Green Travel Diaries

I have  two starkly different impressions of the Fez medina, one magical and one exhausting. As we entered the vast walled city from the train station, with its 9,400 narrow alleyways, dusty and dark and winding and cool, I felt like I had been transported back into a medieval world, full of people in traditional Arab clothing, pushing their handcarts, working on their crafts, leading the occasional donkey, selling their wares. It was impossible not to get lost, but it was quiet, and the air was good as motorcycles are not allowed, and there was ventilation above our heads. Howard had arranged for a guide for a few hours on our first full day. His name is Arabe, and he is a very knowledgeable, kind and patient older man who became an invaluable friend to us during our stay. He has a wife from a marriage arranged by his older sister that he says, with a smile, “worked out well.” They have two sons in university and one 12-year-old daughter. One of the sons is studying medicine and w...

The three days we’ve spent in Essaouria, an ancient walled city on the Atlantic Ocean, has been purely a tourist experience, different from our immersion in the Medina in Marrakesh. We stayed in a very old hotel created by combining two buildings with a wooden bridge. The curved marble staircase, carved dark wood trim and shutters, thick stucco walls and heavy colourful rugs felt very calming and warm. The sea breeze filling our room at night made sleeping easy. The highlight for me was experiencing a hamman, a traditional Middle Eastern steam bath for women only, followed by a scrub with a  sandpaper-like mitt (somewhat painful till I got used to it), and black olive soaping with buckets of very warm water poured over me. The steam room was so hot I wasn’t sure I was breathing air at first. The rooms for sauna and bath were made entirely of black marble from ceiling to floor and remained quite cool, but so dark and slippery when wet that I was hesitant to turn over for fear of plu...

After four days and nights immersed in a medina in Marrakesh, I’ve concluded that the people who inhabit it are extraordinarily kind and patient, especially to an old woman with a cane. Young men have been known to bring their motorcycles to a screeching halt in front of me or carry over a stool for me to sit on when taking a break from our wandering. Always polite and with a kind smile. Their mothers would be proud. It’s interesting how we human beings organize ourselves into a community, even when we’re very poor and crowded together. Or, I guess, especially then. Each morning, the men open up their stalls, small spaces full of all manner of things. The cobblestone alley has been cleaned up of any garbage, and they have sprinkled water on the stones to tamp down the dust. They spend the next twelve hours or so hawking their wares and talking with their neighbours, or watching a soccer match on their cellphones. Our experience has been that they are rarely aggressive. When they see we...