Marrekech Morocco - a trip to the Souq June, 2012

     Okay, so I want to buy a few trinkets for souvenirs, where to go??? Walmart....uhhhh NO.  How about a trip to Psychoville???  Only this is a fun trip.  Let's start from my Riad door.

   



Oh lookee lookee!  There's my main man, the peach salesman!  Darn good peaches too, only you have to wash them first.  No problem.  I take them back to my Riad, wash them, eat them with the breakfast Abdullah makes, which is carb city, and continue on my journey.  I feel bad for the old men who will be working till the day they draw their last breath.  Makes me really appreciate my pension, capitalism and the good ol' USA.

 










 Next to encounter are the women in traditional garb... who do not want you to take their picture.  They tend to frown upon it... though I don't know how you can tell??

  Now to avoid some of the crazy mini bikes, and motorcycles, and horse drawn carts, in other words to arrive at the Souq in one piece, I take a short cut through this deceptively peaceful looking street.
   

















And who is waiting for me??  This old feller didn't have a tooth in his head, but what a great smile!  He was so proud of his oral vacancy.  He didn't ask for money, try to sell me Tampons, or even ask for money to take his photo!   The explanation is simple - he's lost his mind!

The Souq of Marrakech is in my opinion, the best in Morocco.  It is a nightmare for someone without a sense of direction unless that person just dives in and enjoys the show.  You can always hire a 12 year old to show you the way back to your riad for 5 dirham.  It's like a gigantic Walmart.  One person owns  a deodorant aisle, another person owns a fruit aisle, another owns a tea shelf, and so on.  This is the nut and dried fruit salesman.  Looks like the tail gunner of a B-17.

Even in something as seemingly chaotic as the Souq, there is order.  The closer you get to the outside edges of the Souq, the more smelly things are kept.  My uneducated guess is so that the smell can escape to the elements, as opposed to being trapped under the tarps in the center.

This is one of the spice merchants.  I wish him well, but never saw him make one sale.

A fellow traveller and I were looking at paintings and we found a "store" in the Souq selling beautiful paintings.  The merchant takes several down from the shelf and unrolls them on the floor.  Not sure I want my art work, rolling on the floor of the Souq.  Then a cat shows up and walks across the work of art.  Okay, definitely don't want my art work with cat paw prints on the picture.

    You know you are at one end of the Souq when you reach the tanneries.  Not the most pleasant neighborhood to be in!  Whoa!  The odor is somewhere between atrocious and debilitating!   The odor doesn't exactly waft (ohhhh... I like that word) across the Souq, it attacks!  These are the pits that are used to dye the different skins.

 

What could be better than the combination of water and pigeon poop, which is used to treat the skins.

If I had to work this guy's job, there wouldn't be a safe tourist in Marrakech.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

Sir Winston Churchill