Morocco day 5: Fes

Fes is Morocco’s third largest city, with a population of about 1.2 million people, and is made up of three quite distinct areas. Fes el-Bali (the old Fes medina) is one of the largest living medieval cities in the world, a walled maze of 9400 streets within an area of about 280 hectares that was founded in the 9th century and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. West of the medina is Fes el-Jdid (new Fes), an extension to the old medina built in the 13th century, and the third main area is the Ville Nouvelle, with wide boulevards full of shops, cafes and restaurants, built in the 1920s. You can move from an early medieval bazaar to an air-conditioned super-modern shopping mall is the blink of an Arab eye in Fes.

Though our hotel was in the Ville Nouvelle, we spent most of our time in Fes in the old medina, on a full-day walking tour. However, our tour started with our local guide, Fatimah, showing us the beautiful gates of the king’s local palace, then we boarded our trusty minibus to drive to a viewpoint high above the city, where we got a really good idea of how extensive the city is. It was an impressive sight, both for the 365 minarets within the old medina and for the sea of satellite dishes on every rooftop!

From there, we drove to a ceramics and tile factory, for a tour and shopping – this was definitely a day when you could have spent a small fortune on the most exquisite examples of local craftsmanship – how I resisted most temptations I still don’t know! At this first factory, we received a guided tour and explanation of how the goods were made, were able to photograph the skilled artisans at work, watch them chipping coloured tiles into the shapes required for intricate mosaic patterns or chipping away the fired colour to make relief patterns or painting complex designs onto ceramic wares. Exiting through the gift shop, I had a serious case of plate envy when Rhonda bought a beautiful blue and white and silver plate but the shipping cost as much as the plate and I certainly couldn’t have carried it around for the rest of this trip – so I resisted.

Next, our medina tour started for real. We were warned of two things before we started walking: first, keep up and keep an eye out for the other group members because if you got lost, you could be in serious trouble and, second, remember the word ‘ballac’ (not sure that’s the right spelling) – it means ‘get out of the way’ or ‘watch out’. The medina streets are so narrow that small wheeled carts and donkeys are the only way to transport goods in and out, and the donkey stops for no one!

We saw so many different sights during our walk that day that it’s hard to remember everything so here’s just a small selection …

We got a good view of the famous Fes tanneries from the top floor of a leather shop. The smell was quite powerful so we were all given a sprig of mint to wave under our noses while we shopped. From leather purses and handbags to slippers and jackets, the selection of colourful items on sale was enormous. I resisted!

At left, our guide Fatimah, with a couple of the group

At the lantern shop, there were lamps and lanterns of every conceivable shape and size, for use with electric light or candle power, and casting the most lovely shadow patterns on surrounding walls and ceiling. I resisted!

Left, peparing to dye the silk and, right, weaving it

The weavers’ workshop was interesting as they make fabric using strands of ‘silk’ beaten from the fibrous leaves of the agave plant. Here, we were all dressed up in head-gear for a fun group photo. Here, too, I resisted the bed linen and large throws but I did buy a couple of scarves – ‘small, easy to pack, always useful’, I told myself. I couldn't resist everything!

We also visited the Koranic university, saw the oldest minaret in the medina and the oldest mosque – currently being refurbished, and we stopped often at small shops along the way for explanations about the things we saw: the furniture used in wedding ceremonies, the use of henna to paint designs on hands and feet, for photos of camel heads at the butchers and sharks heads at the fishmongers, and much more besides.

Our guide Issam resting his weary feet while we looked around the university

The sights, sounds, smells, colours of that day were almost overwhelming – it was a fabulous insight into local life and into how that life had been lived for centuries past. A Fes of the heart!

A Pre-Columbian art attack!

The pre-Columbian artisans of Peru produced some exquisite artworks, particularly ceramics, and I have now been lucky enough to see many of the places where these ancient cultures of Peru built their cities, worshipped their gods and buried their dead, near Chiclayo and Trujillo in the north, near Nazca in the south and here in Cusco.

This afternoon I spent a delightful couple of hours once again admiring their skill, their dexterity, their fine rendering of birds and animals, and the apparent simplicity of their human representation, all in one place. If you ever come to Cusco and you appreciate the art of ancient civilisations, you simply must visit the Museo de Arte Precolombino in Plaza de las Nazarenas, just a short walk from the Plaza de Armas in the central city.

Casa Cabrera, the building that houses the museum, is itself beautiful, and a fine example of colonial architecture, with exhibition rooms on the ground and first floors surrounding a central courtyard. Built in the 1550s, the building originally housed the convent of Santa Clara, then passed into the hands of Don Jerόnimo Luis de Cabrera and Cerda, a city official, hence the name of the building and the coat of arms on its facade. The earthquake that devastated Cusco in 1950 caused major damage to the building but, luckily, the Continental Bank bought Casa Cabrera in 1981 and has since restored it to its former glory.

The museum’s exhibitions include rooms of gold and silver craftworks, shell and bone jewellery, and colonial paintings but, for me, the ceramics of the formative epoch, the Nazca civilisation, the Mochica, Huari and Chimu cultures, as well as those Johnny-come-latelies, the Inca, were the highlight. So, let me take you on a visual tour through Peru’s early art history, from 1250BC to 1632AD.

Cupisnique, formative period, 1250BC - 1AD

Viru, formative period, 1250BC - 1AD

The sculpted bottle on the left depicts a beheaded man, probably symbolic of some religious ceremony. The lips of his inverted head form the mouth of the bottle. On the right, the body of this pitcher is adorned with geometric patterns and a wonderful animal head - probably a feline - decorates the upper body.

These bowls are from the Nazca culture, dating from 1 to 800AD, and they represent trophy heads, taken from the enemy in times of war. The artist didn't possess great sculptural skills but his painting was superb, expressing perfectly the ferocity, pain and strength of the doomed men.

The Mochica culture also existed from 1 to 800AD, but their artisans introduced a radical change into the art of ceramics, attaining high levels of sculptural excellence and pictorial design, as these three bottles clearly show. They are representations of the same individual, presumably someone of high importance, but were crafted by different artists. The Mochica ceramics are the most beautifully sculpted works of Peruvian antiquity. 

These bottles in the shape of cormorants are also from the Mochica period. Their graceful shapes are superb and so fluid. The artist obviously had a talent for observation and for transforming his observations into such fine pieces.

I can't resist including just one more piece from the Mochica culture. This humanised figure of a deer is just so  exquisite, with its plastic shape, its huge ears and bulging eyes, its finely rendered antlers and that wonderfully cheeky tongue. 

The Huari civilisation succeeded that of the Nazca and the Mochica, and spanned the period from 800 to 1300AD. The Huari people spread through much of Peru, from Chiclayo in the north to Nazca in the south, and extending inland to Cusco and beyond. Their civilisation saw the beginning of nationhood in Peru, with their domination in religion and politics.  

The influence of the Mochica culture is obvious in Huari artworks, as you can see with these llama-head vessels. As beasts of burden and producers of wool and meat, llamas were important to the economy of the Huari, so it is no surprise that they were frequently represented on their ceramics. These particular examples are outstanding, for the fluidity of their shapes, the liveliness  of their design and, of course, I just love that tongue.

When the Huari empire came to an end around 1300AD, the Chancay-Chimu culture arose in northern and central coastal Peru. For some unknown reason, their artisans chose to reject the use of colour in their artworks and focused instead on form and on achieving perfect harmony in the proportions of their pieces. Though it may not be entirely realistic in its depiction, the pelican above is a perfect example of this. 

At the same time as the Chancay-Chimu civilisation was flourishing, so was the Inca culture and, eventually, their empire, which lasted from 1300 to 1532 AD, stretched all the way from modern-day Ecuador to southern Chile. Most people know of the Incas' incredible ability to construct magnificent cities, but their artworks are not as well known. Their craftsmen worked in wood, in clay, and in stone, producing stunning works that blend the beauty of art with the practicality of ritual use. Their style is a synthesis of the magnificence of the Pre-Columbian cultures that preceded them.

The influence of the Chimu can be seen in the sculpted bottle, pictured at right. The simplicity of design in this representation of a condor is a good example of Inca ceramic work, and the stylised stone llamas shown below are fine exemplars of Inca stonework. Known as conopas, these llama sculptures were created as offerings to the gods and symbolised the importance to the Inca of the submission of man to the immensity and power of nature. 

Nazca day one: mummies, ceramics and gold

I’m here and I’m exhausted! What a nightmare of a bus journey – not because of the bus, but the road twisted and turned its way around the mountainsides, from Cusco’s 12,000 feet down to Nazca’s almost sea level, for 14 hours! I slept a little but it wasn’t very restful – I had to wedge myself into my seat with my arms to stop rolling constantly back and forth as that rolling motion was making me feel seasick. I looked out the window from time to time once it got light but all I saw was dry, rocky, hilly country and yet more winding roads ahead, so I quickly shut my eyes again. I imagine some of the roads we drove down during the night were fairly hair-raising, so I’m rather glad I did the journey at night.

On the short drive to the hotel my taxi driver persuaded me to go on a tour with him this afternoon – perhaps not the smartest move for a woman alone but, if anything, he will be after my money, nothing else from a wrinkly old bat like me, so I think I’ll be safe. I’ll leave most of my money and my passport locked up in my bag at the hotel and I’ll charge up my phone – not that that would necessarily help.

Oh, and the hotel, the Kunan Wasi which I had prebooked on booking.com, is fine – just one block from the Plaza de Armas and clean and bright, if rather twee. Check out the bathroom picture!

I’ve had a shower and a nap but I’m still a little shaky from exhaustion, and the more than 30°C heat here is energy sapping, so I’m sitting in a restaurant in the plaza, having a sugar-filled Coca Cola and about to have some food, which I hope will revive me somewhat.

Later … well, the afternoon was fine. Jeffrey collected me from the hotel on time at 2pm and we were soon speeding south down the Pan American highway in his little red taxi, enjoying a somewhat stilted conversation in Span-glish – his English is about the same level as my Spanish – about life, love and Nazca – mostly, about love. It seems I was wrong about him only being interested in my money! He quickly asked how old I was, if I was married, and, though he is 39, he is not married, preferring, it seems, to pick up women from around the world and show them a good time Latino-style! He was very complimentary – said he thought I was between 40 and 45 and wouldn’t believe I am 56 – all part of the charm process! But I am not interested in a brief fling with a shortish  Latino from Nazca, no matter how nice he appears, how much he smiles and says sweet things and touches my arm.

About 30 kilometres south of Nazca we turned inland and churned up the dust, barrelling over a barren dirt road. We passed a modern-day cemetery of wooden and metal crosses – surprisingly there were no families there today on the Day of the Dead, cleaning up the graves and having a picnic lunch with their deceased family members. Before we reached the surrounding hillsides, which are where the mummy civilisation actually lived, we reached the place where they buried their dead.

Twelve graves have been opened at Chauchilla for tourists to see the mummies. The graves are covered with wooden and thatch shelters to protect them from the 3 to 4 hours of rain this place receives each year and have stone walls on their southern sides to protect them from the constant wind that soon had my hair blown wildly and my face covered in gritty sand.

The mummies are fascinating – seated in a foetal position (the tendons behind their knees and across their elbows were apparently cut post-mortem to achieve this) (another opportunity for Jeffrey to touch my arm to explain this!), their skin rubbed with minerals, wrapped in cotton and textiles, then placed in the graves, all facing towards the rising sun. From this, archaeologists have concluded these people believed in reincarnation. The hair and textiles, and sometimes the skin, are remarkably well preserved considering the burials date from between 200 and 1000AD. The hair was particularly fascinating – extremely long and now lying curled around the body on the sand – but these may have been the original Rastafarians, wearing their hair is big spiral mounds on their heads.

The bodies are buried in family groups of, on average, 2 or 3, and up to as many as 6, including the occasional tiny bundle of a baby, sometimes all in one chamber, sometimes in multi-roomed chambers, and they have very simple grave goods – earthenware plates of corn and meat and urns of water. Some of the pottery is plain, some decorated. Around these restored graves are strewn the remains of hundreds more that have been subject to the vandalism of grave robbers, hunting for the more ornate pottery. Fragments of bone and pottery, pieces of hair and textiles, just lie on the surface of the sandy soil.

Unfortunately, my camera started playing up at this point. It would take normal pictures but, if I tried to zoom in, would take a blank picture and had to be turned on and off before taking a normal image again. It hasn’t been jolted, banged or badly treated in any way so I have no idea why it chose this moment to become faulty. Maybe the mummies didn’t like being photographed – spooky!

It’s easy to see why the Nazca civilisation failed due to lack of water, particularly as their economy and daily sustenance was based on agriculture. The valleys surrounding the now-dry river beds form green stripes on an otherwise arid and barren landscape, so there is obviously water underground near the rivers for those roots deep enough to reach it.

The only crop I saw was cactus, grown both for its fruit – called tuna here – and for its leaves, which provide the ingredients for face creams and ointments. As well as tourism, the area’s main industry is mining – those barren-looking hills are rich in copper and gold, and I was to see more of the gold extraction process a little later that afternoon. But first we headed off to the workshop of the most famous ceramic-producing family in the region, the Emilia pottery workshop. Grandfather Andrés Calle rediscovered and practised the traditional techniques of his Nazca ancestors, and his descendants continue in his wake. They have photographed most of the pieces in local museums and now reproduce these for sale to tourists.

I was first shown the process, based on the rich clay deposits of the region, with no moulds used, simply a very basic form of wheel, more like a spinning plate, and using a llama bone to smooth the external surface of the vessel. The colours – shades of red, white, yellow, brown and blue – come from minerals, ground down into fine powders and mixed with water, and the firing process uses a traditional clay-brick oven, which must be heated to 900°to bake the ceramics sufficiently. Once fired, the slightly grainy surface of the pot is rubbed vigorously with special stones, which serve to polish off the roughness.

Then to the salesroom, of course! And, although my suitcase is already destined to be full to bursting when I leave Peru, I couldn’t resist a small wall plaque, with a figure of the god of Tiwanaku, the civilisation in Bolivia near Lake Titicaca. Apparently, this and the Wari and the Nazca cultures were all linked. Many of the ceramics had picaflor designs and I was tempted by them, as a reminder of my time at Picaflor House, but I preferred the colours of the other piece.

From ceramics to gold … we next visited a gold processing workshop, where the rock is pulverised then mercury used to extra the gold dust – a very large amount of rock for a very small amount of 14 to 22 carat gold – but enough for families to labour away at this backbreaking task for a few years to make their fortunes. They work in small co-operatives, the better to protect each other during times of ill-health and injury, probably quite a frequent occurrence considering everything is done by hand and part contains potentially hazardous chemicals. It reminded me of the coca-chewing silver miners of Potosi, in Bolivia.

This is how they pulverise the gold-bearing rocks, standing on that plank and rocking the large stone back and forth.

That was the last call of the day and Jeffrey dropped me back at the hotel just before 5pm. And my first impressions of Nazca? Well, it is disproportionately noisy in relation to its size. Just sitting in the restaurant at lunchtime the noise level generated by the air-conditioning unit, radio and television, external traffic and jovial patrons must have been well above acceptable decibel levels. The city seems small and rather unattractive. The large plaza has benches, sculptures and a tiled walkway all decorated with the symbols from the lines but little else to beautify it, though a smattering of trees provides some shade from the sweltering heat. The church is utilitarian and, frankly, ugly. There seems to be nothing old or historical within the city itself, which is what usually gives a city its character and charm, at least in my eyes.