Month: March 2018

March 22-24

We took a train back to Casablanca on the 22nd from Marrakech. It’s an easy four hours, in theory, but it is a reminder about the one issue we have with Morocco. Everyone in this country smokes and smoking is allowed EVERYWHERE. It is such a throw back to 1990’s United States, except back then there were smoking sections in restaurants (for all the good that did) and here every restaurant is one big smoking section. Cafes, lobbies of hotels, train cars… everywhere. It’s awful. Other than that – super easy train ride back to Casablanca.

When we arrived, Michael took a cab back to our old trusty hotel and I took a cab to the US Consulate. It was time to see just how lucky we were and if all those prayers we requested were going to pay off. Reminder, I have been traveling on an emergency passport since I was blocked from using my old passport to get out of Kenya. But when entering Morocco, my last blank page was stamped. That makes it really hard to go to any new country. So with two weeks in this country, it was my best chance of finally getting a full replacement. During my visit to the consulate last week I was promised it would be ready for me within 14 days. But I needed it in 12 or less in order to fly to Barcelona on Saturday. Anxiety is super high.

I rolled into the consulate without any issue and waited as patiently as possibly for about 10 minutes. Then I was called to the window and they gave me my new passport. That’s it. It was actually very anticlimactic for how much build up and anxiety was pumping through me at the time.

So now I’m the proud owner of three US passports – one of which is fully functional for the next ten years.

Super relieved, I have now spent the last 24 hours saying “I can’t believe I have my new passport” on repeat. Looks like it’s going to be smooth sailing tomorrow. Did I just jinx us? I think I did!

Last night we grabbed sushi for dinner. mmmmm.

Today, Michael went for an 18 mile run while I cranked out a few of these blog posts. Yay for slightly reliable wifi!

Then we went out to visit Hassan II Mosque. This was the mosque that I posted pictures of in our first few days in Casablanca. We went back today to do the tour and it was well worth it.

The building was designed by a French architect who was best friends with the king. The architect had studied Moroccan architecture extensively but was not a Muslim which I think is interesting.

The inside of the mosque is just stunning. All of the materials are from Morocco except for the chandeliers which are all Venetian glass and these two pieces of white Carrara marble (also Italian) on either side of the door. The Carrara marble indicates the direction of Mecca which is why they used this type of marble to differentiate from the rest of the marble in the building. Because, as our guide noted, Carrara marble is the best in the world. Google tells me that it’s the stuff that Michelangelo used for his sculptures.

The picture above shows the second floor of the mosque. This is where the women pray. The men all pray on the first floor.

The entire building is super beautiful and there are no areas that aren’t decorated very deliberately. I felt very lucky that we were allowed to go in and look around. I was surprised, however, that they didn’t ask the women to cover their heads. When we visited mosques in Turkey I was always made to cover my head. I would have expected this mosque to be at least as conservative as the ones we visited previously.

We ran a few errands in the medina after visiting the mosque and now we’re off to our last dinner in Morocco. Tomorrow morning we fly to Barcelona, so this is the end of our time in Africa. It has been an amazing experience and I know we’ll be back!

March 20-22

Back from the Sahara, we had just two more nights before we had to head back to Casablanca. We stayed at a new ryad, hoping it would be a bit quieter than the last. Here are a few pictures to show you what these ryads look like. Really beautiful but still inexpensive to stay there.

There were a few things that we wanted to crank out before leaving. First we visited the Saadian Tombs which were constructed during the late 16th century. The Saadian Dynasty ruled in Morocco from 1554 until 1659 and almost nothing remains from their reign except these tombs. When the dynasty fell to the Alaouite Dynasty, the new Sultan wanted everything from the Saadians to be wiped out but refused to touch the tombs. Those he sealed off and the tombs remained hidden until 1917 which means that they were really well preserved even before their restoration.

The tombs have three rooms that has 60 members of the family buried there. Staff and servants were buried out in the garden.

This is the main room – the Hall of the Twelve Columns.

Tomb selfie – weird? Definitely.

After the tombs we stopped at Bab Agnaou, the most elaborate gate in Marrakech. It served as the entrance of the palace in the Medina in the 12th century. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We definitely stood in the middle of a busy street to get that photo. Safety first.

The last stop on our historical tour of the Medina was El Badi Palace which are the ruins of a palace built by the Saadian Sultan after victory over the Portuguese in 1572. It was intended to be the most important building in Marrakech, so he named it “Incomparable”. The palace had 360 rooms and a courtyard that was 135 meters by 110 meters filled with fountains and a huge pond.

Most of the palace was paid for by a reparation debt imposed on Portugal after the war. The mosaics came from Italy and the gold fittings came from goldmines in Sudan. After the Saadian dynasty fell, the new Sultan removed anything of value to decorate his new palace and El Badi slowly fell into ruins.

We then headed back towards our ryad to grab some lunch when we happened upon this hammam. Ok – it’s not a real hammam – it’s a spa that offers the same services as a hammam but in a more tourist friendly atmosphere.

Anyone who wants to hear these stories can ask about them offline and I’ll give you all the details. In general – really good experience.

So that’s basically it. We had a lot of time, relatively speaking, in Marrakech and we loved it. This is definitely a city that we will be coming back to visit in the future.

March 19-20

Michael and I had a 7am departure from our ryad to head out to the Sahara. We walked to the travel agency and grabbed a van to another location where we boarded a 16 passenger van. Off to the desert! Here’s a taste of the scenery heading out of town as we crossed the Atlas Mountains:

Our first stop was to see a kasbah. We went to Ksar Ait Ben Haddou which is a Berber settlement about two hours out of Marrakech. It is also where a ton of movies have been shot. Before we get into that, a few things to note.

Ksar means castle. Berber towns that were walled in for protection were always called ksars. I’m not sure what I thought kasbah meant going into this trip, but we found out it is a large home or complex for just one or two families. So there were several kasbahs in this one ksar. Also something to note is that there were heavy Jewish and Muslim influences in this town. You could tell as there were star of Davids everywhere you looked. Also, the name of the town is a mix of Jewish and Berber words. Ksar and Ait are both Berber. Ben is Hebrew – meaning “son of” and Haddou is Berber for something that I cannot remember.

This location is a UNESCO World Heritage Site which means that any movie that films here cannot leave any new structures. So when they filmed Gladiator here, the arena that they built had to be torn down after filming.

The town became protected in the 60s so there is one newish item that was built for a move before it became protected that stands… the front gate:

Yes – that entrance is not original. It didn’t have to be torn down, but the World Heritage Site starts directly beyond it. Here’s a list of things filmed here:

And here is a picture of my girl Khaleesi during filming. We’re not positive, but we think the scenes filmed here might have been when she freed the unsullied.

They had pictures of Russel Crowe and Jake Gyllenhall and Angelina Jolie, but let’s be honest – Daenerys is the only one that matters. It seems like the town generally appreciates the filming. A long time ago, this town was used as a stopping off point between a town to the north that had salt mines and Timbuktu. So apparently Timbuktu is a real place. It is in the current country of Mali. Historically, Timbuktu was an incredibly wealthy center of commerce for Northern Africa. However, they didn’t have any local access to salt which was essential to preserve food. That made towns along the route from salt mines to Timbuktu important. Once that need disappeared, people left this ksar to move to the city for work. The economic effects of a movie like Gladiator are significant. Our guide told us that it took something like 8 months to build the arena and then 3 months to film with over 3000 people on location. With a mix of using local workers and the costs associated with housing/feeding that many people, these films and tourists like us keep this town alive.

More pictures from the town:

After this stop, we grabbed lunch and then continued on. The total drive from Marrakech to our desert stop was about 7 hours. When we arrived, we got to meet our camels who we rode about an hour to our camp site for the night.

Riding a camel… not that comfortable. It was a really neat experience, but this falls into the category of something we don’t need to do again. Also, I definitely felt bad for the camel. I’m sure there is some animal rights issue with this, so I’m sorry, but it was awesome.

That’s right… we learned how to turn scarves into turbans. A skill that will be useful for the rest of our lives.

We got dropped off in camp and after tea and a delicious dinner of mystery meat tangine, we had a little time to see some crazy incredible stars. The moon was just a sliver, so our location so far out in the desert had near perfect star viewing.

There was also a campfire and the men at the campsite played some traditional drum music and sang. Then off to bed. We woke up the next morning for a beautiful desert sunrise and took our sore rears back to our camels for our return trip.

On our way back we made a stop at another kasbah – but this one was less cool. Well, it did have the tallest man made palm tree and we went into a shop to see how rugs are made. (Editor’s note: we saw a handful of man made palm trees in Marrakech after returning from the Sahara. They looked pretty big, so we are not sure that this kasbah legitimately had the largest). Anyway, we know this part of the tour – it’s a bit of a time filler to make you feel like you got good value for your tour. They usually do a short demonstration showing how much time and effort is put into their product and then you feel compelled to buy from them instead of buying from the hundreds of other vendors selling the same thing. The women making cloth outside Cusco on our Rainbow Mountain tour were a perfect example of how to do this really well. The skill was difficult, the demo was interesting and the woman doing the talking was really funny. This didn’t go as well. For one thing, the man who showed us around told us it was a home for divorced women. That is something I could get behind – buying from women who are on the skirts of society… ok. Here’s the problem: it didn’t seem like an organization designed to help them get back on their feet. It seemed more like indentured servitude with this man profiting off their labor. I don’t know all the details, but afterwards when I asked Michael his thoughts on the place, he had walked away thinking the same thing.

While there we also had another round of tea. Great – I definitely enjoy Moroccan tea and I like the ceremony of it all. That said, he jokingly called it “Berber whiskey”. We’ve heard this a few times. Man with deepish laugh: Hahaha Berber whiskey hahaha. I like the tea, but relating it to whiskey is like using the phrase vegan bacon. There is no soy product that should ever be called bacon… ever. Just call it what it is and don’t make me sad that I’m not eating real bacon (or whiskey in this case).

Also we passed two film studios that movie productions use when in the area. Part of the movie Alexander was filmed here.

After another lunch of tangine, we’re heading back to Marrakech now! We loved our short amount of time in the desert but we were ready to be back in Marrakech!

March 17-18

We headed out early on Saturday for a cooking class that I had booked online. When looking at restaurants to eat at in Marrakech, one had caught my eye and when I looked into it further, I found out that they do cooking classes. Perfect!

The class was held about 15 minutes from the medina. So we jumped in a cab and headed for Association Amal. Association Amal is a nonprofit that is ultimately a job training program for disadvantaged women in Marrakech. Amal trains women to cook and work in other food service jobs. The organization started in 2013 when an American expat grew frustrated with all the women on the streets who had no opportunity to improve their lives. After talking in depth with one of the women that she would regularly give cash to, she was encouraged by the hope in the woman’s eyes despite the fact that she had nothing. Hence the name Amal which they told us means hope in Arabic. (But when I googled it, it said “charity”. That said, Moroccan Arabic is different than all the rest of Arabic, so maybe this is one of those differences).

The women in the program have to be very disadvantaged to be allowed entry to the program. Some of the stories we heard spoke of women whose parents have died, or who had abusive husbands and by leaving them are now on the streets. One story spoke of a small girl, 6 or 7 years old, whose father sold her to another family to be a house servant. She ran away several times back to her family, but they kept sending her back. Eventually she left her town and came to Marrakech to try to find a better life and ended up on the streets, pregnant. All of this and she’s still very young – in her early 20’s or something.

They accept a new class of students every 6 months. The most recent class had 30 women accepted and turned away about 60. So the need is great.

Once in the program, the women are taught how to cook in a restaurant kitchen, table service and a variety of other skills critical to success. They all take English, hygiene, etiquette and business lessons. The students both cook and serve in the restaurant and also help with the cooking classes. And each student does an internship with a restaurant to have some experience before leaving. The director mentioned that time spent with the cooking classes is some of the best learning opportunities for the women because it gives them experience with different cultures. Their ability to work closely with us and observe us at Amal helps prepare them to handle tourists in the real world. They are also given hints on how best to interact with foreigners.

While in the program, each woman is given a weekly stipend so she can continue to take care of her family while going through the program. Amal seems committed to helping any woman be successful who really wants to be there. They will help with child care and additional funds if the woman needs more help.

At the end of the program, Amal helps place the women in restaurants and ryads around the city. There are some restaurants in the city who have started asking for women who have not even finished the program yet, realizing how hard working and determined these women are and how well the program is training them.

The newest outreach that just started at Amal is outreach to deaf and mute women. As the director noted to us, it is very hard to find a job in Morocco. It is even harder if you are a women. If you have any disadvantage (no family, single mom) it is impossible. If you have a disability… there is no chance for you. So Amal has not started bringing in deaf women to learn skills and enter the workforce. The pilot program is going on right now and apparently the first two women are doing really well – better than expected and the director seemed really excited about them. She even noted that many of the other women in the organization have started learning some sign language to speak with them.

Amal was started with a large funding in 2013 from an outside organization, but is working to be completely self sufficient. They offer cooking classes, have two restaurants, and cook school lunches for two local schools to bring in funds to support their outreach. Their activities currently cover half of their expenses. Another thing that Amal is working on is becoming zero waste. The best example of this is the orange tree they have on the property. It’s beautiful and had huge oranges when we visited. That said, they aren’t oranges that you can cook with or make orange juice out of. So they use them along with coffee grounds and a few other items to make an exfoliating hand soap for the organization. Amalnonprofit.org

But the real question: how was the cooking class? It was great! The director that I’ve mentioned above is an incredible woman and a great teacher. She spoke American English after doing an exchange with a Cuban family in Miami. We asked if she suffered culture shock being in the US. She said she grew up watching US television and knew American culture before the visit. What threw her was the Cuban culture. That was apparently a huge adjustment. But she loved her family, Miami, the Dolphins and her time spent in the US. She was incredibly personable and she added a lot of value to the day.

This is her… super embarrassed that I don’t remember her name, but she was too awesome not to mention.

So Michael and I made lamb tangine. Tangine is a cooking technique where you roast meat and vegetables in clay dish covered by a clay dome cooked over charcoal. Awesome. It’s almost the mix of a stew and braised meat. Moroccans use lots of different herbs and spices including saffron, cilantro, parsley, turmeric and ginger. Throw that all in with onions, meat, potatoes, carrots, olives, lemon, and then put your tangine over the fire for an hour and a half and you have an incredibly easy dish that is delicious and rich in flavors. We love it. We not only love the food, but were enamored with the cooking process. We’re definitely buying two tangines when we get home. Dinner parties when we get back are going to be next level.

Here we are putting together the dish:

This is the vegetable tangine that another group made:

Then it cooks:

Then some carmelized dates on top!

The class was really successful for a few reasons. One, it was super hands on, but everything was within my skill level (which is low). Two, we saw several different types of Moroccan cuisine cooked and they made sure that each was done one at a time so you didn’t miss anything. Also, there were a few party tricks like seeing the main chef make filo pastries. We were in the back of the group so we didn’t get a good photo, but it is a skill that apparently few people know and the training is labor intensive. The pan is hot and has to be turned by hand while laying out the dough like a crepe but tissue paper thin. Apparently when chef taught herself she practiced for hours a day for months, only taking breaks when the blisters on her hand were too bad to continue. Super intense.

There was tea served while the meal was cooking and we got a chance to try our hand at properly pouring the tea.

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/img_1343.trim_.mov

Did you see how pleased Michael is at his tea pouring skills?

And at the end of the meal we got to eat our super delicious tangines. Awesome. Now having uploaded these pictures, I’m realize the food doesn’t look that sophisticated, but I assure you – it was crazy delicious.

After the class, Michael and I headed over to the MACAAL Contemporary Art Museum.

This is the brand new modern art museum in Marrakech. Like it just opened two weeks ago. An article had popped onto my facebook newsfeed that morning about the museum (creepy that the internet knows we’re here, but also super helpful). What’s interesting about this museum is that they are attempting to only depict African artists doing African art through the eyes of Africans. Often African art is made to be sold to foreigners and tourists, so what is created often looks how tourists want to see Africa or how they believe Africa should look. This museum is focused solely on how Africans see Africa.

There were two exhibits when we visited. The first, Africa Is No Island which brings together the work of emerging and established African photographers who are working from a distinctly African perspective of family, tradition, spirituality and the environment.

The second exhibit was called Essential Landscape and focused on art that had reused materials. Much of it was turning garbage into art. Some of it was beautiful like this piece which was made up of antenna cable turned into a calligraphic verse from the Holy Quran.

And some of it was just straight social commentary on the waste and destruction that we contribute to this planet.

Later that night we had dinner at La Maison Arabe. It is a fancier ryad that was the first restaurant in Marrakech for tourists in the 1930s. A favorite of Winston Churchill who use to call Marrakech the ‘Paris of the Sahara’. I mentioned that Epcot is the reason why Morocco was so high on my “to visit” list. This courtyard where we ate is “Disney World” Morocco. The lights, the music, the tile, the food… everything was perfect.

The next morning we hung out at our ryad for a bit, making some plans for upcoming travel and trying to get a blog post out. The wifi was strong enough to get us through the first, but not the second. After this we went shopping. Mall shopping. Michael needed some new running shoes, so we headed to a new part of town with legit stores and no haggling required for a purchase. On our way back from this, we popped into a travel agency and booked a two day tour in the Sahara desert.

After dropping off our shopping bags, we ran over to the square to hit up a few more food stalls. Before dinner, we were hoping to find a glass of wine on one of the terraces to watch the sunset over the square, but none of them sell alcohol. So more orange juice and a beautiful sunset!

And the food!!

And a few more shots from when we were wandering around the Medina.

March 15-16

We took a 3.5 hour train ride from Casablanca to Marrakesh. We had booked a ryad through AirBNB which looked great, but they had stopped responding to our communication regarding a transport from the train station which put us in a sticky situation. But… cool street art as soon as we left the train station:

Note: a ryad (also saw it spelled riad sometimes) is a standard home or guest house in Morocco that has an open air courtyard in the center that the rooms open onto. Think of a Spanish style courtyard.

So we knew the general part of town that we were staying in, the AirBNB name (different than the actual name of the ryad) and not much else to go on when we approached a taxi. Not the best way to negotiate a good price. But that was not our main concern. We have heard stories of people getting completely lost in the Medina and we had no way to contact our host. Our taxi dropped us close and told us to make a left and then a right and then another 6 turns and then it will be right there. Ok… but within seconds of getting out of the cab we had a new friend to help us find our location. There are men who basically find lost tourists and then charge them a fee to take them back to their lodging. Working with very little information from us, he was able to take us to the exact location of our ryad without any trouble. Michael tipped him a few dirham, but the guy quickly let us know that the tip was not NEARLY enough. So Michael had to negotiate with him. These types of negotiations became very common over the next few days. Sometimes we felt like winners. Sometimes we were clearly not.

Trickier at night:

Beautiful doors everywhere:

That first night, after dropping off our bags, we headed to the sports bar in town to try to watch the first day of March Madness. The bar is mostly a futbol bar, so I had reached out in advance to see if they’d play basketball for us. Big success! They told me it was no problem. Unfortunately whoever is in charge of responding to messages didn’t clear it with the people who were going to be working or didn’t have any authority to make this promise. As such, we arrived to the bar and were promptly told there was no way that any of the three TVs were going to play basketball. Cool. It was a pretty long taxi ride to get there, so we stayed and had a few beers while watching futbol.

On our second day in Marrakesh we set out to explore the Medina. But first we had to drop off laundry – which was conveniently next to Jardin Majorelle. Despite a bit of rain, we headed to the garden anyway. The garden is a 2.5 acre botanical garden in town created by a French artist, Paul Sinoir, in the 1930s. In the 1980s, in a state of disrepair, the property was purchased by Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé who restored it. No clue who Pierre is, but Yves Saint-Laurent was a famous fashion designer. The garden is home to the Berber Museum which seemed like a perfect first stop since it was still raining.

Note: this info came from the Jardin Majorelle website. The Berber people are among the original peoples of North Africa. Their history spans 9000 years. They have both a unique language and culture which are both African and Mediterranean. They created kingdoms but also vast territories organized into powerful, democratic, war-mongering, tribal communities. The Berber empires developed inland and were Muslim, but Judaism was also practiced and Sunni Islam majority took on a lot of Berber rituals. The majority of North Africa’s population is believed to be Berber in origin with an estimated 25-30 million still speaking the language. The Berber language is a melting pot of history and culture and has outlived Ancient Greek, Latin, Phoenician, and Egyptian languages. Just recently, the Berber language was recognized as an official language of Morocco and is now taught as a compulsory language in all schools.

The Berbers have a strong link to their land, a sense of community, hospitality, sharing of food and spirituality with influences from Mediterranean, African, Oriental, European and other international cultures.

The museum was really interesting with a few really beautiful exhibits displaying clothes, jewelry, tools and weapons. We couldn’t take pictures in the museum, but here are a few I found on the internet. The one room which displayed jewelry in glass cases was a fairly dark room with mirrors and lights on the ceiling that made the entire room look like it was filled with stars from all sides.

Here is also examples of their clothes and jewelry:

After the museum we spent ten or fifteen minutes exploring the rest of the gardens. It was small, but everything was incredibly colorful! The bright blue reminded me a lot of Casa Azul – Frida Kahlo’s home in Mexico.

There was also a memorial to Yves Saint-Laurent and the other guy:

When I die, all I ask is that any memorials constructed for me are much cooler this one.

After the gardens, we headed into the Medina to grab lunch and see what we could see. We wove through the streets to Jemaa el Fna which is the busiest square in the Medina. One side of this square has the souks and the other side is cafes and hotels with terraces and gardens to sit back, have an espresso and enjoy watching all the commotion.

Indigo apparently keeps the snakes away… not sure if that’s just something they say to tourists. I didn’t see any random snakes slithering around. But maybe that’s because the indigo is doing such a good job.

This is an argan press that makes argan oil. Now you know where all your fancy cosmetics are made… in this guy’s shop.

The main thing happening in Jemaa el Fna: selling. And they are selling everything. Every type of good you can think of and a variety of services that you didn’t know you wanted or needed.

During the day, the main food item sold is actually orange juice. I don’t know why the juice is so good here, but it is. There is also a wide variety of dates and nuts and olives.

One thing to be on the lookout for: henna artists. You wouldn’t think you’d need to be weary of these tiny women, but they are fierce. While taking a moment to pull up an article on my phone that had hints about which food stalls to visit, Michael was put on guard to keep vendors off of us (a task that takes a lot of effort). When a woman approached to sell henna, I was confident that my “maybe we’ll come back later” and “when I have it done I will come to you” and “yes, right here, we know where you will be” had been enough to momentarily satisfy this women, until she grabbed my hand and started drawing. No amount of pulling my arm away or telling her to stop was sufficient. I ended up with a henna tattoo. I think she has me by the pinky here:

Then came the haggling. She wanted 250 dirham – which is roughly 28 bucks for something that I definitely didn’t want. Now I had to negotiate on a service that I had refused in the first place. Ugh. We landed at 150. Still way too much – about 17 bucks. Apparently if you yell “tourist police” at the top of your lungs, they’ll run away and leave you alone. But that’s not really the mood or style we’re going for in our travels. Better off just putting this into a “you know for next time” bucket.

At this point might as well enjoy it – I paid for it. That’s right… glitter for extra good luck:

After this and a bit of wandering we saw the snake charmers. Now this is something that I have no interest in. The idea behind this is that the snakes are mesmerized by music and sort of hyptonotized. From a quick google search, snakes can’t actually hear the music being played but instead keep eye contact with the instrument and the player assuming that they are a threat to the snake. Ok – not too bad yet, but apparently some (not all but, meh, probably most) snake charmers capture wild cobras, remove their fangs and sew their mouths shut. The snakes, no longer able to eat, die of starvation after a few months. So we didn’t know that going into this moment, but we did know that there was some level of abuse to the snakes. We just didn’t know the details. I was happy to walk away knowing there was some mild level of abuse (not knowing how extreme it was). But Michael really need the pictures… that he later had to negotiate a price for:

We’re sorry for supporting the continued abuse of these animals.

After this we had to pop into a cafe for lunch (and to wash that crapola off my hand). The views from the terrace were really beautiful:

Later that night, we returned to the same square for dinner. The mostly open space in the center is replace with dozens of food stalls, each with one or two dudes trying anything and everything to get you to sit down and eat with them. It was a bit overwhelming, but the food was incredible.

After dinner and then a stop at a second stall so Michael could get more meat to eat, we wandered down to the end of the block to see Koutoubia Mosque and Minaret which were just beautiful lit up.

Three things to note from the day:

1. The man cooking our dinner at the food stall spoke four languages. Four. English and Arabic fluently. I didn’t hear him speak French, but everyone here speaks French. As for his Spanish, I heard him speaking with a group of Spanish speaking tourists, encouraging them to come eat his food. He claims his Spanish isn’t that good, but it was conversational and better than mine. Think of all the opportunities a person who speaks four languages would have in the US.

The guy on the right:

2. Marrakesh feels much less conservative than Casablanca. It’s likely because of all the tourists, but the men are more normal interacting with me. Also, even though the women still all have their heads covered, they are doing more things in public: riding bikes, riding motorcycles (with men, with other women, or by themselves), they are vendors, they are conducting business in the market by themselves, and more are eating out in public on their own. Also later in the visit when we get out by the commercial mall, women are out without their heads covered or wearing pants which we did not see in Casablanca. Could be representative of the neighborhoods we visited in both cities, but it’s definitely a feeling that I get walking around.

3. For about half a day Michael and I thought about buying a piece of furniture and shipping it home. We were thinking about a new dresser. The furniture is incredibly beautiful but it costs a lot to ship (obviously). We weren’t able to find a dresser we could agree on, but we found a bookshelf that was incredible. The woodwork was out of this world. So we asked for a price: 65 thousand dirham. That price includes shipping and is roughly $7k USD. Obviously not going to happen. About $900 of that is shipping costs. We went to walk away and the man asked Michael to negotiate. Michael said 20k dirham – which is a little over $2k USD all in. Still more than we want to pay, but so low that we thought it would be the end of the negotiation and we could walk away. Nothing like throwing out an insulting figure in a negotiation. They acted insulted and then proceeded to negotiate with us for another 15 minutes. We got them down all the way to 25k dirham. Read that again – we negotiated more than half off this thing. We still obviously walked away. We didn’t want a bookshelf that expensive! We didn’t even want to be in the negotiation! We thought our first bid would be enough to get out the door. The lessons learned: there is a lot of room to negotiate and don’t throw out a price if you don’t want the item… you might just get it.

March 11-15

We rolled into Morocco on Monday after an overnight flight, pumped to be in Casablanca. I have wanted to visit Morocco ever since I was a little girl, having visited “Morocco” at Disney’s Epcot. That is not a joke. It has been on the top of my list to visit ever since.

We picked up some seafood for dinner on the first night and went to bed really early, both exhausted from the travel.

On our first full day in Casablanca, I had a 9am appointment at the US Consulate to get my passport replaced. I felt really prepared and optimistic for the appointment. Two rounds of security to get into the consulate ended with a woman behind security glass telling me that I had to have my application typed. What?!? Come on. The form only says that it needed to be written in blank ink (which I did). She told me not to worry – there are a lot of Internet cafes all around the consulate. Not having cellular data in Morocco, I asked for a specific place to visit and she refused to recommend a location. “Oh – I couldn’t recommend a place”. Why not!?! Thank you for all of your great service, US Consulate.

A random man told me there was a cafe directly across the street. Perfect. I left the consulate, crossed the street and found zero internet cafes. I walked around the block. Zero internet cafes around the block. I finally found an office that provides visa services – they help Moroccans fill out US visa applications and help expedite the process. The guy quickly agreed to complete my passport form for me and I was able to get him to do it for half the price originally stated. Boom, bargaining.

I returned to the consulate, went through two rounds of security (old pro at this point) and submitted my paperwork. It went smoothly. They let me keep my emergency passport, which means we can travel to other areas of the country while waiting for the permanent passport. The woman told me my passport would be back in 14 days. Ummm. I pointed to the sign on the glass that promised 10 days. She said that is more likely but they say 14 days just to be on the safe side. Today was March 12. 10 days is March 22. 14 days is March 26. Michael and I have to be in Barcelona on March 25, so I really need this to be 11 days or less (since 12 days is a Saturday). I stressed the importance of having this back on my timeline and she told me basically it’s out of her hands. Nothing to do now but be anxious and pray. Worst case, Michael and I fly to Barcelona on the 24th and I have to fly back a week later to pick up my passport. Wouldn’t be ideal, but when your godson meets you in Barcelona, you arrive on time.

Post embassy, I went back to the hotel to meet up with Michael and we headed out to the old Medina. Keep in mind that we haven’t bought “stuff” in a long time. Even in the year or so leading up to this trip we held back on buying new clothes and shoes and other items. So when we entered this great market, we were vulnerable. I was definitely feeling the itch to buy, especially when I found out how cheap leather was!!!

We walked away with two leather jackets, a new pair of leather boots for Michael, some leather flats and a necklace for me. Yikes.

The next day we knocked out a few touristy things. We went to the Hassan II mosque which is the largest mosque in the country and the 7th largest mosque in the world. Its minaret is the world’s tallest at 210 meters and a total of 105,000 worshippers can gather for prayer at one time. 25k inside and 80k on the grounds outside. We wanted to take a tour, but couldn’t figure it out, so we took some pictures outside and we now know how to take a tour when we’re back in the city at the end of our time in Morocco. For now, just the beautiful architecture and tile work:

After the mosque we went to Rick’s Cafe. Now, this is obviously not the cafe from the movie Casablanca. That cafe did not exist in real life. But this was a restaurant designed for tourists with an obsession with the movie to come in and have a meal or a drink. We typically try to avoid places like this, but… I just felt like we had to go.

It was definitely touristy, but not too much. The food was great and the decor was tasteful. It was fun. There were a lot of tourists taking a ton of pictures and having a great time. We were having a great time too.

Afterwards we popped into the central market for those oysters and then back to the hotel so I could do our taxes and we could get some planning in. Off to Marrakech tomorrow by train. We’re planning on spending 4 or 5 days there before heading off to Fez (probably) and then landing back in Casablanca to pick up the passport right in time for Spain!

March 14

Happy Birthday, J9!

A lot of people voiced concern that we only had 46 oysters in Namibia. The good news is that we just walked through the Central Market in Casablanca and there was a vendor shucking fresh oysters. So we got in an another 3 each to knock us up to 52 oysters in Africa. We were going for an even 50, but they were so good that we had to grab another one each. Hopefully this calms all the chatter about our prior performance.

Editor’s note: nobody actually voiced concern about this.

March 8-11

We flew from Zimbabwe to Windhoek, Namibia on March 7th. After a super easy (and free!) customs stop, we had some slight confusion renting the car. Apparently the company that Michael rented with online just outsourced us to Avis. Good to know…

But once we got into that car, things were great. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again now: rental cars are really good for us. There is something great about having the freedom to go wherever you want to go, at any time. Add a UBS port that both charges our phones and hooks our music up to the stereo and we are just tickled.

We also had a spectacular sunset on our drive into Windhoek:

We spent one night in Windhoek at a great AirBNB and then headed the next morning to the coast. It is about a four hour drive west from the capital to get to Swakopmund, where we stayed for four days. Here’s what we knew about Namibia: we should visit the skeleton coast, they have lots of seals, the locals speak German (and English), and they have amazing oysters. Well we’ll be the judge of that.

We arrived in town and went straight to the water to see what kind of oysters we could find. Our first stop did not disappoint. Brut and oysters. Yes, please!

Namibia ended up being a great, easy country for us to rest and relax. We really didn’t do much other than drive around, eat and sleep.

Eating: we had great seafood plus more South African wine at great prices!

Driving:

We drove to both Walvis Bay and up to the Skeleton Coast. Walvis Bay had much less going on that originally expected. There were suppose to be some flamingos on the beach, but we couldn’t locate them. Walvis Bay does have catamaran cruises leaving early each morning, but we needed sleep more than we needed a morning cruise to see an oyster farm. Otherwise, not much going on.

Here’s me and the Atlantic Ocean:

Our other road trip was more exciting. We drove up the Skeleton Coast. The Skeleton Coast is the 976 mile Namib desert coastline. The Namibian Bushmen called it “The Land God Made in Anger” and some Portuguese sailors called it “The Gates of Hell”, so I guess Skeleton Coast is being kind. It is so named for the thousands of shipwrecks and whale carcasses that litter its shores. That said, we saw one small wreck and no whale bones on the shore.

So much empty Coast!

Before getting out the actual park, Michael decided to take a detour down to the water. There were some anglers fishing off the coast and their 4x4s over time had compacted the sand, giving us a road to drive on… for awhile. And just as good as that hard sand was for a period of time, it became not good very quickly. We were stuck. Avis was excited to give us a brand new Toyota Corolla. 7 kilometers when we took it from the Windhoek airport and we had it stuck on a beach. Two issues: First, the car is super heavy – too heavy for me and Michael to push out of sand. Second, the best method would have been for Michael to push while I have the car in reverse, but I don’t now how to drive a manual. So Michael reversing while me pushing was a joke. We got it moved a tiny bit, but things were looking a bit grim. There were some anglers not too far away, but we were trying to fix our predicament without letting locals know that we’re the stupid Americans that decided to drive a Corolla on the beach. Not too long after we got stuck, a truck drove by and two super helpful locals jumped out to help. The dad jumped in the car to reverse while the son, Michael and I pushed the car out. It took about 45 seconds. The older guy did a bunch of grumbling in German while the younger guy seemed pleased to help. Both repeated told us that we could not ever drive the car on the beach again. We knew. It was stupid. But definitely another rental car adventure to add to our growing list.

When we entered the national park, Michael asked the woman at the gate if there was anything we should be on the look out. Her response? “Meh, not really”. Hahahaha.

His follow up questions was about the ship wreck that we’d read about on the internet. She managed our expectations by letting him know that there wasn’t much left of it. We did get to see the ship wreck and it was great that our expectations were managed, because she was absolutely correct. Here are some pictures.

Impressive, right?!?! I wanted that picture of me with the wreck so you could get a true sense of the scale.

Really, the best part of the Skeleton Coast ended up being the vastness. We drove for hours rarely passing another soul. The desert was really quite incredible.

We also found out that there are lions that live in the desert. They are smaller and have longer legs than other lions. Sometimes they’ll eat mice for hydration. They are better than every other cat at regulating hydration. They are desert adapted lions and there are only about 150 of them and they only live in this desert. We didn’t see any, but Michael especially thought that was super interesting.

We drove up and down the coast for 4 or 5 hours before heading back. While driving this very remote and empty highway which was sometimes dirt and sometimes pavement, Michael also had me practice driving. This makes my third time driving a manual. I practiced a bit the day before and then Favazza tried to teach me probably 15 years ago. Michael has decided that when we get back to the States he wants a manual instead of an automatic, and what better time to practice than on a rental? It was a little tricky because Namibians drive on the wrong side of the road, so it was my first attempt at driving on the left side of the road and all the fun that goes along with that, in addition to shifting with my left hand and trying to gauge when to shift based on kilometers instead of miles per hour. It went ok… there were definitely a few times where I revved the engine and a few times where the clutch made a horrible noise, but I had a few great moments too. I definitely need more practice before I would want to drive a car that we actually own though.

Here’s some waves hitting the shore by The Tug Restaurant where we had dinner one night:

Final oyster count: 46 split evenly between the two of us. We were hoping for a better showing. We were trying to pick up another 12 on our last day, but couldn’t find anyone that would serve them on a Sunday at 10am. Final verdict on level of deliciousness? The oysters were huge, very filling and available at nearly every restaurant. One place, the Fish Deli, had possibly the best oysters we have ever eaten in our lives. The rest were good but maybe not as good as some we’ve had in San Fran. Definitely worth the visit!

So we’re heading to Morocco now where we will stay for about two weeks and try to get my passport issue sorted. Morocco has been on the top of my list since I was a little girl, so I am jacked that we are finally getting there.

So this round of Mo Money Mo Problems has nothing to do with us messing up foreign currency. Yay! It actually is about the way that a government can mess up their entire country’s currency. We did not spend any time researching the currency or economic situation in Zimbabwe. Whoops. They have huge problems mostly due to hyperinflation. I’m going to give you a super basic, 10 thousand foot view of this. Note – none of the below thoughts are original to me. Google and Wikipedia are the main sources. If any of you smarties out there don’t agree, feel free to comment. I might not approve the comment unless it’s agreeable, but… feel free to try anyway 😉

Also, if this is super boring… too bad. It’s good for you. Just kidding! I talk about how this affected us towards the end of the post, so skip if it’s too dry.

Starting in the late 1990s, Zimbabwe had currency instability that stemmed from a handful of events including their involvement in a war and the governmental confiscation of some private farms. The farms were taken from white land owners and given to black farmers as reparations for colonialism, but the black farmers apparently didn’t have any training as farmers, so the country had a sharp drop in food production. Then the banking sector collapsed, people couldn’t get loans, food output dropped by 45%, manufacturing dropped by a quarter each year for three years and unemployment went to 80%.

Some say that the price of things has nothing to do with the worth of things and more speaks to the value of money. If there is nothing backing the money or if people holding the money lack confidence in its ability to retain value, then it will become less valuable. Also important is that countries have discipline over the printing of more money. However, the Mugabe government was printing money to finance their involvement in wars and to give large salaries to army and government officials. There was also an incredibly high level of corruption at the time, which undermines confidence in the future and undermines faith in the currency.

So, government instability, civic unrest, massacres by the army in certain parts of the South, guerrilla attacks on civilians, racial unrest and land reform that not only reduced output, but also undermined the belief in security of property.

By 2008 it was unclear how bad the inflation was because the government stopped filing official statistics on inflation. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe blamed the hyperinflation on economic sanctions and trade restrictions imposed by the US and other foreign groups which were on Zimbabweans who were closely tied to the Mugabe regime. This is not a chart I made and I claim no ownership:

Those numbers just seem silly. Like fake numbers. It is estimated that in November of 2008 one US dollar was approximately Z$2.6 Trillion. Trillion.

In 2007, the government declared inflation illegal (you can guess how well this worked) and made it illegal to use any currency other than the Zimbabwean dollar. Anyone who raised prices could be arrested. Starting in December of 2008 the Central Bank of Zimbabwe started giving licenses to shops to deal in foreign currency instead of the Zimbabwean dollar. January 2009, the Finance Minister lifted the restriction to use only Zimbabwean dollars, which most people had already stopped using anyways. People could use USD, Euro or South African Rand. But teachers and government employees were still being paid in Zimbabwean dollars. They were being paid trillions per month which was only half the daily bus fare. The government also restricted bank withdrawals to $Z500,000 which was about 25 US cents.

The government did not try to fight inflation with fiscal and monetary policy. Instead they continued to print larger bills to buy foreign currency and to pay off debts owed to the International Monetary Fund. Three times the Central Bank of Zimbabwe redenominated the currency. Each time they would recall notes and exchange. For example, the Z$10 billion would be redenominated to be Z$1 to make computations more manageable. In February of 2009, the third redenomination dropped 12 zeros from the currency.

In 2009, Zimbabwe stopped printing its own currency and started exclusively using the currency of other countries since its currency was basically worthless. In 2015 Zimbabwe decided to switch over to the US dollar completely.

Ok – so what does this mean for us? Well… we got into the country and converted some of our cash to USD and some to “Zimbabwean” currency. But it wasn’t the dollar. It was a bond note issued by the Zimbabwean government that is backed by one US dollar. These bond notes had to be printed because there wasn’t enough USD in circulation in the country.

So, in theory, that means it is equal to one dollar. This was mostly true. We didn’t run into any issues with this, but we heard that some places will charge you extra if you are using the bond note and charge even more if you use credit card. So a bottle of water might cost 1USD or 1.25 bond note or 1.3 if you pay with a credit card… although this practice is illegal because the government is rightfully concerned about inflation of the bond notes as well.

So how did it actually affect us? Well I mentioned a few posts ago that we never have cash on us when we enter a country. Having left the US so long ago, we just take out local currency every where we go. Our stash of USD ran out before we left South America. This is almost never a problem. But the ATMs in Zimbabwe don’t have money. Seriously. We pulled out some cash in Zambia and exchanged that. Then upon arrival to Zimbabwe we were not able to take any cash out of a bank. The banks don’t have any money. Rumor has it that people are only allowed to take out 50USD per week from the bank. Every morning when we drove to whatever activity we were doing, we would drive by the banks and see crowds of people waiting for the banks to open so they could get some money. What is crazy about the 50USD is how super expensive everything was in Zimbabwe. Now, I know that we got hit with a bunch of expensive tourist stuff, but meals here were expensive even compared to other touristy places.

We heard that there is a heavy black market for all types of items. Our cab driver mentioned that it is much cheaper to buy gas on the black market. And we heard a lot of anecdotes about people smuggling goods into the country by the Chobe or Zambezi rivers. We even saw some people on both rivers that we’re pretty sure were moving goods.

The amount of currency circulating is so low that locals have found work arounds. For example:

We ran out of cash halfway through our second day. I mentioned that we went into town that night for dinner and we were going to need a taxi back. Well we didn’t have cash. We tried to pull some out of the ATMs, but could not. We asked our waitress what we should do about it. She told us she’d find us a taxi to take us back. Our taxi driver took us to a gas station where we were going to buy $12 of gas for his car in exchange for the ride to our hotel. But when we got to the gas station, they were out of petrol. So we still bought him $12 of gas and he got an IOU from the gas station guy so he could come back whenever they had gas again to fill up.

Other times we would pay for items by swiping our credit card at our hotel and then the hotel paid the service provider… somehow? Cash transfer? I really have no idea. So it ended up fine for us – we just used our credit card everywhere and didn’t tip as much as we should have since we just legit did not have any cash.

Michael bought this for 1USD… it was definitely not worth the paper it is printed on.

So this is all I have for our trip to the Victoria Falls area. I’m sure you’re glad that I ended on this exciting topic. Now we’re off to Namibia!

March 7

So we’ve done some cool stuff since we got to the Victoria Falls area. However, we haven’t actually seen the falls yet and it was our last day. 4:30pm flight. So we headed into town at 9am to see what it was all about. After getting through a ton of vendors trying to sell us head to toe rain gear, we got to the entrance of the park.

Dr. Livingstone I presume…

The traditional name of the falls is Mosi-Oa-Tunya which comes from the Lozi language and means “The Smoke That Thunders”. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the seven natural wonders of the world (along with Aurora Borealis, Mount Everest, the Grand Canyon, the Harbor of Rio de Janeiro, the Great Barrier Reef and Parícutin Volcano).

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/img_7777.mov

Per a board at the park: The cliffs of the Batoka Gorge are made up of basalt rock that was laid down 150 millions years ago when lava cooled and solidified. It contracted – cracking or “faulting” in the area of Victoria Falls. In time this mass of broken rocke was covered over with deposits from the Karoo System and later the Kalahari System and so preserved for millions of years. Then… 5 million years ago there was a geological shift that caused an uplift in the area of central Botswana. This blocked the course of the Upper Zambezi, which had been flowing south to join with the Limpopo River, and created a paleolake, the remnants of which form the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans. When this lake finally overflowed into the Matesi River it quickly carried away the deposits that had been covering the basalt and then began to remove the broken rock one block at a time from within the fault lines. Basalt is a very dense, hard rock that resists erosion so the river removes it one block at a time rather than a grain at a time, as would happen with a softer rock. This explains why the gorge, and even the face of the waterfall itself, is not a smooth, water worn surface but retains a rough hewn appearance.

So I don’t understand all of that, but the idea of the basalt breaking off in chunks is interesting to me and you can see that in the pictures.

Now I know we shouldn’t do this. We should not gauge Victoria Falls in comparison to Iguazu Falls. Maybe if there had been more time between the two we could have avoided it, but we couldn’t. We’ve seen pictures of Victoria Falls – we know they’re amazing. What we didn’t know is that in order to get an amazing shot of Victoria Falls you have to be in a helicopter. The main issue is that although the park had sidewalks and areas for viewing, there were no platforms built out to see the falls from top to bottom. Iguazu, however, had platforms protruding from the cliffs so you could get a great view of the falls. At Victoria Falls, all you could really see was the mist from the waterfalls when you were looking at the main section. It took away a lot of the wow factor.

Michael loves selfies in the rainforest.

Some more interesting stuff about the falls:

The average depth of the river above the falls varies between 3-5 meters while in the Batoka Gorge, below the falls, it fluctuates between 30-50 meters.

During peak flood, which is April-May, the annual water consumption of New York City goes over Victoria Falls in just 3.5 days.

Height: Niagra 51 meters, Iguazu 82 meters, Victoria Falls 107 meters

Width: Niagra 1,203 meters, Iguazu 2,700 meters, Victoria Falls 1,737 meters

Average Volume (in meters cubed per square meter): Niagra 2,407, Iguazu 1,746, Victoria Falls 1,110

So where do we land on the Victoria Falls area? If you want to see a waterfall, we’d suggest you go to Argentina and if you want to go on safari, hit up the Serengeti. Glad we went, but cost to value is skewed big time.