Saturday, June 22, 2013

morocco

Morocco, my most anticipated trip and the most expensive. Why Morocco? For one, I wanted to be able to say that I had been to Africa twice this year but also because I have heard a lot of mixed things about Morocco and wanted to see for myself what it was like. I knew I would never feel comfortable traveling there alone since the country is predominantly Muslim and women are not seen as equals and could possibly face grave danger when traveling alone, so I decided to go with a group called Discover Sevilla. Their trip description was amazing. Hitting five cities and sleeping 3 nights in the Sahara Desert, camping under the stars, meeting tribes from the area, it would take several hour long camel rides to get to our camp site (ouch), climbing sand dunes in the freezing night air in hope to see the most beautiful moon of your life... I could go on.
I had to wake up at 5 in the morning to take a taxi to a spot where a bus would pick us up and take us to the ferry. The bus ride was about four hours so we slept most of the trip. We went through customs and got onto the ferry for another two hours and WALAA we were in Africa!!! We headed over to a hotel to have lunch and from there we spent a lot of time in the bus, probably close to some 20 hours in total, we went through the snow- who knew there would be snow in Morocco??.. then we got to dry land..the rocky desert... and finally the Sahara! In order to get to the Sahara we had to take jeeps through the rocky desert. My jeep ride was probably one of the most memorable moments of my semester. A local man drove us in the jeep blasting a live concert taping of Celine Dion..and singing along! I remember laughing so hard that I couldn't even feel all of the bumps and curves of the drive. Laughing so hard and being in mid air because the driver would drive so fast over the rocky terrain that I couldn't keep my butt on the seat.

A surreal moment was getting on a camel for the first time. We arrived in the desert at about 10 at night and the only light was from the cars. The camels were sitting down waiting for us to jump on. When you get on a camel while they are sitting down you have to get ready for the lift off, they kind of wobble up so you have to try to put all your wait on the back of the camel so that you wouldn't fall forward while it was trying to get up, you would hear a lot of "LEAN BACK!!!" One they were standing I became very nervous, those babies are TALL and the way they move makes you think your going to fall right off, different camels have different humps, the ones that we were on only had one big hump in the middle so you can imagine the difficulty of balancing on that with all of your belongings on your own back. Once the cars were gone, and the camels began to take us toward camp. It was so dark that I couldn't even see the camel in front of me, I don't think I could even see my own hand in front of me, the only light came from the moon, it was so bright that night, I was overcome with excitement, I would look up at the sky and it was covered in stars-as far as thee eye can see. I probably saw about 4 shooting stars that night it was incredible. We got to camp got settled in, had dinner and played drums with some locals..danced next to the fire, the usual...


Afterwards we were faced with the challenge of climbing sand dunes. Let me just saw that is a WORKOUT! Imagine running in sand, but trying to climb it, your feet are constantly sinking.. if you don't move fast enough you fall back, the sand is cold..your hands get numb, your thighs weak from climbing on sinking sand stairs.. but you can't give up, everyone is watching. The people that made it to the top keep cheering you on and boasting about the view, there is no turning back now. Out of breath and exhausted, I laid down in the cold sand stared out to the sky and thought, wow, this is living.




So I'm in Morocco, of course I'm going to take a dozen camel pictures..


Rocky desert 


Jeep driver and my new friend Katie!


Night camel ride



After climbing the sand dunes...catching my breath 




Middle of the desert 






Because " this is Africa!" 

where they get water


Climbing sand dunes to watch the sunset



My hand print
A camel hand print





Where they would dye sheep skin to make leather 


local community 


Cooscoos all I ate while I was there, it was like tiny rice with vegies

Mosque 



Africa has snow


Monkey in the snow


pony rides in the snow, only way these people make any money

Goodbye Morocco, it was chill.