Day 34: Imouzzer Kandar to Fez

March 21, 2023

All Downhill to Fez

“What a difference a day makes,” Rachel says, “15km uphill yesterday and 15km downhill today,” Patrick adds, “Pay for it one day and get it back the next, isn’t that the way it goes.” A brilliant downhill, with just the right grade and help from the wind that no pedaling required, with an exception of about 5 pedal strokes on a curve. When we reached the outskirts of Fez, the road continue on a decline with a few short ups and we did have to start pedaling. We’ve looked at Fez on the map for so long, and now we are here.

There is an exceptionally longer Call to Prayer this morning, earlier too with the time change for Ramadan. This is reminiscent of cycling in Indonesia during Ramadan where it seemed there were evening lectures with competing Mosques. We are wondering how Ramadan in Morocco will compare to Indonesia and Turkey. We will only experience about week this time. The unknown is just how many of the shops will close. We are preparing to shop for bread the night before and during the day will be courteous and eat discretely.

We asked for breakfast to be at 0800 which they reluctantly agreed to. For a fancy hotel, the breakfast is very basic with only coffee, fresh OJ, bread with a container each of butter, jam and wedge of laughing cow cheese. But it gets us on the road.

View across the valley towards Fez. It's all downhill from here.

“Imagine flying into Fez and on a tour bus going through this round about and spotting a camel and saying ‘I can’t believe I’ve seen a camel in the wild’,” Rachel says as we spot some camels. This is a long standing joke of when in Africa in 1994 Rachel spotted a Zebra exclaiming “I can’t believe I’ve seen a zebra in the wild.”

As we enter the outskirts of Fez we use our GPS tablet to keep track of our progress. The route leads us right past the CTM bus terminal where we want to buy tickets to Chefchaouen for this Friday. With the extra time we spent in the south we will not have enough time to cycle between Fez and Chefchaouen. We’ve also heard this section is worse with the kids. We’ve been following a French-Canadian couple who we thought at one time we might meet up. They had an experience with reporting kids throwing rocks and the police picking the kids up. The police then have been tracking them. There is a possibility that we will meet them on the ferry to Spain.

The road continues on a down grade all the way to the Bab Jdid, one of the city gates into the old Medina. We picked our Riad based on the recommendations from the Kepinski’s who were here about a week ago. The location is perfect: just inside the Medina, but not in the middle of it where it would be hard work to haul a bike up or down steep narrow alleys and stairways. The only negative about the location is that it is just about the lowest point of the Medina, all roads lead up from here. We will have to navigate the hill back to the bus station.

It takes us some time to find the Riad Oumkaltoum Fes, roads shown on Googlemaps don’t always exist in a Medina. We circle around and approach through some narrow alleys. When we almost give up and ask the locals we notice we have parked the bikes right next to a door with a small plaque next to it. It is hard to read, but here is our Riad.

After some knocking a lady opens the door and we haul our stuff into a colorful ornate covered courtyard. Around it over three stories are five guestrooms. The room is very nicely decorated in an over-the-top Moroccan style. We settle in, get cleaned up and start exploring the Medina.

Door to the left with the little plaque leads into the Riad

Inside the Riad, our room is at the far end. The atrium is three stories tall.

Welcome mint tea while we filled out the paperwork with our Passport information

Even with GPS there is no way not to get lost in the Medina as a tourist. We initially just keep going uphill, but that seems to lead us to the more residential areas with mazes of narrow alleys and tall walls. Many of the buildings are braced to each other with wood shoring across the alley. “Medina this way” as people are helpful and keep directing us to the more commercial areas. There are several distinct separate areas. We stumble across the fruit market, fish market, meat market (a dangling camels head draws our attention), shoes, gold and so on.

We pick up a kid who is supposed to be leading us to the center of the Medina

The kid is optimistic that he can ride his scooter through the market

One of our main goals in Fez is to eat some different food. There is a Chinese restaurant near the Bab Boujloud! We enjoy the fried rice and noodles, but the spicy chicken is a little too spicy for us. We will be back. After the lunch trek we do another foray into the Medina later in the afternoon.

Patrick has been dreaming about this moment....Chinese Food in Morocco.

Where there is a woodworking shop the smell of cedar is strong. We walk into one and are given small turned fillisters as a souvenir. There is a small plaza, Place Sefarine, where metal workers are hammering large copper bowls. There is so much to see. Our approach is just to wander around and take it all in. We have two more days here and are in no hurry.

Walking back on the main road toward an entrance to the Medina....this is one of the places the Moroccans learn to drive.

The Medina is beautiful, but also ugly and smelly

Wood workers shop, the smell of cedar is everywhere.

The man on the left has a sister who lives in Cleveland. They welcomed us into their shop and gave a souvenir.

Nougat salesman all clustered together. We stumbled across them and will probably never find them again.

The Medina seen from the outside. Just a jumble of buildings.

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Today's ride: 43 km (27 miles)
Total: 1,337 km (830 miles)

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