شفشاون

Another fabulous weekend adventure! Yesterday morning, Saturday, I met up with five of my friends and we grand taxi-ed it all the way to Chefchaouen (a pretty tight ride for over four hours). On the way there, we stopped for a bit at a rest stop with a typical set up -- that is, huge sides of beef, and perhaps other tasty morsels, are hung out in the open for travelers to inspect and select, at which point your slab of choice is grilled in front of you.

Chefchaouen was one of the places that everyone in the know had recommended I see before I leave Morocco, and it certainly didn't let us down. The name literally means "look at the mountains." Indeed, the whole town, with a population of about 35,000 is located on a steep mountain in the High Atlas mountains. We spent virtually all of our time in the old medina, which is famous for being painted blue. Sure enough, almost every building, or at least the bottom half of it, is painted a pleasant periwinkle, and the doors and windows are often painted other shades. According to Lonely Planet, the blue was introduced by Jewish residents in the 1930s (accents were previously green), and perhaps for aesthetic reasons, it stuck. The medina is composed of steep, car-less cobbled alleys with few street signs (we came to know, or guess at, our way very quickly). It's a bit of a dream world: child-sized arches and soft, marshmallow-like houses are paired with bright pink flowers hung outside Aladdin-style windows. While we certainly saw other tourists, especially young backpackers, there wasn't an overwhelming amount of tourism and the residential streets of the medina were nearly empty. We had been forewarned that Chefchaouen, like much of the Rif, is the prime place for purchasing kif (similar to hashish) -- it did have a bit of a Woodstock-y feeling, quite often I caught whiffs of incense as I passed through, and there were some bizarre combinations for sale of traditionally woven blankets emblazoned with the marijuana leaf -- but the atmosphere wasn't pervasive. Chefchaouen was also quite different from the other places I've visited here so far in that the Spanish influence is quite noticeable. Everyone spoke Spanish, and as foreigners the first way we were addressed was always "Hola" insead of "Bonjour".

We arrived around mid-afternoon and went directly to lunch at a fabulous (and cheap) restaurant that appeared to be in someone's basement "Restrante Rincon Andalus". We didn't make any plans in advance, so we spent the next couple of hours exploring and also attempting to find a hotel with rooms available. We ended up staying in a pension unlisted in the guidebook, Hostal ValParadis. The cost came to $6 per person. The ground floor was the family's living room, where the teenage son (who more or less ran the business it seemed) and his little brother sat watching soccer. While we were doing paperwork, some (perhaps) friends of the family came in with a bag of fresh green figs that they shared with us. There were maybe 5 rooms total on the next two floors looking out onto an open area in the center of the building. Everything was painted eye-popping colors, and there were beautiful leather hassocks outside the rooms, but in terms of amenities, you don't get more than you pay for... the showers, one per floor, were actually just hoses on the wall of the bathroom (we didn't shower), the doors to the rooms didn't lock and neither did the tall colored-glass windows that opened onto the central open space; we also didn't get a top sheet or any blankets. But we just slept with our valuables under our pillows, and it was a fun experience.

What remained of the afternoon and evening was largely spent just meandering through the streets and eventually down to the main square, Plaza Uta el-Hammam, where there are lots of cute cafes. A little before sunset, we headed up to Ras El-Maa, a small waterfall and popular gathering place at the top of the medina just beyond the gate. Soaking our tired travelers' feet in the cool water, we were confronted with the Jebel El-Kelaa, the main mountain of Chefchaouen, right beside us. One of the things that has been very striking about Moroccan towns, and even cities like Rabat, is that every place has a definite end -- and then suddenly there is open countryside stretching as far as you can see: there is no sprawl. There was a shed where women were doing the family laundry using water from the stream and lots of shebaab lounging about on the bridge overlooking the falls. We attempted to find the nearby "ruined mosque" mentioned in the guidebook, but it became quite dark as we ascended a nearly pathless mountainside, then decided we'd better not risk arrest and headed back. It did provide us with a wonderful panoramic view of the lights of Chefchaouen at night, though.

For dinner (around 10:45), we returned to the Plaza to eat a candlelit feast on the second story of La Lampe Magique-Casa Aladdin, the mountain breeze blowing in through the open windows.

The next morning, we took it easy, grabbing some omelets at Uta el-Hammam and then exploring the restored Kasbah also on the square. Inside was a large, blossoming courtyard from which doors lead to the former castle jail, a gallery of pretty heinous contemporary artwork, and a small museum with local artifacts (traditional clothing, pottery, and musical instruments mostly). I climbed up to the tower, which was by far the best part of the Kasbah... it provided a stunning, 360 degree view of the town and the mountains (see pictures below).

Gelatos in hand, we spent our last hours in Chefchaouen doing a little shopping, meandering through the streets, getting lost in the streets, and watching a pair of goats gallop out of one of the houses before our very eyes, only to be chased back inside by a little girl. On one of the residential streets, a small boy was sitting outside with a cardboard box that he'd strapped to his body as a makeshift drum, and was practicing his beats. Throughout the town, we would peer into one of the waist-high open doors to see men with their hooded djellabas hammering away at wooden pieces, later to be painted in intricate red and yellow patterns, or bent over their tailoring.

We decided to try out the national bus system, CTM, for our return trip. After several complications, we managed to get tickets to Fez: I can't claim the bus was comfortable exactly (and of course no AC!), but there are individual seats, so we were all still in one, normally-shaped piece by the time we arrived several hours later.