Shopping extravaganza! (and monkeys… and for those who stay till the end, a mystery… )

One of my earliest blog posts was about shopping at Marjane in Fez. Those of you who read that post know that I did not have a lot of fun, so you might understand why I put off my next big trip to Marjane for several weeks. This weekend, however, I couldn't put it off anymore. So Saturday morning, T and I began our weekend shopping extravaganza by hitching a ride to the Marjane in Meknes with our friend LW.

It turned out to be a productive shopping trip. We found, among other things, a battery charger and Parmesan cheese. (It's funny how such laughably miniscule accomplishments can make me so happy.)

That afternoon, we went with the W family to Azrou. The highlight of the trip was the monkeys. Yes, you heard me right – monkeys. Actually, they're called Barbary apes, but I think they are, in reality, macaques. I'm not really sure what that's all about.

Anyway, the Barbary apes live in a beautiful national forest that is sort of situated between Ifrane and Azrou. Once one walks far enough into the forest to get away from the somewhat aggressive, handfed Barbary apes, the touristy horseback rides, and the noisy tourists themselves, I'm sure the forest is lovely and peaceful. It is characterized by tall, old cedar trees and moss grown rocks. Beautiful. (Unfortunately, it was too dark to get any good pictures of the forest. I guess we'll just have to go back there.)

And there are the monkeys. They are so used to tourists that they will immediately walk up to you and put out a hand expectantly. (You see, when you first arrive at the location where the monkeys are, there's a man selling bags of peanuts for five dirhams. Purchase of the peanuts seems compulsory.)

If you hand a monkey a peanut, when she is finished with it, she will gently tug on your pant leg to let you know that she is ready for another. If you don't give her another peanut, she will do one of two things. She may climb up you until you give her another peanut, or she may just jump up and grab the entire bag of peanuts out of your hands. Both of these things happened to members of our party.

I am, on principle, opposed to this sort of thing. I'm the person who scowls at adults and children feeding wild animals in national parks. But here I was, handing peanuts to monkeys. LW and I laughed about this. We decided there's something about being in a different country that makes it "okay." And I have to admit, it was nice to see some healthy animals after getting used to all the scrawny looking cats, dogs, and even donkeys in Morocco.

I was also happy to see that some of the monkeys were still wary of humans. We got to watch some of them just doing their "monkey thing."

This baby monkey was, well, monkeying around.

In Azrou, we made our first real purchases of real Moroccan items. Here's a picture of me showing off some of our loot:

our loot included a cheap Moroccan scarf, a lamp, and two chairs. The designs on the chair cushions are quite intricate, even though you can't see them very well in this picture.

We ended our shopping extravaganza at the souk on Sunday. This is where the mystery comes in. You see, since I got to Morocco, I have been looking for non-iodized salt that I could use in my Neti pot. LW told me that the clear crystals being sold at the souk are pure salt. When I saw some yesterday, I pointed to it and asked "sel?" The vendor nodded. So I bought some. When I got home, out of curiosity I tasted it. It most certainly did not taste salty. In fact, I would say it tastes slightly sour. So what the heck is this stuff? Any ideas?