Saturday, Feb 6, 2010

My first morning with traditional Moroccan breakfast.  I woke about 10 local time, which meant 5:00 back home.  I heard that everything is prepared for you here, but was still a little surprised to see the table in our towering lounge room peppered with silver, ornamental domed covers for various breads, jams and cheeses.  There was also the silver tray of ever-present Moroccan mint tea with the cutest silver leaf decorated glass tumblers to drink from. Alas, no coffee.  Covering all this was a delicate clear and gold cloth hinting at the delights underneath.

Mint tea is wonderful, but my American mouth loves the dark bitterness of black american coffee, so the heavily sweetened tea takes some getting used to first thing.  Being an admitted coffee fiend, I’m a little concerned about my head punishing me if it doesn’t get its required shot of black caffeine.   I brought some instant Starbucks just in case.  I don’t want to sabotage my jet-lag day, so I added my instant coffee to their mint tea. It tastes like shit, but I think I’ve adverted a crisis. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have the cook prepare some hot water for my coffee, If I can figure out how to ask her…

There are few things in this world that I despise. Cold water is all of them.  Imagine my terror when moments into my first shower the water went immediately cold.  The agony of skin shredding off my body during a bad motorcycle crash feels like bad sex in comparison to getting blasted with firery spikes of cold water. I HATE COLD WATER! I’d rather go a month without showering and have my dick smell like a swamp of used car tires than take a cold shower.  Too late now. Fuck.

After some hurry up and wait, aunti got on the back of my scooter and a suitcase got on the back of Tariq’s and off we went. Tariq was very detailed in his instructions on how to ride.  I don’t think he believed me when I told him I got paid to teach motorcycle classes, raced superbikes, made a syllabus for a high performance riding school and have well over 100,000 miles of motorcycle traveling.  Ok enough tooting my own horn…

I had a hell of a good time zooming through Morocco chaos.  I’d like it more if I didn’t have to worry about petrifying my aunt, but it was fun just the same.  We picked up Tariq’s brother and headed into the new part of the city for food.

This time it was liver, sheep balls, chicken, kidneys, sausage and ground beef.  I don’t really like liver and this was no exception.  The sheep balls looked and tasted like chicken but with a softer texture and sticky aftertaste, the chicken was delicious as was the ground beef, and the kidneys just tasted terrible.  They know how  to make some awesome tea though! Moroccan mint tea is a staple here, but places doctor it up with various spices and such. This place had it doctored up just right.

I could go on and on about how crazy the scooter rides are here, but I just need to post a video for you guys.  You’ll see what I mean.