Arriving in Fes

Going to Morocco was one fabulous experience! A lot of my experience of Moroccan culture is from a Western perspective - colourful coffee-table books, Floyd's Couscous Royale, paintings by Delacroix and Matisse, all promising an exotic destination.

It was challenging at times and very intense - that's the best word for it - but a real overload on all the senses. We flew from Stansted to Hahn Airport in Frankfurt, Germany for a connecting flight to Fez. Although we were only in the country for a few hours, I still had my passport stamped with arrival and departure in Germany.

I think that our first hour in Fez pretty much sums up the Moroccan experience. Dave and I went through Sais Airport and found a sign that said 'Taxis 120 dirhams, Bus 20 dirhams'. A man asked us if we wanted a Grand Taxi (the local taxis are the same colour and are called Petit Taxis for comparison, a bit like London black cabs) and proceeded to do the negotiations and directions for our taxi driver. We had been deciding whether we should take the bus when a sudden downpour began and we decided it would be wise to take the taxi and arrive at the riad and avoid getting soaked.

The taxi arrived at one of the medina gates - the medina is the old town and is surrounded by an thick, ancient, mud-brick wall which means that there is no entry for cars. The entry was very narrow involving lots of squeezing past other cars, motorbikes and foot traffic and to our surprise the side-view mirror of the taxi grazed the crate of a mule carrying lots of soft-drink bottles. Luckily neither party were harmed. Stepping out, we donned our backpacks and were greeted by a man asking us where we were staying. Wary of 'faux guides' we told him the name of our riad but shook our heads when he said that it was very far, and difficult to get to and that he would ask one of his friends to take us for maybe 50 dirhams, appearing very concerned about us! Was he genuine?

Meanwhile, our taxi driver had turned back for us and although while he was taciturn the first time, was now insistent on us getting back into the taxi. We got back in - turns out that he'd brought us to the wrong gate and we would have had to walk a very long way through the winding souks and probably would have become lost. The driver clapped our would-be-aide on the back, had a mysterious and volatile altercation with some men in fluoro vests who thumped the boot (parking wardens) and with lots of tooting of horns we drove all the way around the city wall to a gate where our riad was clearly signposted.



We ate well that night at a restaurant with a view of the fruit and vegetable market, a tagine and a welcome cold lemonade each.