The blue arrives slowly. From the bus station at the foot of the Rif Mountains, you climb a curving lane past whitewashed houses, and then — just past the gate of Bab el-Ain — the walls turn cobalt. Then indigo. Then a dozen shades of sea and sky, layered like watercolor washes by generations of hands.
There are several stories about why Chefchaouen is blue. One says Jewish refugees in the 1930s painted the walls to symbolize the heavens. Another says the color keeps mosquitoes away. A third, the one the older men tell over mint tea, is simpler: it is just beautiful, and that is reason enough.
Walk the medina early, before the daytrippers from Tangier arrive. The light comes in low and the painted stairways glow as if lit from within. By eight, the bakers are pulling round loaves from wood ovens and the cats are arranging themselves in the warmest doorways.
Chefchaouen does not want to be photographed. It wants to be sat in.
The rhythm here is slower than in Fez or Marrakech. No one will hustle you into a carpet shop. The hagglers in the square seem half-hearted, as though they would rather be drinking tea themselves. Buy nothing for the first day. Just walk, and stop, and walk.
Eat at Bab Ssour for the freshest fish in any Moroccan mountain town — they truck it up from the coast at dawn. Stay at Dar Echchaouen, a riad on the edge of the medina with views down the valley and a courtyard where breakfast is set out under an orange tree. Climb to the Spanish Mosque at sunset for the view that everyone climbs for; it is worth the crowd.
And drink the mint tea — slowly, three glasses, the way it is poured. The first glass, the saying goes, is bitter as life. The second is sweet as love. The third is gentle as death. In Chefchaouen, you have time for all three.
