Morocco: The Beauty Of The Exotic Though Used To Westerners, Female Travelers Are Still A - Not Always Welcome - Novelty

We cruised along at about 60 miles per hour, surveying the rocky, red clay moonscape dotted by palm oases and pueblo-like homes made of the same earth that covered the horizon around them.

The only thing to slow us on the drive through the arid Sahara was oncoming traffic, because, in rural areas of southern Morocco, we shared a spit of asphalt so narrow that we had to slow down for passing vehicles. The road’s shoulders were a rough and bumpy option at that speed.

I was on a car trip - alone - with a guide traveling from Zagora, where we enjoyed the austere beauty of the desert, ambled up a sand dune, and rode a camel before we headed north to Tangier.

While we visited most of the big cities with their busy souks (markets), it was the rural areas and small towns that gave the magical feel of old ways.

I’ve always wanted to see Morocco.

It sounded more exotic and mysterious than Egypt. And with its steady stream of European travelers, it seemed as though it would be more accessible to me as a woman traveler than other Islamic countries.

Beat writers William Burroughs and Paul Bowles had spent time there, as had Truman Capote. That they visited and, in some cases, lived there planted images of whispery permissiveness that I thought would run beneath the visibly strict order of things.

I had expected it to be fairly Western, which is to say I was in for a surprise.

I was not expecting to see half of the women in djellabas, loose-fitting silk robes that covered them from neck to wrist to foot. Many in djellabas also wore scarves that covered their hair and some also wore the veil, hiding all but their eyes.

In rural areas, virtually all women wore the djellaba and veil.

The impact was beyond fashion. It’s odd being someplace where you feel uncomfortable baring your face and hair.

At first I received glares from some men at rural restaurants when my guide and I stopped for bottles of mineral water or tea or wandered through a rural market. To meet the glares with eye contact invited a meaner glare.

By the end of the second day, I pulled a hat I’d brought from home and dark glasses out of the car to render myself less visible in my own way. It worked, and the glares diminished.

In restaurants, hotels and places more geared to tourists, the reception was much warmer.

One young man who was working in his father’s restaurant in Meknes (not far from Fez) was curious about life in America. He had some interesting questions:

“What is the difference between the police and the FBI?” he asked. “When we see a movie where the police talk into their radio, what is it they’re saying? Can the president of the United States say anything he wants? And a question about economics for you: Why does America have problems in its relations with Japan?”

It was fun explaining.

We stopped at rural markets where farmers gather weekly to sell produce next to other vendors selling clay shampoo, henna, spices, cooking oil, cigarettes, batteries, hand lotions, soaps, rabbits, soft drinks, and virtually anything else you might need.

In the marketplace, we passed a “doctor,” who had drawn a crowd of interested passersby by speaking quickly and confidently into a microphone about the restorative properties of the medicine he hawked. Berber women, whose faces were tatooed with the traditional vertical lines at the forehead and chin, sold sequintrimmed scarves they had woven.

Then it was back to the car.

We had no air conditioning and no radio. We did our sightseeing by day and rose early to avoid the heat.

The view changed with altitude. Sharply curved roads wrapped around bougainvillea-shrubbed mountains and dipped into flat valleys of hardscrabble clay dirt and rock. (My guide said 80 percent of the Sahara is rocky and only 20 percent sand.)

The sand - pale, wind-rippled and finer than that on many beaches - looked like it had been trucked in from elsewhere as it sat atop the clay hardscrabble.

Northbound, we saw small mountains with smooth edges that could resemble waves on the ocean, if you stared at them long enough.

Sometimes oases of palm trees and prickly pear cactus bloomed. One oasis in the south bisected more than 100 miles of the desert. Villages and casbahs (homes encircled by walls) often were near the oases, lured by their quiet promise of underground water.

You could see life had not changed much in years. Women did laundry beside shallow rivers. The robust voices of one group of women who worked cutting grain in a field carried on the wind. Men sat in the shade while goat herds and sheep they tended grazed or rested. In June, when I visited, it often was too hot to do much else.

White-bodied storks with black wings hunted overhead. They then glided into nests they had built atop high clay walls and rocky ruins.

Between days in the car, we enjoyed the cities. From the distance they looked drab, but once we got closer there were great color and pattern plays. The ceramic tile, patterned rugs and fabrics, engraving, painted designs and carved mixes were amazing.

I loved dining on tagine, a staple meat and vegetable stew, and brochettes, skewers of lamb or beef, at the Jasmine restaurant near Tinerhin in the south. The restaurant is under a dark woven Bedouin tent beside a shallow river in the middle of a mountain gorge.

Another high point was a beauty treatment of sorts when we stopped by a shop in Fez and I had my hands and feet dyed in ethnic patterns with henna and my eyes rimmed in kohl (eyeliner). Ignore statements that it will last a month. The henna faded to nothing within three days.

Overall, the country was beautiful. Another attained dream.

But if I could change one thing, I would have gone with a friend. There was so much free time and it is a different experience for women than it is for men.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: IF YOU GO When to visit: Travel guides suggest going in April, May, September or October. If you’re going to be mostly in the coastal areas, summer is all right. But if you’re planning to go into the interior or to the south, you’ll be very hot. Winter is pleasant in the lowlands with warm days and cool nights, but mountain areas can be bitterly cold. Getting there: The quickest connection to Morocco is via Royal Air Maroc, which flies non-stop between New York and Casablanca three times a week. Language: The most common languages spoken are Arabic, French and Berber. In Tangier, Spanish also is spoken. Some English is spoken. For information: Contact the Morocco Tourism Office, 20 E. 46th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10017; (212) 557-2520. No visa is required.