Square dancing, camels and map reading: A quick ticket to Marrakesh

More-akesh? Excuse the pun. Last academic year I was in Rome for an Erasmus year and while I was there I had the opportunity to go to Marrakesh, a town to be found in the centre-west of Morocco. My group of friends went there not really knowing what to expect; there’s only so much you can learn from a Wikipedia page, but it was our first taste of Africa, even if it is in Ryanair’s ever-expanding empire of greed and tyranny (€45 return from Rome). About a month before we were due to go, there was the unfortunate bombing of Marrakesh’s main square, Jemaa el Fnaa, so that put an edge of intrepid expedition on the otherwise well-trodden route of mainstream tourism.

Marrakesh as a town I didn’t particularly like. It was dirty and in some alleys of the souk (the largest in Morocco) smelly enough to make you chunder everywhere, although this is certainly essential to the Moroccan experience. After five minutes of walking around the souk you have seen the full range of what Marrakesh has to offer (leather bags, wooden ornaments, shoes etc.). Of a night we would go to the tent restaurants of Jemaa el Fnaa square to get some eats. Like the souk stalls, all of the restaurants offered the same food at the same prices, and like the souk stalls, we would invariably walk around and around until one of the restaurants’ squads of waiters had managed to hook us down in to their establishment (which once ended with all the waiters in that part of the square applauding us). Perhaps due to the fairly recent bombing, there seemed to be a sort of rally-parade-dance-thing taking place in the main square every now and then, one instalment of which culminated in me being dragged in to the centre of a circle of locals for some kind of team dance-off.

To any prospective tourists of Marrakesh out there, I would recommend that if you do not want to pay locals for their directions in getting places, do not ask them for directions. It is much easier to eventually get to your destination using a map rather than try to squirm out of paying a small sum to a local (who will almost certainly be much poorer than you, so why would you try to squirm out of paying him, you stingy bastard). The directions are similar to the food, entrance to attractions and hostels, in that they are all cheap, and the standard of the latter reassuringly caters for even the most pernickety westerners. In an effort to go local and resist the temptation of KFC, I was ill twice because of the food, although I think this was because it was so different in nature to what I eat in England (mainly eggs and waffles), rather than any lack of culinary cleanliness.

I strongly urge all tourists going to Marrakesh to go on a desert excursion. Without the three-day trip in to the Sahara (which predictably was inexpensive, costing around €90), the seven days in Marrakesh would have been too much. The expedition climaxed in the desert surrounding Merzouga, some fifty kilometres from the Algerian border. We handed in our nice, shiny jeep for a nice, shiny camel each. After a further trek of around 90 minutes, bobbing up and down and sliding side to side, we reached the Berber tent where we would be staying the night. This was my first experience in a desert. If I may delve in to the realms of poetry, the desert of endless dunes of sand remembers one of an infinite sea and its raging waves. It was nice. You almost had to crawl on hands and knees to get to the top of a dune, and on the summit it was bloody windy, but the views were, well, breathtaking.

Running down it was even better. Night fell and our group of intrepid middle-class European tourists broke in to song. I have never seen so many stars in one sky. Dawn rose and it was time for another 90 minutes of camel jostling back to the nice, shiny jeep. I’m not sure I would go back to Marrakesh, but the trip for me was of great significance, as my first taste of Africa. The desert excursion made the holiday. So to sum up, More-akesh, but not for me. Excuse the pun.