the honey man

23 different honeys: need I say more? This honey is among the best I've had--real, raw honey. Plenty of crystallization, but the varieties are so distinct and true.

Eucalyptus ($2.75/Lb)

Orange ($3.30/Lb)

Wild ("automatic"--machine harvested?, $4.40/Lb)

Wild herb ($6.60/Lb)

Pineapple/Kiwi ($6.60/Lb)

($11/Lb): Oregano, Carob, Nigella/"black cumin"/onion seed, Takaout (Euphorbe, i.e. cactus), Rosemary, Lavender, Wild (feral bees, wild honey), Thyme, Fenugreek, Anise Vert (2 types of fennel/anise), Date (from the Sahara, down south), Armoise Blanche (white wormwood), Juniper, Fennel (just one kind), Caper,
Figelle (not very sweet, almost bitter)

Walnut ($16.50/Lb)

Argan Oil ($15.75/L)
Olive Oil ($4/L)

Essaouira

My first order of business: bee line it to wherever they sell fresh fish. We were, after all, right on the Atlantic Ocean. After a bit of haggling (the prices are fixed and published, but apparently the math often favors the vendors), we sat down and awaited our grilled selections. There's nothing quite like tucking into a pile of super super fresh seafood. And that's all it was: simply grilled, lemon wedges on the side.

I didn't do much more than here than eat and sleep and bum around. I did go to the bus station in search of my ticket out of this place, and was struck by immediate deja vu. Still, I needed a way out, and bought a relatively inexpensive (this always comes back to haunt you in Morocco) ticket north to Rabat. And inexpensive is what I got. The bus, though I was promised a modern, air-conditioned coach, was definitely out of date, if otherwise according to the man's description. The "direct/express" ride to Rabat was anything but--stopping in at least 30 small towns along the way to let people and animals on and off. Animals? Yep, we had a goat and a turkey on board. Really? Yep, really. The goat was tied around the horns and the turkey simply had his feet bound, both secured in the cargo hold below (no man down there this time). Sometimes we need a few tries until we get it right: Lesson re-learned: bus travel with anyone other than CTM (the national bus service) is to be avoided.

why i love doug

Chicago levies its first foie gras fine

[Doug] framed the city's warning letter about the delicacy and placed it on his counter. He also advertised ingredients for foie gras- laced hot dogs on his Web site and on a board near the front door.
...Mayor Richard Daley...called [the ban on foie gras] the "silliest" ordinance the City Council had ever passed.

Marrakech: 'disneyland on crack'

Food, sights, sounds, smells, annoying people, crazy people, transvestites, crooks, and last, but not least, ass-grabbers.

The food: Sheep heads and brains, snails, liver 'pate,' cow udders, and orange juice--lots and lots of orange juice. Marrakech is known for a braised lamb dish called Tanjiya. Instead of being cooked for hours in a conical tagine over coals (begin gripe: while the best of the tagines are cooked this way, I'll be damned if I've seen it done traditionally more than once or twice in Morocco--the fancy restaurants tend to cook everything in aluminum pots and just transfer into a tagine when ordered end gripe), this dish is cooked in a curvy (think hips) ceramic pot for hours in the furnace of a hammam (traditional Roman/Moroccan sauna/bath). Spiced predominately with cumin, and usually prepared with mutton, it's a sure bet wherever you can find it.
Really, though, the big thing in this town (for this insatiable cook, anyway) is the array of evening food stands in the main square of Djemaa el Fna. The fun starts toward dusk at 5 or 6pm and goes on until midnight. There are five snail stands, where snails are cooked just as I found them in Fez. Moving on, a few different guys have smoky grills putting up little white merguez (lamb) sausages and liver 'pate': a spiced (mostly cumin, garlic, paprika, and harissa) mix of beef liver and fat, very much resembling blood sausage. And then there're the offal guys. Lined up with sheep heads, cow udders, and beef tongues, these guys don't cater to the tourists (in fact, this whole scene, though indeed a draw for tourists, is really still largely a local thing). I'll get some more photos when I visit again, but in the meantime, my album has a couple of fun sheep head videos. Though I could go on and on about the food, suffice it to say that I ate until I, and those around me, dropped (case in point when Gabe and his dad joined in on the fun: we started with a steamed lamb brain, a bit of cow udder, some calf's tongue, and half a sheep head, and went from there...).

Sights, sounds, and smells; annoying people, crazy people, and transvestites; crooks and ass-grabbers: Needless to say, Marrakech has its share of each. Djemaa el Fna is surprisingly clean and odor-free in the morning, as the food stands disappear in the middle of the night after a big clean-up. Mornings in the square involve truckloads of oranges--no fewer than 15 carts selling fresh-squeezed juice call out to passers-by in the hopes of selling a three dirham (40 cents) glass of the stuff. The snake charmers accost unsuspecting tourists, wrapping a snake around your head and urging your friends to take pictures before demanding hefty payment (both of you and the picture-taker) for the privilege. By night, henna artists and fortune tellers surround the square and prey on tourists and locals alike. Men in veils belly dance (for such a conservative country, this is shocking, really) and lunatics surrounded by hordes of locals tell their tales--good old-fashioned story-telling: now why doesn't anybody do this at the county fair back home?
Walking through the souks can be just as daunting as it is in Fez. We walked around with no plans, just for the sake of walking, and ended up in some spots devoid of tourists. At one point Lora had her ass grabbed by a local guy who looked back at us with the cavalier look of a toreador before disappearing into the crowd.
On my last day there, we went to see the old Jewish quarter (the Jews weren't allowed to live amongst the Muslim folks, and so were segregated into the walled Mellach--every town has one) and cemetery. A young English-speaking local smelled Americans and offered his illicit services as our guide (the tourist office was closed, so we couldn't get an official guide). After showing us around for a bit and taking us to his family's overpriced ("I give you special price") spice shop, he unsurprisingly demanded an astronomical fee that not even the most jaded of us had anticipated. Lesson learned: better not to feed the pigeons, but if you're insistent on employing an illegal guide, negotiate before-hand. We paid the crook a fraction of his demands, and upon being followed and badgered, we gave him a couple American quarters and told him they were worth $4. He let up enough for us to make our getaway, probably cursing us Jews for ripping him off.

Most ridiculous run-in: The night that Lora left for Casablanca, by far. A lack of late-night trains meant that getting to the airport for her 8am flight would require at least some modicum of sketchiness, and more than likely a chunk of change. Bus travel was agreed upon as the next-best choice. Little did we expect the crowd drawn to the bus and terminal alike. Wow. I felt really, really bad, letting her go alone on this middle-of-the-night bus with a bunch of freaky guys. The kicker was when the bus finally showed up and the driver opened the cargo door on the side, waking up the man laying down there under blankets(!!!). Lesson learned (this one should have been common sense): bus travel with anyone other than CTM (the national bus service) is to be avoided in general, but most definitely by lone women in the middle of the night. Left with no choice, she boarded. An amazingly generous young man seated near her would later take her under his wing through the sketchiness in the Casablanca bus station and deliver her to the train station at 4am--no small miracle.

Chefchaouen (land of plentiful kif)

In need of a weekend away to a chiller, less pushy town, we headed for picturesque Chefchaoen, where the locals smoke and peddle kif (hash) as though it were totally (not quite, though the police are said to look the other way in this region) legal. Of no matter, in any case, as I still won't smoke... My first bus ride in the country, it wasn't all that bad. The town, though hillier than Fes and therefore a bit tiring, was beautiful thanks to the sky blue whitewash they apply to their houses and pathways.

The people were indeed less pushy--indeed, hours after Lora took a photo of a group of kids, the shy one of the bunch caught up with us as we fixed on some pastries being sold by a man on the street. We didn't recognize her at the time, but she did something that neither one of us will soon forget: she started explaining to the man which pastry she wanted, saying in Arabic "not that one, that one." The man, wearing glasses a centimeter thick that made his eyes appear larger than they were, was having understandable difficulty finding the pastry she requested. Nonetheless, he finally got it for her, but instead of trotting off with it, she placed it in Lora's hands, as a gift. This adorable little girl, living in a land of kids who will beg for a dirham at the drop of a hat (and offer to help you find your hotel 50m away for much more), bought this pastry as a gift to these rich strange westerners.

I spent two hours with a Berber guy trying to sell me rugs and blankets and the like. I kept adding items to the pile, hoping to dupe him into giving me a better deal. Instead the price kept going up, and I started to go numb, not thinking anymore, but rather just bargaining for the sake of bargaining. In the end, the four pieces I purchased amounted to about $75, a good deal by western standards. Lesson learned: a good deal, though it may seem like one at the time, is likely too good to be true. What was camel turned out to be cotton, what was cotton turned out to be acrylic. Like I said, I just was not thinking anymore--in retrospect, of course that sweater is cotton--camel wool would be much scratchier (so really, it was for my own good). Though I could have bought the items for $40 at the over- and fixed-price place down the road, I feel confident that I've paid my 'white man's tax' for the duration of my trip.

The Sahara (Part 2)

Turban securely fastened, we were en route to the last frontier, a hotel on the edge of the dunes where we'd lunch in the shade before boarding our camels for a three hour tour.

[A little background]
When planning the trip, we were posed with the question of whether travel to the bedouin camp by means of a 4x4, or take the more traditional camel-back ride. Besides EB's desire to certify her Cambelback® truly camel-approved, the camels sounded down-right romantic: riding an age-old animal born by the desert into (okay, well technically we were riding in the opposite direction, but you get the gist) the sunset.
[end background]

Riding camel-back is not comfortable painful. We realized this as soon as we'd started moving, hoping that perhaps the pain would subside, fade into the surreality of riding into the red dunes of the Sahara. The sunlight faded; the pain did not. Lesson learned: if ever faced with the necessity of riding a camel for a prolonged period of time, the best thing you can really do is squirm--fidget, change positions.

Upon arrival at the sandy camp we took our obligatory shots of Berber whisky (mint tea) and made for the top of the nearest dune to spot the last rays of the sunset. Snowboards and sleds in hand, we trekked to the top of the 300m (1000ft) dune. Lesson learned: best practices for climbing sand dunes involves baby steps without exerting much force. This way you can walk on top of the sand rather than continuously sinking your feet in like you're climbing the Stepmaster 2000®.

At the top was a truly amazing sight--a view of Algeria to one side and the sunset on the other. The wind began to pick up as the sky darkened, and we made way back for camp under cover of darkness, literally running down the steep side of the dune. We stargazed for a bit before eating dinner, knowing that the full moon was on its way up and that we'd never see the stars once the moon took over the sky, we took the opportunity to gaze upward for a bit before eating. Nothing quite like staring at the night sky in the darkness of the desert.

Dinner was excellent despite the sandy bread (i'm sure one gets used to it), but the height of the evening was the post-meal entertainment. In came our hosts and their drums. It sounds cheezy to recount it, but it was much cooler than cheezy. We were all caught off guard when asked to sing/play a few of our own numbers for our hosts, but twinkle twinkle and frère jacques and finally our best-performed i will survive seemed to do the trick. We got back to the Berber tunes and tore up the rug. A dance in the brilliant moonlight to ensure a night to remember, and we called it a night. Final lesson learned for the day: come prepared for such outings with songs, jokes, and ghost stories. We Gabe, EB, Lora, Martin, and Andom told some alternatively good (Andom, Gabe) and bad (Martin, me) jokes and stories, and the ensuing laughter was enough to tire anyone out.

Of course the camel ride back was perhaps even more difficult given our already-sore asses, but we endured and were rewarded by breakfast and a largely uneventful, sleepy ride back in the lap of our luxurious 14-seat minibus.

The Sahara (Part 1)

I really don't know where to begin about this trip. After figuring out the logistics of transportation (the six of us affordably ended up with a driver in a mini-bus that seated 14), the rest of the planning was easy. Stocked with bags full of snackies for the trip down, we made ourselves at home on the bus, preparing for the eight hour ride south to Erfud.

A narrow, winding two-lane road runs the length of the route.
Occasional stops are necessary to let goats and sheep cross the pavement. More frequent are the slowdowns as approaching villages along the route, reminiscent (for lack of other reference) of drives

Down in the Sahara

through the countryside of Europe. Hanging in front of the ubiquitous butcher shops studding each village are carcasses of the very same animals we have been stopping to avoid hitting; charcoal grills smoldering in anticipation.

We finally arrive at the kasbah in Erfud, fully intending on rocking it. It is the quintessential concept of a man-made oasis: palm trees, a lit swimming pool, sticky drinks with umbrellas; everything I'd expect from a four-star safari. During dinner at the on-premise restaurant, two camels are paraded into the dining room for the benefit of the few tourists braving the off-season--one does a stupid pet trick, picking up a water bottle and gulping it down like a marathon survivor.

As if the evening wasn't surreal enough, the later entertainment in the tea salon was a surprise provided courtesy of local villagers and a just-married couple paraded in to the tune of local Taureg beats, all just for the fifteen minutes necessary to have their wedding photos taken. Laughingly and unsurprisingly forced by the kids to dance along, we took it in sober (any other state and it would have been easier) stride and literally jumped right in, stopping to take photos with the children. All the while observing the sadly obvious desperation on the face of the new bride.

A walk around the premesis under the moonlight completed the night, and before I knew it we were stopping to shop for turbans in a jaw-droppingly depressed town, hassled by kids with shiny fossil necklaces, dug up from the vast sea that once covered the land we now treaded.