21 March: Visitors

We picked up Ralph and Gemma this morning from the airport. They had booked accommodation in a small riad, a building constructed around a courtyard, usually an open courtyard. Charming and very Moroccan, as you can see.

Slight problem: the riad is somewhere in the souks. A souk is a market, and in Marrakech these are huge and located in labyrinthine streets and alleys that are largely un-signed. It takes us an hour to find it, asking directions many times and fending off numerous traders and peddlers. As the crow flies we have covered about 300 metres.

The souks are an almost overwhelming experience of shops and people, crammed in together, all busying themselves with hustling, selling, bargaining, browsing, passing through, or just waiting. It’s a hubbub of people, but when you look hard there are not many transactions being finalised: like Tangier port it’s superficial bustling about without much end product. What it does is give purpose to the trader’s day as he works persistently and at great length at prising money from passers-by, be it only occasionally successfully.