MOROCCO!
I’m apologizing in advance that this is going to be VERY long. So be prepared..
I want to say that Morocco was my favorite place that I’ve been this summer BUT it’s really hard to compare it with anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s on a whole other level. Before this…Croatia was my favorite place. It still might be, just in a totally different context. That was more of a fun, beachy vacation place. Morocco was just an explosion of culture. This was the first place that I didn’t feel like a complete tourist and we actually did things that were sooo unlike anything else I’ve gotten to do in other countries (aside from riding camels because now I am a professional). A lot of people on SAS didn’t enjoy Morocco nearly as much as we did, and I think that it’s safe to say we owe it all to our tour guide, Simo. He was literally the best person I’ve met out of all the countries we’ve been to. A girl that went on SAS last summer hooked us up with him and we contacted him about a month ago telling him we were coming and he just set up a complete itinerary for us and set us up with this AMAZING place to stay and he was just so great. He goes to the American University in Marrakech so he spoke really, really good English. It was so awesome to not only learn so much from him, but we got to teach him a lot as well which is really rewarding. The thing about Morocco was that there wasn’t any particular event that made it the best place ever…there was just a feeling that you get when you’re there that made it so eminent. It had such good vibes all the time. The people were friendlier (although I think my opinion of this may be swayed since we just came from Egypt where they were awful…but we really did hardly get harassed which could have been because we were traveling with 5 guys plus 2 Moroccan tourguides OR the people are just better…I’m going to believe option number 2) and they didn’t hassle you to death. It was a lot cleaner than Egypt, but you could definitely tell you were still in Africa. A lot of these places we’ve been to have a new section and an old section and Marrakech was one of them as well. You could be in the Old Medina and play with monkeys and snake charmers and get fresh squeezed orange juice or you could go to the nightclubs and Pizza Hut (don’t worry..we only had it one time), KFC (the Moroccans are obsessed for some strange reason, ew) and McDonalds in the New City. It was a lot like that in Istanbul and Dubrovnik too. The two were even separated by a giant wall. Prettyyyy cool.
Day One: So we took the train from Casablanca to Marrakech (there’s not really anything significant about Marrakech except that it’s the main tourist area and it’s about 3 hours inland from the coast) and we were shoved into little compartments with no one that spoke English. It was fun. Kind of. Once we got there, our little friend Simo was waiting for us with our names on a sign. It was really cute. We got into our Mercedes Benz bus and met our driver, Mufasa, and off we went to our riad. Riads are the main accommodations in Morocco. They’re basically old palaces turned into a mix between a hotel and bed n breakfast. They’re all privately owned and hold about 9 people. So we basically got a riad to ourselves. We got soooo lucky. It was so beautiful and the owner was the nicest little French lady, Sadia. She gave us each huge hugs and a kiss when she greeted us at the door. Sooo cute. We all sat down in the courtyard and had mint tea (it’s actually sugar water with a little bit of a mint flavor so naturally, I was obsessed). After that we went our to walk around the main square in the Old Medina…it’s called Djemaa El Fna. I have no clue how to even go about saying that so I just call it “the square”. It’s the main gathering area with all the monkeys, storytellers, scribes, snake charmers, etc. And they also set up all kinds of awesome food stands and a million fresh squeezed orange juice and grapefruit juice stands. It was super cheap for a glass and it was the tastiest orange juice I’ve ever had. We played this random game that they had set up in the center of the square where you hold a fishing pole sort of thing with a ring on the end of it and you try to get it over the top of a soda bottle and if you do it then you win the soda. It was one of those things that looks really easy and then when you go to do it, it’s almost impossible. We were hooked on that for awhile until we decided we were starving and went to dinner. We went to the rooftop terrace of a different riad and had a traditional Moroccan meal. There were all kinds of fruits and veggies and their classic soup and lamb with figs and chicken cooked in a tangine. It was really, really delicious. It’s so weird to think that two months ago I never would have touched half the food that was on the table. I’ve become so brave :) After that we went back to the riad and got ready to meet up with all of our other lovely SAS friends at the biggest club in Africa, Pascha! We rolled up in our Benz while everyone else was in taxis. It was great. Once we got to the front of the line, we find out we get the “blue-eyed discount” which actually means we pay like 5 times more than everyone else. We’re all broke college students, not rich Americans..they’ll never understand hahah. Pretty much anyone that doesn’t speak English gets in for 100 dirham ($11 US) and we are oh so lucky and get to pay 350. Of course I was not okay with that so I snuck in while no one was looking and everyone else paid. Oopsies :) It’s so awesome to hang out with your friends in completely foreign countries..it just makes everything much more fun. So we stayed out until like 5am and had an amazing time until we had to wake up at like 8 am the next morning. Blehhhh.
Day Two: We woke up bright and early and Sadia served us breakfast on the terrace of our riad and we had crepes and tea with honey and marmalade. It was yummyyy. Then we drove out to Ourika Valley to hike to waterfalls! We made some stops on the way though. First we stopped to go on a little camel ride once again. Instead of the desert, we went through the mountains this time so it was a nice change of scenery. I don’t think my camel had a name this time but it was kind of gross and being attacked by flies. And the stupid camel behind me kept biting my butt while we were riding! So we’re just trotting along and all of a sudden three men carrying rifles walk towards us. They’re a lot scarier in real life ahhh. We were scared pretty much the whole time because we could just hear gunshots but didn’t know where they were coming from, but apparently they were just hunting wild pigs. I’m pretty sure they missed and shot a dog though :( We were ready for our camel ride to be over after that sooo we got back on the bus and went a little Berber village in the High Atlas Mountains. Berber people dominate a lot of Morocco. They speak Berber and have their own way of life and are not planning on changing that anytime soon. The villages consist of little houses made out of mud. They seemed like reenactments of the old days that you would see in museums, but that’s actually how they live. Everything was really old fashioned and the goats and cows lived in the house with them (gross). The only thing that I found really strange was that even though they were all old fashioned, they had a satellite dish on the top of their mud house and the women were watching TV while sitting on hay couches. Talk about cognitive dissonance…Anyway, we went up to the roof of the house and laid on rugs and just kind of took it all in. The Berber man played us some music and sang while they served us more mint tea and we all just kind of laid there in silence just observing everything for hours. It was such an indescribable feeling. After that, we went on to the Argan Oil Womens’ Association. Argan oil is the main export of Morocco and it’s just a really nutty oil that you can use for cooking or cosmetics. They showed us how it was made and then wanted us to buy all their products and I’m a sucker so I got lotion and some really yummy almond butter/honey/argan oil/nutella-ish type thing. Once we left there, it started to downpour. It was crazy. We were stuck in traffic going up the mountain for a little while but we just people watched out the window and were completely entertained. We were driving along a river the whole time that was slowly getting fuller and fuller and there was just sketchy handmade bridge after bridge going across. It was so neat. Until we found out that we were walking across those too haha. We had lunch at a little restaurant (couscous!!!) and waited for the rain to stop so we could still go hiking. Luckily it stopped so we got to go. It wasn’t really a hike. It was more like rock climbing and river crossing back and forth. I guess it was more difficult than usual because it had just rained so the river was kind of out of control, but I think that made it more fun. It definitely brought out my nature girl side, which hasn’t happened in a long time haha. Once we got to the waterfall, we were just speechless. It was gorgeous. Nothing like a tropical waterfall you would see in Hawaii, but it was still pretty. The water was too dirty for my liking so I opted to just take pictures while other people got in and freezed to death. I was satisfied with my decision hahah. Once we left we had to book it down to the bottom because we were 3 hours away and had to get to a hamam (oh God..just wait) in Marrakech pretty soon. Oh also, the only CD our driver had was Michael Jackson’s greatest hits. I now know every word to every song. Sweet.
We got back into Marrakech and had to go to this little herb pharmacy thing to get our “supplies” for the hamam. We sat in there for a while and got to try all kinds of different herbs and spices that supposedly do different things for your body (totally a bunch of BS but everyone fell for it) and it was really hilarious and now I have clear nasal passages so I guess it was worth it. Now..as for the hammam…I don’t even know where to begin. It’s kind of a tough thing to write about because it was such an experience that I don’t know how it would sound in writing. I’m tempted to film Jess and I talking about it because it was just such a ridiculous event and words don’t really do it justice. I’ll do my best..you just have to understand that as horrible as it sounds, we actually had a really good time and just laughed it off. You have to be a really, really unreserved person to handle this kind of thing in my opinion so I’m just really glad I was with Jess and Kylie because we just laughed hysterically the entire time. This hammam (Turkish bath house, remember?) made the one in Turkey seem like just a little precursor. Plus that one was beautiful inside. This one, not so much. First of all, we get there at like 11 o’clock at night and we’re the only ones there and I think they were closing so the hammam ladies were already disgruntled. So we get in there..naked with huge, gnarly naked Moroccan women once again, and they started treating us like prisoners of war. We basically were just in this hot tile room all sitting in a circle having buckets of water poured on us when we least expected it. Then they start the scrub. Oh my god..I have never been scrubbed so hard in my life. The purpose of it is to scrub off your dead skin but I literally had no more skin left. No more tan, no more sunburn, no more tanlines. It was all in little skin noodles surrounding me on the ground. Soooo gross. And so painful haha. Jess got a skin noodle in her hair. It was very amusing. So they’re scrubbing my entire body and feet and then they so graciously scrub Jess’ face with same scrubber that was just on my feet. It was so disgusting but we were already sitting in a pool of dead skin and oil so things couldn’t get much grosser so we just laughed. Anytime they would want us to move or do anything they would just drag us around through the slippery pool by our feet. Then they proceed to give us a “massage” and then repeatedly doused us with water straight to the face. And of course there’s a huge bucket that they were cleaning the scrubbers in filled with dead skin and I turn to talk to Jess and I get this massive bucket straight to the head. There’s a lot more to it buuuut it’s kind of one of those things you have to hear about in person or you just had to be there. It doesn’t sound funny..but I promise it was. We just left a bit traumatized. So now that my hair is a huge mop of oil..we run back to the riad and somewhat get ready to go out to dinner and then out to a hookah bar and belly dancing show. Lovely. We ate at a little café that had spaghetti so of course I HAD to get it because that then fulfilled my goal of eating spaghetti in every single country!! I didn’t really do it on purpose until the end when I realized that I really did have spaghetti everywhere we went. I think Spain wins for best spaghetti I had though. I don’t know if I ever talked about it on my blog but I had this amazing pizza that had spaghetti on top of it. I don’t know what was so special about it..I think just some different spices but my mouth is salivating just thinking about it. Anyways..so we went to this place called Montecristo which was like 4 levels of a restaurant/bar/club..we went to the rooftop and smoked some hookah and watched bellydancers dance to American remixed music. It was really neat, but I was sooo exhausted. After that we just went home and passed out because we had yet another big day ahead of us.
Day Three: We woke up and had another crepe and tea breakfast on the roof before Jess, Dan and I went to get registered at the Marrakech city hall with Simo. I’m not really sure why it was only the 3 of us because there were 8 of us total but we basically just got registered as a guest in Marrakech so if anything went wrong they would somehow be able to find us? I’m not really sure, but we got to sign the guestbook of Marrakech, Morocco, which was not something you get to do very often! Once we got back to the riad (it was quite the maze through all these shops and little alleyways and the only way you could get back there is if you could literally just remember because there were no street signs anywhere) and got everyone else we walked to the Bahia Palace (boring), Dar Si Said Museum (even more boring) and Majorelle Gardens (really beautiful and awesome; it has plants from 5 different continents in it) but it was 115 degrees out so I was pretty much dying. Then we took (another) horse drawn carriage to our lunch at a Moroccan family’s home. They lived in a typical Moroccan home kinda similar to our riad and it was really nice. It was such a strange, but awesome experience to be around an entire family (all generations live together) that doesn’t speak a word of English, but somehow we were able to spend 6 hours there and communicate and have a great time. They taught us how to make mint tea (like 20 blocks of sugar and some mint leaves and boiling water) and we just hung out with them while they lived their lives. They had 3 little kids that we got to play with…one was a baby that was probably less than a year old and when we walked into the house at first they just handed me the baby…uhh what? I was holding a child that I did not know and I was trying to speak English to it. This would never happen in America haha. They made us a huge bowl of couscous and just stuck like 10 spoons in it so we all shared it and it was just scrumptious. When we finished they took us upstairs to do henna! It’s such a social thing there…like all the women’s entire bodies were covered with weird designs and it was completely normal. We couldn’t really tell them what we wanted so we kind of just let them go to town on us. They did our feet and our hands with crazy floral designs before we finally made them stop. The boys all got Superman, Batman, etc on their chests..so embarrassing. So after we were all stuffed and covered in henna we walked over to the main souks of Marrakech. They were the ones that were used in Sex and the City 2! We got to see the exact stall that the girls bought the shoes at in the movie..it was awesome. I didn’t get anything..Jess got a teapot. She’s special. We’re still trying to figure out how she’s going to get that home. Once we left the souk, we got dinner at Pizza Hut! We had to be exposed to a little bit of American before our long voyage home..it was as good as always..even though they were out of the pan crust, which is obviously the best one so we had to settle for cheese stuffed, but it was still delish. We wandered around Marrakech some more until we were all too tired to function and then we went back to the riad one last time before waking up the next morning to drive allll the way back to Casablanca, of course listening to MJ the whole time.
Sooo that’s pretty much my Morocco adventure. I can’t believe this was the port that we had the shortest amount of time in. That’s unfortunate. I wouldn’t have minded cutting out Egypt and doubling our time in Maroc. Bummer. Nahh I’m just kidding. Egypt was a great cultural experience and now I never have to go back.
Last night we laid on the top deck of the ship and they turned all the lights off so we could watch the meteor shower. That was probably one of my favorite memories on SAS so far. We all just laid together and sang lame songs and got to see lots of amazing shooting stars. It was just so great. Love love love my friends. I’m going to miss them so mucho.
I can’t believe it’s almost over…one week. It’s going to be so weird going back to real life with a working phone and I actually have to make food for myself and not get my bed made every single day. How sad.
The Ambassador’s Ball is in a few days..gettin excited!
Miss you. xox
