Hammam-a Mama

My god! My skin has not been this clean in months!
The Hammam was absolutely and undoubitably mind blowingly wonderful. All of us took turns in pairs, and all of us stumbled out of the steam soaked basement with zombified blissfulness.

Here's a basic breakdown of what happened:
After paying you decend down a narrow corridor to the Hammam located in the basement of an old Medina building. The first room is very narrow and consists only of a reception type desk. She shows you to room number two where you strip down to your birthday suit and shove all your belongings into a locker. Beats the hell out of me where you're supposed to stick the key though! After some sniggering on behalf of the Hammam ladies at our bashfullness (Linda opted to leave her knickers on) we were shown into room number three. This one is basically an all purpose washing area for regulars and those who aren't getting the full treatment. We sat there dumbfounded as what to do next for about five minutes sweating like mad. It was incredibly dark down there, which I took to be a good thing as it stopped me from freaking out about other people's sweat etc. Shortly a completely buck woman came in and took us into room number four and asked us to lay down on two mats while she slooshed warm water all over us. Then another Hammam lady joined us and the scrubbing commenced. My GOD! They certainly give you a going over... ALL over! I think she scrubbed off eight layers of skin and about half my tan in the process. But the upside is my skin is super silky soft. After much more slooshing of water, they plastered us with some sort of black muddy paste and left us to "dry" for about 15 minutes. Then they asked us to stand up and slooshed us with some more water. This is when they took their opportunity to relieve Linda of her bottoms and yanked them down to her ankles. Cheeky and sneaky! Then it was on to the massage. I tried my best not to think about that fact that I had a huge naked Moroccan woman inches from my back and concentrated instead on the fact that she was doing her best to force all the air out of my lungs. Still, it was wonderfully relaxing and I enjoyed every minute of it. At the end the large lady who was doing my scrubbing wrapped and towl about my head, patted me on the cheeks and called me her baby. At least that's what I understood from the mangled french-arabic she spoke. So I'll always think of her as my Hammam Mama.

Linda and I left feeling better than we had in days (in my case, months!). We topped off the night with whole wheat crepes (something other than tajines, hallelujha!) and ice cream with the other girls. Ahh bliss.

Tonight we head to the last city on the tour. Marrakesh. Can we say shopping paradise? Yes we can!