52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Chapter 11: Morocco

In Which I Have Several Very Good Days, And One Very Bad Day, And Try To Sort Out What The Difference Was

“Come on, you’re being a bad dude.”

In fact, I was not being a bad dude. Objectively, it was the young adult following me, with a tone alternating between guilt and menace, that was being a bad dude.

We were in the Medina (old town) of Fes, with him “guiding” me back towards the place I was staying — which he knew the location of because I had foolishly told him the night before making small talk in a coffee shop, and he remembered what I looked like.

I did not need his help, which I said several times, but the tenor of his voice was intended to make me think there could be a problem if I did not financially thank him for his services. And, my place being a pension — a family-run, slightly informal hotel — I was knocking to get in with no avail, stuck between him and the door.

After a few more seconds, I engaged in some haggling, and gave him the equivalent of about 15 bucks.

This sort of thing happens countless times a day in Fes, arguably Morroco’s cultural capital, home to the largest car-free Medina in the world, a sprawling mass of alleys and vendors and everyday residents living their lives…and a couple hundred people offering services and demanding money (generally known as “touts”) making life difficult.   

A person will tell you a street is closed, or that there’s a special way to access a tourist attraction, or asks if you would like to see some sort of shop. Some folks are pleasantly helpful, and will politely leave you alone if you say no thank you.

There are others though where if you engage at all, give eye contact, or just pause for a second before moving on, and you run the risk of them following you for hundreds of metres, badgering you to use their service, demanding money if you push back. And it’s extremely hard to know which type of “help” you’ll be getting.

I had probably about 20 or so of those interactions over the five hours I wandered the Medina in Fes. By the end, it was enough to completely exhaust and depress me, causing anxiety that lasted overnight, making it by a large margin the worst day on this trip.

In the week after, I thought more about the experiences and my reaction to it.

Why did I have such a negative time? And what does it say about the “right” way for me to travel?

Scenes from the sprawling and transactional Medina of Fes

First, I should preface by saying the rest of my time in Morocco was great.

From a travel perspective, I knew it was going to take more effort than Spain and Portugal. A Muslim-dominated country would have a very different culture from the “western” or Latin American countries I had been to. Add in a hotter climate, accommodations that required a lot of lugging bags through crowded car-free streets, and mostly long buses instead of trains, and it required some work.

But those barriers are pretty easy to deal with if allow yourself extra time and space while making sure to drink lots of water.

Following a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar, I started in the coastal city of Tangier, and spent a half-day really enjoying the contrast between its centuries-old Medina on the top of a waterfront hill, and the much more European-influenced wide boulevards along the coastline.

After that, it was a bus ride to Chefchaouen, the most Instagram small town you ever did see.

It’s a small city in the Rif mountains, only around 45,000 people, and is famous for virtually all of its buildings being painted blue.

There’s no definitive reason as to why — some credit Jewish immigrants who wanted to show their connection to the sky, others to mosquito-prevention campaign, along with other explanations — but it creates a stunning visual aesthetic that is fun to engage with for a day, and is just far enough off the beaten path that, while busy, wasn’t completely overwhelming.

(There were also hundreds of cats roaming the streets as well, which may have contributed to my enthusiasm)

After that, Marrakesh was a giant step up in population (around a million people) and energy. The depth of its cultural treasures, developed over hundreds of years of different kingdoms, was a sight to behold: madrasas and temple ruins and Jemaa el-Fnaa, the massive public square, made walking around a constant pleasure in spite of the temperature. An evening spent heading out to the desert and getting on a camel (along with driving a quad through the sand hills) was tremendous, if 100% touristy.

There were still some aggressive touts, but less than in Fes, and I was more prepared, wearing sunglasses to deter conversation and raising my hand while turning my head slightly away if they got close to me.

Overall, it was a rewarding week, with one bad day in the middle.

And that day, more than anything, that day came down to forgetting my own strengths, weaknesses, and values.

The amazing artwork in the palaces and madrasas of Marrakech

To start with, I didn’t prepare: one thing I’ve learned at this point is that if a city has an obvious flaw, or thing that you should look out for, there will be plenty of people talking about it if you google variations of “City X problems tourists”.

(Also sometimes you have to add “Reddit” to the end of things. Over the course of three years researching for this trip and searching for different content than I normally do, I noticed the Internet’s ability to provide helpful information, WRITTEN BY A HUMAN, that directly and honestly talks about things without 1200 words of SEO span and 15 ads has gotten remarkably worse. But that’s another story!)

I love to prepare. More than that, I really need to prepare: being able to deal with unexpected situations intuitively is not one of my strengths, so having a little cheat sheet in the back of my brain for New Experience X is really necessary.

So, I failed on that front.

Second, I failed to create the atmosphere for the type of travelling that gives me pleasure.

Some people like tour guides, or random interactions with locals, and the human and cultural connections that come with it.

But I’ve realized my favourite method is being able to take in the new place with quiet observation. To wander, to contemplate, to figure things out at my own pace: that to me is the more joyous way of discovery. It feels less obtrusive, and more like how you would live back at home, trying things out and receding into the general fabric of a community.

I’m now going to undercut this point by showing a photo of a guided tour where I was giddily driving a quad motorbike for the first time in my life. In fairness, it was the only tour activity I did in the country.

In Fes, you can’t really do travel like that. The walls of the Medina are too narrow, the touts are too plentiful, there’s no real place to escape and pause in the moment.    

And finally, I fell for the very type of marketing I mock on a regular basis.

Spend many months researching what cities to visit in a year around the world, and you learn there’s a pretty common dichotomy that gets used to describe places.

A flawed city is too big, or it’s gotten too big, or too expensive. Whatever the case, it’s definitely not what it once was, and has been ruined (or at least, made impure) by tourists.

By contrast, you know what a perfect travel destination is, even if you don’t travel, because it’s couched in the same language as every other social media influencer product.

It’s off the beaten path. Takes some effort but then it’s all yours. It’s gritty but charming. It’s cute but it’s real. The platonic ideal of a good travel destination is that it’s authentic.

While other places are homogenized and overrun, the authentic city allows you to experience a place in an honest direct way as locals do, and therefore is a more rewarding travel destination.

I shouldn’t be too snarky. Overtourism is definitely a thing, and it can be remarkably easy to spend a couple days in a big city only going to places where visitors dominate.

I wanted to get out of my comfort zone in Morroco. And for the most part, I succeeded in a way that still made me happy — except for the time where instead of doing my own research, or thinking about my own abilities, I jumped right into a hidden gem.

But I take from it the silver lining of being more mindful about my limits in the future — and a very blue lining of the wonderful experiences that Morocco did provide.