Post #4. Oct 7th. Chefchaouen

You’d think that getting up at 8:00 to have a leisurely breakfast before meeting your guide would give ample time for a restful sleep but unfortunately I had a crappy sleep.  My best estimate for the number of hours I spent sleeping is about 3, with the rest of the time awake and unable to figure out why something I’m normally good at was escaping me.

The breakfast offerings were very good with an extensive array of both Western and Moroccan items.  There was an egg station cooking up eggs and omelettes anyway you want and a full selection of hot items including pancakes, crepes, sausages, grilled tomatoes, potatoes, and many other things I couldn’t recognize.  A cereal station filled with a wide variety of cornflakes and granola and every topping imaginable to go with them.  A juice station serving up a variety of orange, papaya grapefruit and pomegranate, and a bank of a few coffee machines dispensing a wide variety of coffees, and a tea station that also served that newly discovered green tea and mint concoction.  

Today checking out of the hotel presented a bit of a challenge.  I carry a couple of small ice packs for my meds and always leave them with reception the day before I check out so they can be re-frozen. My meds need to be kept cool, so having the ice packs ensures that the meds maintain their efficacy.   This morning when I asked reception for the ice pack, they confirmed the item via a picture they took of it when I dropped it off.  But they weren’t able to find it.  I waited for about twenty minutes and our guide came back inside and asked a more senior looking person about the ice packs.  Ten minutes later she came out from the back and apologized because it wasn’t frozen.  We were advised that there was an issue with the freezer unit last night and it had been emptied out.  My freezer packs didn’t make it into another one.  Fortunately, our driver has a plug in refrigerator unit in his vehicle to keep water cool, so we just put my meds in there to keep them useable.  The other issue at the reception was that they presented me with an invoice for the room and requested my credit card to pay for it.  I did explain that it was prepaid but she wasn’t buying that.  At some point I confirmed my room number to her and she realized that she was asking me to pay for someone else’s room.  Coupled with the freezer pack, my reception experience that morning didn’t bring me joy.

We were off to Chefchaouen, a small town in the Rif Mountains, southeast of Tangier, about a 2 hour drive.  We skirt around the outskirts of Tangier and pass through rolling hills with sparsely populated communities dotting the region.  Some areas seemed to be barren and others were lush green patches of farmland.  We start off with lots of signs of commerce here but they slowly dwindle the further we get.  One of the ones that caught my eye were the pottery stalls.

We are heading towards a mountainous range in the distance and that must be the Rif Mountains.  On one of the closest range, we can see lines of wind turbines in the distance.  The Nassim wind farm is located near Tetouan and is one of the oldest wind farms in Africa, operating since 2000.  There is another wind farm nearby which makes this range of wind turbines look like they’re the same wind farm.  About 14% of all of Morocco’s energy comes from wind compared to 6% in Canada.

 

There might have been more interesting sites on the way but i fell asleep shortly after this picture.  Fortunately we stop for a rest at the Salon de The Restaurant.  It’s an awkward name, but that’s what it said on the building.  

The restaurant is located about 45 minutes from our our destination near Barrage Nakhla, a small lake created when the Oued (River) Nakhla was dammed to supply water to the nearby town of Tetouan, 20 km to the south of the dam site.  There was a large open patio in the back where we enjoyed a snack of baklava, an orange juice for Judith and espresso coffee for me.  

There were several geese, chickens, ducks and turkeys in the pens at the left of the picture.  Judith pointed out that the turkeys were black and what they used to look like before they were selectively bred for white pin feathers because they’re less noticeable on a turkey carcass.  

After our pit stop, we get back into our vehicle and proceed onto Chefchaouen.  It’s a hilly area and we seem to be climbing higher and higher.  The area is known as a producer of cannabis and our driver points out a few patches of it.  Apparently Morocco is the world’s largest producer of cannabis and much of it is grown in the Rif mountains.

The main attraction at Chefchaouen is its pastel blue medina.  The name itself means ‘look at the Peaks’ as the city is tucked into the mountainside of the Rif Mountains.   The city was founded in 1471 as a base for Berber tribes to launch attacks on the Portuguese in Ceuta, the little city belonging to Spain on the Moroccan side of the Strait of Gibraltar.  In later centuries, there was an influx of Muslim and Jewish refugees from southern Spain who built Spanish style whitewashed houses with small balconies, tiled roofs, rooftop patios within narrow lane walkways.  Sometime during its history, many shades of pale blue wash became the norm.  

The Medina is very pretty, full of winding alleyways, quaint doorways and active plazas.  Just about every building sports a shade of blue, bringing an almost infinite variety of blue hues.  Here are some pictures typical of the views.  

  

It’s easy to get lost in the myriad of narrow passages and sea of blue.  The market wasn’t as crowed as it can get as we’re in the shoulder season.  

One of the Kasbah gates.  This one towers over the central plaza of Plaza Uta El Hammam.

This is the Grande Mosquée at the Plaza Uta El Hammam.  The minaret is unusual because it is the only hexagonal shaped one in Morocco.  Most of the mosques in Morocco are closed to non-Muslims and this was no exception.

You cannot leave the Medina without a few signature photos.  This is one of them.  

And here’s another.

It’s close to 3pm after we begin to finish up at the Medina.  We decide to grab a light snack and end up walking around outside the Medina.  

We exit though the far northeastern gate at the upper side of the Medina.  Here the waterfall of Ras El Maa falls from the mountain.  It is where local women once gathered to do their washing.  Now there were many vendors where you can get some fresh squeezed orange or pomegranate juice.  These vendors all keep their fruit in fresh water as that apparently keeps them fresher and easier to squeeze.  Here was one of the larger water storage places where the fruit hangs out until an order came in.   

This is the Portuguese Bridge we crossed over on our way back into the Medina.  It was built around 1560 by captured Portuguese prisoners who attacked Morocco during the reign of the Ben Rashid rulers between 1471 and 1560.  

Our guide, Judith and I visited a local bakery and we each picked up a savoury and a sweet item to eat for our snack.  After seeing that you could get a fresh squeezed pomegranate drink, we all decided to get one.  This man has been doing this for many years.  That’s the entrance to his house behind him.  His commute is definitely short.  

We watched him prepare our juice drink.  He had some separated pomegranate seeds already in a bowl.  Several scoops of these seeds were squeezed for our three drinks. He let me take his picture.  

 

We sat down in the main plaza to enjoy our late snack.  Yum.  That pomegranate drink was absolutely fabulous.  Once we were finished, we headed for our hotel.  It’s located on the other side of the valley slope that the  Medina is located on.  So down into the valley and up the other side.  The hotel, Dar Jasmine, overlooks the Chefchaouen Medina.   This is a picture of the hotel from the Medina.

I had heard rumours about the number of stairs to reach the lobby of this place.  We took the stairs which were harder than normal because the rise over run was steeper than standard steps.  There were 159 steps in total.  The Hotel’s luggage handler took our luggage in one trip and it didn’t seem to phase him at all.  Personally, I think I’ll be a bit sore tomorrow. We checked in and sat out on the outside terrace deck until the paperwork concluded.  We were then invited to climb another 24 or so stairs to our room.  

The bathroom sink (not captured in the picture) was a solid stone basin.

View of the Chefchaouen Medina from the hotel terrace.  

This was the video of the Muslim call to prayer taken from the doorway of our hotel room.

The hotel staff have been extremely pleasant and helpful.  At dinner today I captured this picture of the Medina at night.  

Tomorrow, breakfast starts at 8:00 and we need to be ready to go by 9:30.  We’re going to Fes and the trip will be about 7 hours as we’ll stop along the way.  

Judith has problems going down stair so the 159 steps from the hotel lobby to the road might be a challenge for her.  My advice to her has been to just let gravity help her down.