I’ve been really bad at updating my blog so here’s my post on morocco!! More posts will be coming about semana santa, jas&miya’s visit, and lagos, portugal!
Going to morocco was unbelievable. I can’t even describe how amazing of an experience it was. Africa is actually really close to Sevilla because of its southern location. It is the fourth continent I’ve been to now (how cool is that?!?)! I went with discoversevilla, which is a travel agency/group in Sevilla that does trips all over Europe& to morocco as well. Almost our entire tcu program went with too, out of the 24 of us, 20 people went. Crazy! Anyways, we went all over morocco. We took the ferry over there on Friday morning and left from Tarifa, Spain to go to Tangier, Morocco. We took our buses on the ferry with us, and so that’s how we got around all week. Then, we had lunch in Rabat and we took a tour of Rabat. After that, we headed to Fez and on the way we stopped and saw some monkeys and fed them too!! so much fun. The trip to Fez was a pretty long drive in the bus so we stopped again to watch the sunset over these cliffs. It was gorgeous, but a different kind of gorgeous from watching the sunset in the andes (while I was in chile). We had dinner in Fez and left for the desert hotel after dinner (and this was only the first day… so much traveling already!!). Then we left our bus and we were picked up by berbers (like native Moroccan people) and they drove us to the desert hotel in 4x4s where we stayed the night.
Carla, Ali, Rachel, Alo, Liz and I were all in one jeep/4x4 and we had the coolest berber driver ever. He literally was so much fun, he turned up the music real loud and was singing and talking to us the whole time. He was really funny and kept asking us questions, he also took a road that no one was on and drove crazy but it was tons of fun. At one point, we met up with the other cars and he turned up the music really loud and made us all get out of the car to dance. Dancing in the desert was for sure a great way to start our sahara experience.
Then we stayed the night at the desert hotel/had dinner there. The food was awesome. I was really worried before hand about the food bc Manoli was saying don’t eat any fruit or anything with out washing it with bottled water before hand. Also, to only drink bottled water in general. But I only ate like cooked rice/veggies and they were like so good. and I didn’t get sick at all the whole time I was there.
The next day, we had breakfast at the hotel, which had amazing freshly squeezed orange juice by the way. And then we toured the desert town and went into a rug shop. It was really fun and I took some good pictures. We saw this lady who went to a community well and she was filling up big water bottles with water, and filter it with this make-shift bottle/piece of cloth filter. her small children were with her too. then she put all her water bottles in this cart and they had to wheel their water home. our berber guide was saying that everyone in the town has to do this to get clean water, it was really different seeing how hard they had to work for clean water. also, the entire time that we were walking around the town with our tour guide children of like all ages were following us around trying to get us to buy small bracelets, necklaces, and figurines from them for like a euro. Some of them didn’t have shoes either. it was so sad. then we went to the rug shop and ali and I tried to barter with this vendedor but he wouldn’t barter so we gave up and went back to the hotel for lunch.
After lunch, we checked out of the hotel and got ready for our camel ride/sahara adventure. there was literally like a hundred camels for our whole group, have you ever seen a hundred camels before??? ah it was crazy! Ali, Erica, and I rode in front of chris, brett, and corey so we chatted the whole time. also, we named our camels. so funny. Ali rode sancho, I rode henry, ali was falling off sancho the whole time and henry was sneezing (of course, I would get stuck with the sneezing camel.) anyways it was such an adventure, we ended up arriving to the desert like an hour before sunset so by the time we got all our stuff settled and chose our tent, we had like 45 minutes to climb this huge sand dune, which actually didn’t look that bad but it was so incredibly difficult to climb. I was sinking with every step I took, so hard. Also, like 5 people got sand in their cameras and broke them from the sand getting into it. I had the dslr and I was literally carrying it on my shoulder so that it wouldn’t get sand in it. we made it to the top just as the sun setting and enjoyed the view and we took lots of pictures too. we got to hang out in our desert oasis camp for the rest of the night, have dinner with the berbers, and enjoy the sahara for a little bit more.
We woke up in the morning, had Moroccan tea (which is really good by the way), and then we left the Sahara by camel. The second camel ride was fun too. Ali, Jacob, Erica, and I named our camels again – ali rode Pablo, and I rode oliver. We hung out by the pool and got some sun after lunch, then we got on the bus and traveled to fez (so much bus-ing). We got to the hotel in Fez and had dinner.
In the morning, we went to the medina in Fez, toured it, had lunch there, and shopped a little too. The medina is like the city center, where the schools are/people live/and all the shops are. It was really interesting. We went on a tour and saw the tannery (where they make leather) – the tannery was fun but it smelled like dead cow, they gave us mint leaves to sniff while we were there, the spice shop – where they sell like all kinds of natural teas/herbs and what not, the scarf shop – where we saw this guy weaving scarves of vegetable silk, and the rug factory – where we saw these ladies making a rug, so cool, this one lady even let me sit down next to her and she let me try to do it too. it was really fun. Then we had 30 minutes of free time to go buy things/barter with shopkeepers in the plaza. That part might have been my favorite bc ali, Erica, and I bartered and walked away from lots of shopkeepers but then they would like chase us down the street and be like no no no, how much do you want it for? it was so fun. and I bought lots of earrings for cheap.
The next day, we mostly traveled the whole day to get home. but we stop in assilah for lunch by the beach and to shop in their medina too. the medina in assilah was sooooo different from the medina in fez. It was a lot less crowded and more open. Also, the vendedors didn’t want to barter very much either, but the stuff was a lot cheaper too, so it was fine. I bought cute new shoes & new sandals so it was a successful day and ali/Erica/and I bought pink friendship bracelets too. on the way home, while the bus was driving to the ferry, young Moroccan boys were jumping on our bus at the border. It was heartbreaking to watch. they were trying to like open the bus compartments and hide in them, even if they got hurt. benni (our discoversevilla guide) said that they will do anything to get to spain. really just anything at all.
But overall the trip was amazing and I absolutely loved it. I would love to go back again someday and bring my dad with me (he would have loved the whole sahara adventure!).
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