Meknes - Eating camel and a nice hammam

It was a late start leaving Sale but getting out  of the city was quite simple, the roads were smooth and fast and we made really good progress, covering 25km before stopping for a quick lunch in a shaded spot beside the road.

Getting back on the bikes after lunch we had a problem though, Carmen's knee was starting to cause her pain again. We kept on cycling taking it easy from then on, stopping regularly to give some respite before continuing on again. We kept going until it started to get foggy when we decided to look for a place to stop and camp as it was late afternoon and there would only be another hour or so of light. So we found a good spot and stopped there, we had covered 65km that day.

About 30 minutes later a local man came along, and due to not being able to communicate in any language between the three of us, we resorted to pointing and gesturing, which made for an interesting conversation. By the end of it he smiled and walked away, and from what we could gather he was either saying, "You camp here, I am over there if you want anything." or he was inviting us to come set up our tent next to where he was. Either way he seemed a very friendly guy and after that we put up the tent and settled in for the night.

Next morning Carmen's knee was no better and we had about 75km more to cover before Meknes where we could get some accommodation. We stopped frequently along the way to give her knee some respite but it wasn't really helping. Carmen eventually deciding she wanted to find a place to stop and camp 20km short of Meknes and then do the rest the next day. Unfortunately though we were unable to find any suitable spots at all in the last 20km and eventually found ourselves in Meknes itself, right by the medina. A local offered to show us a place to stay and we accepted and made our way there to stay for the night.

A nice spot where we stopped for lunch on the second day

Next morning finally got in touch with a Belgian lady named Monique who had previously accepted a couchsurfing request of ours and made our way over to her house in the new section of Meknes. We were greeted very warmly and shown to a room in her spacious apartment where we could sleep. She explained that she was expecting some more couchsurfers later that evening and then we went out to explore Meknes with her as our guide.

She first took us to a cafe in the main square where we had our first taste of freshly squeezed Moroccan orange juice. It was very nice. I will just take the time to explain something about Moroccans as this was highlighted more than anything right then. Moroccans LOVE sweet things, sugar especially, they put it in everything. This included juices and smoothies. They would put big stachets of sugar next to your cup of juice for you to put in it, and when I say big, I mean at least double, if not triple the size of ones you would normally find in England, and for orange juice!

Moroccan sugar cubes (look at the size of them!)

 Monique then showed us around the old city of Meknes, the famous gate of Bab Mansour with it's now rather faded green tiles, and told us of it's brother in Fes, Bab Boujloud, and how the two cities always argued about whose gate was prettiest. We then saw the underground dungeons where Louis XIV had his soldiers imprisoned when he fell out with the current ruler of Morocco Moulay Ismail because he refused to allow Moulay Ismail to marry one of his daughters, as he already had 500 wives! We imagined it must have been a horrible place to be kept prisoner because back when they were imprisoned they had not made holes in the ceiling where light could come through, so it would have been in total darkness. An interesting fact we were also told was that, prisoners kept there were not fed unless they paid or their families brought them food!

Then went to see the royal golf course, where previous ruler Hassan II had it made just for his pleasure. Now other people are allowed to use it but at a fairly expensive cost £12 - £50 for 9 holes. It is a beautiful place to go though and has a nice cafe up on a terrace that overlooks the course where you can sit, even if you're not a member.

Afterwards Monique headed back by taxi to meet up with her other couchsurfers and we went for a walk to visit the masoleum of Moulay Ismail and we got to go inside and see some lovely mosaics and carvings.

On arriving back at Monique's house we met the other couchsurfers. There were three of them, a couple from Canada and a Moroccan guy, who was their unofficial guide. We went out in the evening with them and Monique to a restaurant run by a friend of Monique's where we were treated to our first Moroccan feast. It was a three course meal, with a selection of olives, four different salads and bread. Followed by a main course of chicken tagine, camel tagine, vegetarian tagine and a goats cheese pastry with some vegetables in. Finally for dessert we had fresh fruit salad. It was unbelievably good. Monique's friend was a very good cook. The highlight for both of us being the camel tagine! We ate really well that night.

There was also some drama that night with regards to Brandee and Matt's unofficial guide Houssen. Apparently, he had initially been someone they had couchsurfed with, but he had persuaded them to rent a car and he will be their guide and then they can go wherever they wanted to go whilst in the car, for the mere price of 60 Euros a day! However this didn't quite work out as they expected as, he would not stop in the places that they wanted him to, he seemed to be on his own schedule. There was the added surprise as well that they had to pay for his food and accommodation also.

They were obviously very unhappy about this and we only heard about it that night and said to them that they needed to do something about that as it would cost them a fortune. So they had a chat with Monique the following morning, and with her help translating, they talked with Houssen and told him that they would continue the rest of the way on their own and they didn't want his help. He refused to refund any of their money from the days that they were not going to be with him and he even asked them to pay his petrol money back to Marrakech (where they started). Rightly they refused. He then left and we all went together, minus Monique, by taxi to a city called Moulay Idriss.

Beautiful view of the holy city Moulay Idriss

Moulay Idriss is the holy city in Morocco and is a pilgramage site for them, second only to Mecca, as this is where the religion of Islam was first brought into Morocco. We were dropped off there by taxi and made our way through the small cities twisting streets, getting lost many times. Until we eventually found our way to the viewing point of the city and the holy mosque where you got an amazing view, and made for a really good photograph. We also saw whilst in the city the only round minaret in Morocco.

The circular minaret

 After this we walked about 5-6km to a nearby site called Volubilis, which was the capital for the Romans in northwestern Africa, however it is now in ruins. Lots of the bricks that used to be in Volubilis were used to help build the city of Moulay Idriss hundreds of years ago (about 800 AD). This was a fascinating area, and if you are an archeologist or a history fan, this would be a great place to spend the whole day. They had beautiful mosaic floors and some fairly intact walls and arches, and the floor plan of the entire city was still pretty much totally intact. One of the best examples of Roman ruins in the world outside of Italy.

It was starting to pour with rain when we finished looking around Volubilis and a taxi took pity on us giving us a lift back to Meknes for the locals price, which would not usually happen. Once getting back Monique suggested a visit to the local hammam to warm ourselves up. This was a very interesting experience!

Now I will be telling this experience from my point of view, which was slightly different to Carmen's, but nevertheless interesting!

For those of you who don't know, a hammam is basically like a public bathhouse. You go there and wash yourself in a room with other people in (at it's most basic form). If you are going to do this in Morocco I would recommend going with someone who knows what they are doing or read up on it beforehand otherwise you might find yourself a little bit lost, as Matt and myself did at first.

There are a few essential pieces of equipment you need in a hammam before you go in.  You can hire them for a small fee from the hammam, but it's better to have your own, mainly for hygiene reasons. The first and most important of these is a hand mitt, known as a Kessa. You will also require a mat to put on the floor, some soap (there is a special black soap, which is made from the kernel of olive nuts and has good exfoliating properties) and a small sort of water scoop to pour water on yourself.

Kessa Glove

When you first enter, you undress down to your underwear and take your mitt, scoop, soap and mat with you, also remembering to pick up a big bucket as well. You leave all your clothes and other things behind in a kind of locker room and pay a man the small fee of 1 dirham to look after your things. You then make your way through into the actual hammam section. The hammam rooms are divided up into three rooms: the first room is the coolest, and they get hotter the further you go. The idea is to go in whatever room you feel most comfortable in and start washing yourself.

However when me and Matt went in we didn't have a clue what to do. We had all our equipment (courtesy of Monique) but didn't really know what we should be doing. So we set our mats down in the first room and sat on the floor on our mats and started filling up the big buckets from the taps that are on the walls around the rooms. We then started to pour the water over ourselves and put some soap on and start to wash ourselves. As we did this we kept looking at the only other guy in this particular room to see what he was doing, and what we should do next. He just continued to wash himself before then leaving.

We eventually decided to move into the second room, which I must admit was rather nice, being a fair bit warmer. We started pouring water over ourselves a bit more until a guy came over to Matt and slapped the floor and motioned for him to lay down on the floor. Once he was lying on the floor the guy put the soap all over his body and then washed it off, this was followed by the application of the black soap. The guy then told Matt to lay down again and put the mitt on and proceeded to scrub his skin with it, making all the dead skin come off. I was chuckling to myself until a different guy came along and started to do the same to me.

At first I found it a little bit awkward, but after a while you just get used to it, and although I was not totally relaxed, I relaxed a little bit and was able to enjoy it a bit more. You finish off by being rinsed off and left with your bucket to do what you want. We both decided to head back and wait for the girls. The girls were an extra hour than us, and were of slightly different opinions than us. They thoroughy enjoyed it and had a really good time. It was one place where they had occassion to meet and talk with Moroccan women, which is not normally possible outside of a hammam. They also didn't mind as much being washed and scrubbed by other women at all, which helped. For women in Morocco, the hammam is a very social place, it's a place where they can go and meet up with other women and socialise as they do not get many opportunities outside. It is not uncommon for women to spend up to 6 hours in the hammam chatting. This is quite the opposite for men who just seem to go in, wash, and then come out again, without really talking.

I would say also that if you are female and a little bit shy then a local hammam might not be for you as the women in there all go topless, and some even go completely naked. So I would recommend to go instead to a more touristy hammam where people are all in bathing suits.

That night after getting back from the hammam, Carmen and I decided to cook a meal for everyone as a way of saying thank you for letting us stay. We decided to cook couscous and chickpeas, which is typically Moroccan, unfortunately we didn't do it quite so well as Moroccans, but people still seemed to enjoy it. This was our last night with Monique in Meknes, which we were sad about, but Fes beckoned the next day, so we had to go!