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In Marrakesh, the 900-year-old "Red City," Winston Churchill spent long hours painting the vast expanse of date palms against the haunting backdrop of the Atlas Mountains. Now pleasant French nouvelles riches wear mink or sable coats as they trip down to the Mamounia Hotel's heated pool.* A few blocks away, in the teeming public square known as Djemaa el Fna, or Assembly of the Dead, robed Berber men and veiled women chew on fried locusts while they watch snake charmers toy with defanged black cobras, or listen to interminable tales of storytellers perpetuating the tradition of the Thousand and One Nights. In Fez, Morocco's ancient center of Islamic culture, the sleek, European-style Merinides Hotel shares a hilltop with the tombs of 14th century sultans. Outside the cities, cars on superhighways rocket past plodding camel caravans and occasional trucks.
Not-So-Rich. It is not only this cultural confrontation that makes Morocco a favorite winter playground for the rich. It is also the vistas, the warm climate (daytime temperatures rarely dip below 80° except in the mountains and on the coast) and the languid, inshallah ("as God wills") pace of life. "It's all very exotic," says Paris Couturier Yves St. Laurent, who has purchased a tiny villa in Marrakesh. "Here I don't work at all, or even think. This is my refuge from the world."
Eugene Paul Getty, son of Oil Billionaire J. Paul Getty, also lives in Marrakesh. Regular Moroccan visitors include Queen Fabiola of Belgium, Baron Guy de Rothschild, Barbara Hutton, Yul Brynner, David! Rockefeller, Lee Radziwill, Fiat Boss Gianni Agnelli and Author Truman Capote, who advises anyone contemplating a Moroccan trip to "have yourself vaccinated against typhoid, liquidate your bank account, and say goodbye to your friends. God knows when you will see them again."
But there are also the not-so-rich. Lydia Bach, a blonde, 27-year-old language teacher from Decatur, Ill., and Mary Jo Ostrom, 29, a fashion illustrator from nearby Galesburg, have vacationed together in southern Morocco for six years; they deliberately travel around Marrakesh in filthy old market buses rather than tourist coaches, "to be with the people" as well as to save money. At the bottom of this season's tourist barrel is a colony of about 270 U.S. and Canadian hippies who are living in sleazy abandon in Marrakesh's medina, or "old city," on 500 a day.