After spending a few days wandering around Casablanca and Rabat I headed over to Fez which is an absolutely amazing city. The town of Fez is dominated by the old Medina and it is basically a city out of the past. The transportation and shipping of goods around the town is accomplished with mules and you'd be lucky to find a building that was constructed within the past 500 years. In fact, the entire pace of life seems not to have changed in centuries and it was great spending several days just wandering around, exploring and taking photos.




After spending a lot of time in the old Medina, I decided on my last day in town to explore the Fez El-Jdid or new Fez, which is called “new” since it wasn't built until the 13th century unlike the “old Fez” which has been around since 800 AD. This Fez was actually built because the Sultan at the time was a bit paranoid and he decided he was better off building his own fortified city right next to the actual city of Fez and filling it with Syrian Mercenaries

One of the more interesting aspects of Fez El-Jdid's history is that the Sultan at the time had a penchant for jews so he encouraged thousands of jews to come to his new-town which developed into a thriving community or Mellah. So, in my search for the Mellah I must have seemed a little bit lost and a random Moroccan man asked me in Arabic if I needed help (at least I assume that is what he asked me), then again in French (which I also don't know), and finally in some broken English. We started talking for a while and he invited me into his very modest home for tea. Tea, eventually became breakfast and eventually he invited me back to join him and his wife Fatima, his 12 year old son Rachid and his 17 year old daughter Afaf for lunch later that afternoon.

After that pleasant distraction I continued my quest for the Mellah and once again I guess I looked lost, foreign, or both because someone asked me if I was looking for something. Coincidentally, the person unprompted mentioned he was a part of one of the 100 remaining jewish families in Fez and if I was interested he would give me a tour of the old Jewish quarter. I accepted and then had a quick tour of an incredibly run-down section of town including seeing the old Jewish cemetary and several synagogues. The most fascinating part was the huge differences in architectural styles between the Jewish and Arab buildings. Despite the fact that both sets of buildings were built at the same time, in the same place for the same purposes the Jewish buildings universally had windows and balconies that faced the streets outside while almost all of the Arab residences were built with an inner-courtyard which all of the rooms faced into. I'm not quite sure what the anthropological impacts of this are, but it seemed really interesting nonetheless.


After the tour was finished I continued exploring the rest of Fez El-Jdid before heading back to the family I met earlier to join them for lunch. Based on my request the family prepared couscous with chicken and I got back in time to get some very rudimentary Moroccan cooking lessons as well as a crash-course in how to eat when invited to a Moroccan's house. A couple of tips for anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation:

1) There are no plates, napkins, tablecloths, or concerns of hygiene
2) Everyone eats out of the common serving platter with a spoon and anything that you can't handle with a spoon should be eaten with your fingers
3) Any inedible things (bone, grissle, etc.) just place on the table in front of you
4) What do you need a napkin for when you've got bread that can sop up any grease off your fingers
5) Homemade food somehow is always better than at a restaurant



So, after a delicious meal I took off to pick up my bag at my hotel and went to catch a train to Meknes, another former capital of Morocco that doesn't have quite as much of a tourist pull as Fez, so I thought it would be fun to explore without having the dozens of street-touts bugging me that were present in Fez.

I got to Meknes around 4:00pm and checked into the Hotel Marok, which is definitely one of the bigger dumps I have stayed in during the course of my travels. In addition to having literally 10 people camped out in the room next to me, the hotel had no heat (and it was about 40 degrees outside at night), and not only no hot-water but no water at all! I guess, not all $10/night hotels are created equal...

After checking into the hotel I wandered around the Medina of Meknes exploring and enjoying the fact that I was one of the only tourists around. I eventually got dinner from a street vendor of a ground meat sandwich along with some pastries from a little bakery down the road. I finally got back to my room around 9:00pm and getting as bundled up as I could in my freezing room I started sorting through all the photos I had taken thus far until around 1:00am.

After getting to Morocco we checked into a special type of hotel called a Riad, based on a suggestion from Sanaa. Riad's are traditional Arabic homes that are built around an inner-courtyard and are frequently decorated with ornate and beautiful designs and patterns, we decided to stay at the “Riad Dar Al Kounouz”. The Riad was great, it was beautiful, had great service and an amazing location in the heart of the old Medina.


After checking in we spent most of the day wandering around the Medina and visiting the main square of the city called Djemaa El-Fna. This square was quite cool as it is a jumble of everything from food vendors, to snake charmers, to traditional story-tellers, to acrobats all at the same time. A very unique place to say the least.





Since Andrea was only in country for two nights we decided to splurge and went to one of the fanciest restaurants in the city for dinner. The food was quite good, the building and ambiance was amazing and the traditional live music in the background just added to the atmosphere.

After a painfully early 7:00am flight to Casablanca that involved waking up at 4:30am (not the way to spend your vacation), we landed at around 9:30am. After we landed we spoke to Sanaa and based on her recommendation made a last minute change of plan to split the weekend up between Marrakech and Casablanca (instead of the whole weekend in Casablanca). In order to get this to work out we decided to rent a car right-away at the airport and drive the two-hours straight to Marrakech.

After spending 45 minutes haggling with National Rental Car over prices (which in Morocco unfortunately doesn't have a Booz & Co. Rate...) we ended up getting the most beat up POS car you can imagine called a Dacia Logan. The sheet of paper that they use to record pre-existing damage on the car wasn't particularly useful since by the time we had gone all the way around the vehicle there were more pen marks on the sheet than white-space. Finally, once the administrative hassles were out-of-the-way, the rental-car guy mentioned to us that we'd need to get gas immediately, and then we were off to Marrakech.

Or at least we thought we were off. The car made it as far as the opposite side of the airport traffic circle (maybe 1/4th of a mile) and the engine started stuttering, and within a few seconds it died altogether. On the bright side, since the car died so quickly we were only a 10 minute walk to the airport terminal. So, Andrea being the trooper that she is (and because she speaks French...) was off to try and remedy this situation (keep in mind she only has 2 days in Morocco).

About 20 minutes later Andrea returns and soon after that the rental-car people arrive in a van and another somehow even more beat-up Dacia Logan (which I didn't think was possible). Even more amazingly the gas tank on this “new car” was just as low as in the previous one! It was then that I realized that someone at the rental car agency has built himself a a nice side-business of draining the gas-tanks to empty when tourists return the cars above zero and selling the “extra” fuel on the black market. I also decided at this moment that I would outsmart them at their own game and return the car just as empty as when we got it! As you can probably imagine, Andrea wasn't particularly happy with this plan...

Now that we were off for the second time we insisted that the van follow us to the gas station to ensure we had enough fuel to make it, and despite the fact that we were cruising on fumes at the end we were able to fill up the car and hit-the-road down to Marrakech.

Just to keep everyone in the loop, there has been a slight change of plans with my travels. One of the main reasons I started my trip to North Africa/Middle East in Tunisia is because my friend Andrea lives in Tunis and she offered that I could use her place as a basecamp for different segments of my trip. Originally Andrea was planning to be in Tunis for a two year assignment but after about six months in-country she just found out that her role will be ending next month. This means that a lot of the traveling she was planning to do over the next year and a half has to be accelerated and as such she invited me along with her to Casablanca to visit Sanaa, a Moroccan friend of hers from Business School.

Since Andrea still has to actually go to work (unlike myself ;-) ) she can only visit Morocco for a long weekend while I can then hang out for another 5 days before returning to Tunis. The reason I have to head back that quickly is I already signed up for a couple of activities in Tunisia starting on the 19th including a black-tie dinner with the who's who of the Tunisian business world as well as a trip around the south of the country with a bunch of people from her work. Besides, if there is still a bunch of stuff I want to see in Morocco after I leave then I can always head back...

The next day we woke up early as we had still quite a few places we wanted to visit before heading back to Tunis. We hung out for a couple of hours in Tabarka spending most of our time exploring a cool fortress that is not normally open to the public (one of the people working on the renovation of it gave us a tour).



After that it was off to the main destination, the Roman ruins of Bulla Regia. At this point since the jeep had successfully navigated around 70 miles on a combination of very rough roads and later on a highway at high speeds we had assumed that it had made it through our little adventure unscathed. Unfortunately, we were wrong.

About an hour into our drive to the ruins (and about 10 miles from the Algerian border), the Jeep's transmission skipped. Soon after that as we were driving through the main road of a tiny one-road town called Babouche when we noticed smoke coming from the hood of the car. We immediately stopped both vehicles and when we opened the hood we saw flames shooting out from the engine of the car. Without a fire-extinguisher handy Matt and I just ran back and started dumping all of the bottles of water we had accrued during the trip onto the fire in the hopes it wasn't oil based (which it fortunately wasn't) until we had the fire out. After we no longer were worried about the immediate risk of the flaming car we then focused on the pool of pink fluid leaking from under the hood of the car which Matt correctly guessed to be transmission fluid.

Needless to say this flaming car caused quite a commotion and we were soon surrounded by half the town with everyone looking at and being quite amused by the silly Westerners. Fortunately, our entertainment value only lasted for a short while and after about an hour the crowds had dispersed.

At this point everyone basically decided that our adventures were over so we gave up and called to have the Jeep towed back to Tunis (3 hours away). During the 2 hours we were sitting around waiting for the tow-truck we cracked open a couple of bottles of wine which was a good thing for Katherine and Matt since it helped them sleep on the way back to Tunis while they were stuck in the cab of the tow truck, whose driver was happy to take twisting turns on precarious mountain passes in a fully-loaded tow-truck at much faster speeds than we were comfortable with in the lowly Isuzu.

At the end of the day we made it back to Matt and Laura's without any further incidents and we spent the evening eating enchiladas and reliving our little Tunisian adventure.

We woke up early to get a jumpstart on the day for our camping trip up to the North West of Tunisia (close to the Algerian border) with Andrea's friends Matt, Laura and Katherine. One of the main reasons why we decided to go camping was everyone had off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha, which is a holiday that is focused around every family buying a live sheep and then slaughtering it (frequently in their front yards). So, since Andrea and her friends had been hearing sheeps bleating pretty much continuously for the previous several days they decided that they wanted to be as far from civilization as possible when the entire population of Tunisia decided to become amateur butchers.

In addition to the five of us going on this trip we also brought along Murphey (Andrea's 75lb Bernese Mountain Dog), Keira (Matt and Laura's 80lb German Shepard) and Pepsi (Katherine's ~40lb dog). Since we had such a full-load of people and critters we decided to take both Matt and Laura's 15 year old Isuzu SUV and Katherine's brand new Jeep Wrangler

After about 2 hours of driving we made it to our first destination which was a town called Bizert. Once there we let the dogs run around and play a bit along the beach while we admired the views from the “Cape Bizert”. After we had enough of stretching our legs/paws we decided to continue on to the next stop, a secluded little fishing village called Cape Serrat that was located on what was supposedly an amazing beach. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of driving we kept finding ourselves right back in front of a massive prison compound that was about 15 minutes away from Cape Bizert (this prison hopefully is not foreshadowing later parts of my trip...). After our third loop around the prison we gave up and decided to get some lunch back in Bizert.



Back in town we found a great little hotel restaurant that had great Tunisian food and even better, they were willing to sell us some beer to take with us to drink at night while we were camping. Not only that but the proprietors of the restaurant were also able to set us up with good directions to Cape Serrat and we were finally on our way (and only 2 hours late). After two more hours of driving through some amazing landscapes of cork-trees and open fields we finally arrived. The entire place was deserted of tourists since tourist season ended in September and the only people around were a couple of locals who were somewhat perplexed to see a bunch of white people showing up in the middle of winter.

At this point we decided to drive down the beach a bit to find a good place to set up camp. The beach however had a channel carved down the middle of it parallel to the coast line from when the tide came up. The channel didn't look particularly deep and it appeared like crossing it would be the only way to get somewhere a little more private to set up our camp. Besides, Katherine had just bought her Wrangler and was itching to test-out its 4 wheel drive capabilities. So, Katherine and Andrea crossed the channel in the Jeep without any problem and started exploring the beach. The rest of us in the Isuzu weren't as comfortable with the river crossing though as the water went up quite deep on the Jeep and we were afraid the Isuzu's lower clearance might cause some problems.

Once Katherine came back from exploring the other side of the beach they decided to try crossing the channel at a different point that appeared to be shallower which would hopefully be an easier path for the Isuzu to follow. The Jeep went into the water and within seconds had submerged above the tires and all the way up to the hood! Katherine slammed it in reverse but the car was completely stuck and since the car had no snorkel it was in serious danger of the engine flooding and being completely stuck in the Mediterranean sea's salt-water. To make matters worse, night was fast approaching and since we were so far out in the middle of nowhere it would take hours for any sort of help to be able to reach us.

As soon as Matt and I realized what was happening we tried to jerry-rig some tow-straps to get the Jeep out of the Sea. Matt went over to the Jeep to try and see how bad the situation was while I ran over to some fishing boats to find some line that could be used to pull the car back to land. By the time I had found some pretty weak looking rope Matt was back and looking for carabiners which fortunately we had both brought along. We strapped up the cars and almost immediately after putting pressure on the rope, it snapped. By this time our little adventure had attracted the attention of the remnants of the town and we had a couple of people over trying to help us. A few minutes later I found a significantly thicker rope attached to a boat anchor. I removed the anchor and Matt hooked it up to the cars again and this time when we attempted the tow, the rope held.


Once the Jeep was out of the water we could see just how precarious the situation had been. The air-filter was completely soaked through and there is no way that it would have been able to permit air to flow to the engine for more than just a few more minutes. We also could see that the air intake was above the water level by less than an inch meaning any little bit of settling would have resulted in the engine flooding with salt-water. However, amazingly other than the soaked air filter a mostly detached piece of plastic undercarriage cover and the inside of the car being completely flooded with water, the Jeep was in amazingly good shape. Even more amazingly one of the guys who came over to watch/help us get the car out of the water was a mechanic who helped us make sure the Jeep was back in operable condition.

Needless to say that by this point in time it was getting dark, we hadn't started setting up camp, nor had we put together dinner. On the bright-side Matt, Laura and Katherine were all in Tunisia studying Arabic and Andrea spoke French so we were able to communicate at least on a fairly basic level with the locals. At first we were just extraordinarily grateful so we offered them the beer which we had purchased from the restaurant earlier (and they eagerly accepted). They then insisted on preparing our food for us (using the food we had brought for camping), and suggested we set-up our camp right out front of their hangout by the water.

Pretty quickly though we started to get quite nervous especially as several of them became uncomfortably “forward” with the women in our group. What made us further cautious is that Tunisia is a very family-centric culture, and it is not that common to have a group of six unmarried men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, especially considering that we were there in the middle of an important holiday which people would normally spend with their families. On top of that the locals brought out some moonshine and were very adamant that we take one of our cars 20 minutes away to buy more beer for them. Given the situation we we couldn't imagine that alcohol would improve things but we didn't have much choice. Lets just say we were all quite happy that we had brought along our own pack of fairly large dogs as company (particularly as Tunisians tend to be fearful of dogs).

Fortunately, Matt and Andrea made it back from the beer-run without any problems and soon after they returned our dinner was ready. The food was actually fairly decent and once we had finished eating we made it clear to our hosts that we would not be camping there that night. Apart from us having to pay a pretty hefty sum for dinner (which was made mostly with our food and which fed the 6 locals as well) there were no problems with our leaving and we took off to our next stop of Tabarka.

While everyone was happy with our decision to leave we were still in a rather awkward situation. Instead of staying in tents with the sketchy locals, we now had to drive 2 hours on pretty horrible roads, with a car that just came out of the sea, in pitch black with the hope of finding some hotel in a tourist town during the off-season who would be willing to take 5 random Americans and three large dogs (remember dogs aren't liked in Tunisia). Fortunately, other than one random suicidal cat that tried unsuccessfully to end things for himself (and us) by jumping out in front of the car while we were crossing a bridge, the drive to Tabarka went by without any problems.

The difficulties began though when we tried to find a place to stay. We drove by virtually every hotel (at least a dozen) that we could find and 2/3rds of them were closed for the season and the remaining ones wouldn't even let us leave the dogs in the cars in their parking lots much less take them up to the rooms. Finally, Andrea got through by phone to a hotel in the city-centre who said they would be able to help us out. The hotel turned out to be fairly nice and very well located (and the manager got quite a nice tip for hooking us up) so on just the second day of my vacation I was already well into quite an interesting adventure.

So, after too long in coming I finally started my travels around North Africa and the Middle-East. My flight went from JFK through London Gatwick to Tunis where I would be starting my trip. Amazingly enough, the first leg of my trip arrived in Gatwick at like 5:00am (over an hour early) and that plus my already pre-existing 2.5 hour layover meant that I had a long time in a really boring airport before my continuing flight to Tunis.

The flight to Tunis finally boarded and we left Gatwick on time and arrived in Tunis also on time at around 12:30pm. You'd think that 3.5 hours would be enough time for my backpack to make it onto the continuing flight but unfortunately with airlines operating the way they do that was not the case. So, after waiting for all the bags to finish being offloaded onto the carousel and realizing mine was not among them I went to the lost luggage person and somehow with my non-existent French and Arabic and the person's non-existent English I managed to find out that my bag decided to take a later flight and would be arriving after 8pm.

At that point I went out into the terminal where my friend Andrea was waiting to pick me up and from the airport we went straight to lunch at a good Lebanese restaurant close to Andrea's house (I hadn't eaten a real meal in more than 15 hours). From there we continued on to Andrea's gorgeous house in the “La Marsa” area of Tunis where I got settled in.

Once back at Andrea's I spent a couple of hours of catching up with her and re-acquainting myself with her great Bernese Mountain Dog Murphey and meeting her newly acquired Tunisian housecat Max, who had recently decided to adopt Andrea as his new owner.

From there Andrea and I took off to pick up her friends Matt and Laura for dinner at a local Indian restaurant to plan out a trip around the North West of the country for the next couple of day since they were all off work for the Islamic holiday Eid Al-Adha. On the way to dinner we swung by the airport to pick up my luggage, but of course it still hadn't arrived. Fortunately, after dinner we made a my third trip to the airport of the day and this time my backpack was there safe and sound.