Fes is Nuts

Day 63
Saturday 29th August 2009

It always worries me when reading about a place being 'an assult on the senses.' In any other context ASSULT is bad but when phrased like this rather appeals to travellers. I'm still not sold on this though. Anyway, just to clear this up Fes is an assult on the senses or to put this another way Fes' Medina is an assult on the senses.

After beating off our third over-friendly tour guide for the morning, this one incidently butting in mid-breakfast, mid-conversation 'Lespagna?Francais? English?' we head to the Medina with a visit to the tanneries top of the list.

Picture a maze of narrow alleyways that stretch out as far as the eye can see. Add enough locals in these alleyways to over capacity touting for business. Oh and a few hundred donkey karts for good measure. Then throw a few clueless tourists into the middle of it all and let battle commence.

We were onto out third map and we still weren't close to any idea of where on earth anything was in this place. We eventually asked somebody for help who passed us on to a smaller less important person who in turn passed onto a smaller even more less important person until we were being led to the tanneries by a small child with a suprisingly good grasp of English and even more surprisingly good grasp of the Aussie accent.

We were led up above a leather shop which is, of course, where we'll end up and had a cracking view of all the action as blokes soaked leather in big pots of different coloured dye. It was fascinating.

The idea was to pretty much get in the medina and out pretty sharpish but we were enjoying ourselves so took another vantage point to see the tanneries before embarking on a walking tour through the medina following particular coloured signs. It was only when we attempted a second walk we realised we'd bitten off more than we could chew  Tired, exhausted, hopelessly lost, hassled, hot, thirsty in the middle of the medina maze we were on a one wsy journey to sweatsville and just wanted out.

We eventually found an exit and before you knew it we were in a petit taxi back to our prison cell room for a cold shower soaking.

The afternoon was a little more relaxed buying our tickets for an overnight bus to the desert for the next day and wondering the Ville Nouvelle. Dinner was a rather lavish afair at a recommended joint that served up some unique Moroccon cuisine.

Fes is nuts but we like it.