Tour Bites Man

It is morning in Marrakech, and two cobras are wrapped around my neck. My travel mate is clearly worried--really, really worried that a fatal bite is in the offing. I, too, am worried--really, really worried. “Don’t,” I exhort, “drop the camera.”

She doesn’t. Despite her queasiness, she raises the point-and-shoot and records the silly but colorful moment in dramatic and colorful Djemaa el-Fna Square. The two jellaba-clad Moroccan opportunists, who had unexpectedly “necklaced” me with the snakes, yank them off and begin hissing for money. I hand one a 100-dirham note, about $11, for about one minute of service rendered. Both get venomous. “Mister, mister. No good. No good. Not enough. Two hundred dirhams. You give 200 dirhams!”

We are into the nominal seventh day of the 10-day “Jewels of Morocco” tour operated by the Cosmos company. Our experience with organized tours is that they are companionable, efficient and sufficient. And this one hits Morocco’s biggies at a price that could define bargain--$1,246 each, including round-trip air fare from New York, Casablanca airport transfers, guide, eight hotel nights, eight breakfasts and six dinners.

But “Jewels” is to prove as much paste as gem.

Because of mechanical ills, our Royal Air Maroc flight leaves JFK 29 hours late (and problems going home await). We thus arrive in Casablanca on tour Day 3. But our equanimity is unshaken until--after passing through a maddeningly long airport immigration gantlet--we find nobody from Cosmos is there to provide the advertised transfer into the city. Nor is there a message at the information desk. (Our tour director, interviewed by phone after our return, claimed he couldn’t get “concrete” information about the flight.) Eventually, we find someone who can speak English, an airport official. Take a cab (200 dirhams), he instructs after phoning the hotel; you’ll be reimbursed there.

At the taxi rank, an Akim Tamiroff-type packs us into his aged Mercedes. We cruise into Casablanca, described in Cosmos’ catalog as “famed the world over because of the film ‘Casablanca’ starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.”

At the hotel, the Kenzi al Mounia, the clerk asks for vouchers. But we have only a Cosmos confirmation statement. This confuses him, and he says the Cosmos guide will have to clear things up. Assuming he’s out with a group, I ask, “When will he be here?”

“He’s upstairs in the dining room, having lunch,” the clerk answers.

I’m stunned. “He’s here? The guide is here? How long has he been here?” I ask. “All afternoon,” the clerk replies.

“Call him. Call him right now,” I insist.

The guide appears. He is English, has the mien of a monk and won’t look at me. He tells the clerk the statement will suffice, tells me “we’ll deal with your taxi fare some other time” and doesn’t respond when asked why he wasn’t at the airport, although he’s holding a Cosmos fax advising of the flight delay.

We’re here for Morocco, however, not arguments. And though I regret that we now have an agenda and an itinerary, it is already late afternoon, and I cease dueling with our still-nameless tour director. We wait a century for the one of two passenger elevators that’s working. The room is upscale YMCA and lacks towels and soap, though these are later supplied. After resting, we have a late hotel supper and then walk around dark and nearly deserted downtown Casablanca.

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The next morning we begin to meet others on the tour. A comment by my companion that our sink drained partly on the floor is quickly topped. Two women from England tell us they had to flush their toilet with buckets of water. A couple from New Jersey say their tub drained entirely on the floor. But these flaws are good humoredly marked up to budget travel, and I recall what a guide in Ecuador once told me: “No matter what happens on these tours, nobody really wants to complain, least of all Americans. Everyone tries to make a go of the trip.”

After breakfast, we board the bus and head for Rabat, Meknes and Fez. Our guide, who now identifies himself as John, welcomes us and takes a nationality census. Of the 43 aboard, there are 11 Americans, two Canadians, three Japanese and the rest Australians and Britons. John advises us that he lives in Morocco, that it is historically rich and culturally complex and warns us not to photograph cops or soldiers.

I’m impressed by his erudition, but not by his supposedly humorous dictum (“I’m not a psychiatric nurse. If you have complaints, don’t tell them to me at night. I need my sleep.”), his surreptitious hint not to fault the hotels (“This is the Third World; don’t expect much.”) or his bald laying out of a tip schedule for himself, the driver and the bus assistant. Of course, he’s at the top of the scale, but I wonder who’s more valuable: John or the driver who throughout the lengthy tour not once discomforts or alarms us.

We reach Rabat, the capital, and pick up a city guide named “Whiskey.” He looks to be in his 60s and is close to unintelligible. He is fun, though, as he exhorts us to keep moving (“Chop! Chop!”) on our walk past, but not into, King Hassan’s palace, as he swaps barbs with an Arabic-speaking woman from an Israeli tour group and as he escorts us to the lavish Mausoleum of King Mohammed V. But Whiskey knows when to halt chop-chop. He stops the bus so we can watch the rowboat ferries cross the Bou Regrey River. Even at the casbah, he quickly gets us up to a rampart where we can observe the Sunday crowd on the Atlantic beach.

After lunch in downtown Rabat, an appealing, California-ish city, we head for Meknes. John begins selling the optional tours--all of Fez being one. He also announces that he would prefer cash. Meknes is walled and grim. The local guide leads us through a swarm of street vendors, into a mosque, up to an invisible line beyond which Christians and Jews cannot pass and then out to a square crowded with food vendors, musicians, magicians, snake charmers and townspeople.

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We move on to Fez. It is almost nightfall when we reach the Nouzha Hotel. Again, it’s upscale YMCA, but everything works. In the morning, I fork over $204 cash to John for four optional tours, ask for a receipt and am rebuffed with “some other time.”

Back on the bus, we are taken to another of Hassan’s palaces and then to the medina. Our local guide exhorts us to stay together in the market maze. The market is a fascinating organism. And, despite the guide’s caution, there is no menace.

In the evening, John says we will visit a residence for dinner and entertainment. But the residence is a mass-feed nightclub. The food is poor, and the belly dancing and tumbling acts are low grade.

Tuesday is for a breakfast-to-dusk bus ride to Marrakech. And, absent local guides and the steering into shops, it proves mostly pleasurable. We ride past sunflower and cornfields and up into the Middle Atlas Mountains, pause for coffee at a town that could be an Alpine ski resort, stop at a riverside restaurant for lunch and roll down into a vast agricultural valley, through a semidesert, past huddled homes that could be from Biblical times and into the Marrakech oasis.

The only flaw is John’s interminable discoursing. At one point, I nod off. When I awake, he is describing the rise of Islam. I ask my companion how long this has been going on. “About an hour and a half,” she replies. “Too bad you were asleep; you missed Judaism and Christianity.”

At the Kenza Hotel in Marrakech, John comes through and gets us switched to a suite after my friend complains about our cramped room.

The next morning’s city tour is basically a bust. We are taken to a reservoir, a deteriorated mosque (from which we, as Christians and Jews, are again banned) and--through an iron gate--to see an Islamic saint’s tomb. What it all means is hard to determine. The local guide either fails to project or his voice is drowned out by traffic noise. Also, it will become obvious that he really wants to get us into a couple of shops--a spice store and then, incredibly, another rug establishment.

At the spice shop, my friend detects that there is a frenetic fleecing of our docile flock. She makes an issue of it, dumbfounding the proprietor, who vainly begs her to set her own price. None of the cheated ask for their money back, but perhaps she has been the catalyst for a micro-revolt at the rug emporium. There, about half the group refuses to enter the showroom, opting to either return to the street or climb to the roof to look over the medina. (“Every tour excursion in the world gives travelers an opportunity to shop,” John says later, in our phone interview.)

We choose the narrow street, where we lean against a wall and people-watch. It is an engaging and satisfying experience. Dozens of Moroccans pass on foot, on bicycles, on motor scooters, on mules or donkeys. Men lug boxes or bales of goods. Women carry sacks for shopping. Some people wear traditional Arabic or Berber clothing, others modern garb.

After about half an hour, the rest of the group exits rug city. We proceed to Djemaa el-Fna, where the cobra encounter takes place. My silence silences the demands of the snake men for more money. I assure my friend the snakes were cool and dry, and admit I never thought about being bitten--I suppose they’re defanged, or something.

Now we have our first “at-leisure” afternoon. We need it. After lunch, we embark on our own city tour. The near-uniform architecture and ochre color of the buildings are almost soothing amid the bustle. We find a boutique on Rue Yougoslavie that would fit into La Jolla or Carmel. The staff is restrained and polite, there is no bargaining and the prices are well below those in the medina.

Near sunset, the group, for $9 a person, boards horse-drawn carriages for a return to Djemaa el-Fna. This time we are the charges of an elderly no-nonsense guide who directs us to a rooftop cafe. And there, from above, you can see why it is known as one of the world’s great sights. The square is thronged with magicians, fortune tellers, acrobats, snake charmers, musicians and hundreds of ordinary Moroccans.

The next day we are taken into Berber country in the High Atlas Mountains on a lane-and-a-half road for tea at a stylish cliff-side hotel, Residence Nouzha--though this is not the trip described in the catalog. And, in the evening, we go to another nightclub. John tells us before arrival that the establishment reminds him of Rick’s in the movie “Casablanca.” Only when we arrive, the place is decorated like the interior of a tent. This time, however, the food is excellent and the entertainment polished.

It is now the penultimate day of the trip. John, who I know has been tipped by another group member that trouble is brewing, suddenly produces both my cab fare and receipt. We are driven back to the Kenzi al Mounia in Casablanca.

The day ends with a thorough city tour led by a thorough guide. The next morning, there is new trouble. We are dispatched late to the airport only to discover that our plane reservations have been canceled. (John had told us there was no need to reconfirm.) Luckily, there are enough seats, and we are able to board. The bargain tour ends on a hurried and harried note--in a country that should never be toured in a hurry.

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Hollander is an editor in Newsday’s Viewpoints section.