Think of Morocco and you probably think of medinas, kasbahs and beaches on the Med. For MAXINE JONESit was her destination on a drive that gave a glimpse of another world
MOST PEOPLE were afraid for me when I said I was driving to Morocco alone in my 1987 Citroën 2CV. Far from seeing the attraction, they tried to talk me out of it. I'm glad I didn't let them. The journey there and back took three and a half weeks and covered 7,250km, crossing from one civilisation to another in the half-hour ferry ride from Tarifa, in Spain, to Tangier.
I no longer had the friendly Irish accent of the satnav system to guide me. It had made driving through France and Spain a breeze, finding me a hotel in the maze of one-way streets of central Madrid and even reminding me which side of the road to drive on. It's Help Me button would have directed me to the nearest mechanic or hospital, had I needed it.
My companion was now silenced as I circled a roundabout several times, then followed a bus belching black smoke and headed towards Chaouen, in the Rif Mountains.
Chaouen was a dream world half- hidden in cloud, a jumble of narrow blue-and-white streets. It was raining, and the blue paint rubbed off on my bag. Cockerels lay displayed for sale on the pavement, their legs tied. Women in straw hats and brightly striped blankets squatted beside the few onions, oranges or bunches of herbs they had for sale. A mule carried its hooded owner, who sat astride flour sacks, texting. Tailors and weavers worked away in tiny booths. In one alcove hot coals were being stoked for the hammam. In cafes mint tea was poured from a great height out of ornate silver teapots. I took a room in the medina and looked down at a shamble of rooftops, each with a satellite dish.
On the road to Fez next morning I passed old men and young lads minding sheep, goats and cows. They would grin and wave at the car. I saw oxen pulling wooden ploughs and seed being scattered by hand. I passed cafes where horses and donkeys were tethered as if outside a Wild West saloon. Women bent under bundles of twigs twice their size would look up and smile as they heard the engine. They gawked at me as much as I gawked at them, and I was comfortable with this mutual curiosity.
Green valleys, mountains and plains were the backdrop of the drive to Fez, where I stopped at a high spot overlooking the sprawling muddle of the world's largest living medieval city. In the ugly new town I saw women drivers for the first time since arriving in Morocco.
It was getting late, so I checked into the Ibis hotel and read up on the old town. I read how to cope with the pullulating hordes, weighed up whether to employ a guide, noted how to evade pickpockets and avoid getting lost. I ate western food and drank beer, surrounded by fellow Europeans.
The Ibis and the delay were a mistake. I entered Fez the next morning to find it empty, like a stage where the actors had packed up and gone home. The shuttered stalls looked nondescript and shabby. The place was dead apart from a few food stalls. What I hadn't read anywhere in the guides was that Fez shuts down each Friday, the holy day.
I passed a mosque and a medersa (theological college), both founded by women, according to the plaques. The medersa was the model for the universities of Oxford and Bologna. I watched a boy and his father unpacking live chickens from a crate and paid the boy to take a photograph of him holding one up and smiling.
A petit taxi took me back to the Ibis. The driver had seen me driving around in the 2CV the evening before and was delighted. He got out to examine the car and offered to buy it.
The next stage on my route to the Sahara was the Middle Atlas town of Midelt. I took a wrong turn at Ifrane into a wild flat landscape with snow-capped mountains in the distance. I crossed the plain, climbed into brown hills and eventually came to a town named Boulemane. All the inhabitants were either in or sitting outside the mosque, the sermon spilling on to the square via loudspeakers. This was way off the tourist route, and I was eyed warily.
The road from here to Midelt turned into a sandy track, and for 90km I saw no sign of life at all, not a sheep or a shepherd or a mud hut. My mind filled the emptiness with disturbing scenarios, such as breaking down and never being found. There was in fact a knocking sound among the usual squeaks of the suspension. I sang Abba songs and breathed deeply to calm myself, but I felt way out of my comfort zone. Eventually a dusty village came into view, and the sight of drying washing restored my equilibrium. I rejoined the road I should have been on in the first place and drove into Midelt.
Dismayed by the apparent grimness of the town, I parked and walked in search of a hotel. Fifteen minutes later I was bouncing back up the road, laughing with two eager passengers, who'd come with me to locate the car and show me the way back to the hotel. Abdul was the receptionist, Havid a hanger-on, a befriender of tourists. They made me hoot at people they knew en route, which was more or less everyone, and soon the whole town seemed to be laughing with us.
My room, for €20, had a bathroom, a balcony and a great view. I had access to a computer and the internet, and the restaurant served a decent tagine.
Havid took me on a tour of the kasbah, defensive houses built into the hillside, mud walls turning orange in the sunset. His own, more modern house lay beyond, over rubble-strewn wasteland. Here his sisters and brother were watching television. He ordered a sister to make tea for us. Havid's cousin owned the hotel where I was staying, he told me, and he had a brother who had a hotel near the "ocean of dunes" on the edge of the Sahara. He flashed a brochure at me. Havid's cousin would organise a camel ride into the desert for 500 dirham (€45). I said I'd wait until I got there and discovered the going price. "Three hundred dirham," said Havid straight away.
Next morning he jumped in the car to direct me to the petrol station and cashpoint. He noticed the knocking I'd heard the day before and took me to his mechanic friend Mohammed. A part was broken. Mohammed didn't have the right part so customised one he did have. Off I headed towards Erg Chebbi – the ocean of dunes.
After a long day's drive I raced the setting sun to get to the outpost of Merzouga. Then I wasted time talking to young men on mopeds who said they wanted to help me. As darkness swiftly fell the likelihood of finding somewhere to stay seemed more and more remote. Guest houses lay at the end of unlit sandy tracks; there were no roads as such.
I lost my temper with the boys and stormed into a small shop where the shopkeeper, an old man, and a veiled woman were in quiet discussion. I demanded in French to be told where I could find a hotel. They stared at me blankly. I repeated my request. The woman put her palm up towards me like a policeman halting traffic, and I noticed intricate henna patterns. Finally the old man enunciated slowly as if searching carefully for the words: "Nous ne comprenons pas." We do not understand.
The boys on mopeds were still hanging around the 2CV, offering to help. I shooed them away and got into the car, which refused to start. You could hardly blame them for laughing at me. By now it was pitch black and very cold. The boys disappeared and the night thickened, punctuated by more stars than I'd ever seen.
I remembered Havid's brother and rang his number. He said he would send someone to find me. A car weighed down with six men stopped; they asked if I was okay. Fine, I said. Then a man on a moped asked to help. When I told him the name of the place I intended to stay, he said that it was way off the track and that the car would get stuck in sand.
I held on a little longer for Havid's brother. Then a third car stopped – a Moroccan man in his 30s and his Spanish girlfriend. He said I could follow them to a hotel he knew. They waited patiently while I revved the car and eventually got it to start.
Not far down the road headlights appeared to be following us. The car overtook. It was an envoy of Havid's brother. I told him, a little guiltily, that I was going somewhere else now. After animated discussion he left, disappointed, and I followed the others to the Nasser Palace, a friendly, laid-back hotel with a beautiful swimming pool. An en-suite room and dinner came to €30. I picked up a brochure and realised it was the one Havid had waved at me while singing the praises of his brother's place.
I headed out on a camel the next evening to spend the night in a nomadic tent. After two hours we came to the camp set up for tourists, whose main reason for coming to Merzouga was to do just this. The dunes were unforgettable. The silence and space were as heady as alcohol – and no doubt could become as addictive. I climbed to the top of a dune to watch the sun set.
Back at camp I talked to two young Polish men, one who'd lived in Dublin with an Irish girlfriend. A guide had brought them here from Midelt. The guide knew Havid, Abdul and Mohammed and was also, it turned out, a half-brother of the five brothers who ran the Nasser Palace. Berber clans are strong and interconnected, I was discovering.
The most scenic drive in a string of scenic drives was from Merzouga to Marrakesh, via Dades Valley and the High Atlas. I stayed in a riad, or traditional house, in the medina and ate soup for 30c in Djemma el-Fna, the city's main market square.
The next morning the car had footprints on the bonnet and dipping roof bars. The glass front of one of the headlamps dangled like a monocle, causing my heart to sink, but it snapped back into place, and the lights still worked.
The vastness of Morocco was beginning to dawn on me. I would not make it to Essaouira, as I'd hoped, but would have to start heading northwards on European-style motorways. (The difference was that people would regularly saunter across, hens and donkeys would wander alongside, and washing might be drying on the barriers.)
Rabat was the perfect shopping stop, an easy-to-negotiate medina where haggling is minimal. Then Tangier and the ferry back to Europe, where people and animals inhabit the landscape less visibly and much less colourfully, and food comes in plastic wrapping.
Where to stay and what to eat in Morocco
Where to stay
For between €20 and €30 I always found comfortable en-suite accommodation. If you go for the likes of Ibis you’ll pay three or four times as much and lose out on atmosphere.
Hôtel Chams. Rue Lalla Lhora, quartier Kharazine, Chaouen, 00-212-39-987329, chams.chefchaouen@hotmail.com.
Hôtel Bou Regreg. Avenue Hassan II, Rabat, 00-212-37-724110.
Nasser Palace. Ksar Hassilabied, Merzouga, 00-212-66-6039194, www.nasserpalace.com.
Hôtel Restaurant Chems. Boumalne du Dades, 00-212-44-830041.
Hôtel Boughafer. 7 Avenue Mohammed V, Midelt, 00-212-55-583099.
La Maison Rouge. 54 bis Derb Zemrane, Marrakesh, 00-212-24-380908, www.maison- rouge-marrakech.com.
What to eat
Tagines – meat and vegetable stews – were my staple, along with soup, unleavened bread and fruit. Breakfasts of pancakes with fresh bread, home-made butter and jam were delicious. Real food at low prices.
Who to go with
Plenty of “guides” will be available for hire. You can get by without them. I came across several foreigners doing exactly what I was doing but with a guide in tow who had convinced them there was no way they would manage on their own. If you have some French you’ll be well away, and even with only English you’ll manage.
For more of a holiday
Air France (www.airfrance. ie) flies to Marrakesh via Paris from Dublin and Shannon. Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus.com) flies to Agadir from Dublin between October and March. Royal Air Maroc (www.royal airmaroc.com) flies from London Heathrow to Marrakesh from €210 and to Agadir from €325, or from London Gatwick to Tangier from €217. Four- and five-star hotel rooms cost less than €20 per person per night for a BB, but you could pay as much as €2,000 per week for a kasbah.
Sunway (www.sunway.ie) has packages to Agadir using charter flights: fly today and pay €199pp for a week’s self-catering at the three-star Intouriste Aparthotel; the price on May 23rd will be €364. It also has a week’s holiday for two adults and two children, from July 4th at the four-star Agadir Beach Club, for €2,612.
Go there
Irish Ferries ( www.irishferries.ie) sails from Rosslare to Cherbourg, in France. Brittany Ferries (www. brittanyferries.ie) sails from Cork to Cherbourg. FRS (www.frs.es) sails from Tarifa, in Spain, to Tangier, in Morocco. Your passport can be stamped aboard, so you can hit the road more quickly once you reach Africa. Plymouth-dakar.co.uk is a meeting point for people interested in driving to Africa in old cars. Start dates are roughly organised and rooms booked in Tarifa, where people exchange details and form groups if they wish. Final destinations are in Mali and Gambia, where the cars are auctioned for charity. For the Morocco Off-Road Challenge, launched this year, participants travel in their own cars and drive back. Itineraries and off-road options are suggested, but there are no specific finishing points. Nominally part of this, I glimpsed only one other team after Tarifa.