Morocco

First off, I want to say this was the coolest trip so far. I hadn't ever seen or done anything like Morocco. To add on, I never knew how different the landscape of Africa could be. I was surprised to see ]the Sahara Desert, Mountains, and Oasis, fields full of grass, and crystal blue beaches all within a country in Africa. The words I say and the pictures I took don't give justice to the scenery and the lifetsyle of Morocco.

Friday 4.16.21011

Left Sevilla at 6 am for Morocco. We took a fairy from very south Spain to arrive in Morocco. Once we got here, we drove, and drove, and drove. I felt like I was in a drum corps bus again. I was actually surprised to see how much of Africa was green and Hilly… definitely not what I had in mind, We finally arrived in Fez that night in a nice 4 **** hotel. We then ate dinner, which was absolutely delicious. I hadn’t eaten that much in months… my fat-boy tummy was satisfied.

We then went out to explore a lot. This was the first time I have been to an Arabian country. It was really cool to see all the words written in Arabic because about 85% of the letters are similar to Farsi. I couldn’t read much because in Farsi and Arabic, they don’t write their vowels, but nevertheless… it was just cool.

Later that night I dipped into the pool. I hadn’t been in a pool in nearly a year so that was refreshing. I had an early night… for an early morning.

Saturday 4.17.2011

We left for the Medina at 9:00 am. The Medina is a huge market with 9,000 unnamed streets. ie.. if you get lost… good luck. No, you’ll just t have to pay a Moroccan kid to navigate you around.  If you are there at night though, I hope you make it out safe. As soon as the sun sets down, the shops close and the places is deserted. Not really the safest place to be. The weird thing is that the people that work there claim to know the Medina like the back of their hands. They know how to navigate in and out of every street because they have lived and grown up there all their life. Also, a lot of these people can speak 4 languages… Arabic, French, Spanish, and English. One guy we met knew 7.

In the Medinas we visited a leather factory which was insane. The picture below shows the working environment. It’s messed up to because the workers will do manual labor and get all sorts of physical problems and diseases, but they’ll just do it to get a job and they’re satisfied. They also make the products for the leather shops right next door to sell. The venders pocket a lot of money. It’s a messed up system but it really makes you appreciate what you have.

The Medinas is a place a to bargain… so Robby and I used our bargaining experience from the Grand Bizarre in Istanbul. We bargained an awesome leather briefcase from 700 dirham to 250 dirham each!!! So essentially… I bought an authentic, hand- made, real leather, briefcase for 25 euros… success!

Here, we also visited a Pharmacy shop which basically used herbs as their medicine... too cool. We visited a rug store (Persian rugs are better… not biased at all). Then we went to a place where they made ceramics. These ceramics are hand crafted and hand painted. The amount of detail they put into their work is unbelievable and their work environment is just unheard of. It means something else though when you see a young kid working the same job as a 50 year old right in front… and you know that in 35 years, that kid will be sitting right where the elder person is… doing his specialty and his skill. That will be his life.

Later on that night we went to a Moroccan show, We saw belly- dancers (Oww Oww!!!) and Moroccan music. It was pretty authentic and just a whole bunch of fun. It is just miles of fun when you get American people to dance foreign music… especially Arabian. The dancers would get the people from the crowd to dance with them so it was just a bunch of fun for everyone. Everyone was in the dancing mood too, so on the way back... we put some music on the speakers of the bus and started dancing.... "Tsamina mina eh eh. Waka Waka Eh Eh"

Sunday 4.18.2011

Early morning, we made our way to the Sand dunes. While we driving, we again, saw amazing landscapes. On the way, we drove through mountains and made the steep cliff turns only to see below a beautiful Oasis. I have never seen one before, but I now know why a band would call themselves Oasis… because in the middle of a desert, a valley of tropical palm trees, blue water, and a symbol of life lay along the low point of a valley. Across the red/ orange desert, it’s green… Truly amazing.

como se dice "la mujer de mis sueños?"

Then we took 4X4 jeeps into the desert. We rode the jeeps across the Sand dunes until we hit our campsite. We got to see the sunset during that hour too. The sand was so soft and shiny... it was exactly like I pictured it... something like off the cover of Aladin.

So the first night we wait for food… in which Moroccan food is absolutely delicious. After food, we spotted a dune miles away. We debated on how long it took to get there… and we had ranges from 7 minutes to at most 25 minutes. We end up walking toward the dunes and at 35 minutes we realized there was at least another 10 minutes. No one believed Robby when he said it was further than we imagined… but he was right. We decided to head back before stuff got scary because we were in the Middle of the Sahara, and if the wind blew, we had no way of retracing our steps. Plus, it was 1:30 am, so getting lost was not a good call.

The people native to where we were at were call Burburs. The ‘Burbubr Babies’… aka, the Burbur kids were loads of fun. We would all wrestle, throw each other around, do flips off the inclined dune and more. Those kids seemed so happy to play with us, and every single one of us loved playing with them. These kids were indestructible and laughed if you tackled them… haha. They were just too cool.

Later that night, a few of us were feeling adventurous so we took our blankets outside and slept bare in the sand outside. The Sahara Sand is crazy soft and it literally felt like a tempus- pedic mattress. Though I must have swallowed tons of sand… I never woke up once…. Well, other than the time my friend right beside me jumped because he saw a spider at his feet.

Monday 4.19.2011

We woke up at 6:45 to the sunrise. Like any desert, the sunrise is the best part. I feel like the sun showed a lot of the African tribes colors they have never seen before. It was a bit cloudy, but nevertheless, the best sunrise I’ve seen.

In the afternoon, we took a camel to a distant city. We had an army of camels…. +/- 100 camels storming through the Sahara. Hahaha. I felt like for all the stereotype jokes I have ever gotten, this was finally my chance to take advantage.

For some reason we didn’t ride the camels back, so instead, we rode a van. More less…. We rode on top of a van! It was ridiculous. We had a van full of people inside with seats that were basically benches that weren’t nailed to the gro!!!nd. And we had a rail on top in which we fit 15 people on top. That was our ride through the Sahara… very uncomfortable, but it definitely felt like a Safari ride or something, It wasn’t as fun though when the van got stuck in the Sand…. Haha. So I guess we weren’t mudding… but instead, ‘sanding.’ Stuff like that will never be found in the US… but we were in Africa J

Later, we had lunch, rested, played card games, and then made our way out to play football. We ‘tried’ to play football outside but the sand blowing sideways made it a bit hard to see. It was a lot fun playing with the Burbur kids and what not, but I felt like I was going blind while swallowing a bunch of Sand… not the best feeling.

At dinner, a Morrocon band played music with hand drums, singing, a violin, and a keyboard. Then it was time to dance the night away. With the mix of Morrocon music, Spanish music, American music, Salsa, and so on… we had an amazing time just dancing in a huge tent. I got to play hand drums with some of the locals… that was pretty neat. There was definitely some communication going on there. No one really had showered in days and we had sand falling off of with every inch we moved, but we danced the night away in our big tent… Good times!

To add on to the adventure, we tried to enjoy our last night in the Sahara outside, where we went a bit further off to a sand dune. After chilling out for a while, a sand storm hit… and it hit fast. All the sudden, we couldn’t see who was in front for too much further and we had to make sure we got back with a 10 minute walk. I was literally worried because we probably ad 2 girls for every guy, and someof them didn’t want to run. Butttt we made it out fine. That night I slept and inhaled the sand. Bueno.

Tuesday 4.20.2011

In the morning, we made our way for Sevilla. It goes to say that Morrocco can do some funky stuff to your stomach after being there so long. Unfortunately, there were people vomiting left and right in the bus and stomach problems too… I wanted to take a picture Buuuutttt I thought that might be a little mean. I’m sure you can picture a bunch of sick people in a bus driving through the deserts of Africa.

We also stopped at this one place that had monkeys… you had to go out there and look for them though. They wouldn’t come to you.

We went to some nice hotel (which ISA hooked us up with all **** hotels), and alas, we took a shower. I was so covered with sand that I still had sand on me after the shower and I have less hair than anyone else.

That night I passed out… I was too exhausted to do anything.

Wednesday 4.21.2011

Second day of driving for Sevilla.  Enjoyed the northern Morrocconlandscape, did the whole Fairy business, and was back in Sevilla by 9:30… the Cupa Del Rey game with Barca and Real Madrid was on within minutes so I did what any other Spaniard would do… I took my luggage right to the closest place that was showing the game and yaaaaa…. It didn’t end how I wanted to but heyyy at least Morrocco was awesome!