 people at a little square-side cafe. Olives, bread, kebabs with lovely spice sauce, and a bunch of mint tea. It was simple, but excellent. Exactly the kind of food that you would hope for while on the road.

Bliss.

Fes

...or Fez, if you must. Yes, it's where the little hats were made. Not so much anymore, but the name stuck.

Back across the middle Atlas to the city of Fes.

It was a beautiful ride, with lots of snow. There's even a European-style ski resort up there, and it's surrounded by an unexpected pine forest.

We were meeting a group of our friends in Fes. Original plans of spending the whole time together in Morocco went awry, so we ended up hanging out mostly in Fes. Which was fine. Fes was a great place.

Like Marrakech, it had a beautiful old médiéval medina, with lots of twisty narrow streets and souks.

It was a bit smaller than Marrakech and I just got an all around better vibe from it.

The ancient city gate.

The souk was easy to navigate. You go down the hill and the stink of the tanneries hit you, and that's where all the leather good can be had. Go up the hill, and you get carpets and food.

And did we ever.

We found a lovely, funky cafe called Clock.

After a long, ravenous lunch I decided that I would probably move in if they let me. Eventually, it was decided that the cooking class that I wanted to take (I try to take one wherever I may roam) would most definitely be in the kitchens here.

Everything we ate so far had been good, but this was a step above.

The staff was as nice as could be as well...

and there was a Camel burger on the menu. It tasted a bit like mutton.

More about the cooking class later.

Outside the grand palace, we found a souk for the locals. It was packed with locals and much more fun that the main souk in the medina. You are expected to haggle here. We had an Arabic speaker in our group (sneaky), two Chinese speakers, and four of us spoke French, and we all spoke English...so in between the 5 of us we could communicate what kind of price the locals were getting, and what kind of price we were willing to commit to. You know you are going to be paying more than the locals. It's not a tourist tax per say, but more of a "you are wealthy enough to travel here, you can damn well afford to pay a couple bucks more for that" tax. Some of the handiwork was astounding. Embroidery on handmade shoes, leather bags and belts. The shoes ended up being bargained for less than $20 US for a pair, and some really nice handbags for about $50. It's a great place to go shopping. The souk ended up spitting us out into the old Jewish Quarter, which is really no longer of anything. We found a synagog Aben Danan, and for about $2, a very old man was happy to show us around. Judaism in North Africa is very slim at this point. This used to be a thriving community all over Morocco, but the only thing he could show us were pictures of cemeteries and ruins of synagogs in different parts of Morocco. Outside, the palace. It was pretty damn opulent.