Up and out early – it's so cool in the morning. We found a wifi connection in a gorgeous riad, so gorgeous that it decorated the fountain in the inner courtyard with fresh blood red rose petals and the floor and walls with hand painted tiles and mosaics. We dropped our bags back at the hostel and wandered round trying to decide what to do – we'd both been reading but not absorbing any of the information in our guidebook.
On our way to find the start of the walking tour, we were briefly befriended by a young man who gave us directions to get there, he also asked if we wanted to see the tanneries. We'd seen loads of really cool photos of the tanneries so we said yes and decided to pick up our walking route later on. He passed us onto another younger man who worked at the pits and happened to be walking past us. So we followed him through the maze of streets which although weren't central, were no less crazy than the main square and arrived several minutes later at the Berber tanning pits.
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| From Marrakesh, Morocco |
We were then passed onto another man who gave us mint 'gas masks' for the smell (some of the dips are pigeon poop) and gave us a very brief tour with equally brief explanations of the tanning process, 1 week lime dip, 1 day pigeon poop, 2-3 weeks flour dip and some time in the dyeing pit (the dye pits were all the same colour unlike the pictures we'd seen before) all in it took about 45 days for the goat, sheep or camel skins to be ready for the artisans. We were allowed to take pictures and ask some questions (although he didn't always understand or know the answer). We were then taken to a shop, naturally, where one of these artisans showed us different products from the different skins. The man we spoke to was very understanding about our non purchase of any of his products once D explained what kind of trip we were on (the non buying kind) and for how long we had to lug our backpacks round for. Once we said goodbye and left the shop, the 'tour guide' approached us again, hand out demanding money.
I have to mention again at this point that many people help or do things for others (including tourists and therefore us) without expecting or asking for any kind of payment, so it's very difficult to know when the services or help being given or offered is for free or comes with strings attached.
When we said no, because he hadn't told us before our 5 minute trip around the tannery, he insisted more and became angry, getting other people involved to whom we explained the same thing. The whole process of getting away and out of the mess took a while and a lot of repeating, we said that if he had told us before we would have been happy to pay something but he didn't and so we wouldn't, we were prepared to give him something as a token but it was rejected and eventually we were told to give back the mint gas masks and go. It left a really nasty taste in our mouths and we spoke about it for a while, I did wonder if we had done the right thing not paying him and I can honestly say it was principle that won in the end, that and his attitude which counted against him, getting nasty doesn't get you much.
We went back to Djemaa al-Fna the scenic route, the very scenic route which involved doubling and tripling back on ourselves getting very lost. We got something to eat on the way from a 'hole in the wall restaurant' which couldn't have measured more than 3x5m. The guy had some pots on a hot plate and we choose from; lentils, beans, sheep's stomach and mutton, surprisingly enough we didn't go for the stomach but what we did have was delicious (and most importantly cheap).
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| From Marrakesh, Morocco |
We then found the Ali ben Ali ben Youssef Medersa Museum which was included in a collection of three buildings, it was interesting to walk around, but we didn't really know what we were looking at - our French being so minimal. They did have some cool tiles though.
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| From Marrakesh, Morocco |
We got lost again, found the main square and had an orange juice and then a three hour nap.
At 7ish we went back out to the square and got some food from one of the main open air restaurants in the middle of the square. We then wandered up a long road which lead to the Ville Nouvelle (nice to get out of the Medina) looking for a beer. Not finding one, we went back to our bed and slept like hot, sweaty babies.
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