Running Away From Christmas

Over the course of my time in Slovenia the moments of having that gut wrenching homesick feeling have been remarkably non-existent.  Sure I’ve missed things about home; my friends and family, the simplicity of knowing where everything is and how to get it, and Kraft Dinner, just to name a few.  But not once have I wished I was home, let alone ever entertained the thought of giving up this incredible experience of living in Ljubljana in favour of the aforementioned niceties.  However, even before I set out on this endeavour I knew that if there was ever going to be one time where I felt that longing for home and the familiar it would likely be at Christmas.  I had images in my head of calling home on Christmas day while sitting alone in my cold, bare cubicle of an apartment, all of my friends having already travelled the short distances to their homes while I’m left here on the opposite side of the world from mine.  So with this horrible scenario in mind, I set out to avoid it from happening.  I was gonna go somewhere so exotic and different that turkey dinner and presents would be the last thing on my mind.  As it turned out, I found that place and it was Morocco.

It’s not as though I just threw a dart at the map and decided to go wherever it landed (although that probably would have made for a better story), there was some logic behind my decision.  I know a few people who have been to Morocco before and all of them had great things to say about it, so I’ve been interested in visiting the country for a while.  I also wanted to go somewhere warm but not so much because the Slovenian winter is so unbearably cold (because it’s not) but because spending Christmas with a view of sun and palm trees is just about as far as you can get from the snow and gloom of December back home.  So I booked myself a flight and a space on an 11 day tour and almost before I knew it I was jetting off to spend my holidays in the ‘Orient’.

A man walks outside a mosque wearing the traditional Moroccan Jalaba.

There are many words one could use to describe Morocco but perhaps the most accurate of them all is ‘enchanting’.  The whole country is a myriad of vibrant sights, sounds, smells, and colours which together are all an assault on the senses but at the same time and in some unexplainable manner leave you wanting more.  Even the names of the cities, like Marrakech, Fes, or Ourzazate, sound like they've been ripped out of the pages of some tale of adventure in far off lands and have an allure to them as captivating as a mirage in the Sahara.  My first destination, Casablanca, was of course no exception.  

Almost immediately after arriving there was an undeniable sense that I was somewhere different; different than my home in Canada, different than my adopted home in Slovenia, different even than my former home in Kuwait.  All that was required to find a taxi to my hotel, for example, was to simply walk down the street and let them come to me, which they did in droves.  When I didn’t like the quoted price I just had to threaten to go with another taxi and suddenly the price was about 70% lower.  In a way, this exchange with the cab driver in my first minutes in the country was indicative of everyday life in Morocco, where everything is negotiable.  After agreeing on a price I piled into the 1970 something Peugeot, a “Petit Taxi” as they are called, and went along for the ride.  Now I’ve had some interesting experiences on roads in different countries, but none of them quite compared to that first drive in Casablanca.  My driver wove around obstacles on the road, some visible some obviously in his head, at different points he would floor the gas and slam on the breaks, all the while speeding through intersections without so much as glancing at the traffic lights.  As Youseff, one of the guides, later explained, “Traffic lights in Casablanca are just decorations.”

Hides are hand dyed in these pools in Fes just like they've
 done for hundreds of years.

From Casablanca we continued on to Fes.  Famous for its medina, or old town, and leather industry which seemingly runs in the same fashion it did when the old town was young.  You can still see men working away in their stalls treating the hides and scraping off the fur with blades by hand.  Then the tanned hides are loaded onto the backs of donkeys to be transported through the maze of alleyways and passages that make up the medina.  The clamour of everyday life engulfs the entire place, but the words, “belek, belek!” stand out.  Roughly translated, they mean get out of the way.  Tanners frequently yell them out as they guide their caravans of donkeys through the city to hand off the hides to be dyed.  The dyeing station is a burst of colour in an otherwise monotonous place.  There are dozens of small pools and each is filled with a different vividly coloured natural dye.  However, you can only enjoy the magnificent site if you can get past the revolting smell.  A combination of the ingredients in some of the dyes and fat residues left on the hides make for a pungent odour which can be hard to take.  But as one local assured me, “thank God you came in winter, because in summer it can be quite unbearable.” 

Our guide, Rachid, takes a walk amongst the rolling sand dunes
of the Sahara.

After Fes we carried on south over the Middle Atlas mountain range into the Sahara.  Of course, there really is only one way to truly experience the desert; by camel.  Riding on a camel watching the last rays of the orange sunset dip below the horizon in front of the sea of cascading sand dunes is something I will not soon forget.  Unfortunately, that moment couldn’t last forever and quite soon the warmth from the last glimmer of the sun was replaced by the biting cold of the desert night.

After the night in the desert the scenery only grew in spectacle.  From the rocky outcrops of the imposing Todra Gorge to travelling back in time through the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs and finally through the snow-capped peaks of the High Atlas range.  It was some of the most contrasting yet beautiful landscape I have ever seen.  Arid desert and lifeless mountains are only broken up by the infrequent oases which seemingly support all life in the region.  The peace and serenity was a far cry from our final destination in Marrakech.

The fortified village, or Ksar, of Ait Benhaddou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and popular backdrop for movies such as The Mummy, Gladiator, and Prince of Persia.

Marrakech is the quintessential Middle Eastern city, or at least, its everything you imagine the Middle East to be.  The main square, Djema el-fna, is a dizzying din of snake charmers, musicians, animals, food stalls, and millions of people. It’s enough to make your head spin and it’s the type of place that based on all of my past experiences I should hate.  I hate crowds, I don’t like it when people try and put their monkey on my shoulder, and I definitely do not like the chaos of the entire scene, yet for some strange reason I couldn’t get enough of it.  I’d slowly make my way around the square and into the surrounding souks and occasionally stop to haggle with some shop keeper over some item or try to explain to him that, no, I don’t need that huge carpet, even if it is for a "good price for you, my friend."  Marrakech was like nowhere else I’ve ever been before and no matter how hard I try to describe it, I will never be able to do it justice.

Sunset over part of the souks of Marrakech.  This is the time when the whole place comes alive and the main square becomes full of food vendors.

So, my trip to Morocco had come and gone and with nothing but a call home and the odd seasonal greeting, so had Christmas.  Come Christmas day I wasn’t sitting in my cold apartment all by myself, and I definitely wasn’t missing home, there was too much to do and see to even think about that.  At first I kind of thought I would go to Morocco to run away from Christmas.  I thought it would be easier to be away from home if there wasn't any Christmas at all.  But what I realized as I made my way through successive medinas, deserts, and kasbahs, was that I really wasn’t running away from anything.  I was running towards adventure and excitement and the unknown.  And what's really exciting, is that over the next few months I'm going to have a lot more running to do.