Morocco Email

Yet another Muslim country passes me bye and i havn´t realized how far from home i really am until i crossed the straight of Gibraltar on my two hour ferry, picked up my back pack and wondered into the Spanish Ferry Port. I looked for some food right away and noticed a deli of sorts, it hit me right away, i´m in Spain and there is chorizo, serrano and iberico ham to be eaten, being starved of pork in the Muslim countries i was quite excited. I quickly headed into to buy my self a sandwich and remembered how poor my Spanish skills really are, ¨una sandwich pequeno, con jamon y queso por favor¨ (one small sandwich with ham and cheese please), and then the questions came back in spanish which made little to no sense at all to me, since i didn´t even order the ¨sandwich¨in Spanish and just said ¨sandwich,¨ but i got my food and was happily on my way to the bus station to catch the next one out to the city of Malaga. Another interesting conversations in extremely poor Spanish and I had purchased my ticket and sat waiting for my bus. I looked up and noticed the decorations, i took the earphones out and listened to the music, it´s Christmas time!!! A holiday which doens´t exist in the countries i most recently traveled, Christmas was in my face and i laughed thinking about how different the two worlds are simply separated by a narrow strip of sea.

18 days in Morocco was enough for me, it is a country i can see my self returning to simply because of its close location to Europe and the flavors and food which i have enjoyed. My journey started in Marrakesh and was forced to take a rather unusual rout due to a major festival which grabs a hold of this country and nearly brings it to a crippling halt. In honor of a biblical story where Abraham slaughters a sheep in sacrifice to God (instead of his son), every Moroccan (Muslim family) kills a sheep or goat once a year. I was blessed with traveling the country when all buses, taxis, donkey carts, trains, and camels are booked solid but also had the privilege to witnessing this festival unfold in front to me as i slowly drove past a couple of small downs the day of the slaughter. A bit gruesome to see them killed, bleed, skinned, hung, and butchered all in public. I didn´t mind seeing it, as I am, and always have been a person who eats meat. I think the neat and clean packages stacked in our supermarkets filled with boneless, skinless, animal products are completely unrepresentative of what your are actually consuming, it makes us, at least me, forget that an animal had died and possibly lived a shitty life so i can stuff my fat face. I´m not going vegetarian on ya-all here (sorry to disappoint some) but i was happy to be reminded of how it all goes down.The hills of Morocco were beautifully peaceful as the Sahara desert was much of the same. I avoided riding an elephant while in Thailand due to cost and my disbelief that the animals were even marginally content with the life's they are forced to life. All though i feel partially the same with Camels i found it nearly irresistible to avoid sitting camel back and riding in the the endless sand dunes of the Sahara desert. A two hour, ball breaking ride (literally... quite painful) and my small group arrived at camp where we spent the night watching start pop over the massive 150ft dune we were camping under. From the busy markets of Marrakesh to the tight twisted alleys in Fes, to the colorful but quite streets Chefchaouen and the desolate Sahara desert i felt like i covered a fair bit of ground in a short while.

Morocco is a colorful place filled with culture and the last stop on the long twisted silk road which i have been traveling on and off for the past 15 months of my life. As a chef wondering into the spice markets in Marrakesh i smiled thinking about the distance i have traveled and the familiar sights i saw bottled up in front of me, star anis, galanga, lemon grass, cumin, coriander, different chili varieties, cinnamon, white pepper, black pepper, juniper, all spice, mace, green cardamom, black cardamom, along with the many others i couldn´t even identify. The flavors of the old world collected along the way passing in caravan style from Pacific Ocean and Beijing through Central Asia, into the middle east, across North Africa, dispersing across the Mediterranean into Europe or eventually making its way to the Atlantic here in Morocco. A world of flavor sat in front of me, and just like all those flavors, i´ll soon be heading across the ocean as well. Sitting now in Madrid Spain after arriving two days ago, eating tapas with some new friends, cooking dinner for some others, watching a Soccer match in a 50,000 person stadium last night, and waking up to snow on the cars this morning, i am currently waiting for my flight to Buenos Aries Argentina. I´ve been thinking about all the ground i have covered up until this point and it amazes me how far i have come. One last long air plane ride across the Atlantic Ocean puts me back in the Americas, just one step closer to home, with a few thousand miles of solid traveling ahead of me i´m ready to tackle one last continent.