Casablanca
After watching “Casablanca” my girlfriend and I decided to go on a flight of fancy and take advantage of some employee benefits of working for an airline. We had never traveled together and thought the intense stress of backpacking around North Africa for a couple of weeks would either bring us closer together or we would be single in Europe in the spring time… I had a strict ‘one or none’ rule on the clothing and supplies we were to pack since weight was a concern as all of it would be carried on our backs. The airline also has strict dress code for employee flight benefits. The only footwear that would pass the airline dress code and hiking requirements of the Atlas Mountains were our Blundstones.
Modern Morocco is a reverberating collision of Africa and Europe, west and east, Bohemia and high culture, Arab cities and Berber villages. Just south of Marrakech, the foothills of the Atlas are a patchwork of emerald green terraced fields, rising to rugged barren peaks sliced through by dramatic valleys and escarpments, and eventually opening out onto the awesome landscapes of the pre-Sahara. Formerly, long caravans of merchant Moors crossed the area on camel back to exchange fabrics, glass beads and salt for gold, slaves, leather and pepper, in the southern parts. Our trek through Morocco enabled us to discover the true desert between sand dunes, villages with superb Kasbahs, and lost oases. We wandered through the souqs (market stalls) in the ancient medina of Marrakesh, where we were enticed by the foods and spices available for sale. Walking among the market stalls, we felt as if at any second Indiana Jones would come rushing out of a doorway at us. Walking through the narrow, winding streets, offered a strange juxtaposition of the squalor in the streets foiled with the beautiful flowers and tiling beyond the entrances of the riads (traditional homes with center courtyard gardens – where I took this picture). Another interesting juxtaposition was our new love for our Icebreaker shirts her Bodyfit150 and my Superfine190. We packed them expecting extreme cold of the desert mountains but continued to wear them into the high 20′s (Celsius). Their adaptability was unbelievable. You wouldn’t expect to be wearing something called Icebreaker in Africa but we did and we loved loved them. Now we are back home (with our relationship still in tacked) I am planning to pick up a pair of R.M. Williams Wentworth’s to prepare for Vancouver’s rainy season.
