We were about an hour away from reaching the African continent and we were quite tired as we hadn’t slept on a bed since we left Lisbon, a couple of nights back. Spending a night on the train to Madrid and most of the day walking around the Spanish capital, put on some extra weight on our backs and all we could think about was the bed that awaited in our riad. Riads are traditional Moroccan houses houses that feature an interior courtyard. We were eager to reach ours as we were so tired that it would probably seem like a palace to our eyes once we got there. To our disappointment there was a huge line for passport control once we landed, resulting in us missing the last bus to Jemaa el Fnaa, where our riad was situated. That meant we had to catch a cab, which implied that we had to haggle with the airport taxi drivers.
Haggling is a thing that Catherine hates – even if it is about clothing, but it is an affair I am mostly keen on delving into whatever the object of trade. However we were tired and a cab was our only realistic option to reach our bed without much hassle, so we started the show with the man in charge for hooking up drivers and passengers. The original offer was twenty euros (200 darahim), but after a while we agreed on fifteen, which taking into account that the time was way passed 1.00 am and there were no bus, seemed like a good choice. We had to threaten that we would rather walk downtown in a rather theatrical manner and start our bargain at the ridiculously low fare of five euros. The price could possibly go a bit lower, but we weren’t interested in gaining an extra euro or two not to mention that if anyone had offered to guide us straight to a place where we could drive all of our fatigue away, we would gladly pay triple the amount.
Needless to point out that the driver couldn’t leave us outside our riad, since no cars are allowed inside the narrow souks, so we would have to do some walking. We wouldn’t have any time to enjoy the city as we had to catch a bus and take part in an organized tour to the Sahara early in the morning, but we would return to Marrakech after a couple of days. The thing is, we were so close to our accommodation, yet we were tired and disorientated and what’s worse we had no internet access. As we were also carrying our luggage among the crowd, looking lost, we were becoming potential pray for scammers that offer to help confused people to find their way.
Actually a small group of them followed us for a while and we ended up taking a small break for a refreshment inside a small cafe, as it had been hours since we had tasted a drop of water. In the end we struck a bargain with one of these guys that offered to guide us to our riad for the price of a mere euro. We haven’t formed a clear view on these sort of services yet, but I will disclose my opinion on the matter on a next post, as we had a couple of more similar encounters once we were back in the city a couple of days latter.
The facilities in our riad were fairly basic, as we booked this place intending to take a short nap, so we couldn’t find any point in spending more money for something more pricey. It was an adequate choice, but we would avoid booking there if we had planned to spend more days in Marrakesh. Finally, we took a long anticipated shower and had a few hours of sleep, before enjoying the main part of our journey, a trip to the desert. Taking into account that we had been on the road for the past couple of days, joining a three day tour without proper rest didn’t really sound like the best of choices, but it proved to be less tiresome a task as we imagined and one of the best choices we made during this trip…