We’d discussed the night before what our plans were for the following day, and there were two camps of thought – the bulk of the group wanted to head to the coast towards Casa Blanca while Kostas and I, along with Gordon and Ron (in the pug) were interested in seeing a more mountainous route, so we agreed to head off in the morning in our separate directions.
Since we were in Fes and it was famous for it’s Medina it seemed silly NOT to go and see it, so we decided to try and knock that off in the morning and then head off with Gordon and Ron – unfortunately due to the slightly messed up communications they got the impression we’d scarpered without them while we were in the Medina – understandably annoying for them – so they ended up going with the others.
The Medina in Fes is pretty cool, massive old fort style structures hiding a warren of small alleys and buildings, all filled to the brim with people trying to sell you things – to be fair the food all smelled delicious. Weirdly there seemed to be a lot of selling of used clothes, or maybe I’m just too used to the geometrically laid out stuff you see in european shops..
Fes is also famous for it’s tanneries, which is essentially the old school process of turning peeled animal into nice leather, whether that’s goat, cow or whatever. It’s a nasty chemical process that normally stinks to high heaven and used to involve what is essentially piss and other waste chemicals to treat and soften the hides. The famous tannery is in the old Medina where we were visiting, and while it’s definitely worth going to see and is interesting, beware of some seriously hard sell which you will be subjected to as a non native. If you actually fancy buying something you see start off at 30% of what they are asking and then haggle, don’t be afraid to walk away – we were chased down the road for about 10 minutes by the sales guys because Kostas expressed interest in a leather jacket.
Haggling is hard as an englishman (or at least I found it hard) as we don’t want to be rude and assume that the other people won’t shaft you – they will, but it’s all part of the game.
We had decided to head south from Fes into the foothills of the Atlas, hopefully finding some interesting roads and scenery on the way, so we headed down the N8 and were surprised pretty quickly to find what is essentially a swiss town in the middle of morocco, complete with steep roofed buildings and a lot of snow.
It’s a place called Ifrane and appears to be a quite exclusive holiday resort – literally snow everywhere, posh buildings and tourists all over the place – For some reason we didn’t get any photos of the place but you can google it – definitely a brilliant surprise and if we’d had more time it would have been good to stop. Here’s a random stock photo I found on t’internet.
The N8 heading from Ifrane through Khenifra, Ait Ishaq and Zaouiat Cheikh is quite pretty, slowly losing altitude and with it dropping below the snow line. Our goal was Beni-Mellal, a reasonable waypoint to start the next day into the Western High Atlas National Park.
We arrived in Beni-Mellal and found an acceptable hotel in called the Hotel Iman Alkhalil, got some food and hit the sack.
Notes
- It should take about a morning to do the Fes Medina properly, you may get bothered by people saying you need a tour guide, but you don’t really
- You can park pretty much right outside, might cost you a few dirham for the time, but your call will be watched
- Go to the tanneries, worth a look, but don’t feel like you have to buy anything
- Ifrane is cool, especially in the winter
Route
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