Arrival: Chechaouen, “Come I take you to my hotel, good hotel, good price, come I show you, come with me, hot shower, just to look, you don’t like it’s OK, come we go this way.” And we did and he was right, nice place, cheap, in the medina.
The town is a labyrinth of small winding streets. Everything is painted a light sky blue – an Arabic Greece. Everyone wants to sell you something or guide you to some shop or hotel. And hash. Everyone has “the best” hash to sell you. Simply the best. For the best price of course. The hash guys know where you are all the time and until you buy from them they will be waiting outside every restaurant, shop and hotel you enter.
Our hotel has a roof terrace with little mattress beds set up on them, and without a doubt you will forever find at least ten stoned people up there. Every white guy in this place seems to have come for the sole mission of getting high on “the best stuff”. Actually I believe everyone in our hotel was stoned or drunk at any given time. And the smell of gastro could be distinguished every now and then.
The hotels don’t even seem to have fixed rates. Just haggle, haggle, haggle. A five bedroom and one floor mattress room is our new 230Dh a night in total home. Dinner was a Lonely Planet recommended restaurant. Walking home, a man just out of Mosque started chatting to me and told us to come and see his carpet and stuff shop. Abdul Salaam. First we broke Ramadan with him and various male relations or friends.
Soup, bread, sweet and delicious Moroccan things, avocado smoothie, mint tea and lots of discussions about us, him and Morocco. Double dinner meant we were stuffed. Then of course the business side of things. Laying out carpet upon carpet upon blanket he explained decorative significances, materials and how everything was made. Poor and over-packed already, we wanted everything. Colours and colours and colours. Textures, softness, warmth, beauty. We promised to sleep on the idea of purchases and return fresh and decisive. We slept well.
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