Fes - Day 1

Tuesday, April 23

After we left the Ibis Hotel, we found a cab driver to take us to the Dar Tazi where we checked in without further incidence.  Our cab driver was a friendly guy named Ibrahim, who Dante noted resembled Borat.  He had a decent grasp of English, so we decided to hire him to take us on a short car tour around the city later that afternoon and a day trip out to Volubilis, Meknes, and Moulay Idriss on Thursday.

The Dar Tazi is a nice guesthouse that is situated right at the edge of the Fes el Bali, also known as the Medina of Fes, one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites.  The location of the Dar Tazi is great with easy access to just about everything you would want to see, and it has a rooftop terrace with panoramic views of the city.  

Dropping of our bags, we decided to head out into the streets to get ourselves oriented.  Within one block, we walked past a cafe with a dozen Moroccan men sitting around small tables.  A couple of them sitting at a table started frantically waved at us, and quickly said in broken English, "No, no, wrong direction!  Nothing over there but buses and taxis."  Our big mistake here was hesitating.  As soon as you look confused, they realize that you are new in town.  The reaction is not unlike sharks smelling blood in the water.    

One of them motioned to another guy across the street who ran across the street and introduced himself as Mohammed.  His English was excellent and he explained to us that what we wanted to see was in the other direction, and he started leading us towards an alleyway opening that we saw when we exited the Dar Tazi.  We hesitated in following, but Mohammed kept reassuring us, "I show you verrry verrry nice views!  You trust me, I show you Medina!  I do not want your money.  I just want to practice  English with you."  He quickly flashed his ID in his wallet to prove to us that he was a university student, but who knows what the ID actually said?  I could have flashed my ID and said I was CIA and it would be equally likely to be valid.

Before you think we are totally naive, we had already read a little about being conned in Morocco.  So we were aware, but you don't realize the full extent of it until you actually go there and see for yourself.  Basically, what it comes down to is this: if you are approached by someone else offering to help you or take you somewhere, there is an approximately 90% chance you are being hustled.  The risk of being taken by con artists decreases considerably as you get outside the cities or the touristy areas.  But if you're in a place like Fes, watch yourself.  We were never in any obvious physical danger.  But these con artists don't take no for answer and you have learn to be mean.  If they won't leave you, threaten to go find the police.  As long as you're wishy washy about your response, they will persist in trying to sway you to use their "services".  

In Fes, there are legally licensed tour guides located near the sites of cultural and historical significance.  The numerous unlicensed tour guides are everywhere though and they will quickly try to scoop up unsuspecting tourists before they get close to those sites and take them away...somewhere else.  The reason is that if they are caught, they will be taken to jail.  But they know where the police are and so they always steer tourists away from those areas.  If you are ever being lead around and you do not see any tourists, that should be your big red flag.  Do not ever follow an unlicensed guide (like we did).   

If you approach someone else to ask for help, your chances are better but there is still a significant chance you will be conned.  I'm a fairly seasoned traveler, but there are few places I have experienced where the people are as aggressive as Morocco.  If you are going there, put on a very thick skin and be VERY slow to trust anyone.  If strangers ever tell you anything in the way of information, like where to go eat or where to go shop - take it with a huge grain of salt.  It is more likely to be a lie than helpful information.  Money is the only goal and short of mugging you, there are no ethics when it comes to trying to get it from you. One person even tried to guilt me when I ignored him, by shouting after me, "I'm Muslim, I'm not terrorist!!"  Man, that one really pissed me off.

We decided to trust Mohammed for a little while (poor decision), so we followed him into the alleyway (another poor decision).  Five minutes later, we had no idea where we were.  The Fes el Bali is essentially one giant labyrinth of small alleyways.  Unless you live there, it is extremely disorienting to walk through there.  Still, as we would later find out, it is okay to get lost because it's really not that big and eventually, you end up somewhere outside the walls where you can find your way back to wherever you need to go, or you just call a cab.  But, at the time, we felt we had no choice but to follow Mohammed (yet another poor decision).

Mohammed then took us for lunch at some local dive hole-in-the-wall "restaurant", where it was a fixed menu.  There was actually no menu at all.  You sat down and were served fried fish, bread, and a tomato based soup - harira.  He assured us that the food was "very cheap, unlike tourist trap places" and that it was genuine Moroccan food.  In retrospect, I suppose it was genuine Moroccan food the way a street vendor's hot dog would be genuine American food.  Don't get me wrong - a hot dog can be delicious, but is that really what you would take a foreign guest to go eat?  As a self-admitted Portland food snob, I'd hope not.  So Mohammed wasn't really lying in that sense.  But then again, I may be telling you this to lessen the sting of being taken for a ride.

So we sat down to eat without checking a menu or asking about prices (did I mention we made a string of poor decisions?).  The store owner then brought us a bill - 120 dirhams per person.  Almost $14 USD each.  It was a decent enough meal and a large quantity.  But it was pretty much what the 8 other guys in the small hole-in-the-wall were eating.  We later used a little common sense to realize that there was no way any of the local Moroccans were paying $14 USD for lunch.  At the end of our trip, we had an amazing dinner in Essaouira where we ordered almost everything on the menu and we paid 120 dirhams TOTAL.  (Go to that entry - Essaouira Day 2 - if you want to know where that was.)

Mohammed then proceeded to take us to a tannery, where I bought a belt for 300 dirhams (rip-off), and then to a ceramic factory.  The goal was to get us to buy something and of course, Mohammed would get a cut of the money.  Even though the practice is illegal, it seems to be something that the whole city knows about.  And no one we came across bothered to warn us.  

The tannery

The ceramics factory

At 4:00, Ibrahim came to pick us up and take us on a tour of the city.  We first visited the Marinid Tombs, located on the top of a hill that overlooks the entire city.  After that, we were dropped off near the Royal Palace (which tourists cannot enter) and visited the nearby Jewish quarter with its cemetery.  Ibrahim pretty much just dropped us off and allowed us to wander by ourselves.  We agreed to meet  him at his car an hour later.

As we grew a little more comfortable with Ibrahim, we told him about our encounter with Mohammed, the university student who was studying English.  He simply chuckled in response, "Yes, you will find many many people 'studying English' here.  Maybe he is.  Maybe he isn't.  Then, maybe his name also not Mohammed."  It was a good (and not very subtle) point.

Ibrahim himself claimed to have studied biochemistry at the university but then since there aren't too many jobs for biochemists in Morocco, decided to become a cab driver.  We weren't too sure who or what to believe at this point.  But Ibrahim was able to talk fairly in depth about genetics and DNA, so for the time being Ibrahim was placed in the "trust quarantine".  In Morocco, trust is a precious commodity, and for tourists, it is perhaps more valuable than Moroccan silver.

After a pretty full day, we ended up in a cafe across the street from Dar Tazi, to watch Barcelona get stunned by Borussia Dortmund in the UEFA Champions League semifinal match.  Since we were not in the US, this game was a VERY big deal in Morocco and the cafe we were in was packed to the brim.  Given Morocco's close proximity to Spain, soccer fans there seemed to fall into one of two camps.  They were either Real Madrid fans or FC Barcelona fans.