April 13, 2007
First off, HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY BUB!!!
This is the Morocco blog update, and it will be long. Sorry, deal with it. :)
I went to Morocco for a week with a program called Discover Sevilla (check ‘em out online, it’s a really cool company) who takes mostly American students from Spain to some really cool places in the area, such as Morocco and Portugal. It was started 3 years ago by two 25 year old guys and now they’ve grown into a really, really impressive company. I was kind of skeptical on going on an organized trip with a big group of people, but now I realize that was the very best possible way for me to see Morocco in a week.
The first day we met the group at 4:45, drove to the southern-most tip of Spain, and took the ferry to Tangier. We then drove down to the capital of Morocco, Rabat. Along the way we stopped at some really cool beach towns and had lunch (the beginning of intestinal problems for everyone) and finally got to Rabat in the afternoon. We explored the oldest part of Rabat right on the coast now a little village with blue painted walls supposedly to keep mosquitoes away.
We visited some national monument-type buildings, and I really wish I knew something about Morocco to understand the significance of these famous landmarks. One of the buildings had the tombs of all Moroccan kings for hundreds of years, and it’s also a pilgrimage sight. We were there right about sunset, at around 6:00 loudspeakers around the city call out a prayer call, indicating time to pray for Muslims. So we’re in this pilgrimage site looking like idiots when everyone around us drops to their knees, faces Mecca, and begins to pray. It was really moving and awesome to see, but I felt like I was really invading something sacred, especially at a holy site. I later realized that not everyone follows the strict rules of prayer, but it just so happened that our first experience with prayer was at a Mosque, where everyone would be praying. Pretty interesting first cultural experience in an Islamic country, for sure.
Picture of the Morocco group, some of my friends from Barcelona that I traveled with… missing a few girls but this is the majority of us:
Our next stop was Fez, the religious and cultural capital of Morocco. Fez is, for the most part, a sprawling city just like you would expect in a developing country. The coolest part of the city is the medina, the city center surrounded by the ancient wall. Every big city has a medina, usually the market place with the oldest history. We had a Moroccan guide take us through the Medina, and the first thing he said to us was that tourists die every year getting run over by donkeys. Awesome. So we got to the medina, and it was pretty incredible. Fez has one of the biggest medinas rivaled only by Marrakech, which meant it had 9,800+ “streets” which were most like crowded walkways of vendors and stores. Unfortunately no pictures I took could capture how freaking awesome it was, mainly because in the coolest parts I didn’t really feel comfortable taking out my camera. I saw some pretty crazy things in there and the meat section made me eat vegetarian for the rest of the week. I’m beginning to think that if I can’t handle dead pig heads and seeing chickens get decapitated, I shouldn’t be eating meat. Anyway, we spent the full day roaming through rug stores, a pharmacy, a great restaurant, a gorgeous Mosque (we weren’t allowed in any religious building, but it was still beautiful from the outside), and many other cool places I wish could be explained in words. That night we saw a belly dancing and local music show, which was pretty bizarre but interesting.
Here’s a picture of the medina, although this pic doesn’t quite do it justice:
More or less the Rabat “skyline” within the walled medina, proof that Morocco definatley is a developing country.
Here’s the donkey that did not run me over:
Ok, next. On the third day we drove across a lot of Morocco, through some really beautiful towns, and over the Atlas mountains. We spent a lot of time in the bus, but it didn’t matter at all because the scenery was so spectacular. We went from coastal towns, to farmland, to hills, to massive snowy mountains, and ended the day in the Sahara desert. We parked the bus at a hotel in the desert, but then found out that we weren’t staying at this one, we had to 4-wheel through the desert to get to the place we were staying. Turns out there is a legitimate road from the first hotel to ours, but Moroccans believe in short cuts, aka driving over 50mph through the desert at night with only dim lights to lead the way, no signs, no idea how they knew where they were going, no idea how they didn’t hit a bush or animal or person. After a full hour of flying through the desert with a man who didn’t speak English or Spanish (there were 6 students in the car) he somehow was able to tell us we were lost, and maybe in Algeria (actually that part I heard a few days later). Finally we got to our hotel about an hour after everyone else, thanks to the fact that our guide somehow had cell phone service. Our hotel was in the middle of the Sahara surrounded by sand dunes in every direction. It was amazing.
More pics, first of the Atlas Mountains:
Excited to be in the desert hotel! (This might be a good time to point out to whoever is unaware that jumping pictures are a tradition with CCO folks and not some random obsession I have, it’s legit! I swear! And it takes more talent than normal pictures.)
So I have to backtrack a bit. On our way over the Atlas Mountains we made a rest stop at a place where there’s a lot of monkeys. At first I couldn’t figure out why there were so many monkeys in that particular location, and then I realized it was because people fed them. Very sad, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t excited to see some African monkeys!!
Here’s a picture of the baby monkey eating food some idiot gave him. People are ignorant about wildlife in every part of the world, it turns out. And no, it wasn’t the American college students feeding them:
Ok so back to the Sahara Desert. This was by far the highlight of my trip. The cities and towns were also very cool, but something about camping in the Sahara I know I won’t forget for the rest of my life. The first night in the desert hotel (I wish I could give a name or location, but “middle of nowhere” will have to suffice) we wandered into the desert after dark and explored the dunes. At first we thought we were more or less alone, aside from a few other groups of students exploring. Then we started running into a lot of locals, randomly walking through the desert. It was at first kind of creepy to turn the corner and see a lone man walking towards you in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, but we felt safe the entire time and everyone was really friendly and either wanted to chat or at least greeted us in Arabic and left us alone. We met one guy (I won’t try to remember his name, I’ll butcher it) who worked at our hotel and also took college classes in Fez. He spoke pretty good English, even better Spanish, and also spoke French, Arabic, local dialect, etc. We met a few more people wandering throughout the desert at night, and it turns out they use the night and the full moon to travel from work to home or vice versa, because when it’s daylight it’s just to damn hot to be walking through the desert.
Me on the dunes outside our hotel, at daylight, no doubt jumping for joy:
Most the people we met in Southern Morocco were Berber, the native tribe of people more of less untouched by the spread of Islam. They’re an indigenous group, and one of the only ones that hasn’t been completely absorbed by the greater Muslim culture in Northern Africa. One guy explained to me that they don’t really marry outside the Berber tribe, so the blood is more or less purely of their native group and not really diluted at all... for centuries and centuries they’ve kept to themselves. They speak Arabic in college (they are WELL educated, venture out of the desert for a college education, at least all that I met, which were all about my age) but maintain a pretty unique culture. Oh yea, and they are really good looking. Especially for deprived college girls.
Here’s a picture of my friend Maggie with a guy we met while in the desert, he spoke perfect English and was really friendly; he definitely wanted us to enjoy his home and wanted to teach us all about their culture.
Ok this entry is getting really long… stay with me, I’m almost done, I swear. So we woke up, day 4, and were able to get sufficiently sun burnt at the hotel pool. After lunch we packed up enough clothes for a night in the desert, and began our trek on camels. It’s of course an experience I’ll never forget, but camels are mean, painful, and slow. Four hours on a camel made me think horses were super cool, and I don’t really enjoy riding horses either. We rode camels through the Sahara to a “desert oasis”, aka the only patch of trees we saw amongst the dunes for miles. Within the trees there was a few big campsites set up for various groups (tourists, or local travelers) to have a place to rest on their journey across the desert. We made it to the oasis in the late afternoon, and then climbed a huge dune to see a spectacular sunset. We met a group of Berber men (never met or saw a Berber woman) who cooked us a great dinner. The rest of the night the group drank bad Moroccan wine and danced to drums in front of the campfire. We woke up in the morning and had to get back on the camels back to the hotel, which was the low point of the trip but only because the campout was so great.
Picture, my camel, resembling a prehistoric dinosaur and clearly an idiot:
Picture of me, totally covered (it was hot, but I didn’t want to get burned) on my camel through the desert.
THE best part of the trip, climbing the dune to watch the most amazing sunset ever (out in the distance it’s a lake, it’s mirage). You can see people out on the right spread farther along the dunes:
Our campsite, the lone trees in the Sahara Desert. In the background you can see the first section of the dune we climbed.
After getting back to the hotel on the 5th night we spent a good part of the rest of the day traveling back to Fez. We spent an exhausted night in Fez, and traveled back across the Straight of Gibraltar to Sevilla, getting in about 1:00 am. One good (but rainy) stop on the way back to Sevilla was the little beach town of Asilah (spelling?) that I wish I could have spent some more time at.
Obviously pictures explain more than words alone, and I wish I could post some more spectacular pictures on here. So that was Morocco, you get a prize if you read to the end of this entry!!
I’ll be home in less than two weeks! Yippee!!!
Love and miss you all,
Laura
First off, HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY BUB!!!
This is the Morocco blog update, and it will be long. Sorry, deal with it. :)
I went to Morocco for a week with a program called Discover Sevilla (check ‘em out online, it’s a really cool company) who takes mostly American students from Spain to some really cool places in the area, such as Morocco and Portugal. It was started 3 years ago by two 25 year old guys and now they’ve grown into a really, really impressive company. I was kind of skeptical on going on an organized trip with a big group of people, but now I realize that was the very best possible way for me to see Morocco in a week.
The first day we met the group at 4:45, drove to the southern-most tip of Spain, and took the ferry to Tangier. We then drove down to the capital of Morocco, Rabat. Along the way we stopped at some really cool beach towns and had lunch (the beginning of intestinal problems for everyone) and finally got to Rabat in the afternoon. We explored the oldest part of Rabat right on the coast now a little village with blue painted walls supposedly to keep mosquitoes away.
We visited some national monument-type buildings, and I really wish I knew something about Morocco to understand the significance of these famous landmarks. One of the buildings had the tombs of all Moroccan kings for hundreds of years, and it’s also a pilgrimage sight. We were there right about sunset, at around 6:00 loudspeakers around the city call out a prayer call, indicating time to pray for Muslims. So we’re in this pilgrimage site looking like idiots when everyone around us drops to their knees, faces Mecca, and begins to pray. It was really moving and awesome to see, but I felt like I was really invading something sacred, especially at a holy site. I later realized that not everyone follows the strict rules of prayer, but it just so happened that our first experience with prayer was at a Mosque, where everyone would be praying. Pretty interesting first cultural experience in an Islamic country, for sure.
Picture of the Morocco group, some of my friends from Barcelona that I traveled with… missing a few girls but this is the majority of us:
Our next stop was Fez, the religious and cultural capital of Morocco. Fez is, for the most part, a sprawling city just like you would expect in a developing country. The coolest part of the city is the medina, the city center surrounded by the ancient wall. Every big city has a medina, usually the market place with the oldest history. We had a Moroccan guide take us through the Medina, and the first thing he said to us was that tourists die every year getting run over by donkeys. Awesome. So we got to the medina, and it was pretty incredible. Fez has one of the biggest medinas rivaled only by Marrakech, which meant it had 9,800+ “streets” which were most like crowded walkways of vendors and stores. Unfortunately no pictures I took could capture how freaking awesome it was, mainly because in the coolest parts I didn’t really feel comfortable taking out my camera. I saw some pretty crazy things in there and the meat section made me eat vegetarian for the rest of the week. I’m beginning to think that if I can’t handle dead pig heads and seeing chickens get decapitated, I shouldn’t be eating meat. Anyway, we spent the full day roaming through rug stores, a pharmacy, a great restaurant, a gorgeous Mosque (we weren’t allowed in any religious building, but it was still beautiful from the outside), and many other cool places I wish could be explained in words. That night we saw a belly dancing and local music show, which was pretty bizarre but interesting.
Here’s a picture of the medina, although this pic doesn’t quite do it justice:
More or less the Rabat “skyline” within the walled medina, proof that Morocco definatley is a developing country.
Here’s the donkey that did not run me over:
Ok, next. On the third day we drove across a lot of Morocco, through some really beautiful towns, and over the Atlas mountains. We spent a lot of time in the bus, but it didn’t matter at all because the scenery was so spectacular. We went from coastal towns, to farmland, to hills, to massive snowy mountains, and ended the day in the Sahara desert. We parked the bus at a hotel in the desert, but then found out that we weren’t staying at this one, we had to 4-wheel through the desert to get to the place we were staying. Turns out there is a legitimate road from the first hotel to ours, but Moroccans believe in short cuts, aka driving over 50mph through the desert at night with only dim lights to lead the way, no signs, no idea how they knew where they were going, no idea how they didn’t hit a bush or animal or person. After a full hour of flying through the desert with a man who didn’t speak English or Spanish (there were 6 students in the car) he somehow was able to tell us we were lost, and maybe in Algeria (actually that part I heard a few days later). Finally we got to our hotel about an hour after everyone else, thanks to the fact that our guide somehow had cell phone service. Our hotel was in the middle of the Sahara surrounded by sand dunes in every direction. It was amazing.
More pics, first of the Atlas Mountains:
Excited to be in the desert hotel! (This might be a good time to point out to whoever is unaware that jumping pictures are a tradition with CCO folks and not some random obsession I have, it’s legit! I swear! And it takes more talent than normal pictures.)
So I have to backtrack a bit. On our way over the Atlas Mountains we made a rest stop at a place where there’s a lot of monkeys. At first I couldn’t figure out why there were so many monkeys in that particular location, and then I realized it was because people fed them. Very sad, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t excited to see some African monkeys!!
Here’s a picture of the baby monkey eating food some idiot gave him. People are ignorant about wildlife in every part of the world, it turns out. And no, it wasn’t the American college students feeding them:
Ok so back to the Sahara Desert. This was by far the highlight of my trip. The cities and towns were also very cool, but something about camping in the Sahara I know I won’t forget for the rest of my life. The first night in the desert hotel (I wish I could give a name or location, but “middle of nowhere” will have to suffice) we wandered into the desert after dark and explored the dunes. At first we thought we were more or less alone, aside from a few other groups of students exploring. Then we started running into a lot of locals, randomly walking through the desert. It was at first kind of creepy to turn the corner and see a lone man walking towards you in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, but we felt safe the entire time and everyone was really friendly and either wanted to chat or at least greeted us in Arabic and left us alone. We met one guy (I won’t try to remember his name, I’ll butcher it) who worked at our hotel and also took college classes in Fez. He spoke pretty good English, even better Spanish, and also spoke French, Arabic, local dialect, etc. We met a few more people wandering throughout the desert at night, and it turns out they use the night and the full moon to travel from work to home or vice versa, because when it’s daylight it’s just to damn hot to be walking through the desert.
Me on the dunes outside our hotel, at daylight, no doubt jumping for joy:
Most the people we met in Southern Morocco were Berber, the native tribe of people more of less untouched by the spread of Islam. They’re an indigenous group, and one of the only ones that hasn’t been completely absorbed by the greater Muslim culture in Northern Africa. One guy explained to me that they don’t really marry outside the Berber tribe, so the blood is more or less purely of their native group and not really diluted at all... for centuries and centuries they’ve kept to themselves. They speak Arabic in college (they are WELL educated, venture out of the desert for a college education, at least all that I met, which were all about my age) but maintain a pretty unique culture. Oh yea, and they are really good looking. Especially for deprived college girls.
Here’s a picture of my friend Maggie with a guy we met while in the desert, he spoke perfect English and was really friendly; he definitely wanted us to enjoy his home and wanted to teach us all about their culture.
Ok this entry is getting really long… stay with me, I’m almost done, I swear. So we woke up, day 4, and were able to get sufficiently sun burnt at the hotel pool. After lunch we packed up enough clothes for a night in the desert, and began our trek on camels. It’s of course an experience I’ll never forget, but camels are mean, painful, and slow. Four hours on a camel made me think horses were super cool, and I don’t really enjoy riding horses either. We rode camels through the Sahara to a “desert oasis”, aka the only patch of trees we saw amongst the dunes for miles. Within the trees there was a few big campsites set up for various groups (tourists, or local travelers) to have a place to rest on their journey across the desert. We made it to the oasis in the late afternoon, and then climbed a huge dune to see a spectacular sunset. We met a group of Berber men (never met or saw a Berber woman) who cooked us a great dinner. The rest of the night the group drank bad Moroccan wine and danced to drums in front of the campfire. We woke up in the morning and had to get back on the camels back to the hotel, which was the low point of the trip but only because the campout was so great.
Picture, my camel, resembling a prehistoric dinosaur and clearly an idiot:
Picture of me, totally covered (it was hot, but I didn’t want to get burned) on my camel through the desert.
The view form our campsite. The desert goes on forever there.
THE best part of the trip, climbing the dune to watch the most amazing sunset ever (out in the distance it’s a lake, it’s mirage). You can see people out on the right spread farther along the dunes:
Our campsite, the lone trees in the Sahara Desert. In the background you can see the first section of the dune we climbed.
After getting back to the hotel on the 5th night we spent a good part of the rest of the day traveling back to Fez. We spent an exhausted night in Fez, and traveled back across the Straight of Gibraltar to Sevilla, getting in about 1:00 am. One good (but rainy) stop on the way back to Sevilla was the little beach town of Asilah (spelling?) that I wish I could have spent some more time at.
Obviously pictures explain more than words alone, and I wish I could post some more spectacular pictures on here. So that was Morocco, you get a prize if you read to the end of this entry!!
I’ll be home in less than two weeks! Yippee!!!
Love and miss you all,
Laura
