Morocco! African continent, check!

I will try to make this blog entry covering my 13 day adventure complete, short (enough) and yet entirely entertaining at the same time.

We arrived Dec 21^st in Marrakech flying Royal Air Maroc. I mention this because we received a lovely Moroccan meal –including curry chicken and noodles and almond cookies. The flight is three hours, lets hear it for the “royal” treatment (a whole meal! Compared to our flights where the ½ can of pop is all you get). More importantly we arrived, got totally scammed and paid too much for a taxi, got driven to the wrong hotel (4 stars! What a disappointment when we discovered it wasn’t the right one), got scammed some more and told we couldn’t be dropped off at the hostel. So we arrive, two North American girls around 11:30pm in the center city. Totally fine but a major culture shock as there are very few women out around this time, so we stick out just a little bit. I’m sure we looked adorable all the same with our little travel packs and smiles.

Marrakech was beautiful and we strolled the medina (old center city), mostly just shopping around the first day. Tons of shops and people trying to pull you in to buy this or that – silver, leather, shoes, weird make-up, spices, pillows, scarves, porcelain… you name it. And the price is all based on bartering. I wasn’t totally into it, but some of my friends were really good at it. These men know their business and I can’t even imagine how elevated they start the price knowing how much we will probably pay. Plus lots of delicious little treats – I think my stomach was overloaded as I chose to have almond juice, fig and avocado ice cream, couscous, a grilled bread (similar to the gordita bread at taco bell, strangely enough) with cheese, an almond-y cake, a second almond-y cake that my friend didn’t want before dinner. I could have thought that through better. 

We woke up early the next day and drove … eight hours into the desert with a tour group. It was through some of the most beautiful mountains, oasis, and desert. Some parts reminded me of Colorado or Utah but then some parts were so foreign. Tiny little towns built out of the earth with no paved roads. Families doing the exact same things we do, women sitting around chatting and children playing soccer (excuse me, football).  We arrived at Zagora, almost the furthest south you can go without being in the Sahara to meet our berbere guides (the native, nomadic’esque, desert dwelling people of Morocco). And then we rode CAMELS! For two hours… though after about 45 minutes, I was good. That hump is not so comfortable. We rode while the sun was setting in a beautiful travel moment I’ll never forget, but then we were in the dark for about an hour. These men led us through the pitch black (I imagined myself as some version of Jasmine finding the cave of wonders!) until we reached camp where we had dinner, sung and danced around the fire, and went to sleep in our little tents. Waking up was beyond anything I could have imagined, so beautiful in this desert of nothing, just our tents, camels, and the sun rising to spread light on the sand. Inspiring. Then back eights hours, with a stop in Aït-Ben-Haddou. This town has had more famous people in it than I can name. Films made there include: Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazreth, Babel, The Mummy, Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven, Indiana Jones, and Prince of Persia… to name a few. Back in Marrakcech for Christmas Eve dinner at a pizza restaurant on a terrace overlooking the old city. Not bad.

Christmas Day we took the train to Casablanca – which is overwhelmingly economic and industrial. But my friend Marina desperately wanted to go there for the movie. Unfortunately we learned the move was filmed in Tanger, Morocco. Still, one famous scene (Rick’s Café - "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.") was from Casablanca so we enjoyed an all right dinner there (with wine for the first time!). We haphazardly met a taxi driver who we thought was maybe trying to scam us but turns out after we haggled a bit he drove us around the whole town – to the world’s second largest mosque and the only one non-Muslims can enter (ten euros though, I wasn’t quite alright with it, normally even Muslim women cannot enter the mosque so I felt a little strange about it), the old beach side cafes that you could imagine were swank during the 60’s but now its restaurants and spas where ocean water has washed over the walls and filled the ancient pools with sea water, the Mafia district, Royal Palace etc. The best part about this cab driver, he was about 67 yrs old, was his older gentlemen perspective on life – he explained how this king (the last king, his father, was the previous dictator) is EXCELLENT and has done so much for women’s right, he’s modest and modern. He told us about when he married his wife (they were 15 and 17) and his children. Perfect little afternoon.

 Christmas Dinner

After two days in Casa, we headed to Fes. A beautiful city where the old city medina has approximately 8,000 – 10,000 streets. Needless to say, you get lost. We enjoyed our first dinner with a Couchsurfer friend. He and his friend chatted with us about Fes, the Muslim faith, schooling, their work, etc. An interesting insight into the world of 20-somethings in another country. The next day was spent shopping (lots of shopping). My friends picked up some interesting souvenirs including: 2 knives, a tanjine pot, a rug, and a teapot. I was mildly more practical but not by much. The next day we unfortunately had an incident with our hotel saying they had overbooked and requesting we move to a new hotel. I channeled my inner-Niemann and requested (demanded??) the difference in the amount we had paid for our room and amount our old hotel had paid for the new place. It wasn’t a pleasant experience but it gave me a little travel confidence all the same. The next day we went to Ifrance, a little mini-France built after WWII. You would never know you weren’t in France. At first, we had such luck and happened to hop off the bus about 10 minutes before the King drove through the town! We saw him drive through with all his soldiers, very exciting! Unfortunately the day was a total disaster as we got massively scammed by a guide to go hiking – and by guide, I mean a potentially crazy man who 30 minutes into trip told me he has no papers and lives in the mountains… and by hiking, I mean walking around a park with him picking berry branches.  And it was the Office of Tourism that called him for us! After the paper comment and branch picking, I told him I was too sick to keep hiking. He was nice enough to find me “medicine” (thyme, it did not smell like thyme) and then conveniently charge me three euros for it. Overall not the best. But that night back in Fes we almost made up for it by eating at a delicious place where I had a camel burger! It was claimed as best in the world, and it was pretty freaking good.

New Years Eve Day we headed up to Volubilis, an ancient Roman site founded around 200 AD. It was epic and beautiful. That evening we went a party hosted by the hotel. We were a bit nervous but it was fantastic! A six course meal – little Moroccan treat, pastilla (thin pastry filled with chicken and covered with cinnamon and sugar… trust me its delicious), tanjine with weird unidentifiable small bird and noodles, fruit cream dessert, Moroccan cookies, and of course mint tea. In between these courses, there was dancing and musicians singing in Arabic. We sat with a lovely Chilean and French couple who all luckily enough all spoke English. Midnight was kind of a letdown… all the sudden a few people started kissing and then they turned out the lights and we all sort of guessed that was it. But no countdown! And then about 15 minutes later, it was time to go home. New Years day we headed home to Paris and back to Angers.

 Eating coconut, you can buy it on the street!

New Year's Eve Dinner!

It was fantastic! There were certain overwhelming moments - bartering for taxi prices, finding hotels in those tiny streets, getting used to the fact that men are pretty consistently catcalling you, and seeing little children trying to sell you anything for just a little money. I was so thankful for my French, and it was great to see something so different from Western Europe. It fueled my “save your money so you can travel more!” fire. And now back to teaching, no Africa but it’ll do!