Camels move ghost-like across the dunes.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.”

— Mark Twain

By BOB FOULKES

My latest adventure came at what is now recognized as a historically tumultuous time in the Middle East, when Islamic totalitarian regimes were falling like trailer parks in a tornado.

When we leave for Morocco, the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt have fallen.  Tiny Bahrain is a powder keg, Yemen is experiencing escalating protests and Syria is starting to look sketchy. Libya waits for its turn (which has since come). Every regime in the region is concerned that revolt might be contagious.

In March 2011, Morocco is a relative island of calm, so we head off on our planned vacation. While there is always a subtext of anxiety to our journey, we encounter no disruption, just a heightened sense of adventure.

We spend a day of wandering the exotic streets of Meknes, a northern city of about one million. Jim, one of our group, comes back to the hotel with a disturbing report: “I saw a mob of young men marching in the street, shouting and waving banners. Should we go out tonight?”

Mohammed, our guide, patiently explains that it was a parade of football fans celebrating their team’s victory.

Here’s the lesson, men:  Stop believing those guys on CNN; they turn every small event in the world into a crisis. If you listen to them, you’ll never leave your room.

In Houston, Texas, where I lived in 2005-2006 more people were killed and injured in crimes and domestic disputes than the number who died in Iraq during the same period.

By all means be careful, but don’t cancel travel because CNN shows a video of a hot spot. You’ll miss a lot and at our age the chance may never come again.

Having said that, I always need to break down that barrier to good insightful travel: my fear of anything strange.

Two youngsters in the main square of Marrakech.

Here’s what I would have missed had I given in to that fear. I arrive in Casablanca. I wander about on my first day, talk in my pidgin French to cab drivers and hotel staff and get used to this strange new land. I begin to relax; there’s not a single wild-eyed Islamic jihadist in sight, no one trying to rip me off, no need to stuff my wallet in my crotch.

It usually takes me a few hours to a few days to relax, become less suspicious and more open to the kindness of strangers and the ordinariness of their lives.

Start with food. At a small restaurant, I have a great couscous covered with meat and mixed root vegetables in a wonderfully spiced sauce. A great  launch lunch. When my travel buddy, John, arrives and settles in, we enjoy dinner with some local ambiance. Our tagine comes with side dishes: two belly dancers. There’s nothing like a veiled breast in one’s eye to accelerate cultural immersion. I manage to restrain myself.

We find one of the ubiquitous little red taxis — a sardine can on wheels — this one driven by Mohammed, a 62-year-old with a pleasant nature who becomes our guide for the day.

First stop, the Hassan II mosque, second largest in the world, in time for the last tour. After the usual tourist stuff, John, an aficionado of upscale watch knock-offs, wants to upgrade my Swatch. Mohammed — surprise! — knows just the place. He escorts us to his special shop, sits with us, helps serve mint tea and manages a supportive role in my shrewd negotiating. Don’t worry, no Moroccan shopkeeper is going to sell something below cost because you beat him with your haggling. He and his ancestors have been doing it for centuries; it’s practically in their DNA. Haggle on, it’s a part of the fun.

I become the proud owner of a Piaget, a Patek-Phillipe and a Panerai, all from “special” cases hidden away, shown only to the most discerning of tourists. It is apparently gauche to wear all three at once. The real trick is to project enough savoir faire to convince others that my Piaget is real.

It all starts with trust; our taxi driver has opened the door to an adventure of shopping.

Illusions of Morocco vanish quickly. The north is lush and green; more rainstorms than dust storms. Fields of grain and orchards of fruit, nuts and olives abound, more like southern France than Saudi sand dunes.

The ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis surprise us. Built and occupied in the 80 years on both sides of the birth of Christ, it is perfectly situated between hills and flat land, served by a fresh water aqueduct that delivered water to each house and took waste away in a sewage system. The marble was hauled from a nearby quarry. Each Roman house had an interior courtyard, dining rooms, bedrooms, slaves quarters and private quarters. There were six mosaic tile floors in better condition than most I had seen in museums. This outpost at the outer reaches of the vast Roman empire had the best of Roman technology. It had better plumbing 2,000 years ago than Moroccans have now.

The Fez souk: Morocco's Walmart.

Fez, the cultural capital of Morocco, has a university that dates to 900 AD.  The Fez souk — market — is a sensual feast with fresh herbs, fruit and vegetables, nuts, bread, pastries fish, meat from butcher shops that defy description and nauseate our vegetarian — perhaps it’s the sheep’s head on display. It’s a Moroccan Wal-Mart in a thousand little shops.

The souk also houses factories: denim dyers, coppersmiths, cobblers, wedding-carriage builders, dress designers and an ancient tannery.  Mint leaves to press against our nose don’t help — the tannery is execrable, to work there unimaginable.

A drive south through the middle Atlas mountain range shatters another illusion. Rain turns to snow. By the time we reach the summit at 2,200 metres, a blizzard closes the road. French colonialists created a small ski resort here in the 1930s, the Chamonix of Morocco.

Over the pass, everything changes. Wide vistas, blue skies, brown rock and barren soil, broken by lush valleys and occasional oases. Tan mud-and-straw buildings. Finally seeing our stereotypical image of the desert heartens us.

We buy traditional Bedouin headscarves and climb on camels for an adventure in the desert. My mount is Charlie, who has a nice disposition — for a camel — which is to say he doesn’t bite me.

After a long march into the dunes we reach a replica Bedouin camp, dismount, find our tent, then climb the nearest, biggest dune to see the sunset. Dinner is tasty, although we’re not sure what the meat is. We decide to sleep outside under the stars.

In the frigid night, my Canadian toque — and every other bit of clothing I own — comes in handy. The gods leave a night light on for us: the moon is full. The star-gazing is unmatched, and for the first time I can see the constellations.

Imprisoned by two heavy, pungent, camel-hair blankets and surrounded by dunes, I sleep/dream/wake in perpetual amazement, smiling at the star show.

Next day, we make a brief stop in Ouarzazate, a small town made famous as a movie set — most of them starring bare-chested Orlando Bloom lookalikes. Welcome to Moroccywood. The world keeps getting smaller and you can get Coke everywhere.

Next is a UN world heritage site in Ait Behaddou. It is an old  kasbah, a village fortress guarding a fertile river valley. As one who spent some of his boyhood building mud castles, I can see I am in the presence of masters. Three- and four-story buildings of mud, straw, and donkey dung are hundreds of years old. These are not Mayan temples, Inca ruins or the Pyramids, but they do prove I should have mixed a bit of straw and donkey dung into my mud pies.

Food is always a large part of any travel adventure. Moroccan cuisine is mostly tagines and couscous. I learn a basic tagine at an evening cooking demonstration.

Breakfast is Moroccan bread, a Frisbee of processed flour. The coffee is sewer sludge; the best is Nescafe, which explains the omnipresent mint tea — consumed day and night by Moroccans.

Tourist restaurants define success by their western toilets (clean and stocked with paper) and their ability to get a load of tourists fed and back on the bus in under an hour. They are not defined by their cuisine. Authentic  tagines, couscous and skewers of grilled mystery meat are found at the sketchy looking places. We tolerate the washrooms if the food is tasty and authentic. No one gets sick.

John has educated us on how to buy dates.  The French colonialists left behind a tradition of excellent pastries, baguettes and croissants.

Another cliche dies: Morocco has mountains. We trek up a path to the village of Armd, the staging point for silly Swiss types who want to bag the highest peak in Morocco: Jbel Toubkai at 4,167 metres. (Switzerland’s highest peak is 4,634-metre Monte Rosa.)

A mountain village: snow in March

We start our night in the village with a walk through the winding streets. John and I attract every child around, entertaining them with silly tricks. Every vacation has a sweet spot, ours is these 20 village children, still delighted and amused by simple parlour tricks, their sense of wonder unjaded by video games.

The men’s dorm is a single room with four mattresses on the cement floor. There is an ample supply of the ubiquitous camel-hair blankets — heavy ones for a good night’s sleep. It is so cold we know we are going to die.

But we don’t. Breakfast tastes sweeter for our ordeal and we wander down the mountain with a new found appreciation of just about everything. On the way we see a group of silly Swiss heading out to go skiing.

From mountain top to beach is a three-hour drive. We stay in Essouira, a town of about 71,000 on the Atlantic coast. The shopkeepers are pleasant, there are the most beautiful wooden boxes on sale, we have fabulous fresh sea bass, walk on the beach and enjoy the breeze off the ocean, refreshing and cool. For reasons unknown, Rastafarians are everywhere.

Our final stop is Marrakech — one wag says the name is derived from the Wall Street dialect for the words ‘More Cash’. It is hot, muggy, noisy, smelly, and full of hustling entrepreneurs. The square near the old city souk is colorful; snake-charmers, monkey tricksters, street performers, fortune tellers and hustlers of all ages, colours and varieties. The fortune tellers won’t give me a discount even though I argue that at my age I have less future to predict.

The point of all this is that if you overcome your fear of travelling to the world’s more exotic destinations, if you don’t buy into the line about the world being a scary place, you’re going to have some wonderful adventures.

And shed your prejudices: Muslims in Morocco aren’t much different from you. To make some great memories, you have to trust strangers and take some risks.

The rewards will be the most unexpected sweet spots at the most unexpected time.  A clear sky on a mind numbingly cold night on the edge of the Sahara — inexplicable. Twenty children, wide-eyed with wonder, engrossed in your tricks — priceless. At our age — irreplaceable.