Southern excursion

So we just spent a week traveling to every city of major importance in the entire south part of the country. This meant we got to see lots of cool and different places at the same time that obviously also meant a lot of time spent traveling—and traveling in our case meant sitting on a bus. So this will probably be a very very long post but bear with me because a lot happened!!
So we left Saturday morning bright and early and drove to a city called Azrou. We drove all morning and for lunch we had a picnic with some barbery apes. These monkeys were soo cool. They were a little scary because they were in no way scared of us and we had lots of food. But the fact that they weren’t scared of us also meant I got lots of close pictures. But I willll admit, I was very terrified of them. There were so many of them! And they’re smart! In my mind, they could have easily arranged an attack and we would have, without a doubt, been defeated. The good thing though is that they saw each other as competition for food as they did us. Even the very very very cute baby monkeys were hit away—even by their moms—when they tried to go for food that was in front of a bigger monkey. They were pretty ferocious… but no one was bitten, eaten or attacked by a monkey, so we survived the picnic.
So Saturday night we stayed in Azrou at hotel Panoramique. In between lunch and dinner we had free time to wonder around the town. The educational point of stopping in this town, besides it also being the half way point to the desert, was to see all the development in the city and paying attention to that ended up being really neat. There was craaazy dichotomy between the rich and poor in this small city. Literally, there were shanty towns—as in pieces of fabric thrown over poles within the confines of the town dump—right down the street from brand new condos. All this new development going up was the closest thing I’ve seen to suburbanization in Morocco. Anyway, I also bought two necklaces made of really pretty stone and we climbed a big rock in the middle of the town that had a huge iron crown sitting on it…? How it got there or why it’s there, no idea—but it was cool!
When we came back from wondering through the town, we played botchee ball (how do you spell that?) and then took a nap before dinner at the hotel. Once it started getting dark we noticed that no lights worked throughout the entire hotel. We’ve stayed in some hotels in the past that turn off the power during the day when it’s unnecessary to turn on the lights to conserve energy. I though that’s what was going on here, but no. Apparently the entire town was in a black out because—rumor has it—someone stole something from the city’s power box. (I use the term “power box” because I don’t know the real term, but the town was missing a vital electric component to giving energy to the entire town, so this stolen item was important! Why someone stole it or, more importantly, HOW, I have no idea.) So it was also freezing cold because we were away from the coast and in the mountains, so we all sat in the dark by the fire in the lobby before we were served dinner at candlelight. Dinner was really great, except for the fact that I experienced my first “full fish on the plate” meal without any warning. All of a sudden an entire fish—head, tail, skin and scales—was staring at me and I was kiiiind of freaked out. Once I figured out how to maneuver around the bones and chew slowly as to spit out the stray bones that made it into my mouth, it was a very delicious meal. The lights came back on in the middle of dinner and being that there was a disgusting fish looking at me on my plate, I preferred the dim lighting. But it was nothing the lettuce garnish couldn’t cover up while I finished! haha
Sunday was a very very very long day on the bus. Although we saw lots of great views on the way, getting all the way to the desert took a very long time. We drove through what’s called the Ziz Valley which is an “oasis” because, although there is a lot of drought throughout this part of the country, there is one flowing river that makes this one valley through the mountains flourish immensely. It was actually a pretty surreal sight being able to see these dry mountains on either side of a lush valley full of thousands of palm trees. BUT here’s the great part, there was this weird fog/haze business happening too, and the guy who briefly spoke to us about the valley said it was weather he has only seen 3 times in 25 years. THREE TIMES IN TWENTY FIVE YEARS?!?! What are those odds! Hahaha of coooouuurse. Why wouldn’t that happened the one time I go to the Sahara Desert?! Well, we finally stopped for lunch somewhere and had this meat pie type thing. It was kind of like a huge hot pocket, except it wasn’t delicious like a hot pocket. This pie later becomes the main suspect in a series of illnesses which I will soon describe. But anyway, after lunch we got our overnight bags off the bus and got into land rovers to take us one hour to this small village on the edge of the Sahara Desert called Merzouga. In Merzouga we first stopped at this NGO for women and children. A woman there gave us a small talk about what they did, and the moral of the story was that they were most importantly a school for children during the day and they also helped women learn specific trades like making carpets or clothes or shoes, so that they could do something to support themselves or their families while living in this very desolate place. Then we took the land rovers to the camels! I was so excited to ride camels into the sunset, but there ended up being two factors that really killed the mood. One being this fog/haze thing (it was not made of water they told us so it wasn’t technically fog, but I don’t know what it really was) and the second factor being that we were running really late, so when we got out of our land rovers we were instantly dragged by the camel guides and thrown onto camels. They just kept saying “come on come on!” It was literally 30 seconds from when I stepped out of the car and was sitting on a camel. And by the way camels are TALL! They are sitting down when you sit in the saddle and when they stand up they get their hind legs up first which almost throws you off forwards, then they get their front legs up which almost throws you off backwards. All the while they groan and make this awful noise like “I haaaaate taking tourists into the sand dunes. Whyyyyy are you making me do this!” Camels are very grumpy animals, but if I were one of these camels, I would be grumpy, too. But it was really funny and I laughed very hard watching everyone get on, and at myself because I was actually pretty positive I was going to fall off. (I didn’t by the way). They Saharan men/camel guides /self proclaimed nomads walked alongside us for like 30 minutes into the desert. I felt really stupid riding camels while they just walked alongside us, but they were very nice. I asked what my camel’s name was and they informed me that they don’t name their camels and I was sooo surprised by this! I was so excited to know my camel’s name! That’s one of my favorite parts of horseback riding, but ya know, why is it that we name our horses really? It’s kind of dumb and the only point is to entertain the people riding them. So even though my camel was a boy, I named him Laila because it’s my favorite Arabic name. We parked our camels after 30 minutes and ran to the top of some sand dunes to, in theory, watch the sun set. But at his point it was almost black so the sun was long gone, but the fog would have prevented us from seeing it anyway. Some brave souls rolled down the sand but sand in my pants, in the dark, in the middle of nowhere was not appealing to me so I played it safe and just enjoyed the view I couldn’t take pictures of. We took the camels back to our hotel in the pitch black, and this was kind of disappointing, but we made plans to come out again to watch the sunrise in the morning to take better pictures of the dunes. We were also at this point only about 30 kilometers away from Algeria which just kind of felt cool.
So, I kind of think it’s really important to talk about the infrastructure of this town and other Berber village towns. Our hotel was really cool, and the classroom we saw was really well maintained, but it was all made out of this mud/hay paste. I’m told the word for this concoction doesn’t translate to English but it was amazing to see every building, when you looked at it close up, was made of mud! I mean I knew this type of structure existed, but it was just done so well, it surprised me! From far away it looked so perfected it seemed like the only thing it could possibly be made out of is plaster, and I guess when I think of mud as the main component of a building, I don’t think of the building as looking well maintained. I was wrong. It was so cool. BUT here’s the fun part, even though from afar it looked very sturdy, it was still made out of dirt. And when dirt gets wet, it turns back into mud. The mysterious fog we had been seeing happened to transform itself into a thunderstorm later that night. And when there’s a storm that apparently happens once every 10 years, the buildings are not really prepared. AKA our hotel began to melt. Seriously, melt is sooo the right word it’s not even funny! One group of girls had to totally switch rooms because their ceiling caved in when a dripping leak quickly turned into what is better described as a pouring faucet. We had two small leaks too although they didn’t force us to switch rooms. One of my roommates couldn’t sleep in her bed though and leak number 2 was only discovered the next day when my jeans were soaking wet. Hahahah it was so ridiculous! Hahhaha the stairs were literally spongy! I thought the whole this was going to collapse! But we did survive the night and we woke up very very early to walk back out into the dunes to watch sunrise and I got a few blurry pictures before my camera died L But my roommate got lots of good pictures I’ll make sure she sends me.
I couldn’t go back to sleep before breakfast so I got like 5 hours of sleep that night, ick. Monday was, then another very long long day of bus time. And it was also a day of everyone getting very sick and having to be sick in Turkish toilets. Let me just say, I.hate.turkish.toilets. They are so gross and usually smell sooo awful I want to vomit. BUT I am getting pretty good at mastering the not peeing on my pants or my shoes part (some people haven’t totally gotten that down yet). But, anyway, the real thing to talk about here is diarrhea. Oh my gosh diarrhea. I was somehow very very lucky and did not get this illness, but I was a rare breed on Monday. We had to pull over and stop the bus, I think 7 times NOT at rest stops so people could either vomit or poop behind cactuses. It was sooooo funny. At one point, my friend Tommy was walking back to the bus from behind a cactus and I was like, did he have boots on before? No, he had flip-flops that were now covered in thick mud. Apparently rainstorms in the desert also make for bad pooping behind cactuses. He just came walking back to the bus looking so defeated! AAHAHAHA it was literally one of the most hilarious moments I’ve ever seen. He was also laughing at himself, so I’m not being a total bitch. I believe his quote was something along the lines of “What’s the best thing that can happen to you while you’re shitting your brains out behind a cactus? 5 inches of mud!” After him, I know of at least three people who had to do an emergency poop outside the bus. Ugh.. I felt so bad for them! But more, importantly I was sooo grateful it wasn’t me!!! We were also on a very windy road and a lot of people got motion sick, too. Dramamine has officially become the single most important thing I brought to Morocco—works like a charm!
Ok so after lunch we are just going down windy road after windy road and then we come across, what else? A mudslide! A real life, dangerous mudslide that, by the time we got there, had already pretty much taken out the road we needed to cross. We were stopped there for about an hour. It was actually a really cool sight, but it was also scary! The water eventually slowed way down and a few cars forged themselves successfully across so we were torn whether or not to try to get the big tour bus across. Here’s a great example of how our SIT program is so not actually school. At one point our director (who is not really our teacher more like our friend), in all seriousness, said, “ok , let’s vote on whether or not we should take the bus across.” WHAT?! I mean I’m all about a fair democratic vote, but it’s not like we are at all at liberty to make that judgment call! Hahahaha Oh my god I just couldn’t believe what was going on. I think the executive decision of whether or not to cross ended by being made by our academic director that we called on the telephone! He talk to our program director and the bus driver and I guess said go ahead. It was so bizarre and I actually thought we might be stuck in this tiny town in the middle of nowhere for days. BUT we crossed successfully and without being washed away! I did feel awful for this little village that will probably have to wait years before this road is fixed. All approximately 200 people who live in this village stood by and cheered us on while we crazy tourists crossed the mudslide in a humongous bus. It’s probably a story that will be told for generations… (joke)
A few hours later we stopped at a rest stop to use the rest room and, to prove our insanity at this point in the day, we actually physically raced a group of old Germans who pulled up their tour bus at the exact same time. I was confused at what was going on at first and why everyone was running, but then I looked across the lot and bunch of 50-60 year old Germans were running, too! Hahaha it was so funny, we showed no mercy to the fact that they were our elders! After this day, we just needed to pee! BUT good thing this rest stop had like 20 toilets so the line moved quickly anyway. Also, why is it that the only people who visit Morocco are 20 or 60? There must not be a Moroccan calling to anyone of any age in between. It’s a rule: you must be in college, or retired to travel in Morocco.
So obviously, with the many stops of the day we made it to our final destination of Ouarzazat very late. Here we stayed in a dormitory of a girl’s school. The school was actually really cool and we had dinner with about 60 of girls themselves. We sat at tables with about 3 of us and 5 of them and spoke in an Arabic/French/English mess. And mostly it took 5 minutes to get one sentence through, but I got to kind of use some Arabic which was very exciting. We all slept on one big dorm room with lots of bunks but the beds were so comfortable and we got to sleep in until 8:30 which felt like heaven! OHHH my goodness I almost forgot to talk about the milk incident. Ok so, I have long ago accepted the fact that milk varies too much from country to country for me to expect my cravings for cold, skim milk to ever be satisfied. But in Morocco, where a lot of the economy revolves around farming, milk sometimes is a very important part of someone’s meal—especially in these small towns. Most of the girls at this school live in the dorms because they are from these small Berber villages that are miles away and they can’t make the trek home every day. So for these girls who live in farms, fresh and therefore THICK milk is an everyday thing. Wellll let me just say I have possibly never acted so immature as when the canister of warm, thick, sour cream-selling milk got delivered to our table RIGHT under my nose. I was sitting at a table with two other Americans and then 7 Moroccan girls. None of the three of us really spoke French so we couldn’t legitimately communicate with them even though we tried. So Camille and I hurried up and poured water into our glasses but Sue wasn’t fast enough and someone poured her a big glass of this milk. Oh, my I thought I was going to die laughing watching her just LOOK at her milk. We had already had such a long day and we were just ancy and giddy and delirious and I just thought it was possibly the funniest thing to happen, especially because it didn’t happen to me. Sue did end up getting one full sip into her mouth without spitting it back out. BUT the rest of the pitcher, for some reason, was sitting right next to my plate and I just kept smelling it! And smelling it may have been just as awful as tasting it, although I wouldn’t know. It literally smelled like sour cream, and the idea of maybe pouring sour cream onto the couscous may not have been horrible, but drinking it was simply repulsive. And Camille and I may have had the most immature moments of our lives, but we got a very solid laugh out of the whole situation
Ok so by this point it’s still only Monday!!! It had already been such a long trip! Ahhhh I slept so so so well that night! (This is already 4 full single-spaced pages on Microsoft Word… fell free to take a break and read the rest later)
Ok so Tuesday morning we drove to Marrakesh which ended up being an awesome awesome city and I loved being there. On the way there, though, we stopped at a micro-credit organization because this excursion has to be a little bit educational as wellJ. We have been talking a lot of about micro-credit in class because I think this concept has been especially successful in Morocco as I believe it has in a lot of places all over the world. The concept behind it is to give very small loans to people or groups of people (ranging from 500-15,000 dollars) so they can start small businesses or do start doing some sort of small investment. The majority of these loans also go to women. BUT, I have to say I don’t totally buy it. This organization is pretty much JUST a bank. They do NO training, NO help with actually using the money they give, and they do nothing for people who can’t pay their loans back. Apparently there are laws that ensure these organizations simply remain a financial part of these people’s lives for one reason or another that was very unclear, but I feel like these organizations could be so much more efficient in what they do if their goal is really to help poor people…?
Anyway, that’s obviously not the fun part. The fun part is called Marrakesh. We got to the city in the late afternoon with plenty of time to wonder around. Our hotel was right in the medina, across the street from the very famous shopping/souk/people trying to rip you off square. I was really prepared to dislike the city a lot and not want to buy anything because I assumed it would be way over priced because it’s such a touristy location. BUT I had no trouble at all spending money! Haha It was actually a spectacular view to see all the snake charmers and men with pet monkeys and women dying to rub henna all over you. I was really excited to see the snake charmers but they were actually really lame. I had to pay 3 dirhams just to take a picture, and it wasn’t even impressive. They just had like 10 snakes lying all over each other and the man playing a loud clarinet for no reason. It was definitely not legit, but it was still kinda cool. The men with monkeys scared me a little because they would just kind of throw a monkey on your back and I was still terrified of them from the picnic a few days earlier. But my friend Alice is fearless and she let this HUGE monkey sit on her, and we took some pictures even though we knew he’d charge way too much for each picture we took. But my goodness, these guys probably makes serious money off that! Although I felt so bad for the monkeys on those chainsL
That night after dinner in the hotel we all went and found a bar close by and got to order a few drinks and finally relax and be CLEAN and the same time. It was really nice. I think everyone in our entire group went out, except the 3 people still recovering from illness. The thing about alcohol in Morocco… well it’s obviously not very prevalent in a Muslim country, but when it is around, it’s totally geared towards tourists—specifically Europeans being that they are the largest tourist group that comes to Morocco. Therefore, drinks are absurdly expensive compared to what everything else costs in this country. A drink, on average costs $10. And somehow, we are very willing to pay it! hahaha I don’t feel bad because we had a lot of fun and went to a very nice place and enjoyed ourselves a lot!
On the way back, Pat and I were desperate for food being that it was 1:30am and that we had just spent the evening at bar, that’s pretty self-explanatoryJ. So we wondered into the square and very bravely just sat down at one of the many mini restaurants that just set up a grill on the middle of the street. We were actually warned not to order food from these places because it’s just hard to tell if the food will make you violently ill or not. But being that we were where we were and the time of night, let’s just say we braved it. We sat down and had no idea what to order and the guy said, in broken English, “you want mixed kabob?” We said ok. We had no idea what or how much we ordered, but we were just being adventurous and did it. So we ended up getting two plates of fries, two plates of the classic Moroccan tomato/ onion /cilantro salad, a plate of olives, a small water bottle, a small kabob of vegetables, chicken, what we think was lamb, and what we think was beef. All for 85 dirhams (about 5 bucks each). That beats late night Jack-in-the-Box any day. It was also delicious. It was probably extra delicious for many reasons, but either way I enjoyed myself immensely. On the way back we were contemplating how sick we would be in the middle of the night, and admittingly, it was a serious risk to take. The sticks of meat they put in the grill had most likely been sitting out all day and god knows how many flies made that their home throughout the day. BUT it was worth it because guess what… I didn’t even get diarrhea! (after so many people diarrheaed themselves on the side of the street the day before, talking about it is like talking about getting a headache, I have nothing holding me back, so be prepared for free-range diarrhea talk at any point hahaha).
So the next day we just had a free day in Marrakesh which was awesome! I bought so much stuff for some reason. I just got this overwhelming sensation to buy ALL my gifts right then and there that I just couldn’t be stopped! And there were lots and lots and lots of great shops and, actually, because there was so much competition, prices were really low! And I have become an expert bargainer. I used to be so scared to bargain, but now, I must say, I rock. Actually, I’m still probably getting ripped off in a serious way, but I feel good about it and in the end, that’s all that matters! So I won’t say anymore as to ruin the surprises but I have to say Dallas’s gift is the cutest thing ever made and it cost me approximately 8 dollars.
After some shopping in the morning, we went to check out some gardens in the newer part of town. We went to this garden that was supposedly funded in a big way by Yves St. Laurent the famous fashion designer…? Who knows but it was gorgeous and I took so many pictures of so many plants!
THEN we had the best chocolate milkshake of my entire life (the first time I’ve craved something American and that craving was really really satisfied... this milkshake was god sent and I got another one later that night). For dinner Wednesday night we had decided to check out this Thai restaurant the guidebook had suggested. We knew it would be pricy, but we were willing to pay for good food. And yes it was deliiiiiiiiiiicious. I miss going out to dinner in a big way—especially because overall, the food here had been majorly disappointing. So there were 11 of us and the total bill was 4,000 dirhams. That just seemed like the most absurd amount of money! Alice alone spent like 450 because she had an appetizer and two drinks, and she was like omg, omg, I just spend so much money. Turns out, 450 durham=51 dollars. HAHAHA put into perspective like that was just so crazy because we have been so trained to want to pay 20 dirhams for everything. Hahha it was just such a surreal moment. We were at maybe the nicest restaurant I’ve ever been to, definitely the highest-range restaurant in the country and it was still about average for dinner in the US. The psychology of money is fascinating…
Thursday morning we left Marrakesh and went to our last stop of the trip which was Essaouira (pronounced esso-wera). Essaouira is one of the many coastal cities and it’s close to Agidir which is where we went a few weeks ago. I ended up loving this city too! But actually, on the way there we drove through a part of the country that grows Argan trees. Argan trees produce this nut that makes amazing oil and other food and beauty products and it’s very famous in Morocco. It’s famous because this region in Morocco and one region in Algeria are the only regions in the world with Argan trees so the products that come from this area are very uniquely Moroccan. (Algeria doesn’t make the same products from their trees.) They have also kept the products and the production of the products from being seriously capitalized and mechanized because it employs so many local women in the area. We stopped by one of the “factories” and these old women still use stones and sticks throughout the whole process which I just thought was so cool! It’s amazing that anyone has enough power to keep production from changing. The country could be making a lot of money if they better exported this stuff, but they don’t because then these women would lose their jobs, and certain women’s groups protect them. It was a very unique situation—especially compared to any business in the US. Argan trees are also famous because they are the home to a species of tree-climbing goats. I’ve heard about these supposed goats but never knew if it was true. But apparently it is! We never stopped the bus to take pictures of the goats in trees which was disappointing, but there were indeed many goats sitting on top of these trees! Hahaha It was such a funny sight. I’ll have to at least get a post card of it before I leave.
So I really liked Essaouira because it was a very small, pedestrian friendly town, on the beach. We wondered through the medina. This city is best known for its cedar wood products and for the spice souks. I really wanted to buy some spices so we went into one guys little shop and he was a. very cute and b. spoke excellent English. He told us he had a degree as a medicinal herbalist and he also had lots of funny concoctions to solve things like baldness and cancer. Don’t worry, I didn’t totally buy into that side of the store, but the spices he mixed smelled so goooood. I definitely bought some of those and he also made us Berber tea which had like 10 different ingredients and was delicious.
Later, our SIT group had a soccer game on the beach that I did not participate in, BUT it was just very nice to all relax together on the beach and kind of wind down from the long week of traveling. Essaouira is also a port city and when I think of a “port city” I think of huge cargo ships bringing train cars full of toys from China, but then again, not everyone lives in LA. This was a fishing port and it was just beautiful to see all the boats coming back in in the evening and the fishermen actually selling the fish they had spent all day catching. There were lots of seagulls flying around, too. It was just really nice scenery.
We left the next morning and headed the 7 hours back to Rabat. The majority of people stayed in Essaouira for the weekend but I just wanted to get back, and I didn’t want to pay for a bus back when we had a free one to take us instead! Now I have the weekend to chill out, check my e-mail and hopefully talk to my mother on the phone.
I can’t believe you made it through this entire post! You’re committed to my blog and I so appreciate itJ