Photologue of Intersting Things and Travelling within North Africa

MOROCCO – The Overview

For Westerners, Morocco holds an immediate and enduring fascination. Though just an hour’s ride on the ferry from Spain, it
seems at once very far from Europe, with a culture – Islamic and deeply traditional – that is almost wholly unfamiliar.
Throughout the country, despite the years of French and Spanish colonial rule and the presence of modern and cosmopolitan
cities like Rabat and Casablanca, a more distant past constantly makes its presence felt. Fes , perhaps the most beautiful of all
Arab cities, maintains a life still rooted in medieval times, when a Moroccan empire stretched from Senegal to northern Spain,
while in the mountains of the Atlas and the Rif , it’s still possible to draw up tribal maps of the Berber population. As a
backdrop to all this, the country’s physical make-up is also extraordinary: from a Mediterranean coast, through four maintain
ranges, to the empty sand and scrub of the Sahara.

But Morocco is really an ideal place for independent travel. A week’s hiking in the Atlas, a journey through the southern oases or into the pre-Sahara, or leisured strolls around Tangier, Fes or Marrakesh – once you adapt to a different way of life, all your time will be well spent. It’s also a safe and politically stable country to visit: the death in 1999 of King Hassan II, the Arab world’s longest serving leader, was followed by an easy transition to his son, Mohammed VI. And it’s difficult for any traveller to go for long without running into Morocco’s equally powerful tradition of hospitality, generosity and openness. This is a country people return to again and again.

As far as the climate goes, it would be better to visit the south – or at least the desert routes – outside midsummer , when
for most of the day it’s far too hot for casual exploration, especially if you’re dependent on public transport. But July and
August, the hottest months, can be wonderful on the coast, and in the
mountains.

Weather conditions apart, the Islamic religious calendar and its related festivals will have the most seasonal effect on your
travel. The most important factor is Ramadan , the month of daytime fasting; this can be a problem for transport, and
especially hiking, though the festive evenings do much to compensate. See “Festivals” section for details of its timing, as well
as that of other festivals.

A more current distinction, perhaps, is the legacy of Morocco’s colonial occupation over the fifty-odd years before it
reasserted its independence in 1956. The colonized country was divided into Spanish and French zones – the former
contained Tetouan and the Rif, the Mediterranean and the northern Atlantic coasts, and parts of the Western Sahara; the
latter comprised the plains and the main cities (Fes, Marrakesh, Casablanca and
Rabat). It was the French, who ruled their “protectorate” more closely, who had the most lasting effect on Moroccan culture, Europeanizing the cities to a strong
degree and firmly imposing their language, which is spoken today by all educated Moroccans (after Moroccan Arabic or the
three local Berber languages).

MOROCCO – Traveling from Kenitra to Rabat (the
Capital)

Travelling to Rabat from Tangier , you will bypass the stretch of coast around
Kenitra – which for the most part is no great loss. Kenitra is a dull little town, and its waterfront at Mehdiya is scruffy and unattractive. Further south, however, there are
pleasant detours (if you have transport) to the
Plage des Nations near Bouknadel – Rabat’s local beach resort – and to the
botanical extravagance of the Jardins Exotiques.
If you’re dependent on buses, these can be visited as a day-trip from the capital. Bird-watchers may also want to explore the Lac de Sidi Bourhaba , near Mehdiya, which has protected status due to
its notable birds of prey.
It’s a little over an hour by grand taxi from Rabat to Casablanca (under an hour by express train) and, if you’re making a quick
tour of Morocco, there’s little to delay your progress. The landscape, wooded in parts, is a low, flat plain, punctuated inland
by a series of scruffy light-industrial towns.

MOROCCO – Traveling from Rabat to Casablanca

On the coast, things are slightly more promising: Mohammedia has a fine beach and good restaurants, and is, with the smaller
resorts of Temara and Skhirat , a popular seaside escape for the affluent of Rabat and Casablanca. For visitors, however,
there’s a lot more to get excited about on the coast south from Casa towards Agadir.
Other interesting places to visit are the beach regions in Bouznika,
Temara and Skhrirat.

MOROCCO – Casablanca City

The principal city of Morocco, and capital in all but administration, CASABLANCA ( Dar El Baida in its literal Arabic form) is now
the largest port of the Maghreb – and busier even than Marseilles, the city on which it was modelled by the French. Its
development, from a town of 20,000 in 1906, has been astonishing but it was ruthlessly deliberate. When the French landed
their forces here in 1907, and established their Protectorate five years later, Fes was Morocco’s commercial centre and
Tangier its main port. Had Tangier not been in international hands, this probably would have remained the case. However,
the demands of an independent colonial administration forced the French to seek an entirely new base. Casa, at the heart of
Maroc Utile , the country’s most fertile zone and centre of its mineral deposits, was a natural choice.

Superficially, with a population of over three and a half million, Casa is today much like any other large southern European city:
a familiarity which makes it fairly easy to get your bearings and a revelation as you begin to understand something of its life.
Arriving here from the south, or even from Fes or Tangier, most of the preconceptions you’ve been travelling round with will
be happily shattered by the city’s cosmopolitan beach clubs or by the almost total absence of the veil. But these “European”
images shield what is substantially a first-generation city – and one still attracting considerable immigration from the
countryside – and perhaps inevitably some of Morocco’s most intense social problems.

The problem of a concentrated urban poor, however, is more enduring and represents, as it did for the French, an
intermittent threat to government stability.
Casablanca, through the 1940s and 1950s, was the main centre of anti-French rioting, and post-independence it was the city’s working class which formed the base of Ben Barka’s Socialist Party. There
have been strikes here sporadically in subsequent decades, and on several occasions, most violently in the food strikes of
1982, they have precipitated rioting. Whether
Casablanca’s development can be sustained, and the lot of its new migrants improved, must decide much of Morocco’s future.

Casablanca City Map:

MOROCCO – Travelling by Car

Police checks take place on travellers throughout the country. They come in three forms. One is a check on local
transport. European cars, or rental cars, are usually waved through. Buses
and trucks are much more likely to be stopped, but usually only briefly. The second kind of police check is a routine but simple passport check – most often polite and friendly, with the
only delay due to a desire to relieve boredom with a chat.
Morocco has for its higways the Road Toll. Credit Cards are not accepted to
pay for the routes.

Cross-References: