The hotel reviews for Tetouan where fairly positive for the hotels themselves, however a few negative comments were directed at the actual locals not being very friendly. I had put this down to a few special snowflakes, until a friend emailed and happened to mention not to go to Tetouan, unless I want to be ripped off and abused.
Rightio, I had already dropped Tetouan back from two nights to one, but now I decided to drop it completely and head straight to Chefchaouen. A few others in the riad where having trouble booking buses, due to Eid, which would mean the grand taxi’s would be everywhere. And they sure where, rocking up to the ranks a nice van had a couple of seats available, and at an inflated price of 100dh I climbed aboard for one of the more harrowing rides I’ve had.
There seems to a pathological dislike for having a car in front of a taxi driver. The car maybe be 50 metres away, but the driver will see it, seethe with anger that there’s visually a car in front of him, and accelerate towards the other car until they’re tailgating it. Now here comes the fun bit. The road to Chefchaouen is along the Rif Mountains, so there’s no real straight roads, they all tend to wind around bends, meaning there are a lot of blind corners.
But a blind corner, I hear you say, that’s when you should be at the most cautious and overtaking that irritating car in front of you, the one telling bad jokes about your mum and laughing at you, you’d be mad to try and overtake it. Yet here we are, time and time again our driver would try and pull out, drop back, pull out, accelerate towards invisible oncoming traffic, just to get in front of that other car.
After a 2 hour drive, we make it alive to Chefchaouen, the famous blue city of Morocco and said to be the countries most beautiful.
To be honest I might even go as far to say one of the most stunning and beautiful towns in the world. The town, predominately in the medina, is painted an incredible sky blue and white, with terracotta red tiles. In some areas it’s just all blue, literally an entire lane way is painted blue; the ground, the walls, the doors, everything. It’s quite weird to see that, but it’s all so mesmerising how amazing it all looks. From the rooftop of the riad I stayed at, you really appreciate the birds eye view of just how cool this place looks.
But it’s not all happy and colourful here. The touts are dialled up to 11, this being the major tourist attraction in the country. I think my experience with them would greatly differ to others that have visited in groups or as a couple. As a solo male traveller the touts see only one thing; someone to buy hash.
When I arrived at the kasbah and checking the map on how to get up to the riad (the town is settled on the side of the Rif Mountains, so to get anywhere you’re going up a whole lot of stairs and steep paths). This is when the most annoying tout I’ve ever come across targeted me. This piece of shit wouldn’t leave me alone. While the touts in Tangier would walk off after a few minutes, this guy just kept following. His line was he’ll show me to the riad, and to prove his qualifications, he showed me pictures of his family, which were clearly random photos from the 70’s. In a strange turn of irony, he did actually help me find the riad in the end since the map from the online booking site, Agoda, was actually wrong.
Then of course the enviable, just as we’re 5mins away he kicks off the hard sell for hash. Not interested. Come on, just 5 Euro. Nope. This one for free, then you come back to me. <sigh>, nope. He swore, I think, in Arabic quite a few times clearly getting frustrated, but it seems the usual way to haggle in Morocco is to just keep yelling and insulting the person until they give in.
I ended up giving this idiot 15dh to get a coffee, he lost it and even followed into the riad. Eventually he took the 15dh and left. I’d bump into him one more time, and that time he literally tried pushing a tiny bag of hash into my arm and claim it was only 50 Euro (!!). I kept walking and he started swearing again.
While that guy represented the worse of Chefchaouen drug pushers, every single person that I talked to would push to sell hash. Random guy in a lane way, hey want some hash? Shop keep after saying I’m not interesting in their wares, want some hash instead, I have the best. Get some food in a restaurant on the main plaza and the waiter would come over, I get you a good deal for a spliff, come on, just try a bit, you’ll like. It honestly got grating, and it was never just an offer, it was a hard sell, and all you can do is just walk off with them yelling to get your attention back Hey, hey, HEY!!
In the I just ignored them completely. No interaction, just acted as if they weren’t there. This ended with one guy yelling at me: You must be paranoid, yeah
paranoid, you need to stop being paranoid! I guess if you antagonise the right people they’ll re-engage and you have a slither of hope to sell that overpriced hash. I just walked on.
There isn’t a hell of a lot to do in Chefchaouen, but the town is so picturesque that you don’t need a reason to do anything. Stroll around the blue painted lanes and alley ways of the medina to see where it may take you (and discover a really cool spot for a photo), sit on the plaza drinking coffee, sit on the roof of my riad and look across the town with the amazing Rif Mountains looming in the background (seriously, the mountains look incredible). Despite this destination leaving a sour note for me due to the endless onslaught of hash sellers, another very special event happened. It was the Feast of Eid.
The sound of sheep and goats had blurted out since I had arrived. On my first night there was one near my window that was making the saddest pathetic call for help, I couldn’t help but think it knew it’s fate and it just wanted to see it’s family for the last time. Still, it kept me up all night and the tired and bothered part of me just thought, it two days time you’ll won’t be making much more noise.
On the day before Eid, as I wandered happily through the blue and white medina just exploring, I rounded a bend and at the end of the lane was a gang of sheep and goats. The leader, the one with the horns, locked eyes with me and said BLEEERR! The others took note and faced me. Slowly they started towards me, BLEEERRR!!
This was it, they knew tomorrow was their sacrifice day and this was their one last chance at human blood. I started making my way back down the lane way.
BLEEERRR!!
Looking back, I could see the horned leader still following. What the hell??
A lady passes me by, sees the sheep, and starts yelling out and begins knocking on a door. Was she telling the owner their murder filled sheep had the blood lust and were following a hapless foreigner? I quickly got my camera out and tried for a photo, hoping to not set off the sheeps inner berserker rage. Hastily I power walked back down to the main plaza, wishing there was a place to buy a beer after that near death experience. Ah well, tomorrow was Eid and I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
I had a slight idea though, it was explained to me this is their version of Christmas. And much like our Christmas day, just about everything was closed, save for 2 restaurants and a cafe. Nothing else was open. At breakfast on the riad roof, I looked across to the adjacent roof top and could see the sheep sacrifices had begun. A father had the sheep strung up by it’s hind legs and he was skinning it. Several pools of crimson blood congealed around it, as his children watched on playing amongst themselves.
Leaving the riad to find food, the small plaza I’d pass through had been converted to a makeshift charcoal fire grill. I had noticed the smoke plumes rising from various parts of the town, and a distinct smell. As I arrived here I realised what the smell was; charred flesh. The grill was charring various sheep heads and hooves, the smell was unmistakable, and they were using leaves to create great bellowing smoke stack that rose to the sky (I assuming this is significant as the offering is rising to heaven).
The lane walls started to pile up with the sheep fleece and skin, gleeful delivered by small children. Most of the skins still had blood on them, and small rivers of crimson began running down between the cobbled lanes. By the afternoon the charring had mostly stopped (thank the gods, the smell was getting a bit much), and the families had their feast well into the night and past midnight.
Happy Eid Chefchaouen!
On my final morning I packed up and walked down to the bus station. With Eid being the day before, the bus station had been closed so I wasn’t able to buy a ticket to Fez the previous day as what’s usually recommended. Arriving at the station, I waited at the bus company CTM’s small ticket office hoping there would be a seat. As the fates would have it, I got the last one.
Meanwhile a large group of backpackers seemed stuck and from the sounds of it, on of the other bus companies organised a grand taxi for the group. This is a 4.5 hour trip, so I’d hate to think what they had to pay. There were also two Japanese girls looking a little lost, and two girls of that big group decided to help them out and go with them in a taxi (also, there are a tonne of Japanese tourists in Chefchaouen, not sure what’s going on there).
This act of human kindness had an unintended consequence. It seemed the taxi driver who was supposed to have take the other two had just lost his fare and he was fuming. Yelling and shouting at the bus company clerk who had organised it, at one point he grabbed him by the shirt and had his fist raised, until his friend rushed over and pulled him away. Strangely the clerk was having nothing of it, basically ignore this guy the entire time, even when he was threatening to punch him.
Thankfully the CTM bus arrived and I was soon off to the city of Fez.
One response to “Chefchaouen – Blue and Crimson”
I meant to warn you about the Eid after I'd read up on your next destination following you last post. It did say transport would be a problem but seems you got lucky all the same.