Chefchaouen - "a jewel of a town".

A journalist friend, Ellen Clark, recently spent time exploring the northern parts of Morocco and reports back that "while some of northern Morocco is gradually pulling itself into the present, centuries of history, tradition, and culture aren't going to disappear instantaneously. It's a safe bet that this mysterious and beautiful land has some time before it is truly on the tourist map. That said, maybe you should bump up Fez and the rest of northern Morocco a little higher on your life list…just in case."

Photo: Ellen Clark

Here is a taste of Ellen Clark's article that appeared on Away.com

Chefchaouen is a ridiculously photogenic jewel of a town. Surrounded by the Rif mountains, a cluster of white-washed buildings march up the hillside between two peaks. This is an ideal place to hang out for a couple of days when traveling between Fes and Tangier.

The medina's narrow streets are a vision in various shades of blue. A carryover from when it was a primarily a Jewish quarter, dried pigments are available in the shops, and decorative doors and walls are painted in hues that range from indigo to powder blue and turquoise. Residents are clearly proud of their lovely neighborhood, as this quite possibly the cleanest medina in Morocco.

Today the medina has a large Berber population, easily identifiable by their unique clothing, the men in woolen earth-tone djellabas and women in colorful straw hats and red and white striped skirts.

Besides its charming medina, Chefchaouen is know for its marijuana, or, as it's locally called, kif production. There are plenty of cannabis fields in the hills just outside of town, and while smoking marijuana is illegal, though widely tolerated, exporting it is perfectly on the up-and-up.

You can walk right from the old town, past the riverbank where residents are doing laundry, into the Rif Mountains. For a pleasant day hike, head up the graded path past cannabis fields, grazing sheep, and panoramic views of Chefchaouen to the tiny village of El Kalaa.

There are still some legendary Barbary apes in the Rif Mountains Talassemtane National Park, but they are few and far between, as these tailless monkeys are now on the endangered species list.

Ellen's full article can be found here: On the cusp; Northern Morocco

Tags: Moroccan Morocco Fes, Maghreb news