My first Morocco trip

[beerlaodrinker]

Cracking thread khmer, Pity about that coont Chris cock blocking you with the Singaporean chicks

[Latindancer]

They're lovely shades of blue. It’s believed that many years ago, the paint dye was extracted from a small shellfish and the color it produced was close to indigo.

I wonder where they get the blue colourant from these days ?

[Black Heart]

Nice photos. Makes me curious about Morrocco.

[Dan]

Thanks for the memories. 2004 was my only trip there, spending a month in Marrakesh and then to agadir. Lots of prossers in the Irish bar there if memory serves me correctly.

Was pretty much beer, weed and young women for those two weeks.

[terry57]

Great thread mate, Jesus, I'd love to get into some of that Hash.

Ain't had Hash for years.

[patsycat]

Does anyone remember opium oil, you sort of painted it on cigarettes?

We get hashish here, but i am sure it is not of the same caliber as on site stuff.

I can't roll a joint to save my life - i need male minions to do that task. I did have one of those cigarette rolling machines once and managed to break it...

I do have a hash pipe. but even that, i undid it to clean it and couldn't get it back together properly.

And to think my father was an Engineer...

[BaitongBoy]

i need male minions to do that task

Heh...

[Dillinger]

I started to realise that, despite his use of cannabis, Chris wasn't exactly street smart, a bit naive almost.

you mean like....stoned ??

Chris, who works in finance, then began to bore them silly by talking shop thinking that would impress them. I could see their eyes glaze over almost instantly, thinking "boring [at][at][at][at]". I was beginning to dislike Chris.

So why didn't you charm one of these birds yourself ? I will tell you why, because dope is one of the most unsocial drugs there is and all that mind numbing Stoner shit is good for is to bring you down off E's and coke.

nice thread BTW

[khmen]

The rest of the day was spent between ambling about the old town and relaxing at my hotel, but as the afternoon drew onward I developed a hankering for a hair of the dog.

As I've already mentioned places from which to buy alcohol are somewhat limited in Chefchaouen, and I didn't really fancy going to the hotel bar where I'd spent New Years. There is a big hotel on a mountain overlooking Chefchaouen which I'd heard had a bar so I decided to take a stroll up there to catch the sunset.

This would involve walking all the way to the top of the medina, out of one of the gates in the northern edge of the old city wall, and walking up a bit of the mountain to get to the Hotel Atlas. I thought the walk would do me good so off I set and soon, after much walking up steep steps and slopes, I came to one of the old gates out of the old town:



After I'd gone through the gate I walked up the mountainside on a handy concreted path for a few minutes, and soon realised I'd got my timings wrong for viewing the sunset from the bar. The sun was already well in the process of setting and soon it'd be dark, but it made for some nice photos of the mountains tinged in their sunset shade of pink, with the moon hanging in the sky above.

In this shot you can see the gate I'd just walked through in the bottom right corner:


View back toward town featuring one of the old gatehouses:


Panoramic view of the same:


View from further up the mountain after I'd left the concreted path:


Finally, after far more exertion than I'd expected, I arrived at the hotel bar. This place was even deader than the place in town, two locals propping up the bar and a bar man with no other customers in sight whatsoever. I ordered two beers and went to sit on the terrace overlooking town. The beer tasted good after hiking all the fucking way up here to get it!



View from the terrace over town:


So I sat outside until the lights of the town came on and the sun slipped behind the opposite mountains listening to the sounds of the town below drifting up to me, draining four beers in the process:





After which I went inside to drink another couple in the dullest bar imaginable, made worse by the shit French football game on the telly, and it was time to make my way back down the mountainside in the dark:



Not the most exciting evening ever, but at least the hair of the dog had done the job and I felt much better for it! The rest of the evening was spent at my hotel reading and relaxing, ready for a proper walk up into the mountains I had planned for the next day. Will upload pics of it when I get chance.

[khmen]

Those kitties are exactly the same colours as my last batch. We, here are grass smokers. But that stuff from there is lethal. I get the munchies and then sort of do a swan death falling over out of my box thingy. To pop up ten minutes later. Shit i wish i could have been your shadow... I'm sorry, i stole the picture of the kittens to send to my sister. Saturna and Jimmijoe re-incarnated-

Hehe, yeah it can be quite strong, especially when it comes direct from the source - I'll mention scoring some top grade direct from source up in the hills in my next post.

No probs re the kitty pics, share away. Some more cat and kitten pics coming up in later posts, there are cats absolutely everywhere in Morocco, you'd love it!

Cracking thread khmer, Pity about that coont Chris cock blocking you with the Singaporean chicks

Cheers. Haha, tbh mate they seemed a bit too much like hard work for me anyway! Classy, beautiful, but didn't they just know it!

I'd love to get into some of that Hash. Ain't had Hash for years.

Yeah it's some top quality stuff up in the hills, I've seen Moroccan in Europe on many an occassion but nothing to match the stuff I came across in the production region.

Does anyone remember opium oil, you sort of painted it on cigarettes? We get hashish here, but i am sure it is not of the same caliber as on site stuff.

Are you sure it was opium oil Pats? I used to get proper Moroccan/Indian hash oil back in the day, it was a dark black/brownish liquid that was spread on ciggarettes or papers, strong as fuck gear. It's made by washing the buds with ethanol, filtering it and evaporating the alcohol. Easy enough to do, made some myself once.

you mean like....stoned ??

No, I mean like not very streetwise, from a bit of a sheltered background, not "down wit da streetz" to use the lingo kids these days may or may not use!

So why didn't you charm one of these birds yourself ? I will tell you why, because dope is one of the most unsocial drugs there is and all that mind numbing Stoner shit is good for is to bring you down off E's and coke.

As I said in reply to BLD, they seemed like too much hard work, like I'd have to put a load of effort in in the vague hope of a ride. I don't fuck about with women like that these days - if they ain't showing much initial interest I certainly ain't going to be chasing after them. If the pussy is going to come to me, it comes to me. If it doesn't, I've always got my ever faithful right hand to sort myself out!

Agree with you that cannabis can be quite an unsocial drug, I've got a friend who smokes it all day long and he's an anti-social vegetable. It's like anything though, everything in its place and everything in moderation and it's all good.

I use it at home on occasion to relax after a hard days work or to help me go to sleep, but will never use it in a social situation as it makes me awkward, or if I've got shit that needs to be done as it makes me lazy. Didn't have owt to do with why I didn't wire into the Singer gals.

Weed/Hash is shit for trying to come down off class A stimulants, it barely touches the sides - for that you'll be wanting some form of benzodiazepines or opiates.

nice thread BTW

Cheers.

[khmen]

The next morning I awoke relatively early with a vague plan to take a wander up into them thar hills. The plan was to go and walk up to and check out the view from the Spanish Mosque, the small white building on the hill slightly to the right of centre in this shot...



...and from there to potentially follow some trails further up to the mountains, depending on how arduous the walk was. As far as I can gather the Spanish Mosque was, as the name suggests, built by the Spanish but was never actually used as a place as worship. Now it mainly serves as a viewpoint and a landmark above town which marks the start of several walking trails into the Rif.

So off I set with no idea as to how to actually get to it, I knew that many people go there for the view at sunset but didn't know where the path was. I meandered downhill from my hotel toward it and crossed a bridge over a small river:



I then began walking uphill where I came across a road from where I could see a few rough trails heading further up the hill. I stopped to take a few shots back toward town:







I then crossed the road and began to walk up one of the trails leading up the hill. A shot looking back toward the old town:


A shot looking up toward the Spanish Mosque where I was heading:


It wasn't long after this that I realised I was actually walking through a graveyard, the entire hillside around me was dotted with blue and white painted graves:


Not being very au fait with the protocol of being a non-Muslim strolling around the graves of their ancestors I felt a bit uncomfortable to be honest, wondering if I might have inadvertently blundered into making some social faux pas. I passed a few locals as I progressed along the trails and they greeted me as they passed so I suppose they can't be that bothered about it.

Views as I progressed up the hill:








It was about this stage that I began to feel the strain on my legs a bit, and coming to the foot of a very steep, loose and rocky rocky slope I decided to sit down in the shade of a tree for a few minutes. "Fuck me", I thought, "Surely all the people who come up here for sunset don't scramble up these bloody slopes and down again in the dark? There's gotta be an easier way!"

After a few more minutes I decided to tackle the rocky slope above me in my completely unsuitable footwear, this is the view from about halfway up back toward the tree I sat beneath, slightly left of centre:


And this is the view upward of where I still had to scramble:


After nearly going arse over tit a couple of times I finally made it to the top, I'd actually got quite a sweat on. Fucking healthy activities will be the death of me one of these days I swear!

View back down the rocky slope I'd just come up:


Views looking back toward the old town, you can see the graveyard bottom centre of the shot:


The Hotel Atlas where I'd had a beer the previous evening can be seen on the hill above town, the big white building:






Continued shortly...

[BaitongBoy]

Welcome back, khmen...Nice little trek, that...A real power course...And the cold beer and smoke afterwards...

[khmen]

*For reasons which will become apparent, no photos were taken during the course of events in this post*

After I'd taken a few shots I decided to go and sit in the shade provided by the Spanish Mosque to catch my breath and take in the view. I sat down next to a young local lad who I noticed was rolling a joint. He smiled and said "Bonjour monsieur, something something something" in French. I told him I didn't understand and apologised for my poor French - "Desole, mon Francais est terrible!"

He laughed and asked where I was from, I told him England and he said in English "Haha no problem, I said you look very tired!" I told him I'd just scrambled up the side of the mountain and pointed the way I'd come up, he said "Why didn't you walk the easy way?" pointing out a nice easy looking path back toward town on the opposite side of the hill. "Haha, I didn't know how to get up here so just walked up the first path I came to!"

He offered me a puff of his joint which I gladly accepted after the climb and introduced himself as Otman, a student in Chefchaouen from a nearby Riffian town called Ouezzane. We sat there chatting for a while until the joint had been smoked and I began to take a liking to him, he seemed like a genuinely nice young lad.

The conversation turned to all sorts, how I found Morocco/where I'd been, English football, my hometown in the UK, what he was studying and what he planned to do on completion of his studies, Moroccan culture, Islam in Morocco, the hashish scene in the Rif. He told me he often walked up into the hills from town to smoke in peace, to ponder and to contemplate things while taking in the scenery. "Up here", he said, "it's peaceful, it's quiet, I can relax and think about things alone, you know?". Surveying the scene before me, and feeling the calming effect of the hashish, I knew precisely what he meant.

Some local men had been hanging about and had seen us smoking the joint, and it wasn't long before one approached Otman to ask if I'd like to buy some. I knew from previous reading that when one walks further on from the Spanish Mosque one starts to encounter people who can provide the prime fruits of the Moroccan harvest...unlike the pushy touts in town the guy didn't seem too dodgy so I thought I'd just roll with the situation. I'd deliberately only brought a small amount of cash with me just in case.

I'd spoken to Chris previously about how much he had been paying for his hash and he'd told me between 3-400 dirhams (30-40 Euro) for 10 grams of OK, but not primo quality, hash. I'd immediately told him that he'd been ripped off, which he sort of acknowledged. I'd told him that to get the best at a good price you'd have to wander up into the mountains where it's all going on. This was part of the reason I'd taken a stroll up here.

Anyway, I decided to accompany the guy further up into the mountains to sort out a wee bit of smoke for myself, and Otman said he'd accompany me to translate. So, off we wandered further up the mountains for around ten to fifteen minutes where we came to a cluster of trees with protruding buttress roots where me and Otman sat while the guy disappeared into a house nearby.

He emerged from the house and sat next to us, where he proceeded to pull out a cricket ball sized ball of very light, loosely pressed, lovely blond hash. He explained that he had made this himself, and pointed out some bare tilled soil, where he said he grew his plants during the season. He put a lighter to it and it immediately began to melt, a very good sign of purity, and held it to my nose to smell. It smelled divine, rich and fruity, better than any of the hash I'd seen in town thus far. I knew he wasn't trying to sell me sub-par gear from that point on.

I smiled and he proceeded to roll a joint for me to try, after a few pulls I knew this was about as good as it gets for Moroccan hash. Then, it was down to business and he pulled out a bag filled with cellophane wraps in 5 and 10 gram weights. Aware of the old bait and switch tactic I opened a couple to inspect and sure enough it was all of a similar high quality.

I inquired as to the price and after a few words with Otman he said it would be 100 dirham for 5 gram, or 200 for 10. I didn't quibble, remembering what Chris had been paying for lesser smoke, and I'd just scored my first bit of Moroccan hash, handing over 200 dirham for 10 grams.

After finishing the tester joint I felt didtinctly light headed, but the dealer said through Otman that he wanted to show me something. He led us to a shed near to his house and upon opening the door I was greeted with a powerful scent of cannabis. Stacked in the corner was a big pile of raw unprocessed cannabis plants, in the middle was a bucket fitted with a fine mesh screen, and in the opposite corner were some plastic ziplock sacks filled with loose unpressed hashish powder.

He explained that he was still working his way through the processing of his previous years crop, and would I like to see how he made it? Of course I did I told him.

He placed a fairly large quantity of the cannabis bud onto the silkscreen mesh on top of the bucket and using a rubber band attatched a thick sheet of plastic loosely over the top. He picked up a couple of sticks and proceeded to beat the material through the plastic in a rhythmic fashion. He smiled and said something which Otman translated as "Moroccan hash making music".

After a short while he removed the plastic, swept the beaten bud onto it and removed the silkscreen mesh. In the bucket he had collected a nice quantity of loose golden hashish powder, which he then wrapped in a small piece of cellophane and began to vigorously rub on his leg. After a couple of minutes he undid the cellophane to reveal another piece of the soft pressed golden hashish he'd sold me. He grinned, broke off a piece of it and gave it to me for free.

He informed me that if I wished I could buy the bud by the kilo, I forget the price but it was pennies, and process my own. As I'd just bought some I didn't really need any more so declined, but said I'd bear it in mind but may just take him up on it at some point, if only for the experience. He said that'd be o problem and that he was always around and about this area should I wish to do it at some point. With that, we shook hands and me and Otman left to walk back toward the Spanish Mosque.

As we walked, Otman said "Khmen, I have something for you" and held out his hand. In it was some money, 100 dirhams to be precise. I was confused, and asked him what it was for. He said "Moroccan people pay a lot cheaper, and he made you pay too much. When he spoke to me before he said that he'd give me 100 dirhams for me getting him a foreign customer. I don't like it, I don't want to keep it."

I told him I appreciated his honesty, but that for his honesty he could keep the 100 dirhams. Paraphrased: "No." he said, "You don't understand. You see, I am a Muslim, I believe in my prophet and my God, I cannot accept this money because of my religion. Some Moroccan people, they say they are Muslim, but they don't act like good Muslims. They should not make tourists pay more, it is not good. For me, I am Muslim, you are not, I am Moroccan, you are not, but we are equal. I believe in equality, and I don't like people who do things like this to tourists. They are not good Muslim people, they are not good Moroccan people, so this money is yours, not mine to keep."

It blew my mind to be honest, to be given money back from an illicit drug deal when I'd been perfectly happy with what I'd paid...I thought there must be some ulterior motive to Otmans apparent selfnessness, but no, when we got back to the Mosque after another brief chat he gave me his phone number in case I needed anything while in town, told me he had to go to college shortly, shook my hand and said his goodbyes. I thanked him profusely for his honesty as he left which he just dismissed with a smile and a "Welcome to Morocco my friend, enjoy my country and the rest of your holiday", touched his hand to his heart in the Arab manner when expressing genuineness, and with that he was gone...leaving me with a lot to ponder about the nature of the country and the culture I was visiting.

So, that was my first score of Hashish in Morocco, and what an experience it had been!

Next update will feature my stoned hike back down the mountain and a trip to a waterfall, will upload when time permits.

For those interested in the hashish farming and production in Morocco here's an excellent documentary on the subject. Skip to 25 minutes to see the hash making process described above :

[khmen]

Welcome back, khmen...Nice little trek, that...A real power course...And the cold beer and smoke afterwards...

Cheers mate, I haven't abandoned the thread but as I said in the OP life is very hectic at the minute so finding time to upload pics etc is quite hard! It'll get finished but it's just going to take a while, thanks for sticking with it!

[BaitongBoy]

A well-written account of your travels, khmen...Was this just after New Year, in early January?...

[khmen]

Yes mate, I landed in Morocco on the 29th December and left 13th January.

[BaitongBoy]

^Thanks, I remember you bringing in the New Year, and it reads like we're walking right in your footsteps...a couple of months later, however...

[khmen]

So, what comes up must come down. After a while sitting there enjoying the view and my buzz I decided to take a stoned stroll back down the mountain the easy way, the plan to head further up into the hills abandoned for some inexplicable reason.

It was a lot less strenuous on the way back put it that way, I just sort of floated down the mountain.

Views on the way back down:












Fucking ugly wire, I'll have to edit that out at some point as I quite like this shot aside from that!






Not long after I took this I saw a western woman and a guide emerge from this crevasses and scramble down the hill. Fuck knows where they'd been or what's up there but I wasn't in the mood to find out, looked far too strenuous and precarious for my liking!:






I arrived at the bottom of the mountain where I came back to the river/small series of waterfalls I'd crossed earlier:



I sat at a cafe overlooking the river for a while and had a drink while the effects of the hash wore off, then decided to take a stroll along the river...













....continued soon. (I'm aware this thread is the slowest progressing thread ever but hey ho, I'm a busy guy and I'll get there in the end! )

[BaitongBoy]

Cheers...

[grasshopper]

Bloody good stuff! The story, I mean.

The hash? I dunno but will take your learned opinion on it.

[billy the kid]

great thread Khmen.
used to rent a house in Chefchaouen in the early 70's for £5 a month with a flat roof to gaze from. on our first day the chief of police came to visit, we saw him from the roof
standing knocking at the door. we hid all the weed and sipsies and let him in.
he introduced himself in a very polite way and asked if we had a some keef, weed.
we said no no,no have. Ah he says wait, i come back.
Sure enough he came back with the pipe and weed and we all smoked the peace pipe. usually stayed 3 months of the year and then back to work for 9 months.
named a mountain there Caramello mountain which we sometimes climbed for the views and the craic. absolutely wonderful place; the people, food,weed,wine and nitelife. just could not fault it then, it was the best. oh yea the oily hashish, splendid.

[halen]

Marrakech is known as Morocco's "Red City", due to the predominant colour of the old city walls ranging from ochre-rose to a deep red - you can see why in this shot:


I see an arch at the end of a street...


And as I approach I see a perfect photo opportunity, such a beautiful light. A better photographer than myself would probably have done it more justice but I'm still happy with the result:




Not long after coming through this arch I came to the place I'd been heading toward, the Ben Youssef Medersa. (Thank you google maps app with location pinpointing, I'd have never found my way there without it in the maze of the medina!)

I shall upload some info and photos on it later, aswell as some more scenes from the souks on the way back.

Yeah You must give it a try. It is the must to see market street of Morocco and major attraction for tourists and had a quite big effect at Moroccan's life. Morocco is a great place and where ever you are in Morocco each town having different souk quarters.

[PeeCoffee]

Khmen, sounds like you were enraptured. All well and fine.

Quick question - if someone decides to stitch you up (which happens from time-to-time to naive travelers) what's the worse you could get for possession of hashish ...ten years ?

I'd be gutted to say the least.

[alwarner]

Brilliant thread.

[halen]

Yeah i would say through reading that thread i got really interested and massive details about that region's attractions and places to see. fishlocker! I am also a travel freak and also glad to see your thoughts as the spirit you have to live your life. I am also a travel freak and had a dream to explore World's all beautiful destinations.