A day at the Marrakech market square

The last night out in Marrakech was good, but not exactly what we had been hoping for. Our guide Rachid took us to some fancy hotel's roof bar. The bar itself looked pretty cool and it was well decorated, but it looked exactly the same as the ones we have back in Helsinki. We met some Swiss people who were spending their holiday here in Marrakech. We were having a nice time listening to their funny stories.

But meeting Swiss people and sitting in fancy bars wasn't the reason why we came to Marrakech in the first place. The real deal is to be found in the streets and in the back alleys of the famous market square of Marrakech. So we left our funny guide Rachid to do his thing with the ladies and headed back to our apartment.

We packed our cameras once again in the morning and headed out to find some coffee and breakfast. Marrakech is filled with small cafés and we just picked one that looked nice. The prices here are friendly. Café au laits and croissants for three guys for 5 euros, not bad. 

After the breakfast we headed to the famous market square of Marrakech. My own expectations were maybe a little too high. I thought that the market would be something like a few kilometers in diameter, so once I saw it, I thought that is this the right place. It was a lot smaller. Anyway, we did see some snake charmers (cool), some bell ringers (uncool) and lots of colorful people with something for sale. We went to the bazaar to find some local music CDs for the show and found a really jaw-dropping rap album by a local artist. We also met some nice local salesmen, who were pretty into our cameras.

After a couple of hours in the market we headed for lunch and then back to our apartment. Moving around Marrakech is easy by taxi. Taxi fares are around 0,5 euros per kilometer, but the prices may vary with the drivers and their tariff machines. You have to be ready for some crazy driving as well. The traffic in Marrakech is fast and the rules seem to be flexible or there are none . Still the best thing is that some of the drivers look like they're on drugs while they're driving. One of our drivers almost fell asleep in the traffic lights.

After some small things that had to be done at the apartment we headed back to the city. We had an appointment with the chief of Toubkal Trekking, the company that we are going to use to help us getting to the Mount Toubkal. The guy waited us in one local hotel's tea room. At first, it seemed that he didn't speak English at all, but after a while he started talking. Maybe it was a test, I thought. I understood a word here and a word there and somehow it came out as a sentence telling us that his son is coming in a while and that he's going to explain everything to us.

So after a while the younger guy showed up and his English was much better. We made a deal with the guys that they will provide us with everything we need for the next three days up on the mountains. What ”all” means here, I can not tell you at the moment, but you will see and hear about it on this HiutaleTV-blog once we come back down from the mountains.

So the meeting with the trekking company went well and we decided to go and try find something to eat from the market. Things are different during the night in Marrakech. The colorful market that we saw a few hours back had been altered into a swarming mass of people playing music and dancing everywhere. It was something called the Berber Day – a local feast, where families gather together for some good eating and music. One side of the square was packed with small booths with grilled food for sale for everyone. And there are guys on every booth trying to talk you to come and eat in their place. After maybe a dozen sales pitches we chose the booth that had the funniest guy. All the booths were numbered and our guy was yelling ”1-1-7, takes you to heaven” and when we interviewed him he called himself Antonio Banderas.

Once again the food was great. We ordered maybe a million different small courses with Ape. Blumi decided not to eat, because of his weak stomach I guess. We ate all sorts of fish, calamari, shrimps, veggies and meat, all in tasty sauces, yummie. We will probably see tomorrow if it was a wise choice Blumi made. After the meal it was time for us to head back to our apartment and do the last preparations before a good nights sleep and tomorrow's big trip to the mountains.

See you in a few days. HiutaleTV from Marrakech, over and out.