Harassment and hammams in Imlil

This sleepy Berber mountain town in the High Atlas was very cold and very quiet in January. I ended up here on a whim with my friend Davita, who I had met in Essaouira, where a girl at our hostel had convinced us that we had to check out Imlil for the incredible mountain scenery. Davita and I got a shared taxi from Marrakesh to Asni, where we had to find another taxi to take us to Imlil pretty late at night. We met some really kind strangers along the way who helped us figure out how to get to our there – our driver even offered us a room in his family’s house to spend the night. Instead, we hiked in the dark to the bed & breakfast our friend had recommended, with the help of some very nice locals. We were welcomed with a crackling fire, a warm bed, wonderful tagine, and Moroccan whiskey (mint tea).

Imlil was peaceful, but it was a little too quiet for me. The mountains were nice, but I must admit they were not as impressive as other mountains I’d seen. Because we didn’t have any equipment and it was the dead of winter, we didn’t get a chance to go to Imlil’s main attraction – Mt. Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa. It was just too cold and snowy. So we opted for a day hike instead, and it didn’t turn out so well.

We hired a guide for the day, and he was really polite and friendly. But he got a little bit too friendly as our hike progressed. At first, he held my hand so I wouldn’t slip on the ice (the trail actually was extremely slippery), but then he kept on holding my hand or trying to hold my hand even when I told him I was doing fine by myself. He asked me if I had a boyfriend or if I was married, and I thought to myself, “Oh here we go again!”. I brushed off all these things as being pretty standard with Moroccan men – I’d heard it all before, and it was annoying, but I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. But then, when we finally got to the top of our little mountain, he came up to give me a high-five but instead went straight in and kissed me on the neck! I was grossed out. I politely told him not to do that. And instead of apologizing, he basically wouldn’t talk to us for the second half of the hike, and walked about half a mile in front of us the whole way – all after we had paid him to hike with us.

I was super annoyed that our guide had turned out to be a bit of a creep. Once again, I was reminded that being a female traveler is exhausting, and will always be exhausting in a way that men will never really understand. It’s so unfair that we constantly have to deal with this – not just in Morocco, but literally everywhere (see my article about all the creepy men I met in Ireland). All I wanted to do was go on a nice hike and learn about history and nature, and I couldn’t even do that without unwanted attention.

The hike upset Davita and I, but we made up for it by visiting the hammam with an Australian woman we’d met in the mountains. Hammams are basically public bath houses, where people go to bathe and scrub their skin and, of course, meet up with friends to gossip. Moroccan cities are full of fancy, expensive hammams for tourists, but you’ll have the most authentic experience in a public hammam. It’s super cheap and very rustic, and it’s a lot of fun to figure out the process for yourself. For me, and I’m sure for many other women, the ladies hammam is the ultimate safe haven because there are absolutely no men allowed! Finally, I had found a place to escape from all the uncontrolled testosterone that inundates every corner of Morocco. It felt so freeing to strip down naked alongside the Moroccan women who I had only ever seen completely covered and veiled.

In our case, no one at the hammam spoke much English or French, so we pretty much communicated in sign language. We all entered a big, dark, steamy room, splashed hot water all over ourselves, and scrubbed our skin with harsh, black soap. It felt great. A woman scrubbed all of us until a whole layer of our skin came off, and then gave us all an insane massage that stretched my muscles so much I could barely walk the next day. We all just laid there in the steam and talked and laughed until we got too hot. The experience was wonderful – I have never felt so fresh and clean and spiritually renewed before. And the whole thing was only about 8 dollars.

Imlil ended up being a pretty good time by the end, but I’m not too compelled to go back. It’s great for people who really want to be somewhere quiet with good access to mountain trails, but watch out for creepy guides. And don’t order a margherita pizza, unless by “margherita” you actually mean burnt cheese and olives (I’m still bitter about that).

Getting lost in Fez

Fez was my favorite city in Morocco. Before I went, I had heard both good and bad accounts from other travelers, so I figured I had to experience it for myself. People in Marrakesh told me Fez was dangerous and boring, but I found it to be friendly, fascinating, and absolutely gorgeous. I think one of the main reasons I enjoyed it so much more than Marrakesh was because I visited during my second trip to Morocco. Knowing more or less what to expect made such a huge difference in my ability to enjoy myself in this country. By the time I got to Fez, I was fully prepared to deal with being bothered and harassed on the street, I felt confident with my haggling skills, and I felt like I generally understood Moroccan culture much better than I had while I was there in February. Basically, I wasn’t going to let myself be intimidated. I only had three days in Fez, but I was ready to make the most of it.

Bab Boujeloud (The Blue Gate)

I had quite the adventure getting to Fez from Chefchaouen with with my Argentinian friend from the hostel, Brenda. We bought bus tickets a day in advance, but of course the bus broke down the next morning, so we were thrown onto some other bus that was absolutely sweltering inside. It was horrible – the sun was shining directly onto my face for the entire three hour journey and I didn’t have any water. Then we had to switch buses, which is a bit of a stressful experience if you aren’t used to it. The bus just pulls over in the middle of absolutely nowhere, without any warning or explanation, and some guy gets on and screams “FEZ? FEZ?” and you have to raise your hand and then he whisks you off the bus and shouts at you to get your bags and then suddenly a different bus appears out of nowhere and you have to just jump on – and before you know it, you’re hurtling off in a completely new direction!

All I can say is this is just how public transportation works in Morocco. It might not make any sense to a Westerner, but no matter how delayed or uncomfortable your journey is, people will always make sure you get to where you need to go eventually. The key is to go with the flow no matter what!

I loved Fez from the beginning, just from looking out the bus window and watching the way the afternoon sunlight made the ancient city glow like gold. Brenda and I had quite the time finding our hostel – asking for directions in a big Moroccan city is an instance in which you shouldn’t trust everyone you meet, because unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who will take advantage of your naivety. Also, watch your bags, because Fez has a lot of pickpockets. Especially watch out for children – they may seem very sweet, but don’t fall for it – some of them will steal your wallet if you aren’t paying attention!

After some stressful navigation, Brenda and I finally found our hostel – Funky Fez, which I really recommend, by the way. The intimidating thing about Fez is that it’s home to the largest medina (old, walled city) in the entire world – meaning the old part of the city is an endless labyrinth that would literally take years to learn to navigate without a map. There are no cars, as the twisting alleyways are simply too narrow for anything except pedestrians and donkeys (watch out for donkeys). The medina in Fez is unlike any other place I’d ever been to. It was built in the ninth century, so the mere notion that it was a thousand years old gave me actual goosebumps (very typical of an American, I know).

It is literally impossible to find your way through the medina without asking someone for directions. Google maps doesn’t always work, so you need to be willing to get lost and enjoy the journey as you stumble across delicious food stalls, metalworkers, women selling argan oil, and God knows what else. The sights, smells, and sounds are all completely fascinating, and there’s always something else to discover just around the corner. While trying to find the way home with a group of people from my hostel, we all got lost in the medina for more than two hours, and actually ended up hiring a couple of kids to show us the way through the labyrinth.

I had a lot of fun getting lost. That said, I would have felt very uncomfortable walking around the medina all by myself, especially at night. Moroccan men are known to be aggressive, particularly if you’re a woman on your own (and it doesn’t help to be tall, blonde, and blue-eyed). I would definitely suggest finding a group to go with, which will be easy if you’re staying in a hostel, since almost everyone will be in the same boat.

I think I got very lucky in Fez in terms of meeting the right people. In Marrakesh I had quite a bit of trouble with harassment, and I didn’t make too many friends in the hostels I stayed in. But in Fez, I met a fabulous group of solo travelers at my hostel, and we had an absolute blast walking around the medina together. We had a wonderful tour guide who showed us the oldest leather tannery in the world, Chouara – it’s huge, colorful, and over a thousand years old! That was one of my favorite sights in all of Morocco, because I’d never seen anything remotely like it. We were given bunches of mint leaves to keep the stench at bay – they use cow piss and pigeon poop to soak the leather, so you can imagine the smell. The whole leather-making process was super interesting, and the finished products were absolutely exquisite. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford any of them.

I found Fez much more relaxed than Marrakesh – it felt less glitzy, less touristy, and less superficial. There were more people who seemed to just be going about their daily routines, whereas in Marrakesh it often felt like so many people’s sole purpose in life was to make money off tourists. Fez felt truly ancient, very authentic, and breathtakingly beautiful. The place was surreal to me – I really did feel like I had gone back in time. There was some kind of magic in the air, the architecture, the everything.

The ultimate highlight of my second trip to Morocco was my last day in the country, when I took the train from Fez to Tangier to catch my flight back to Europe the next morning. After my horrific experience on the overheated bus from Chefchaouen, I splurged on a first class train ticket (it was only twenty euros) and sat in a compartment with five other Moroccans. They all offered me food, and I shared my strawberries and bread with everyone. The old man sitting next to me asked (in broken French) if I was sure I knew where I was going. I told him I could manage, but he insisted that I should be accompanied by a local. The woman sitting across from us, listening in on our conversation, said she could give me a ride to my hotel. Not only did she give me a ride, but she also took me to the mall in Tangier and bought me strawberry frozen yogurt. We chatted away in French, and then she and her brother took me all the way to the airport, which was nearly thirty kilometers out of the way!

I was so grateful and happy that my second trip to Morocco had ended on such a good note that I felt a little heartbroken about leaving. I couldn’t stop thinking about all the weird and wonderful encounters I’d had with strangers. A few months earlier, I had been terrified to visit Morocco. I am so glad I conquered my fear and figured out how to enjoy this country and all the amazing things it has to offer. Morocco is one of the most memorable places I’ve ever been to and it will always be one of my favorites.

The Blue City of Chefchaouen

I didn’t make it to the Blue City the first time I was in Morocco – it was a ten hour bus ride from Marrakesh and the weather forecast in January was dismal, so it hardly seemed worth the journey. But I kept meeting people who wouldn’t shut up about how great Chefchaouen was, so I decided I had better just hop over from Spain while I had the chance, and I’m so glad I did. It felt wonderful to return to Morocco. The first time I went there, I was so scared – this time, I was ready.

Well, “hopping over” to Morocco from Spain was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. It’s possible to get $20 flights if you book well in advance, but unfortunately I’m not much of a planner, so I could only afford the ferry. It took me 18 hours from door to door. First, I took an overnight bus from Madrid to the Spanish port of Algeciras, then a ferry to the Tangier port, then a shared taxi to Tangier city, then a four hour bus ride through the Rif Mountains to Chefchaouen. I think I saved about $100, which seems very stupid in retrospect considering I could have saved myself about 12 hours of travel time by just taking a flight. Nevertheless, it was a memorable journey and I have no regrets.

Incredible food at Beldi Bab Ssour – the best restaurant in town

Chefchaouen was just as pretty as everyone said it was. It was also very quiet and serene. I didn’t get harassed once – I mean, I’m not saying I like being harassed, but to be honest it felt really strange to actually be left alone for once in this country.

The thing about Chefchaouen is that there really isn’t much to say about it – everything is blue, the mountains are gorgeous, you can buy cheap, quality hash from anyone on the street, and there are lots of aesthetically pleasing cats snoozing in alleyways and frolicking through gardens. It’s a nice place to hang out. But it’s very, very touristy, and it gets boring after a few days.

Chefchaouen is well-known for being incredibly photogenic and “Instagrammable”, which attracts a lot of social media influencers. I became very aware of being just another tourist with a nice camera, and it made me feel weirdly voyeuristic and cliché. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the overly touristic atmosphere, but I did meet a lot of fun people in Chefchaouen. I went hiking up to the cannabis farms in the mountains with two German guys, spent a whole day speaking Spanish with a Peruvian guy and an Argentinian girl, played “Never Have I Ever” with a group of people from my hostel, including the Moroccan manager (a VERY weird experience), and laughed about accidentally driving into rivers with an English girl who had run away to live in the Sinai Desert for eight months.

One of my favorite memories of Chefchaouen was on my last day, when I tried to buy a SIM card from a Moroccan lady on the street while I was waiting for my bus to Fez. She didn’t have any SIM cards left, but she insisted on accompanying me to the town center to buy one, so we got in a taxi together. It was so lovely of her to go with me, even though we did not speak the same language at all. After I sorted out my phone, we had to literally run back to the bus stop together (I almost missed the bus) and we tried to have a conversation, but she only spoke Arabic and a few words of French. The most complex thing I managed to tell her was “Chefchaouen… Small! Fez… Big!” Even with the language barrier, we laughed a lot and she gave me a big warm hug when we said goodbye, and told me to please come back to Chefchaouen. Those random connections with friendly strangers are my favorite thing about traveling in Morocco.

The Blue City was beautiful, and I’m glad I went in April instead of January, because the weather was perfect. But three days was enough for me. I was ready to move on to more energy and excitement after this quiet mountain town. I personally don’t think a visit to Chefchaouen needs more than a couple of days, but I would suggest going for longer than just a day trip because the mountains surrounding the town are worth exploring. The sunsets over Chefchaouen are amazing, and best viewed from the Spanish Mosque (or even further up in the hills if you want to escape the crowds). I would also recommend doing the opposite of what I did – go to Chefchaouen after you visit a chaotic city like Fez or Marrakesh. It will be a huge breath of fresh air, both literally and figuratively.

How I drove a car into a river in Morocco

Davita, Anna, me, and Lahcen

My mini road trip through Morocco only lasted three days, but it was easily one of the most memorable moments of my travels. Basically, my friend Davita really wanted to go to this saffron farm in the middle of the countryside, and the only way to get there was by car. Lucky for us, it turned out that renting a car in Morocco is incredibly cheap, so there was really no reason not to go. “Driving in Morocco will be so fun!” I told Davita on the way to Marrakesh, as our bus hurtled through the countryside, honking the horn almost constantly, without really stopping for people to get on and off – everyone just kind of jumped onto the bus while it was still moving.

The views were beautiful, but the roads were atrocious.

We got really lucky with forming a last-minute roadtrip crew. I was the only one who could really drive (thank you Mom for forcing me to learn how to reverse uphill with a stickshift), Davita was sensible and resourceful, Anna was fun and adventurous, and Lahcen, a local, knew the country really well, spoke all the languages, and saved us from getting ripped off all the time. It was so fortunate that he decided to come with us, as things would have been drastically different if it had just been us girls.

The Ouzoud waterfalls

Traveling with a man made us feel a bit safer in general, but there was still the whole issue of driving in Morocco. According to Davita’s guidebook, “driving in Morocco is extremely hazardous”. I can confirm this to be true. The roads are absolute shit, pedestrians love to walk directly in front of moving vehicles, and no one EVER stays in their lane. You just get used to it after a while. I almost had heart failure upwards of fifty times, but it was okay because we got to see absolutely breathtaking scenery that a lot of tourists in Morocco probably never get to see. We drove over the mountains at night, hiked around the Ouzoud waterfalls and saw wild monkeys, ate the best tagine, and watched the most incredible sunset over a bright blue lake. Every moment was beautiful, or at least fun.

We finally made it to the fabled saffron farm on the third day – a journey which involved the incredibly stressful task of driving the car straight through a crowded village market. Oh my god, it was terrible – I’ve never had to honk at so many people in my life. But then we got to the farm – an actual paradise – and I instantly felt calm and serene. The Swiss woman who owned the place showed us her baby donkey and hundreds of tropical fruit trees – pomegranates, mangoes, lemons, bananas, and everything else you could ever think of. We drank bright yellow saffron tea and washed our feet in rosemary water, saffron water, lemon water, and rose petal water. Then we scrubbed them with sea salt and pure argan oil. I’m telling you, my feet have never felt so pure and blessed before. But then things took a turn.

The water and sea salt we used to clean our feet.

Davita with saffron tea at the saffron farm

So when we left the saffron farm, I had to drive down this extremely narrow dirt road that ran alongside a little river, and the sun was in my eyes. Also, there was a pile of branches in the road. And I’m also an idiot. I kind of swerved just a little bit to avoid the branches in the road. Okay, maybe I swerved more than just a little, because suddenly everyone was yelling at me and then the car was halfway off the road and the front wheel was in the river. I could not believe it. One by one, people from the village came out into the road to look at what I’d done. It was such a disaster. We figured the only thing we could do was to build a layer of stones underneath the wheels so we could reverse the car back onto the road. To do that, we had to wade through the river, which was literally full of used diapers and garbage and other shit. Remember how my feet were so clean and pure just twenty minutes before? Well, now they were getting saturated in dirty-diaper water while everyone was staring at me! I felt like such a moron.

It took almost an hour and about eight people to get us out of there. All these Moroccan men showed up and laughed at me as they helped us push the car out of the river. I must have looked ridiculous – I was wearing magenta velvet bell-bottoms and broken flip flops and I probably smelled like dirty diapers. The Swiss woman walked over from the saffron farm to have a look at the disaster – I couldn’t even look her in the eyes. But the important thing was that we got the car out of the river, and we all survived. Oh, and the car was fine too (as far as we could tell).

Although you can see a lot of Morocco without a car, I would recommend a road trip to anyone craving a real adventure (but you better be confident in your driving skills). All you need to do is just ask around at hostels, and you will find people to go with you. Don’t be afraid – if I can drive for three days straight in Morocco, so can you (maybe). Just be very careful and don’t drive into rivers!

Getting my first tattoo in Essaouira

There’s something really addicting about this seaside town on the West Coast of Morocco. It’s so calm and sunny and lazy and beautiful – the perfect antidote to Marrakesh. There isn’t necessarily that much to do in Essaouira – a lot of people just go for one day – but I happened to find a great group of people that made me want to stay forever. On the bus ride from Marrakesh, I was sitting next to a super stoned Austrian guy who mentioned he was staying at a place called Atlantic Hostel. I decided to just go there with him because I hadn’t made any plans on where to stay. As it turned out, the people I met at Atlantic Hostel did a lot to shape the course of my travels. I planned to stay two nights in Essaouira and ended up staying for almost two weeks.

View from the rooftop terrace

I’ve been to several hostels where I didn’t meet a single person I wanted to spend any time with, but being at Atlantic Hostel felt like becoming part of a family. All the other backpackers and the Moroccan staff made me feel right at home. There was an amazing rooftop terrace where everyone hung out all day long, and in the evenings we all ate dinner together and played music and sang.

Sunset on the beach

During the days, I loved going out with a few friends and wandering Essaouira’s narrow streets and alleyways, eating breakfast in little rooftop cafés, and sipping freshly squeezed orange juice on the beach. It was also really interesting to walk around the harbor, where fisherman were selling freshly caught seafood for an unbelievably cheap price. One of my favorite things to do was to buy a fresh fish and take it to a restaurant, where they would grill the fish for you. I even tasted a sea urchin, which was slimy but surprisingly good.

Sea urchins taste good!

The day’s catch

Probably my finest achievement in Essaouira was getting matching ankle tattoos on a whim with two other people I met at the hostel. This German girl had a tattoo kit and wanted to practice on people, so my friends and I decided to volunteer ourselves after maybe a little too much drinking on the rooftop. It was my first tattoo – the “free man” symbol of the Berbers, which are the main ethnic group in Morocco. The Moroccan guys at the hostel loved that we got this tattoo. It was small and simple, and it would always remind us of Morocco.

The Berber tattoo (mine turned out the best)

I could have stayed in Essaouira for months. It was the ideal place to recharge and recover from the stress of Marrakesh, and it was also incredibly cheap – I paid 30 euros for 6 nights at the hostel, and got free meals in exchange for painting walls and flowerpots, which I was more than happy to do. Going to Essaouira made me love Morocco again after being in Marrakesh for a week and questioning whether or not I wanted to stay in the country. The people I met really made all the difference – in fact, my road trip in Morocco, my trip to Imlil, and subsequent trips to Austria, Switzerland, Seville, and Granada, were all with people I met in Essaouira and connected with later on.

Enjoying the perfect weather.

A cat takes a nap on the ocean rocks

 

 

The wild ride to the Sahara Desert

Before I went to Morocco, I imagined the Sahara Desert to be some vast, inaccessible wasteland that you’d have to be on a National Geographic expedition to get to. How wrong I was. If you want to visit the desert, all you need to do is walk down a major street in Marrakesh or Fez for two minutes and you’ll hear at least five people shouting at you to join their tour (“special price just for you!”). Specifically, you will be going to Merzouga, which is the tourist gateway to Erg Chebbi – an incredibly photogenic field of windswept sand dunes.

The cheapest desert tours in Morocco are all exactly the same, so it really doesn’t matter which company you go with. If you have a higher budget, then you can look into some better, more comfortable options – otherwise you should prepare yourself to be in a cramped minibus with about twelve other people for an absolute eternity as you go over the Atlas mountains, through the Dades Gorge, and almost all the way to the Algerian border in two days. It was actually snowing while we were driving through the mountains, and I thought we were going to die. As our driver hurtled around hairpin turns on narrow roads at an appalling speed, we saw two abandoned cars dangling halfway off the side of the mountain. That didn’t make me anxious at all!

These are the kinds of roads we drove on.

The Dades Gorge

On the way to the desert, we saw the Dades Gorge at dusk, which was beautiful, though we only had about fifteen minutes to walk around, so I wish we’d gotten more time. We also stopped in Ouarzazate, which is known as “Morocco’s Little Hollywood” due to all the famous movies and TV shows that have been filmed there, like Gladiator, The Mummy, and most recently, Game of Thrones.

Aït Benhaddou from across the river

The main tourist attraction in Ouarzazate is the ancient village of Aït Benhaddou, which features the traditional architecture of Southern Morocco. This place looks like it came straight out of a storybook. We went on a short tour and saw all the old dwellings, the women weaving beautiful rugs, and the fortress at the very top. It was very touristy and there were lots of tacky souvenirs for sale, but I enjoyed my visit – except for when our guide insisted the ONLY place to eat lunch in the whole town was a grossly overpriced tourist restaurant, but that’s to be expected on any guided tour in Morocco.

We didn’t get to Merzouga until late in the afternoon, where everyone in our group was assigned camels to ride into the desert. If you’ve never stood next to a camel before, they are surprisingly tall and it’s kind of scary to ride them at first. Once I got used to the camel’s movements, I took in my surroundings and realized I might as well have been on a completely different planet. We were lost in an endless sea of red sand dunes. As the sun began to set in the crisp, January sky, it got really, really cold. But riding a camel through the dunes excited me so much that I didn’t even feel the cold. I just felt like a little kid. I couldn’t stop laughing with everyone around me because I was so overcome with awe and wonder.

When we finally arrived at our campsite, we tried to climb to the top of one of the dunes to catch the end of the sunset, but it was nearly impossible. Scaling a huge pile of sand is much harder than it looks! Instead, we just made sand angels and watched as the stars came out. It was a new moon that night, and we could see billions of stars beyond the silhouettes of the sand dunes. It was absolutely indescribable.

We had a campfire that night with the camel guides, where we smoked shisha together and spoke in a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. One of the camel guides, Ismael, invited me to venture further out into the dunes with him to look at the stars. I was feeling adventurous after the camel ride, so I said yes. We walked through the dark for quite a while, until we were surrounded by nothing but dunes and emptiness and silence. The Sahara is the quietest place I’ve ever been to. If you sit still, there is absolutely no sound, and it’s the eeriest, most magical thing.

Sunrise

Ismael and I sat there and watched the stars for a while and spoke in Spanish (every camel guide speaks about seven languages). Of course, he wanted to know if I was married. When I told him my default response (yes), he lamented that he was the unluckiest man in the whole world because he would never get to marry me. Talk about being overdramatic. After he accepted that I wasn’t going to marry him, we slowly walked back to the campsite, past the huge, dark shapes of camels silhouetted by starlight. Ismael explained how they regurgitate their food from the day before so they can eat it twice. How romantic.

The temperature dipped well below freezing that night, and I’m pretty sure my “bed” was just an old metal fence with a blanket over it. I guess that’s what you get when you pay for the cheapest tour. I didn’t sleep at all. My feet were numb when I got up for breakfast, and they didn’t stop being numb for the next 12 hours. I didn’t really care though – I got to see one of the most amazing places on the planet and it was everything I dreamed it would be. I’ve always loved deserts, but Erg Chebbi was otherworldly to the next level.

 

My love/hate relationship with Marrakesh

I was so scared to go to Marrakesh. Before I bought my plane ticket, I had read so many travel blogs about how Morocco was dangerous and horrible for solo female travelers, and that the harassment was intense and never-ending. To be fair, the harassment was intense. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about Marrakesh. But it was one of the most interesting places I’ve ever visited, and I’m so glad I decided to leave the comfort and familiarity of Western Europe to experience Morocco for myself.

The main square – Jmaa el-Fnaa.

I think Marrakesh was a very good place to begin my trip because it’s literally a crash-course in all the extremes of Moroccan culture. During the first few days, you get totally overwhelmed with swarms of people trying to talk to you and sell you trinkets in this loud, hot, chaotic and colorful city. But then after a while you start getting used to how things work in Marrakesh, and you can start enjoying all that it has to offer – gorgeous architecture, fascinating history, a million different spices, and contagious energy.

But at the same time, I hated that Marrakesh was so hectic. I hated feeling like an object everywhere I went. I’m tall with light hair, pale skin, and blue eyes, so I had absolutely no hope of blending in. Men would constantly shout things at me ranging from, “Hello, where you from?” to “You, me, sex, now?” and it was seriously exhausting to keep pretending I didn’t hear them. I started wearing sunglasses all the time to avoid accidental eye contact with people. Even that didn’t always work – once, when I was really lost, some guy wouldn’t leave me alone no matter what I said, and he ended up grabbing my arm and trying to drag me down a dark alleyway. He told me he would only let me go if I gave him money or a kiss. That was super upsetting, and it was the first time anything like that had happened to me so I didn’t know how to deal with it. Fortunately I managed to run away from him, and I spent the rest of my afternoon exploring some lovely palaces with an incredibly kind local woman who bought me a pastry and spoke to me about how much men suck. I felt so fortunate to have met her, and even more fortunate that I was able to speak French, as the Moroccan women I met rarely spoke much English. How peculiar, I thought, to have met both the best and worst of strangers in the same afternoon.

That’s the thing about Morocco – probably my least favorite thing about the whole country – you meet so many people who want to take advantage of you, and you meet so many people who are genuinely kind and don’t want anything in return, but it’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes. Trusting everyone you meet is not a great idea, so it becomes much easier not to trust anyone.

Spending time in Marrakesh can be pretty draining when it feels like every single person you meet just wants money from you, even if they’re just showing you the way to your hostel. I understand that most people in Morocco have grown up with the idea that all Western tourists are made of money, so it’s not surprising that they want me to buy stuff from them. But it’s just plain exhausting and unpleasant to see people take one look at me and immediately decide that I’m a walking, talking ATM. This happens in plenty of other countries too, but I found Marrakesh to have the most aggressive, relentless salespeople of all.

Every tourist gets majorly ripped off in Marrakesh at least once. It gets easier to bargain once you start to figure out how much things should cost, but if you want someone to give you a really good price you’ll have to be just as aggressive as they are. This also gets easier with time, as you realize it’s all part of the game and they expect you to argue with them.

After a while, I just became desensitized to people bothering me in Marrakesh. Despite all the harassment that goes on, it really is an incredible city and I’m glad I got to experience all of it, the good and the bad. Getting lost in the endless labyrinth of the medina eventually became fun instead of scary, and I learned to have a sense of humor with some of the shopkeepers who kept pestering me to come buy their stuff. Marrakesh really does have some of the most beautiful gardens and palaces I’ve ever seen, and if you know where to look, you’ll find peace and tranquility just as easily as you’ll find chaos. Rooftop terraces were my favorite sanctuaries after stressful days of navigating through the medina. There’s nothing like sipping on sweet Moroccan tea while gazing out at the sprawling city below you and knowing you’re safe from all the craziness, at least for a little while.

Rooftop view from La Maison de la Photographie.

So, my advice to people who are hesitant about going to Morocco alone – just go! You will meet plenty of people to keep you company if you stay in hostels. It may be stressful and scary at times, but the experience will be so rewarding and so worth it. Don’t miss out on this amazing country.