A Moroccan Road Trip: Part 1 of 6

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It was maybe only one or two days after my ‘Butcher of Marrakech’ experience that I made my way to Ourika Valley. 

The ‘Butcher of Marrakech’ was a local barber just next to the Jemaa el-Fnaa square. My hair was a little getting a little long and starting to feel a little 1980’s Michael Bolton. What started as a ‘take off 2cms, please’ became a hack job I don’t care to revisit.

Best to shake off the trauma by leaving town, I thought.

Ourika Valley is about an hour drive outside of Marrakech. Nestled in the Atlas Mountains, it’s close enough to be a day trip destination from Marrakech but it was my first stop before heading off to the Sahara.

The contrast between the fertile river flats and the dusty surrounds in Ourika is stark, a few steps away in the right (wrong?) direction and lush fertile ground is replaced by rock hard, stony earth.

The town soccer field is located on the hard earth part of town without a blade of grass to soften any fall. It seemed a feature of Moroccan soccer fields; all pegged out on rock, dirt, or sand.

Soccer might be the national sport, but grass is just not a consideration in a place lacking the right climate or infrastructure. There are no slide tackles in this part of the world!

I was lucky the Berber market was open the day I was there, an open-air market on the outskirts of town, on the other side of the river.

The bridge that once crossed the river had collapsed, maybe from the recent earthquake, or had been swept away by floods. Either way the market was only accessible by driving across the river flat.

What at first seemed like chaos slowly revealed itself to have some sort of order. The market had distinct sections; clothing and footwear, barbers (barbers for Berbers!), electronics (basic cables and adapters), fresh fruit and vegies, and spices.

There was a donkey parking lot, right next to the donkey shoeing vendors, logically located next to the blacksmiths working out of mud brick forges, making donkey shoes and farm equipment. 

It even had an open-air butcher’s market attached to the town abattoir. This scene was even a little confronting to a devoted carnivore like me. The abattoir was a solid brick and interior tiled structure entirely lacking in the sort of hygiene you imagine necessary to produce safe edible food.

The slaughtering was finished by the time I arrived, but the remains were there to be seen; only a cursory attempt at washing off the blood seemed to have been made.

There was a single window about 50cmx120cm on the opposite side of the entrance. Maybe its original purpose was for ventilation.

Now it serves as the easy way to dispose of entrails with the animal gizzards piling up outside, visible above the bottom ledge of the window. 

The slaughter might have finished but the various butchers were still selling the days stock consisting of carcases, prepared meat cuts, beef and goat heads, and more. The carnage reminded me of my recent haircut!

There’s a system that gives a whole new meaning of the term ‘farmgate to plate’; you select your own meat section and weight, which is cut for you on rudimentary concrete counter tops to take home or have cooked immediately by any nearby outdoor grills, for a small fee.

It was a stark contrast to the elongated and invisible supply chain of animal protein I’m used to.

There’s no time or need for plastic wrapping, especially if you visit a local grill; the food is in your stomach before bacteria have time to multiple to any dangerous level, I hoped.

That said, the whole scene would send a western health and hygiene officer or vegan into a traumatic fit.

At home, place like this would be declared a biohazard zone before being enclosed in a Chernobyl-like concrete sarcophagus for centuries to come.

But it’s the way it works here and overall it was a bit more chilled than Marrakech, I could walk freely without the hard sell hustle. It was a nice change. 

I had a fresh cooked half-chicken from one of the open-air grills for lunch, with the obligatory Moroccan mint tea.

Post lunch, I felt the pull of the Atlas Mountains and the desert.

I washed my chicken-greasy hands and headed for the hills.