Safe driving in the Lebanese Alps

The morning after I arrived back in Dubai from our last visit to California, I had to leave on a trip to drive Volvos in Beirut. In reality, we would spend little time in the city, which has a reputation as the nightlife capital of the Middle East (whoop-dee-doo), traveling instead to a ski resort about an hour and a half outside of town. You can find my thoughts on the C-30 here if you're curious.

Two summers ago I stood in a small San Francisco rug shop talking with my friend Jason about the prospects of moving to Dubai. Jason is American but holds an Iranian passport courtesy of his Dad, and at that time was the only person I knew who'd ever really spent time in this region. I bring this up because I remember that Jason, who fully expected to visit during our tenure here (and in fact now lives in Tehran and comes through regularly) mentioned the possibility of a field trip to Beirut. My reaction at that time was to calmly reply, whatareyoufuckingnuts?

Living in Dubai changes your perspective in a lot of ways. For instance, I've been forced to get over my mall allergy because, for many of life's necessities (free wi-fi and the simple act of leaving the house) there's no where better to go, especially in the summer months. But what really happens here is that you're forced to confront your own xenophobia towards the Arab world, a place that, for all it's peculiarities, is just another assembled mass of status obsessed, distracted, over-caffeinated people who want to eat cheese burgers and watch Oprah. 

So yes, Beirut is a place that people go to on a regular basis because, as Jason told me that evening a few years ago, "it's not like they don't know when things are going to start blowing up." When I was in LA on the Cadillac trip last year, I befriended a younger Lebanese journalist who said something similar: "I think there will be war again before too long, it's inevitable. But then, we're used to it. Last time people kept going out to the clubs and living their lives, we just stayed away from certain areas."

Nothing was exploding while I was in Beirut, and it seemed like a a city that would merit further investigation. On the surface Beirut felt a lot more modern than Fes, perhaps a little like Tangier but without the Medina, but then I really only saw it from the cab so who knows.

This I can say for certain, Lebanon has some very nice mountain terrain and ski resorts. After we drove each of the four Volvos, which is too many for one day if you ask me, we then had lunch and a short break before mounting quad bikes and tearing off into the cold and sunny afternoon. And so we noisily and somewhat stinkingly traversed what would have been a very good hike. Which isn't to say that it wasn't fun, it was. 

After a while we stopped for a snack that had been trucked in on an old Land Rover Defender, which belonged to the hotel. This was some what unusual, as often on these types of trips you'll find that every vehicle is from the host company's family of products. But this was a smaller scale trip and we kept finding ourselves dining or departing under giant banners depicting GM products. If anything, it was refreshing to be in an environment that was a little less obsessed with branding. Also, the food was good and that always wins me over.

Swimming Bird

The day after the Hud-hud's visit, Rajan found this green fellow (or lady) waterlogged and exhausted in the pool. Rajan nursed the bird back to health, noting that "this bird very like banana." Rajan was elated to care for the bird, and I'm sure the bird was pleased to have been rescued. We suspect he or she is some sort of Parakeet, but I should send a picture to Jane for identification as the Green Parakeets I've found by searching online seem to have a different colored bill. Raj called it a Myna Bird, but my internet research does not support his findings.

Hud-hud

This Hud-hud, or Hoopoe, so identified by our ecologist pal Jane, came to visit the other day, just outside a bank of second story windows. As is common in most of of Dubai's buildings, our villa has highly reflective glass windows, and this Hud-hud seemed to be attempting to commune with his (or her?) reflection. He (there's something very male about all that plumage) also seemed to have no idea I was there at first, and then became very excited by the sound of my camera's shutter, hopping up and down and pecking at his reflection. According to the link referenced above, the Hud-hud is mentioned in the Quran as the messenger of prophets and, even before I read that, I felt lucky to have gotten so close to him. He was, for nearly an hour, our honored guest.

Overheard in the elevator

As I've noted before, even though English is commonly spoken in Dubai, a good many conversations conducted in English are complete train wrecks. The names below are purely imagined, but protect the bereaved nonetheless:

"Hi Sally."

"Oh, Pearl-- you're back. Have you been on leave?"

"Yes, my Father passed away and I was home for the funeral."

"Oh great! Where did you go?"

"Sorry? No, my father had a heart attack quite suddenly and he didn't make it."

"Oh yeah? Is he ok?"

"No, like I said, he died."

"I'm sorry. Was he old?"

"No, not really."

[silence]

Morocco - Fes

I'm trying to remember if anyone in Fes was actually wearing a fez--- I don't think so. The sage scholars at wikipedia are apparently unsure if there's an etymological connection between the two and, since I stayed at a budget hotel, even the door man lacked a fez. Apparently higher end tourist hotels make their door men wear one.

The many artisans that populate the city's crumbling medina seem to make almost everything other than those iconic hats. We did visit a ceramics factory, where I was interested to see how the ornate tile mosaics for which Morocco is known are fabricated (I still don't really understand it). At the end of the tour we came to the gift shop, where I bought a cereal bowl. Shopping, or my total lack of interest in it, would be a common theme as I toured the medina. I would be led to some shop or workshop, where I would see someone making something in a particularly low tech and interesting fashion, and then they'd want me to buy something. Mostly I resisted, returning home with, albeit cliché, but highly succesful husband-to-wife gifts like a scarf and cereal bowl. Why just this morning Vanessa was wearing her new scarf while enjoying a heap of muesli from her moroccan crock.

Fes is famous for its tannery, with its colorful dye vats and sulphuric stink. To reach the view pictured above, I was led through one in a long series of inconsequential looking doors, up a ladder-like stairway, to a leather goods shop with open air views of the tanners at work below. It's almost as if the lack of signage in the Medina is designed to support the tour guide industry.

This is the conversation I had at the leather goods shop---leather shop doesn't seem right in this context, as there were no chaps in evidence. Also, I find the term "ass-less chaps" to be redundant:

"Sir, how about a nice leather jacket?"

"Oh, I don't think so."

"Maybe this one here." He holds up a sort of all leather, primary colored (all of them) letterman jacket. Something not unlike this.

"No, that's too hot for where I live."

"Where do you live?"

"Dubai."

"Oh no, sir. Not too hot for Dubai." Knits brow.

"Yeah, it's going to be like 42 degree centigrade there soon." That's 107.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

"No problem, jacket not too hot for 42 degrees."

So, needless to say, Vanessa wasn't sporting a new pair of Moroccan slippers, or letterman jacket, while she ate her muesli. She already has a The Abyss cast and crew letterman jacket, but it's not here with us in Dubai. Similarly, I didn't buy a rug, or one of the ornate pressed metal plates that I viewed at subsequent shops. The latter sales pitches weren't quite as reality-adverse as what I experienced at the leather goods shop, but the truth is that we have exactly the same stuff for sale in Dubai, and I'm not particularly tempted to acquire more belongings at this stage of our residency here. I suppose I could have made an exception for the puppy, but he wasn't for sale.

At the madrassa in the medina

While in Fes I took a tour of the medina, or old city. With its narrow, circuitous lanes, it's nearly impossible to navigate the medina on your own, as many of its most interesting sites reside beyond closed doors.

In the medina I saw a lot of interesting things, but among them I thought this madrassa deserved a post of its own. Not so much because I have a lot to say about it but, well, look at it.

The windows above the courtyard are actually the dormitory of the school, representing the most striking architectural view of any dormitory I've ever seen. Morocco has moved on to more secular modes of education, so most old madrassas are no longer used for religous instruction. In fact this one is just a tourist attraction at this point. We did see a group of students lining up at another madrassa, but I was told it is mainly used to house foreign students.

Morocco - Tangier

Spain's slow drizzle evolved into a downpour as I boarded the boat for Morocco. I was pleased to find myself once again aboard a ferry, having commuted to San Francisco that way one summer several years ago. For some reason, I thought the weather would improve once I got to Morocco and, while the sun was shining on my arrival, it was a brief dry moment in what would be a particularly wet trip.

I hadn't made any arrangements for a hotel, so once I was safely aground in Tangier, I caved in and hired one of the several guides shilling at the ferry terminal, selecting mine more for his festive hat and cowboy boots than anything else. I'd corresponded with our Moroccan friend Omar via email prior to the trip, and he'd warned me that there would be touts everywhere, and that they could be both aggressive and annoying. Omar also explained that official tour guides would be able to produce a badge identifying their official status, and that it might be worth asking for, even if it could be fake.

After seeing his badge, I hired Rashid to be my guide and, after I withdrew local currency from an ATM, he led me to an overpriced taxi and we zipped off to an internet cafe. If you find yourself under-scheduled and accosted by dubious helpers in a foreign land, the internet cafe is a great refuge. For one thing, I was able to begin work on my Audi article, as the deadline would fall during the trip. I had mostly written off my time in Tangier as a travel day anyway, and wanted to free up time for Fez. Additionally, I was able to read several less than enthusiastic reviews of the hotel that Rashid was pushing, and book a place of my own selection. Working on my article was also part of my strategy for dumping Rashid, I would simply wait him out. Eventually it worked, I explained to him that I'd made a hotel reservation, and that I planned to work for a few more hours, and he went away quietly enough after naming his price. Rashid was the first of many Moroccans to reject my Euros in coin form, for some reason they're not accepted in Morocco, which I found annoying since the bills are welcomed.

After roughing in my Audi review, I walked to a cafe for a decent but unremarkable dinner, and then caught a taxi to my hotel. Fares are double at night in morocco, at least in the usually more affordable petite taxis, and I was a little taken aback when the driver pointed at the meter and asked for twice as much. Still, the prices weren't as high as Rashid's Mercedes driving cohort had commanded, and I was too tired to care. The driver didn't know quite where the hotel was, and at one point we drove down a narrow street in the medina, only to back out in lurching, clutch smoldering fashion, when it became clear that we were headed the wrong way.

The hotel had a crumbling charm that was inversely proportionate to its lack of insulation. The common areas were both shabby and ornate, making the even shabbier, but not at all ornate guest rooms a bit underwhelming. Still, I was safe and dry, and drifted off to sleep with german coverage of the winter olympics murmuring in the background. In the absence of travel partners, the winter olympics would become my constant companion throughout the trip, biathlon its chief personality defect.