Cold Mountain

I grew up in Maine. I know from snow. I know to look out for black ice on the roads in winter. And I know how to handle a car in storm conditions: to turn the wheel into a spin; to flip the transmission into neutral if you feel yourself loosing control . . . or so I thought.



Driving home from our desert adventure, Amanda and I took a two hundred kilometer detour to see the red rock formations of the Dades Gorge before heading back to Marrakech. She shot off a couple of rolls of 120-milimeter film amidst the Mars-like outcroppings and we hit the road. Big deal, we figured, as long as we had Marrakech in our sights by dark, we’d be in fine shape to return the rental car on time. We might even, if we drove fast enough, miss the Friday night traffic heading into the city.



Unfortunately, speed turned out to be an issue as we entered the opening twists of the Tizi-n-Tichka pass. I’d just passed an ancient, black smoke-belching Honda truck (along with four other cars, mind you), when I was waved down by a police roadblock. I’m ashamed to say it was my second of the journey; I’d blown by a stop sign near Tamegroute two days earlier and had gotten off with a stern warning. Though a speed gun was not in evidence and I wondered why it was that the two cars before me had been blithely waved on by the gendarmes, I grudgingly pulled onto the gravely shoulder. The officer approached our car with the universal police swagger and demanded my papers. My driver’s license, it turns out, had expired a few months ago, something we discovered when we rented the car, so Amanda, ever quick on her feet, handed me hers, which I passed off as my own. I can’t deny a certain amusement in playing on the ethnic stereotyping that I normally find so frustrating, e.g., that every Westerner looks the same to Moroccans. Despite Amanda’s blue eyes and long blond hair, the officer didn’t bat an eye at my fake ID. He was too intent on turning a profit. “Vitesse excessive,” admonished the cop, demanding a 400-dirham fine, though we weren’t presented with any ticket. Not only did he want money, he was keen on knowing what I do for work in Marrakech. “Nothing,” I reasoned, might come off as a bit cheeky, not to mention embarrassingly banal, so after much pressing, I told him I was a writer. “Oh,” he said, as if I might name a book title that shared space on his bookshelf at home with the Koran. “But I’m not published, and nothing I write is any good,” I explained. Never has the sad truth served me so well. The fellow, his face awash in pity, actually returned 300 of the 400 dirhams. I think he muttered something about getting myself a few classes, but I can’t be sure.



Amanda and I were so excited that the license ruse had worked and that we’d been returned three-quarters of our fine, we raced up the pass on an adrenaline high. I ought to have clued into potential problems when Sam, who’d phoned earlier in the day from Marrakech, said that it was rainy and cold in the city. But no, it wasn’t until we rounded a bend and noticed a spectacular rainbow peeking out from dark clouds that had descended over the top of the pass like a shroud. Snowflakes soon followed, and then the flakes turned into a flurry, which swept itself into a full-blown blizzard. Visibility shrank to 20 feet as we ticked off kilometers (80 left on the pass!) in hushed, worried voices. At least we had company. The road was clogged with 4x4s returning from real desert adventures, as well as the ubiquitous Honda trucks laden with people and a few old Renaults that looked as if the traversing the pass would present a challenge even in the best of conditions. At a certain point, my nerves just couldn’t take it any more. Even though we could no longer see the precipitous drops on either side of the road, I knew they were there and couldn’t fight the image of us careening off the side and into the void. I don’t want to do a Thelma and Louise, I thought. No, I wanted desperately to click my ruby heels together and get outa Oz.


Amanda, sensing my distress and probably fearing for her own life, decided it was time to switch drivers. We pulled into a café at the top of the pass and hurriedly switched seats, but not before we were each covered in sleet. As we were pulling out, several policemen in a Land Cruiser (with chains on its wheels!) pulled up beside us. “Do you think we’ll make it down in this car?” we asked. “Practically,” was their discomforting reply. “Practically,” we repeated, looking at each other in terror. But our options were continue on down the side of the mountain, or turn around and face the same descent on the opposite side. We forged ahead. And the policemen allowed just a few cars to follow us before closing the pass.

With the car in second, we slunk down the route at first 30 and then 20 and finally 10 kilometers per hour. In an effort to keep our nerves under control, Amanda chatted and I took pictures, lots and lots of pictures. There were moments of glee, like when a flock of seagulls burst in front of the car as if they’d been blown in from the Atlantic with the storm. Their whiteness was difficult to discern amidst the snow until their wings were nearly dusting our car. And moments of panic. After clearing the snowline, we drove for several kilometers on a clean road, marveling at the red of the valley set off by evergreens, only to notice seconds later that the road twisted back up into another series of hairpin turns above the snowline. Our reprieve would be brief.





An hour and a half later, we’d made it over the second snow-covered pass, Amanda’s legs and arms tight from pumping the brakes and clutching the wheel. As we once again hit bare road, we felt an enormous surge of exhilaration. Nature, when she gets herself worked up, can be magnificent and it was glorious (in retrospect) to be overcome with a fear, a joyful powerless panic, and a measure of awe.

Palm Heaven

Driving around Morocco we’ve come upon palm trees sprouting in the middle of the road on many occasions. Out in the countryside, we tend to think nothing of it, though in the middle of Marrakech, when our taxi driver swerves - horn blaring - into oncoming traffic to avoid a palm tree protected by an enormous brick planter, it’s a bit unnerving.

It turns out, that it is against the law to cut down a palm tree in Morocco, and that only the King can make exceptions (the US Embassy was allowed to cut down two palms, but only because they were male trees, and did not produce seeds.) The trees provide food and shade, and the fronds are used extensively in construction. Their beauty is considered part of the heritage of the country, so for one person to cut what belongs to all Moroccans is prohibited.

In fact, large tracts of land surrounding Marrakech, which seem ideal for building, remain vacant in the midst of a construction boom, and the culprit seems to be an abundance of palm trees. Palms ringing the perimeter of a piece of land effectively guard it from development, and too many palms dotting a plot make it difficult to design a building that can avoid the trees.

In the meantime, in a bustling city, the exhilaration of sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists, mopeds, donkey carts, horse carriages, taxis, buses and more is made even more extreme, as all of the above must remain alert to finding a palm in the path.

Lots a Sand

Former college roommate Amanda is visiting from New York and on her Morocco hit list for the two-week visit were desert and mountains. We’ve found it’s good to jump into the activities because two weeks can evaporate quickly and since Morocco is quite vast, you have to factor in significant travel time for certain sights. So, yesterday we set off on a three-day trek to rub noses with the sands of the Sahara. We took the same twisty Tizi-n-Tichka route south over the High Atlas to Ouarzazate that Sam and I had traveled several weeks ago, and then tacked on another 200 kilometers south to Zagora. The repeat trek was less harrowing for me than the first time we negotiated the pass. We wound through more fabulous rock formations in the Valee du Draa, narrowly avoiding the kids selling dates and gemstones that rushed the car as we tried to maneuver the switch-back curves. Amanda captured (though she told me photographers take umbrage with the word “capture” when referring to shots) the dramatic gorges with her new medium-format camera, which is very cool. So cool, in fact, that a middle-aged, fat and toothless French tourist (didn’t know the French ever came that way!) stopped her van and waddled over to us to ask about the camera. She explained that she has one like it and that she and her husband had recently bought a place in Ouarzazate. Go figure.

When we arrived in Zagora, we drove through the city’s main drag to the vast palmerie, or palm grove, where our small maison d’hotes is situated. No sooner had I put the car in park than we found ourselves swarmed by bedraggled boys needling us for pens or candy. I know I won’t win any points with this one, but kids can be scary and manipulative and these boys had a predatory air that creeped us out. Their desperation was palpable, like hungry hyenas circling a bloody carcass. Again, Morocco has made us examine the conflicting emotions of being defensive and rude to threatening youths and feeling like we’d like to reach out and help them however we might be able. Even though we’d been warned that tourists are often “accosted” in Zagora, it’s still discouraging to feel that we’ll never be more than a possible swindle to these kids. But we are just tourists passing through town and I guess we’re naïve to think any kind of meaningful, genuine interaction is possible. Fortunately, the inns portly bellman shuffled out in his slippers and shooed the boys away as he grabbed our bags and whisked us inside. Mint tea and cookies in the on the inn’s balcony, overlooking a quiet garden with palms, olive trees and a small pool, relieved some of our road fatigue.

We opted for dinner at the inn and had a brief nap before settling down to our table in the living room beside a cheery fire. A tagine of carrots and olives, the carrots almost caramelized in a buttery sauce, accompanied a tagine made of kefta meatballs in a tomato sauce. We’d skipped lunch and hungrily devoured both tagines to the bellman’s pleasure. Afterwards, up in our second-floor room, with windows overlooking the palmerie and a private balcony, we watched two episodes of Gray’s Anatomy on the laptop before falling asleep. There’s something absurd, yet comforting, about tuning into an American TV show when you’re in Morocco, miles from anywhere on the edge of the Sahara.


When we made it to the dunes, or rather THE dune at Tinfou, we were a bit underwhelmed. From a distance, the dune looked like a silly Disney-esque installation on the edge of a seemingly endless flat road. Beyond, a steep plateau stretched in a crescent across the horizon, as if just beyond its south face the Sahara might spread majestically before us. It also appeared as if the plateau was acting as a natural barrier, keeping the sands at bay. So how, we wondered, did the Tinfou dune come to be?



Well, on closer inspection the dune was quite giant, at least 300 feet high, and after refusing all of the pesky camel drivers, we hiked to the top and enjoyed a nice squat with a view of the dune’s sensual undulations. Were we hoping for a sea of curvaceous dunes? Sure. But with some clever photography and the right attitudes, we figured we could tell of a real Sahara sighting. It turns out that Merzuga and the massive Erg Chebbi dunes (where films like Lawrence of Arabia were shot) are 400 kilometers from Ouarzazate; since our trip already involves around 1200 kilometers, we made the emotional decision atop Tinfou to save Chebbi for another time. We’ll always have Tinfou.

Oh la, la

A last-minute trip to France, which involved me tagging along on a trip with my mother and her best friend since childhood, proved a much-needed restorative. France is like that, and so is family, for that matter. I had the chance to reconnect with my mother’s friend’s daughter, a girl I hadn’t seen in 14 years, but with whom I’d spent many summer holidays and even an ill-fated winter expedition to Quebec which resulted in ear infections. Within the space of just hours, we had the lucky fate of falling in like sisters, as if hardly a day had passed since our last visit. Despite husbands and kids and new cities, the things we think change us so much, we seemed quite familiar to one another, grown into the skins we were already wearing as kids. Young skin may look taut and fresh, but most of the time it has hidden wrinkles and pouches that need plumping with age.

Paris, and Versailles, where my new-old friend lives a literal stone’s throw from the Chateau, greeted us with customary gray, misty skies, which we gamely called “quite nice,” and “not too cold.” That’s to say, we weren’t going to let a little winter weather spoil our fun. Frantic to arrive with my Third World wardrobe clean at the very least, I’d washed all of my trousers the night before leaving Marrakech only to find that some midnight bandits had scaled our terrace and snitched them from the clothesline. Besides the comic image of a Moroccan teen wearing my low-cut Chip and Pepper jeans beneath his djellabah, I was peeved. But in the damp chill, my last pair of jeans, faded Converse sneakers and wool pea coat proved a winning outfit for our first foray into Paris. We took the RER from Versailles with my friend’s two kids in tow; her children possess rare patience and manners, and we put them to the test with miles of window shopping and sight-seeing. Armed with steaming nutella crepes and cafés au lait, and at my Mum’s insistence, we piled onto a bateau mouche and rode the choppy, gray waters of the Seine past the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Notre Dame and a host of must-sees. It was touristy and fun and perfect with kids. From there we trotted from Les Invalides through the arrondisements of the Rive Gauche to St. Michel, popping in for a lunch of hearty lentils and sausage. Afterwards, we shopped for used paperbacks at a small English-language bookstore called San Francisco near the much-touted Comptoir restaurant; serendipitously, I’d made the chef’s chestnut-celery root soup from a recipe in Food & Wine magazine just a few days before coming to France.

The next day, Mum and I set out alone for a marathon tour of Paris, complete with nostalgic peeks at an apartment I’d once rented on the Rue Visconti and favorite haunts from the time I’d spent in the city during college and thereafter – the marche on the Rue de Seine, the Madeleine church and chic design stores of the St. Germains des Pres. Why is it that everything in Paris, whether a simple brioche in a pastry store window or a settee covered in Pierre Frey fabric, is so damn chic?

When lunchtime rolled around, I was incapable of making a decision about where to eat, examining the menu and ambience of a dozen bistros before we settled on what I hoped would be the perfect neighborhood spot. It was to be our only day together in Paris and for some reason, I felt that much was riding on our lunch venue. As if conversation would be wittier, more intimate and memorable if we were nestled into just the right banquette. Thankfully, the wee restaurant was perfect, and after a rich slice of rabbit terrine, chicken breast in a cream-mustard sauce and berry crumble, we were ready to hit the streets again. We took in Monet’s water lillies at the Orangerie, which has just reopened after a near-decade renovation. Displayed just four to a room, the massive canvases floated on the oval walls beneath an elegant skylight. Even for one who doesn’t love Monet, the effect was commanding – serene and energized at the same time. Downstairs, where the private collection of XX is hung, Mum spotted one of her favorite paintings, a Georges La Tour image of a girl holding a candle up to an old man’s face, the light from the candle spilling magically from between her fingers. The image sated and fortified us like the perfect pain au chocolat we’d consumed that morning for breakfast. We returned to Versailles with throbbing feet, but feeling quite alive.

Friday is market day in Versailles and I attacked the cheese vendors with terrifying zeal. One contingency of the trip was the promise of mounds of stinky, gooey unpasteurized cheese for Sam, who had to remain behind in Marrakech for work. “Just bring me some cheese, Cait, lots and lots of cheese,” he’d pleaded. Determined to induce glee, if perhaps a twinge of lactose intolerance, I had the poor cheese vendor sweating as she raced from one end of the stall to the other, her arms laden with my purchases. Five kilos (yes, that’s over 10 pounds!) later, I had two grocery bags stuffed with all manner of goat, sheep and cow goodness, including Camembert, Vieux Comte, Morbier, Bleu d’Auvergne, aged Gouda, Brillat-Savarin, and on and on. Arteries be damned!

Post market madness, we retired to the near-deserted gardens of Versailles, where the shrouded statues looked like eerie apparitions amidst the military precision of the evergreen shrubbery. My friend’s children skipped along the canals, visiting their favorite statues (the lions, of course!) like the old pros that they are. I’m sure Marie would have been pleased with the care they took to scratch the ears of her goats and throw bread to the ducks in the pond at the Hameau. I don’t care how many times you wander in the footsteps of Louis and Marie through these manicured gardens, the place is just spectacular and to be jaded would be to be dead.

At the risk of boring with the blow by blow of the trip, I’m leaving it at that. Suffice it to say that I could not have dreamed up a more satisfying voyage and visit for my first one outside of Morocco in eight months. Mum, Betsy, Jill, Shea and Finn, merci, merci, merci beaucoup!

Gorge-ous

Three hundred miles of driving is enough to wear you out, but when you’re in Morocco, it’s also enough to see some gorgeous, varied countryside.

The Atlas Mountains are dry on their sunny south side, but on the cool north side, snow clings to the ground. We expected our entire drive to be like the beautiful bleak of the American West, and were surprised over and over as we drove through thick forests of fir. The roads were empty save one thing; every few miles we passed people selling gems from the local terrain. Sometimes an actual store had been erected, but more often it was a solitary roadside table piled high with gems and fossils or a young man frantically waving his lone geode in the sunlight, hoping to slow a passing tourist. Amethyst, quartz, indigo, peridot. It was remarkable to see such profusions of color coming from dusty brown hills.



We made our way across small streams where women squatted washing their clothes and drying them on the banks, and saw birch trees for the first time in Morocco. As we wove up into the Dades Gorge where wood smoke clung to the sides of the hills, we passed men plowing small fields with pairs of mules and plows that looked like something from Little House on the Prairie.

The Dades Gorge twisted back and forth taking us through narrow canyon walls of a deep brick red. Having seen the Ait Ben Haddou Kasbah in its glory, it was interesting to pass several smaller and more run-down kasbahs on the route. Because these dwellings are made of local earth, we passed by many without noticing them, camouflaged as they were.





As red as the drive up the Dades is, the drive up the Todra is green, perched in the treetops of a 35-kilometer ribbon of palmerie. At the end of the road in Todra (beyond which you can continue in a 4x4 but not in our miniature Hyundai) we stopped for lunch at Les Roches, a small hotel owned by a friend of a friend. It sits just above the riverbed, with 350-meter high rocks rising on each side. We comment on the beauty to the owner, and while he agrees, he explains how difficult life here is. When it rains, many surrounding mountains drain into the gorge, and the water lever can rise 10-15 feet in five hours. Though the government has installed culverts and solid concrete and rebar roads, the water proves too strong - again and again washing them away, and sometimes taking pieces of the hotel as well.

We’ve heard that this part of Morocco is predominantly Berber, and we see some Berber graffiti on the walls of the gorge as well as a road sign written in both Arabic and Berber.




We paused in Tineghir. where we toured through communal farming plots, past a derelict Kasbah, used mainly for its well, and stopped in the old Jewish cemetery. While Morocco was once home to a large and robust Jewish population, beginning in the late 1950s over 300,000 emigrated (mainly to Israel and Canada) and the sad, untended cemetery here is surrounded by encroaching industrial buildings. Because of a Moroccan law allowing people to build on top of cemeteries if there have been no interments in three generations, it seems that the fate of the small grave stones here and the remains they mark is sealed.

Rock the Kasbah

It's hard for us to hear the word kasbah without thinking of The Clash's song, though any rockin’ going on with or without Shareef's approval is of the fully acoustic variety, as electricity has not yet arrived.

Thirty kilometers north of Ouarzazate, past the camel crossing signs, sits the impressive Kasbah Ait Ben Haddou. The countryside of Morocco is dotted with kasbahs, a word which seems to help multiple definitions, but which, south of the Atlas Mountains, means a fortified feudal village of several dozen house built around a castle and made of pisé, a mixture of mud and straw. This mixture, while beautiful, is not exactly durable and requires constant upkeep. This makes it hard to date buildings and something that appears a thousand years old in style might be less than a hundred years old, but left ravaged by weather. We’ve heard than warring tribes would attack each other’s kasbahs not with fire, but with water; if you could divert enough water, you could simply wash away your enemy’s fortifications.




Ait Ben Haddou, situated on the bank of a small river, is considered one of the better examples of a remaining kasbah, though the village has turned from agriculture and trade to tourism, supplementing from time to time by renting itself as a set for movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Gladiator.

We hired a guide, who’s main job seemed to be keeping other guides at bay, and directing the route we climbed, rather than explaining much about the kasbah. He points out the “streets” – formerly dirt, but now paved with stones – which UNESCO renovated several yeas ago. He notes with a bit of disdain that they brought in 200 workers to fix the streets, while all around houses are crumbing to the ground.

Who knows what we might have learned with a better guide or more time perusing the guidebooks, but on a crisp January afternoon, it was a sight to behold. Quiet and serene with views extending miles in all directions, all thoghts of rockin' vanished as we headed back down the hill for lunch.

Two for the Road

This weekend, we drove nearly 1000 kilometers in a zippy little Hyundai over the High Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate, the Dades Canyon and then on to the Todra Gorge in southeastern Morocco. The route was a bit harrowing. About 50 kilometers out of Marrakech, the road starts to twist and turn into the mountains, stomach-turning switchbacks that continue long after the adrenaline rush subsides. “Make it stop, make it stop,” we chanted. We were divided on what was scarier: the guardrail-less hairpins with vertigo-inspiring vertical drops, or the yahoo cab and bus drivers that take the turns at seemingly impossible speeds. Why is it impossible to capture that sense of vertigo in a photo?



At one point, feeling confident, we careened around a curve with the wheels screeching, only to find ourselves being passed simultaneously by both a car and a small pickup truck filled with men blithely holding onto the cage. Speed: 80 kilometers/hour. Distance between hairpins: 50 meters. Why torture ourselves in this way? The extreme beauty of the route is the only answer. In a matter of hours, we passed through canyons and toppled over mountains that reminded us of the Rockies, Lake Tahoe, the red rock of Moab and the unrelenting vastness of Utah. Morocco is grand. Morocco is gorgeous.

On the Town

To say that we are not night people is, well, to indulge in gross understatement. While Marrakech may be likened to Ibiza in terms of its burgeoning all-night club scene, we’d be hard pressed to tell you the names of three, okay maybe two, venues for music and dancing. Our idea of a nice night out is a movie and dinner at CdL, or maybe a small dinner party. Even the vernissages, or art openings, end by 9 p.m., promising that we’re home in bed with a book or movie by 10 p.m.

Last week, though, with our new acquaintance Andy as our chaperone, we dispensed with bedtime and tasted the Marrakech scene. Andy’s nocturnal escapades in Marrakech had preceded our introduction to him by several months. This is a guy who splits his time between New York and sub-Saharan Africa, but Marrakech is where he comes to “go out.” Andy’s command of its sleazy bar scene seemed near-epic as too his stamina and penchant for female company. Needless to say, we found ourselves both in awe and in slight fear of this mythic being. The real thing, let me tell you, did not disappoint.

Our first introduction to Andy was at a quiet dinner party, but even then, the gauntlet had been thrown. A night out on the town was inevitable. We steeled ourselves and called Andy a few days after Christmas, inviting him to meet up with us at a rather forlorn English-style pub called The Chesterfield, located on the second floor of a hotel on Avenue Mohammed V. The Chesterfield serves beer on tap, which is a treat, and its horrible wood paneling and claustrophobically low, smoke-stained ceilings, we hoped, would give us some seedy cred with Andy.

After a few rounds, we moved on to a club called the Montecristo, where, sure enough, Samuel was able to order a fat cigar that he puffed on the rest of the night. Here we listened to a few loud bands, crooning away in Arabic, and were pleased to have Andy confirm our suspicion that Lulu and I were the only women in the house not charging for their company. We’ve seen countless kaftan and djellabah shops, but where, I wondered, does one buy a rubber dress in Marrakech? The Marrakech dress code we witnessed here, after dark, is certainly a far cry from the traditional look in the Medina. And Lulu was the first to notice that Paris Hilton videos were playing on a large screen behind the band; the tabloid tart’s reaches have extended, it seems, if not to the world, than at least to the great metropolises of North Africa.

Next up was a disco called Teatro, attached to a hotel and casino in the Hivernage neighborhood. As Samuel and I waited for Lulu and Andy to arrive in their cab, we observed legions of emaciated, scantily clad French girls, as well as slick, jet-set Moroccans, waiting in line for the club. As our experience at the film festival taught us, if you look determined enough, you can breeze through any line. And so we did. When Lulu and Andy arrived, we muscled our way through the crowd and two bouncers as if Amy Sacco were a personal friend and we’d just arrived at the door to Bungalow 8. The disco’s cover charge was 150 dirhams, which is 50% more than it costs to go to see the National Symphony; imagine what the cost ratio would be in London or New York. For the average Moroccan, whose salary is about 2000 dirhams per month, this is a lot of cash. So who are these kids? Do they spend a night on the town, stumbling into their local mosques for the 6 a.m. prayer? With Eid around the corner, we wondered if these kids are as excited about the ram sacrifice as the Moroccans we see in our neighborhood during the day.

The expected techno music inside was absolutely deafening – no exaggeration as Samuel spent the next 24 hours yelling “What?” every time someone spoke to him. Despite the chill outside, we were immediately sweating as bodies crushed around us. Okay, our wool sweaters and jackets (attire more appropriate for a dog-sledding adventure than a night of clubbing) didn’t help. Several hours and innumerable embarrassing dance moves later, Samuel and I finally had to call it quits. My watch showed an impressive 3:15 a.m. as we stumbled into a cab.

The next morning, we learned that Andy and Lulu had gone on to one or two additional spots and hadn’t cried “uncle” until a rather impressive 7 a.m. Each of them was full and pulsing with 20-something Moroccans. Damn the stamina of youth! Though later, Andy did concede that he’d spent the entire day in bed recovering. Even the immortals need a day of rest now and again.