Day 21--In port, Casablanca

13 September. 33° 56”N, 07° 36” W. Casablanca

Not much to say about Casablanca except that’s it’s no longer the romantic city of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. It’s closer to Pittsburgh . . . before the mills closed. I suppose the ambiance of the city wasn’t helped on Thursday, the day we arrived, by the overcast skies and incessant drizzle that varied between a heavy mist and a light torrent. It also wasn’t helped by the port of Casablanca. The MV Explorer is docked at the far end of an almost-mile-long pier, blocked from the city by massive loading cranes, stack upon stack of corrugated steel containers, and the comings and goings of long ships with their towers of multi-colored boxes. We could be in the port of San Pedro, California, and the view would the same.

To get from the ship to the entrance to the port and back, SAS is running shuttle busses that are supposed to be operating on a schedule of 15-minute departures. But that doesn’t take into account the cigarette breaks the drivers take after every run to and from the port entrance. The schedule also doesn’t account for the drivers’ 1-hour lunch and dinner breaks. The result is that we can’t be sure we’ll be able to get to the entrance or to the ship when we want to. So schedules have t be very flexible.” Plan ahead” is the motto.

I took a city tour with 60-or-so shipmates Thursday morning into mid afternoon. Casablanca is a city of stark contrasts: modern office buildings and expensive shops in one block, roof-less brick squares housing extended families in squalid conditions in another. The current king, Mohammad VI, is very popular and is trying very hard, apparently, to improve living conditions for the poor. But they have a very long way to go. Trash litters the streets everywhere. The skies were gray; the city is gray.

The memorable stop in the tour is the Grand Mosque of Casablanca, a massive building in traditional Islamic style, sitting on many acres of prime real estate overlooking the ocean. It’s the 3rd-largest mosque in the world, and between its huge main prayer space inside—main floor for men, balconies for women—and the outdoor terrace sitting at the foot of the 250-foot-tall, square-sided minaret, the mosque can accommodate 20,000 of the faithful. It was finished just a few years ago after only 6 years of 24-hour-a-day construction—quite an accomplishment considering its size and considering the fact that the National Cathedral in Washington, much smaller than the mosque, was begun decades ago and, I recall, was completed only within the last few years.

Other than the mosque and a stop in a government store where several of us bought ****** oil, Casablanca is a forgettable city. If the oil performs all the miracles our tour guide claims—a cure for arthritis, wrinkled skin, bad backs, and just about every other ailment known to man—Casablanca will have been a worthwhile visit. Otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend it as a holiday destination.

Marrakech is a different matter. I took a morning train to Marrakech Friday with the Chapels, the Cooper-Sissons, Betsy Bloom, Stepanka Korytova-Magstadt, and Kathleen Jump. Stepanka is a history scholar from the Czech Republic who has taught on a previous voyage and now is teaching 3 different history classes, one with a focus on women. Kathleen is executive assistant to the UVA chief operating officer and oversees the administrative office onboard.

The 3-hour train ride passed through many miles of very arid country that looks like the deserts of Nevada and the plains of eastern Colorado, the latter in the early spring after the snows have melted but before the spring rains have greened up the treeless expanse. It’s all very tan, marked occasionally with a small village of stone homes, many, again, without roofs. But almost all have a satellite dish attached either to a side wall or mounted into the ground, testimonies to how interconnected the world is becoming. The picture of a Moroccan family sitting in their one-room hut, hand made from locally gathered rocks, watching an episode of “Lost” or talking with Facebook friends half a world away is mind-boggling.

The land is also full of shepards and their sheep herds. It’s easy to see why so many of the Moroccan national dishes include sheep, lamb, and mutton, and why their markets are so full of rugs, jackets, and other items made from wool. The mystery is figuring out what the sheep are eating, because they seem to be grazing on dirt. Most of the countryside looks cultivated, with narrow, shallow rows crisscrossing the ground, but nothing’s growing—certainly nothing green.

According to the driver who picked us up in Marrakech, the lambs are actually grazing on wheat . . . very short wheat. It is possible to see tiny tan plants growing in the dust as the train passes, but I’d never have called it wheat. Whatever the case, the sheep are eating something because they taste delicious in tangine, a Moroccan stew served in a teepee-shaped crockery pot.

We arrived in Marrakech shortly after noon Friday and were met by Majid, caretaker of the riad where we would be staying for the next two nights. A riad (REE-ahd) is a private home that has either been converted into a small, private hotel or is operated as the Morrocan equivalent of a bed-and-breakfast when the owners are away, which is the case where we stayed. We loaded into a large van outside the brand-new Marrakech train station—a beautiful building sitting on a large square—and drove through the streets toward the medina, or “old city,” where the Riad Trois Cours is located.

Marrakech is pink. The homes are pink, the office buildings are pink, the walls surrounding the medina are pink, the mosques are pink, the shops and banks are pink, even the interlaced bricks of the sidewalks are pink. Everything is the color of the oxidized desert stones and dirt from which the original city was built over 1,000 years ago. Today, of course, other building materials and colors are available, but the government has decided, wisely, that Marrakech should look like Marrakech. And Marrakech is pink. If Disney had created modern Marrakech, they couldn’t have done better.

Except, of course, Disney wouldn’t have their cast members sleeping in nooks of buildings or on street corners. Disney probably also wouldn’t populate the streets with cars, tiny taxis, huge busses, mopeds, bicyclists, and donkey carts, all vying for the same section of road at the same time. Moroccan drivers, at least the ones we saw, seem to view stoplights, warning signs (including do-not-enter signs), and lane stripes as quaint decorative devices with little utility. The situation is worse in Casablanca, where the taxi ride to the train station was terrifying, but it’s only slightly better in Marrakech. Crossing the street as a pedestrian in Marrakech is probably the closest I’ll come to feeling like Evil Kneival.

The king was visiting Marrakech Friday, so the city was decked out in the Moroccan flag—red with a green five-pointed star in the center—and was very clean. Majid said they wished it always was so clean. We even caught a very quick glimpse of the king and queen as their motorcade swept by enroute to mid-day prayers, with the street lined with excited Moroccans lu-luing (that high-pitched sound Arab women make with their tongues and voices) and cheering.

Riad Trois Cours is magnificent. It was three separate houses until the present owners, a Belgian couple, purchased, combined, and renovated the place into a single, 4-bedroom home that is a modern version of a pasha’s palace. It’s very Moroccan, with 3 open courts (thus the name) decorated with wooden frames, tiled planters, a bubbling fountain, cushioned seating areas, even a small pool. The bedrooms are equally magnificent, with lots of marble, wood, brass, and elaborate Moroccan chandeliers. It was far, far nicer than any of us—except for Jim Cooper, who found the place online—expected.

Web site: www.r3c.nl

We spent Friday afternoon winding through the souks, or marketplaces, of the medina, searching for the main square that, we understood, was filled with food carts, street entertainers, vendors, even snake charmers. The Medina is like a maze of very, very narrow streets, just wide enough for open-air shops, a couple lines of pedestrians and riders on mopeds racing through as if the paths were abandoned. We saw one woman hit by a moped as the bike made a speedy left turn around a blind corner and smacked into the lady, whose view might have been restricted by the veil. She was obviously hurt, but not seriously, and we all wondered how often similar accidents happen. It has to be often.

We spent an hour trying to make our way past the endless row of shops and vendors, who pounce like hungry carnivores if you so much as make glancing eye contact with a scarf or wooden box or dish or dress or leather purse or any other of the myriad items for sale. The souks are a festival of bright colors, the din of sales pitches, and indescribable smells. Only smell-o-vision could do them justice, but I took a lot of photos and videos that, I think, give a sense of the place. Walking through the old city of Marrakech is a cross between a National Geographic documentary and a scene from Indiana Jones. As I said, Disney could not have created it better.

The main square is exactly as the guidebooks describe: a huge plaza full of food carts, street entertainers, even, yes, snake charmers. And, in addition to the sights and smells of the souks, the plaza has added the clang of bells and whine of pipes pointed at swaying, flayed cobras. And, of course, everything is for sale.

We stopped for cold drinks on a rooftop café before heading back to the riad late in the afternoon, where Majid and his staff prepared us a delicious dinner of pumpkin soup and lamb tangine. Then we all went to the rooftop courtyard for a few glasses of wine and listened to the final calls to prayer echo across the city. Not a bad way to earn a living.

Yesterday (Saturday), we did much the same: a lot of walking, though this time through the newer section of the city. The new section is also very pink and, for the most part, upscale, with expensive shops, first-class hotels, a few cafes (limited service during Ramadan), and, of course, cars, mopeds, and donkey carts. Last night, very tired, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner, where I had a tasteless plate of couscous, chicken, and vegetables—a surprisingly boring meal in a country known for exotic flavors.

After dinner, Bob, Jim, and I gathered around the PC in the riad to watch the play-by-play account of the Michigan-Notre Dame game on ESPN.com. UM, led by its freshman quarterback, Tate Forcier, pulled out a victory on a touchdown pass with 11 seconds remaining. Bob’s and my shouts echoed through the streets just as the call to prayer had an hour or so earlier. “Attending” a game in the Big House from Marrakech, Morocco. What a world!

Today, I accompanied Maria, Shamim, and Betsy to a museum and old madrasa (religious school), while Bob and Jim stayed in the riad to read. The 4 of us then returned to the riad through the souks to do some last-minute shopping, bargaining, and gift buying. I was quite a sight walking through the narrow paths followed by my “harem” of three women, all walking in line behind. When we stopped at a silver shop and Maria started bargaining, the vendor advised her to ask “your husband” for more money. And several pointed out that, under Moroccan law, a man is permitted 4 wives. So I still had one to go.

We left the riad at 2pm, boarded the train back to Casablanca at 3pm, and are due to arrive back at the ship sometime around 7pm. After all the sights and sounds of Marrakech, I ready for a relaxing round of golf tomorrow at Royal Mohammadia, just outside the city. We depart for Ghana tomorrow night.