Okay, so my title might be a slight exaggeration but I have never felt as unsafe while travelling as I do in Marrakech. Luckily I'm not travelling alone, my friend Dom (you may remember him from adventures in Portugal if you read my old blog) is along for the ride and sharing the terror.
The moment we stepped out of the airport to head to the bus stop we were approached by a very pushy taxi driver who insisted we ride with him. Normally I like to pretend this people don't exist but Dom thought it would be a good idea to ask how much and ended up taking about 10 minutes to get rid of this guy and the rest of his posse who began pressuring us to take his cab. I felt like he was so desperate for us to get in his car that he surely had plans to rape and kills us, or at the very least steal all of our stuff and leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say we took the bus into the city centre.
The walk to the hostel wasn't much better. The directions I had weren't exactly the greatest and said things like 'walk through the square with the juice sellers on your left'. The square is full of juice sellers. While we were trying to find our way we were approached by about 100 different men who either insisted we stay at there hotel or offered to show us the way in exchange for money. Everyone was so pushy, it was very intimidating, but eventually we made our way to the hostel which is down the sketchiest of alleys where I'm sure many horrible things happen each night.
After getting settled into the hostel we decided to go for a wander around the main square and grab a bite to eat. I decided that bringing the DSLR would probably attract even more unwanted attention so opted to bring a point-and-shoot that fit in my pocket (and even then I tried to be careful about when I used it so I don't have many pictures, sorry!) and we were on our way. We wandered through the stalls set up in the main square where we were approached yet again by several pushy people wanting us to buy their goods. We wanted to escape the craziness so ventured out of the square and down a side street to try to find some food. There was someone stood outside every restaurant trying to get all the passersby to eat at their establishment, which I've found to be pretty standard in cities that draw large crowds of tourists but these ones were much more forceful than any I had encounter before.
We ended up finding a restaurant with a balcony in the sun to eat at and while waiting for our food I did some people watching and noticed that no one on the street full of tourists looked as terrified as I felt. I watched some more and realized I was just being paranoid. While the locals were pushy and intimidating they didn't want to harm anyone they just wanted money for goods and/or services. Suddenly I felt more comfortable in my surroundings.
After lunch we headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap since we woke up at 4:30 to make it to the airport on time and fear (no matter how unnecessary) really sucks the life out of you. When we woke up we headed back to the square which now had a different vibe. It was filling up with belly dancers, musicians, and snake charmers. We only wandered through the area for a little bit before heading towards a mosque we could see in the distance.
Another thing that makes Marrakech terrifying is the fact that everyone and their dog owns a motorcycle and there don't seem to be any driving laws or strictly pedestrian areas so you are constantly in danger of being run over. If not by a motorcycle than a horse-drawn carriage or a donkey pulling a cart. You constantly need to be aware of what is happening in every direction and in order to make it out alive you will probably leave with a severe case of whiplash.
During our walk to the mosque we were almost run over several times. Luckily we managed to escape death and made it there only to learn that it is surrounded by a wall , and you need to be Muslim to get in. Well, so much for that plan. We were fairly hungry again so decided to wander the nearby streets looking for food. We ended up back in the main square at a table facing the market stalls. We sat down right before prayer was broadcasted over the loud speakers of the nearby mosques so it took a while to get served which was a nice break from the intensity we had experience everywhere else all day.
Although I felt a little safer after realizing no one was out to hurt me and they were just trying to support themselves I still didn't feel safe wandering around after dark so we made our way back to the hostel and called it a night.
The original plan for day two was to take a day drip into the dessert and to ride a camel. This plan came crashing down when we learned that said day trip involved ten hours of being trapped in a vehicle and two hours of free time. Not how I wanted to spend my day so we came up with a new plan: explore the souks, grab some food, and find our way to one of the dodgy looking camel riding places we saw on our way into the city so I can scratch 'ride a camel' off my bucket list. That is not at all what happened.
Things started off fine, we made it to the souks and people were hassling us and we were constantly dodging motorcycles. Most of the shops look exactly the same and the layout of the place is a complete maze so I was not surprised when we ended up lost.
We tried to make our way back to the main square using bell towers on mosques as our guide and failed miserably. surprise, surprise, there is more than one mosque in the Muslim city. At one point without even realizing until later we left Medina, the walled ancient city in Marrakech that we desperately wanted to be in. I clued into what we had done a short while later when we got to an intersection that had directional signs for popular destinations and not one was for Jemma El Fna square so we back tracked and made our way back into Medina but were still horribly horribly lost.
After wandering for what felt like forever but was really more like an hour and a half we encountered a man who saw us and pointed in the direction we needed to go without us even saying a word. We started walking in the direction he pointed but he ran ahead of us and started guiding us around the city. I wasn't sure how to feel about this. At first I felt happy to have a sense of direction but as the number of people around got smaller and smaller the fear from the day before came creeping back in. This guy is going to rape and kill us. What are we going to do. I could feel my shoelace coming undone and knew I was going to be screwed if I had to turn and run and there was nothing I could do about it. Luckily the guy just wanted money. He lead us most of the way back to the square, asked for a ridiculous amount of money, we gave him less than he requested, after-all we didn't even know if he had actually lead us back to the square or to the secret lair of his partner in crime.
In the end we made it back to the square but it was a pretty exhausting ordeal that left us craving familiarity so we headed to KFC. The menu was in french and while the french I learned in school was pretty much useless I felt confident I could order at KFC. I said what I wanted in what I though was pretty decent french only to have the server reply in english. I guess my french is even worse than I thought. The food didn't taste anything like home and we had almost died yet again to cross the street getting there so it was a bit of a disappointment.
Exhausted and defeated we headed back to the hostel for a nap before venturing out again. A camel ride definitely was not in the cards. I did not want to risk getting lost again and really I wanted to ride a camel in the desert anyway not on some muddy grass on the outskirts of the city.
On our final trip into town we were only hassled by a few people before deciding on a restaurant. Dom had a local dish called tajine which he said was tasty and I was as brave as ever with my adventures in food and had spaghetti carbonara. Surprisingly this meal was substantially cheaper than the KFC we had earlier.
With food in our bellies we wandered around the square one last time before heading back to the hostel. We leave for Copenhagen tomorrow and while the city has grown on me I can't say I am sad to leave. I am really looking forward to the adventures to come and hopeful that none involve the same amount of culture shock as this one.
The moment we stepped out of the airport to head to the bus stop we were approached by a very pushy taxi driver who insisted we ride with him. Normally I like to pretend this people don't exist but Dom thought it would be a good idea to ask how much and ended up taking about 10 minutes to get rid of this guy and the rest of his posse who began pressuring us to take his cab. I felt like he was so desperate for us to get in his car that he surely had plans to rape and kills us, or at the very least steal all of our stuff and leave us stranded in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say we took the bus into the city centre.
The walk to the hostel wasn't much better. The directions I had weren't exactly the greatest and said things like 'walk through the square with the juice sellers on your left'. The square is full of juice sellers. While we were trying to find our way we were approached by about 100 different men who either insisted we stay at there hotel or offered to show us the way in exchange for money. Everyone was so pushy, it was very intimidating, but eventually we made our way to the hostel which is down the sketchiest of alleys where I'm sure many horrible things happen each night.
After getting settled into the hostel we decided to go for a wander around the main square and grab a bite to eat. I decided that bringing the DSLR would probably attract even more unwanted attention so opted to bring a point-and-shoot that fit in my pocket (and even then I tried to be careful about when I used it so I don't have many pictures, sorry!) and we were on our way. We wandered through the stalls set up in the main square where we were approached yet again by several pushy people wanting us to buy their goods. We wanted to escape the craziness so ventured out of the square and down a side street to try to find some food. There was someone stood outside every restaurant trying to get all the passersby to eat at their establishment, which I've found to be pretty standard in cities that draw large crowds of tourists but these ones were much more forceful than any I had encounter before.
We ended up finding a restaurant with a balcony in the sun to eat at and while waiting for our food I did some people watching and noticed that no one on the street full of tourists looked as terrified as I felt. I watched some more and realized I was just being paranoid. While the locals were pushy and intimidating they didn't want to harm anyone they just wanted money for goods and/or services. Suddenly I felt more comfortable in my surroundings.
After lunch we headed back to the hostel for a much needed nap since we woke up at 4:30 to make it to the airport on time and fear (no matter how unnecessary) really sucks the life out of you. When we woke up we headed back to the square which now had a different vibe. It was filling up with belly dancers, musicians, and snake charmers. We only wandered through the area for a little bit before heading towards a mosque we could see in the distance.
Another thing that makes Marrakech terrifying is the fact that everyone and their dog owns a motorcycle and there don't seem to be any driving laws or strictly pedestrian areas so you are constantly in danger of being run over. If not by a motorcycle than a horse-drawn carriage or a donkey pulling a cart. You constantly need to be aware of what is happening in every direction and in order to make it out alive you will probably leave with a severe case of whiplash.
During our walk to the mosque we were almost run over several times. Luckily we managed to escape death and made it there only to learn that it is surrounded by a wall , and you need to be Muslim to get in. Well, so much for that plan. We were fairly hungry again so decided to wander the nearby streets looking for food. We ended up back in the main square at a table facing the market stalls. We sat down right before prayer was broadcasted over the loud speakers of the nearby mosques so it took a while to get served which was a nice break from the intensity we had experience everywhere else all day.
Although I felt a little safer after realizing no one was out to hurt me and they were just trying to support themselves I still didn't feel safe wandering around after dark so we made our way back to the hostel and called it a night.
The original plan for day two was to take a day drip into the dessert and to ride a camel. This plan came crashing down when we learned that said day trip involved ten hours of being trapped in a vehicle and two hours of free time. Not how I wanted to spend my day so we came up with a new plan: explore the souks, grab some food, and find our way to one of the dodgy looking camel riding places we saw on our way into the city so I can scratch 'ride a camel' off my bucket list. That is not at all what happened.
Things started off fine, we made it to the souks and people were hassling us and we were constantly dodging motorcycles. Most of the shops look exactly the same and the layout of the place is a complete maze so I was not surprised when we ended up lost.
We tried to make our way back to the main square using bell towers on mosques as our guide and failed miserably. surprise, surprise, there is more than one mosque in the Muslim city. At one point without even realizing until later we left Medina, the walled ancient city in Marrakech that we desperately wanted to be in. I clued into what we had done a short while later when we got to an intersection that had directional signs for popular destinations and not one was for Jemma El Fna square so we back tracked and made our way back into Medina but were still horribly horribly lost.
After wandering for what felt like forever but was really more like an hour and a half we encountered a man who saw us and pointed in the direction we needed to go without us even saying a word. We started walking in the direction he pointed but he ran ahead of us and started guiding us around the city. I wasn't sure how to feel about this. At first I felt happy to have a sense of direction but as the number of people around got smaller and smaller the fear from the day before came creeping back in. This guy is going to rape and kill us. What are we going to do. I could feel my shoelace coming undone and knew I was going to be screwed if I had to turn and run and there was nothing I could do about it. Luckily the guy just wanted money. He lead us most of the way back to the square, asked for a ridiculous amount of money, we gave him less than he requested, after-all we didn't even know if he had actually lead us back to the square or to the secret lair of his partner in crime.
In the end we made it back to the square but it was a pretty exhausting ordeal that left us craving familiarity so we headed to KFC. The menu was in french and while the french I learned in school was pretty much useless I felt confident I could order at KFC. I said what I wanted in what I though was pretty decent french only to have the server reply in english. I guess my french is even worse than I thought. The food didn't taste anything like home and we had almost died yet again to cross the street getting there so it was a bit of a disappointment.
Exhausted and defeated we headed back to the hostel for a nap before venturing out again. A camel ride definitely was not in the cards. I did not want to risk getting lost again and really I wanted to ride a camel in the desert anyway not on some muddy grass on the outskirts of the city.
On our final trip into town we were only hassled by a few people before deciding on a restaurant. Dom had a local dish called tajine which he said was tasty and I was as brave as ever with my adventures in food and had spaghetti carbonara. Surprisingly this meal was substantially cheaper than the KFC we had earlier.
With food in our bellies we wandered around the square one last time before heading back to the hostel. We leave for Copenhagen tomorrow and while the city has grown on me I can't say I am sad to leave. I am really looking forward to the adventures to come and hopeful that none involve the same amount of culture shock as this one.
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