My second hammam

Today I went to the spectacular Imar Spa. It’s in the middle of nowhere in a neighboring emirate, about an hour drive (or two hours, for a trio of chatty girls).

After stripping down to our disposable spa underwear, we were led one by one into a long, narrow marble room. I stood at the far end, tentatively clutching the metal rail on the wall, while a sturdy grandmother-ish Moroccan lady picked up a small fire hose and proceeded to hose me down from about 15 feet away. Back, arms up, front, side, arms down, kinda felt like I was doing the Macarena in a carwash.

Then they took us into the blue-tiled hammam room to cover us with a gritty henna mixture and leave us to steam for a while. There was much topless giggling.

Then they scoop cups of warm water from the fountain in the center of the room to wash off the henna before slathering us in something that they claimed is soap but looked more like brown Vaseline. Then they spread us out on the marble benches and started to scrub. Wow. I thought the scrubbing in my first hammam in Istanbul was intense, but this was a different league of loofah. When they say exfoliation (which is, of course, not what they say – they have some incomprehensible Moroccan word for it), they really mean it. She twisted me all around to get to unexplored angles – even my armpits were exfoliated! And the stuff that was sloughed off was incredible. About a dozen times through the course of the scrubbing, she would shake off the mitt and drop a little gray 3 inch worm of dead skin. Gross, yet fascinating.

Then they rinse us off, slather us up with some sweet-smelling, curry-colored clay, rinse it off, smooth us down with olive oil and send us on our way.