The Road South

We set off today on the road south to Mirleft. I am traveling with four friends and we will rent a house in Mirleft for a week. I will explore the sights of southern Morocco from this point. You can look up Mirleft on Google, but here is a map of Morocco (Mirleft is about 100 km south of Agadir on the Atlantic coast):

We left Kénitra at about 7:00 am. There has long been a toll road/modern highway connecting Rabat and Casablanca. There is now a new highway, just opened last month, that connects Casablanca to Agadir. Between these two cities lie the High Atlas Mountains, so before the highway was built, getting to Agadir from Casablanca was very hard traveling, dangerous and long. We road the new highway, with its beautiful views and modern rest stops, and made our way from Kénitra to Agadir in about 8 hours.

Saïd's brother-in-law's family lives in Tiznit, about 100 km south of Agadir and this was our destination for our first night in the South. Here are a few pictures I took along the way, although they don't do justice to the majestic beauty I saw:

We passed through the toll booths to exit the highway in Agadir on the very first day that they made people pay to use the road (it was free for the first month it was open) and we found this sign posted at the toll booth: 

For my non-French speaking friends, all it says is that starting on July 21, 2010, people will have to start paying the toll when they reach Agadir, regardless of the date or time they began their journey. As a French teacher exploring francophone culture in Morocco, I found it interesting that this official announcement was posted solely in French. There were no such signs in Arabic or Berber.

We did see a road sign that made us laugh. You can sound it out and see if it makes you laugh, too:

Once we arrived in Tiznit, we met up with Saïd's brother-in-law's family and they took us to their comfortable home and treated us to the customary, over-the-top hospitality of Moroccans in general and Berbers specifically. Here are a few photos:

A pomegranate tree in a garden in Tiznit ---

Moroccans, like people in most (if not all) Muslim countries do not wear their shoes onto the rugs in their homes. They leave their shoes just outside the door to whatever room they are in. When they leave the room, they put back on their shoes. They never walk without shoes on areas where there are no carpets. Here is a picture of shoes lined up outside outside the doorway into the living room in the house where we are staying (we were preparing to have tea and a snack in that living room) ---

Since Moroccans eat with their fingers (although they do have silverware available when needed), washing hands before eating is important. They have a lovely hand washing courtesy: One of the hosts (usually a woman) goes to each of the guests with a basin, some soap, a pot of water, and a hand towel. Each person then washed their hands while the host slowly pours the water from the pot. Here is a picture of our host's niece performing this gesture of courtesy for Aiman, who is on this trip with our group. Notice that the basin and pot are made of silver with intricate Moroccan designs ---

For our tea time snack we had mitsemen, a type of flat, fried bread. Here are two pictures of mitsemen, the darker one is made with spices and beef fat for a richer flavor and the lighter one is just made with butter ---

To eat the mitsemen, you tear off a piece small enough to gather between your three fingers (thumb, point, middle), then you can add to it any one of the option you can see on this tray, starting on the top left: Honey, butter, chocolate spread, processed cheese,  kosher salami, extra virgin olive oil, or argan oil (a speciality of this region, very delicious) ---

Around 10pm, we were served a delicious dinner of cucumber, tomatoes, and purple onion salad with a tajine (stew) made with onions, olives, and braised goat meat. Here are two pictures to illustrate what our table looked like at dinner---