After an unexpectedly windy and
carsick-driving bus ride through the Rif Mountains, we arrived in the town of
Chefchaouen, “The Blue City.” This city had been recommended to us by
everybody. The city was formed in the 15th century, by Muslim and
Jewish refugees from Grenada. My history is a bit rusty, but I’d say they didn’t
expect the Spanish Inquisition. They came here, banned Christians from entering
the city and spoke a medieval form of Castilian until the Spanish opened the
city up in 1920, and coloured everything blue! Everything in the city is blue.
The stairs are blue. The doors are blue. The buildings are blue. Sometimes, you
turn a corner and it looks like a blue
igloo – where the buildings almost look like they have been built with one of
those gelatinous plaster machines that blows more of a blob that, if you don’t
smooth out, just looks like a blob.
The city is incredibly charming
and a wee bit cool. Not sure if it’s because we are in the mountains, or because
we’re closer to the Mediterranean, or because it’s late October, but now we are
starting to take out our sweaters. It also makes the whole igloo theme make a
bit more sense.
Another thing that makes this city
different and reflects its history is the Spanish mosque that overlooks the
city. Lonely Planet recommends it as a lovely 1.5 km hike to the top the
Spanish mosque’s hill. We overheard one of the girls, Maya, from our hostel say
she was keen on going so we invited her to come along. We got to the top of the
hill and relaxed for a bit to enjoy the view. After 30 minutes or so, we
thought we’d get up and check out the other side of the mosque. We found a
small path into the mountains. Feeling adventurous, we thought we’d check it
out. It looked pretty level and well-trodden, so we figured it wouldn’t hurt
anything.
Wrong! Maya suddenly had this
desire to pick one of these cactus fruits we’d seen for sale in the markets.
She was like Sleeping Beauty with the spindle. She just had to get that fruit.
She picked up a stick, she approached it, and she got it off of the cactus with
care. That’s when she realized that the fruit wasn’t just covered with a few
visible thorns. Oh no. The fruit was covered with hair-like thorns which were
now embedded in every single one of her fingers! In a split second, she had
turned into the latest superhero, Cacti Woman! Thankfully she didn’t eat it!
We grabbed her coat for her, and
she held her poor hands so she couldn’t touch anything, and we started to walk
down to the village. As we walked, we approached a local and asked him if he
knew how to get the thorns out. He said to put some dirt on them to help
relieve the sting. Then he invited us back to his farm to see the farm and to
have his aunt help pull out the thorns. We asked the price for the farm visit, and
he said no too much. Off to the farm we went.
We got there, saw the farm,
applied olive oil to the hands (which apparently allows you to brush off the
thorns), and then started to argue when he quoted us a ridiculous price for
having taken us to see the farm. We finally paid what we felt was fair and we
went back down to the village, complaining about this particular bargaining
style of the Moroccan people.
When we arrived at the hostel,
ready to go and get some tea, Maya looked in her bag and suddenly declared, “where’s
my phone?” That’s right. Another phone had gone missing in our lives within a
two week period. Pallavi and I confirmed that the phone was in her hand when we
were at the Spanish mosque chilling on the wall. We also confirmed that there
wasn’t anything in her hand after she became Cacti Woman. The phone may have
fallen out of the bag at the guy’s farm, but it’s most likely back up the 1.5
km walk to the mosque. Pallavi and I refused to let Maya go back up by herself,
given that it was sunset.
Back up to the top of the mosque we
went. No sooner did we get to the top than we met the same guy. He called his
aunt to see if the phone was there but with no luck. We searched the ramparts
near the mosque to see if she had dropped the phone while we were sitting. No
luck. Finally, we thought we’d walk towards the cactus to see if, by some
random chance, she had set the phone down on the ground and forgotten it while
she was be-spelled by the plant.
There it was! The guy was so
excited that we’d found it that we were invited back to his mother’s house for
celebratory tea. Moroccans may have a
curiously aggressive bargaining style, but they still are incredibly helpful
and generous when you’re in a pinch.
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