Morocco Post 2

Sorry, these are a little out of order, just been adding them when I have time.

Hello-
I am back on the ship from our stay in Morocco!  It was awesome. The food was very good, and my trips were awesome.  First I did a trip to Marrakech, Zagora, and a camel trek.  This was awesome. We left the morning that we arrived in Casablanca and immediately headed towards Marrakech. We stopped at the big market upon arrival in Marrakech and it was crazy. There were so many people walking every direction, and cars and mopeds, and donkeys and mules with carts, and stands with snake charmers, it was just a mess!  We almost felt like we had to hold hands!  Unfortunately our first day in the market was cut very short by a torrential downpour. It does not rain very frequently in Morocco, but while we were there the skies opened up!  Of course the market is an outdoor market, so we ended up getting drenched. At first we were able to avoid the downpour by ducking into a little passageway that was dry, as more and more people discovered our dry spot though it got really full in there.  We were getting a little nervous when the shop owners surrounding our little area decided to turn off all the lights, but we realized this was because the flooded streets were a hazard to the electrical supplies that ran along the floor of the markets.  We ended up dashing back to where the bus was supposed to pick us up because we felt a little uneasy being the only women, and the only tourists in the area.  Unfortunately, just because of the downpour the bus did not decide to come early and we ended up waiting in the pouring rain (really heavy rain) for nearly 45 minutes for the bus to come. There was nowhere to hide waiting for the bus either! 

We slept in Marrakech that evening at a hotel and then continued the eight hour drive to Zagora the next day. The bus ride was crazy! It was through the High Atlas Mountains. The mountain passes were VERY windy and the bus seemed to take them way too fast. We were like falling out of our seats many times! Water bottles and backpacks were sliding across the bus!  Once we arrived in Zagora we left the busses and got on camelback! There were 85 camels, but 170 students so we had to share a camel. We decided one would walk and one would ride and we would switch off.  The camel riding was fun. It was pretty bouncy, and VERY tall.  We traveled about 45 minutes into the Sahara where a nomad camp was waiting for us. This camp had been set up just for our arrival. It was set up with an entrance with an area of Moroccan rugs all laid out perfectly with an area in the middle for a campfire. Off the middle section were the 3 large dining tents and about 30 small tents for sleeping.  We had nearly 2.5 hours to waste before dinner (until after the sun went down for Ramadan), so we just hung out and explored near the camp and watched the sun set. Dinner was very good, we had a beef stew tangine and vegetables. The Berber women also made fresh pita-style bread over the campfire for us that was hot and fresh and delicious!  After dinner we had melon for dessert. After the dessert there were some demonstrations by the nomads in singing and dancing, and everyone got involved. Once those were done people hung out and chatted. We explored outside the camp and found a huge sand dune with a great view of the stars. There were about 20 SAS kids laying out there watching shooting stars. I learned the following day that some of them ended up sleeping there!  We returned to our tents to go to bed but Kate’s bed had bugs in it. They were beetles that were like 2 inches long. It was gross, so we all decided to stay together near one of the dining tents. This was better anyways because the dining tents were not entirely enclosed so we were able to half sleep under the stars in the Moroccan dessert. It got really cold that night, and we froze over night, but it was still worth it.


The next day we boarded our camels and trekked back through the Sahara to where we had left our busses. It was about an hour and a half this time because we took a longer route.  The camels were pretty bouncy, but it was a lot of fun. The camels were tied together in strips of about 5 camels each led in the front by a nomad. After we got back to the bus unfortunately it was time for that 8-hour trek back through the mountains. It’s a beautiful drive, probably one of the prettiest I have ever been on, but it’s just not as fun in a 40-passenger bus!  Good thing we were all so tired, we got an extra nap on the bus!  We stopped for lunch and had tomatoes and potatoes for the first course (chopped of course) and then we had a tangine of chicken with dates, and then for dessert we had melons. It was pretty good. Then we reloaded the bus for some more drive. When we finally arrived back in Marrakech we were sick of the bus!  We went to a market and I did a little Christmas shopping!  Then we had dinner on our own (Pizza Hut!) then returned to the hotel in Marrakech.


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