Maya
by Elena Levon
Maya ~ The supernatural power wielded by gods and demons to produce illusions.
To me, that’s what Chefchaouen is…
It’s a place with no time, it’s a place where your imagination gets to run free.
A place where nothing is what it seems.
Like a chameleon…
Walls of this city changes colors, as morning turns into day and day dissolves into night…
I was really exited to be exploring this gorgeous blue city, taking loads of photos and going for a hike in the surrounding mountains …
However, Life had other plans for me…
It rained the whole time I was in Chef. But I did get to see one sunset.
RIAD BARAKA - REVIEW
_____________________________________________
I have never written a bad review on my website before.
But if you know me, you’ll know, that I love doing things for the first time… besides, the owner of Riad Baraka basically dared me.
Don’t wanna disappoint…
I spend first 2 nights at RIAD BARAKA
It was the worst decision of my time in Morocco.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous Riad with beautiful views, but it has a HUGE disadvantage – the owners.
They are by far, the most rudest people I have ever met in Morocco.
They are not Moroccan ( of course they are not! )
They are very rude to their staff who works for them and to customers who pay them money.
The owner of Riad Baraka has screamed profanities at me and at the man who works for him on more than one occasion.
One of the sons, who’s stoned all the time, walks with his ass hanging out of his pants, while you’re trying to have breakfast.
Anyway, I spend my last night at a different hotel. So sad that beautiful Riad Baraka is being ruined by clueless owners.
Riad Baraka is now number 5 on tripadvisor for B&B (before this article it was number 2)
Owners do anything in their power to delete all the bad reviews.. like mine.
Joe McCourt -owner and tripadvisor team deleted my reviews on tripadvisor 5 times. ( he really doesn’t want mine to be up there )
Actually, my review was up there for about a week, that had a bunch of helpful votes from travelers…
Since, I knew that permanently stoned Joe, will do anything in his power to delete it, I made a screenshot.
I have also made sure that this hotel is listed as Riad Baraka – The Worst Hotel in The World all over my website with a link to this article.
Joe, be a man, at least for once in your life and stop pressing “problem with this review” button…
He deletes it because he states that I have never stayed there… and tripadvisor team refuses to post my review, even though I send them a booking reference as a proof of my stay at Riad Baraka..
The reason they tell me that they deleted my reviews because it wasn’t *Written by actual travelers.
After he deleted my review, this stoned cripple, dared to send me an email and also continued harassing me through tripadvisor message options.
I have blocked him and complained to tripadvisor about this, however, they didn’t do anything.
He send me first email back in October, when I posted my first review. He said “not everything you do or say will make the world shake” …
well, interestingly enough, Dear Joe, Riad Baraka, went down from second place to 5th, after I have posted this article
and as I can see, you are even offering discounted stay at your place now…
so yeah, I guess, you’re right, Joe.
It’s about time someone taught you a lesson – Be Nice To People. To those people who pay you money and even to those, whom you pay.
Then there was a second email from owner of Riad Baraka – Joe Mccourt…
Joe, darling, you can continue to delete bad reviews of Riad Baraka from all sorts of sites, however, no matter what you do, you will NEVER be able to get rid of this one!
This one is here to stay.
And so are these –
You can’t run away from the truth.
Riad Baraka on tripadisor has only 90 Reviews in 3 years…
( because you have been trying to delete all the bad reviews and write the 5 star ones yourself… I wouldn’t be surprised if you spend some of your pocket money, that your mum gives you for pot, and bribe people for 5 star reviews )
When Joe is really stoned, he shamelessly writes them himself, tries to harass a person who wrote a 1 star review, in all sorts of ways and manipulates tripadvisor in his favor -
Almost every single time I write a post, I get over 100 comments. Since November 2011, I published 48 articles, with over 7000 comments.
Do the math, Joe.
(although, that would be really hard for your stoned mind to accomplish)
From now on, every time someone google’s Riad Baraka for reviews, they will arrive at this very post… because this website gets a lot of traffic and unfortunate for you, will continue to grow in traffic and subscribers. I will make sure this particular article of mine gets as much exposure as possible.
One last thing, Joe.
I had some nice pictures from the rooftop of Riad Baraka that I shot… it was so hard to choose which one to post.
You know, we, photographers, are so picky sometimes…
so I decided to go with this one … I think the colors and content compliment each other…
Now, don’t you worry, I made sure this jpg. and others, has the name of your place.. that way, they will show up in google when people search for images of Riad Baraka.
Every single time someone re-posts this article to their own subscribers it will go up in google search.
( by the way, huge thank you to all of you who re-posted this! )
Karma is a bitch, Joe.
You can even try to flag images as much as you want, it doesn’t change the fact that in less than a month this article is on the 1st and second pages on google when you search Riad Baraka, Riad Baraka Chefchaouen or Riad Baraka Review.
We don’t want to mislead them, do we now?
( you should also count how many times I have written Riad Baraka in this article and read up on SEO when you’re not getting stoned )
Don’t thank me… it’s my pleasure.
oh,
and
FUCK YOU.
(go cry to tripadvisor about this one, asshole.)
__________________________________________________
~
But you know what? There’s always good in the bad…
If the owners of Riad Baraka were nice to me, I would have loved to spend all the rainy days chatting with them about life, but instead I had to go outside and explore.
The darkness is a safe cocoon, from which the light is born…
If you want to get high, you don’t need to spend much money in Chef. All you need to do, is go into one of the local cafes and order some coffee…
Seriously, the air is so heavy from all the hash smokers, that you literally get high…
I sat outside of one of the cafes, watching the life of rainy Chef. pass me by…
And then, I had to question if what I was seeing was a reality or a MAYA …
A blonde girl was trying to find a place to hide from the rain…
Wow! It was Lisa ! I knew, that Life will somehow bring us back to each other.
She joined me and we ordered some more coffee. To be honest with you, it was just an excuse for me to go into the cafe and get high again.
As we were enjoying our coffee, a local musician played music for us. With every note and with every rain drop, time, once again, disappeared into the cloud of sweet cotton.
My mind was light again and nothing mattered.
Lisa asked me; ” Have you ever been to Mandala Restaurant here ? “
No, I haven’t.
She told me that it’s the most geniusly bizarre place on the planet.
After we finished our coffee, Lisa asked some guy how to get there…
When we reached it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.. even from the outside its unreal… The world beats coming from the inside were hypnotic. You can’t help, but follow the sound…
The owner of this place is Italian, who spend 9 years in India and now lives here. He’s an artist and his whole place, is one big orgasm of his beautiful mind.
No, he doesn’t just work here… his Art is his life… If he gets inspired, he quickly sits down at his table and his mind begins to speak.
No, this is not just a restaurant… it’s his home.
We saw a group of Italians here, but other than that the place was empty. One lady was painting something… she came here to be inspired.
He doesn’t care if you stopped by to have some food or to discuss Life’s purpose… He is here for you…
Actually strike that, he’s here for Life itself and you are a part of it.
He doesn’t understand small talk… he doesn’t give a shit.
I like that.
Here, you can have omelette for dinner and hashish for lunch.
He’s name is Giani Uigi, but he asked me to call him GIGI…
To me, he is a genius.
The next two days were spend here… There was no other place I wanted to be.
Lisa felt the same.
The hours turned into seconds and seconds into hours…
Me and Lisa crashed on his couches, listening to music, sharing food and stories. All of us even got to watch Gregory Colbert’s masterpiece ” Ashes & Snow “.
While Gigi was puffing away, Lisa and I got completely lost in the spectacular imagery, words and sounds of Gregory’s work.
Lisa said; ” You know, Gigi is quite taken by you “
The feeling was mutual.
There was no pretence with Gigi. Either he liked you or he didn’t.
No matter the price, his art was not for sale.
Me and Lisa did ask him many questions about his paintings, the meaning behind his creations and the question everyone wants to know…
” What is the meaning of Life, Gigi ? “
He looked into the distance, beyond the mountains and above the sky, and then said;
” MAYA – MAYA “
Gigi sees life as an illusion.
What do you think, is it?
Every time he looked at me, he sighed and said ” Maya, Maya, Maya ..”
There was no “goodbye”.
When we parted we said ” see you tomorrow ” …
But before I left, Gigi created something for me…
I really wanted a few shots of women in veils against the beautiful blue background, but weather really didn’t want me to get those shots.
Everyone was hiding from rain and there were barely anyone on the streets.
But I did manage to find a very beautiful location…
All I needed now, is for someone to open this fairytale-like door and walk out of it…
Or perhaps someone just passing by…
Nope, there was no one…
All of the sudden the rain stopped. But, there was still not a soul on the street. So I decided to create a moment, instead of just waiting for one…
As it happens, I had a matching color scarf that was given to me as a gift by Patricia Tome. She is a french writer, whom I met in Marrakech.
She said “oh, you’re going to Chefchaouen? I want you to have this. It’s perfect for you!”
I set my camera on a timer, placed it on the nearby wall, covered my curls with this blue scarf and walked to the door…
( note: these shots are not altered in any way, except cropping. The colors would not be the same if it was sunny. )
If you try to google Mandala Restaurant in Chefchaouen, you will be disappointed… There are no images of this place on internet or a tripadvisor page.
The only thing they have is some kind of pizzeria by the same name.
Could this be, that Mandala somehow transformed from a normal eatery into the endless world of Maya?
There is not a single picture of Gigi’s Mandala. Nothing!
Was it even real?
As Lisa and I got in our shared car, en route from Chefchaouen to Tangier.
I couldn’t help but wonder…
If Mandala & Gigi never did exist in this world as we know it…
Could it be that, Maya herself, was our host? …
Under,
Through,
and then
Above…
_____________________
The woman behind the words …
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[...] Being in one of the most bizarre and truly mesmerizing restaurants in Chefchaouen, Morocco, that has artworks everywhere, which are not for sale, is a one-of-a-kind [...]
No doubt it was illusion, as is everything. Morocco is like that.
Whatever the illusion, whatever reality, though it a bold intrusion or lovely enmity, one shall always remain in thee as within me.
very beautiful! true poet ..
Gorgeous pics as always, Elena! xoxox
thank you sweetheart!! so great to hear from you! xxx
Beautiful!
Given the historical and cultural advantage, locals often turn rude and complacent towards tourist. Bad Bad Bad.
That’s the flip side of travel, who cares! Someone out there is waiting to welcome us, treat us well and the pictures say it all. Amazing artwork at Mandala and the blues of the locale is sheer magical.
You could also be giving TripAdvisor a bad name if they don’t clean up their act about letting establishments delete their bad reviews. I’m sure more people will take your word over Joe’s and TripAdvisor’s. I was glad to hear you found a much better place to stay.
yeah, it’s weird that tripadvisor let’s them delete the bad ones.. anyway, Karma works in interesting ways …
The serendipity of life. One bad experience always leads to several good ones. For me, the bad helps me savor the good. I suspect you are the same.
I love the pictures with the blue scarf, especially.
Andra, agree with you! I’m the same way.. but sometimes struggle getting through the bad stuff.. it’s much easier to put it on a paper, than put it through your heart..
All that gorgeous blue! So magical and beautiful. All of your images are wonderful ~
The hotel owner needs to get out of the business. What a horrid attitude he has.
Thanks for all your visits and likes on my blog posts.
thank you! agree, he really should.
Magical!
There are physicists right now designing and building experiments they hope will prove whether or not all apparent ‘reality’ is or is not one gigantic interactive hologram/computer program (yes… like The Matrix!)
Whether it is Maya that is creating the hologram or program of which we all may be but a part will be up to others to try and prove
In a far more real current sense though – what we believe we see/feel is most certainly not exactly as what our minds/self perceives it – ie. all is illusory..
That’s cool.. but something tells me it would be a bit boring if the illusion disappears…
another wonderful blog. Hopefully one day we will cross each other’s path on the road called LIFE.
Nice shots, great words.
Beautiful.
Nice and interesting .Jacek
A wonderfully evocative post as always Elena. A delight to read.
Fate brought you the rain and the bad hotels…
and it brought Maya too )))
Very cool.
This is an awesome post and beautiful pictures. And you are so right–people may try and create the false illusion of grandness, such as the hotel owner and his sons but on wordpress we have to power to share the truth and dispell the maya that others create nad google is the path that will lead to the truth.
ivonne
Ivonne, that’s very interesting the way you incorporated “Maya” into the the hotel … when I was writing I didn’t even think of that Hotel as that… first time I ever heard about Maya word meaning was from Gigi’s lips.
Yes, guess the illusion is used in both, to uplift and bring you down…
thank you for reading and speaking “your truth” ; )
Beautiful post with such beautiful colours – and the scarf! I hope your Trip Advisor buddies who have had their reviews deleted find themselves here, free to post without risk of deletion!
Great photos – especially like the shades of blue!
Thank you so much for your words, story, and the beauty displayed in your pictures. You are simply art, itself.
wow! thanks a lot )
Feels I’m reading new magic world by the way you describe in words! Like this article!
Enjoyed this very much Elena…couldn’t miss your post anyhow, since my youngest daughter’s name is Maya. (-°-)
that’s a gorgeous name!
..the Mandala Restaurant is made even more special by its contrast with the Hotel des Cons. Nice work, Elena!
I like your photos. Truly amazing color.
P.S. Sorry to hear about your experience with those hotel owners. What goes around, comes around, I say.
Elena. Once again a post for my senses – beautiful, even the review of the hotel …. You manage to paint out for me.
Shit happens at times when we travel, but not very often. Glad that Gigi took you into his world an embraced you … I think you are one of those people that where ever you go – they loves you and never forget you. Your view on life and people makes you very unique – you accept everyone you meet and you give them that smile that they maybe been missing for a while. You embrace life for what it’s – you have a gift. Wonderful to hear from you and thanks for sharing. That scarf is stunning … and I wish that my everyday was that lovely blue too
Thank you for your words. You know, i’m no saint, and do have my moments where i don’t even want to be near me… but for the most part i walk with a smile in my heart.
Elena, I don’t think you’re an angle … but you have a gift, because you connect with everyone … and I believe that you when you’re angry … is it better to leave the planet. You have a generous heart and soul.
)))))))) yes, please, everyone evacuate!
( thanks for making me laugh! )
My pleasure!!! With your intense eyes … there must be a volcano somewhere. *smile
You are a travel inspiration. I wish I could be that free.
you ARE free! Trust yourself!
love,
lena
Reblogged this on immanuelldomunge.
thank you! I love your work!
I read your post and imagined your high…. then the noise of children shouting “maya, maya, maya enters my vision. Crash! I’m here and theres a bunch of kids shouting “mum, mum MUM!” Enjoy your travels. I do.
)) that’s funny… this reminded me of the
– ” mum, mum, mommy, mum , mommmy, mum, mum ”
– ” What?!!!” ”
– ” Hi! hehehehehe “
No omelette for dinner and hashish for lunch….if you come to Rome..:)! that’s for sure…Your short story made me smile – thank you!
fine, never mind the hashish.. but here’s a question for you — i’ll be in Rome this Summer — will you fish me out of the Trevi fountain and then bail me out of jail after they arrest me??…
I’ll make you an omelette if you say yes ))
Splendid!!!!! love your plann about the Trevi fountain…We’ll see what we can do…:)…and there’s a lot we can do around Rome! thank you in advance for the omlette:)
deal! ))
….where are you now??….(oh yes, you might answer Curiosity killed the cat….:)))
i’m the cat that walks by herself )) you can always see where i am on my travel page.. i’m in LA right now… catching up on writing about my last 5 months on the road. Will be leaving in May for a trip through Europe, then Russia and then might even do a trans-mongolian to China ) damn… i just opened all my cards.. ))
…love “the cat that walks by herself”….i’m just sitting at my desk, sun is going up…yes, you stay in touch with your travel page, but in fact you’re out of reach…even if you spread your emotions trough phrases…and somehow you open all your cards…
…where are you now..?
The images of you in the doorway are absolutely stunning. I’m at a loss for words. I really enjoyed the story you weaved throughout your post. I enjoyed the colorful play on illusions. You other phots were awesome as well – amazing. Thanks again for sharing – so much for those owners – they didn’t realize the gem they had stay with them – their loss!\
Thank you!! you know, when I saw the pics, i said ” holly shit did i really take that ? ” )))) it’s just sometimes, as a photographer, you think that everything is against you and you can’t get the shot you imagined in your head… but then you realize that everything was leading you towards an even better shot.. the most important thing is not to give up ))
Oh my gosh, ha ha. I love how you poetically wrote a bad review about the place you stayed at. Great job, great read, and lovely photos! I love the way the colors pop in Morocco and I hope I get to visit there one day.
Great inspiration and fantastic photography!
Elena, what an astonishing, and powerful blog here. Thank you for stopping by my blog, and liking my post. Speechless!!!!
Thank you Elena. I mentioned this post on mine, I hope that is ok. If not please let me know. Peaceful journey to the Magic.
A beautiful and mysterious city that beckons a return to Morocco. I never made it there when I last went but met a fellow traveller down the road who shared in what he found there.(: In those stories I formed pictures in my imagination and they look just like yor photos. Amazing, thanks for that.
Wow, thanks for liking my entry Elena. You really got an awesome blog here!
Thank you for following my blog. As you know, I really enjoy your beautiful, spirited blog
I really injoyed your post your a good writer the pics were amazing specialy the lady by the the blue wall now I will dream about morocco because of you 😊
Thank you for this nice trip
Best regards.
Zaraa H
Beautiful post. You’ve gained another follower. Your mix of words and photographs are music. Your music is your legacy. I can not wait to dig into the archives of your wondrous blog.
Great post and blog! I really enjoy your writing voice.
Thank you for stopping by.
Beautiful photos and writing. Thank you for sharing your time and thoughts.
This was truly unforgettable!
Thank you.
http://mselenalevontraveling.com/2011/11/18/zambia-solo
Where the shades, the tints of blue, before morning colours light. Moments in each world shared, exchanges free of time restraints, where the music of souls reunite. A travellers’ voyage, a moment’s rest, lost to conversations, with in the weather’s breath, where in days peoples’ share….
You’ve journeyed far, the wayfarers’ way, your posts and photographs are like a meandering life of many leagues, that which you have traveled, those you have met and shared with, through the many days past, to those of the future…
http://mselenalevontraveling.com/2013/01/29/black-rose-of-the-desert/
Hope you enjoy the journey (the loop) of this post of spoken words, between your posts’ wayfarer’s voyage, just something a little different to a single comment.
Wow!!
Love this imagery. You are a beautiful writer. I love how honest you are. I would much rather read your posts on travel destinations. Thank you for following my blog bubblemomentpages. It is a great compliment from someone as talented as you.
Thank you so much for following “Where’s my Genius?”
Also, this is a great post, and I loved blue photos of you in the doorway. I will make sure to stop by again, this looks like a wonderful and inspiring blog!
Nice photos, nice writing. A delight to read. Thanks for sharing!
Dennis
[...] Maya. [...]