marrakech, morocco: oct. 30, essaouira

The next day, we got in our same little bus with our original tour guide Josef and drove to a beautiful beach town called Essaouira. On the way we made a couple stops, the first of which being at this tree. It is exactly what it looks like: a tree full of goats. Apparently there is a type of goat in Morocco that climbs up into trees and just stands there all day eating the leaves.

I got to hold this little baby and it was so cute and sweet! I know, I made a lot of animal friends in Africa.

Our next stop was to see how argan oil is made. It's a long process that starts with cracking about a million nuts, about a million times. The women that were doing it were so fast. I gave it a try and was a lot clumsier than they were.

When we got to Essaouira we took a short tour of the city, through the outdoor markets, the port, and the fish markets. We went out to a point where you could stand over the water and it was so beautiful. I could feel the mist off the water on my face and the waves were huge. Watching them crash over the rocks reminded me a little bit of La Jolla cove. It was a really relaxing and reflective experience for all of us.

I took a short video to try to capture how big the waves were.

We went to a wood-carving place where they showed us how they make all these little wooden figures by hand with a type of wood that is only found in Essaouira. All of the wooden elephants reminded me of you Dad!

We had lunch at a really cool outdoor fish market where Josef told us "the real moroccans eat."We looked at all the raw seafood, chose what we wanted, and negotiated a price for the table, and then they grilled all of it right in front of us. We got lots of different kinds of fish, squid, crab, lobster, and stingray all for about 700 dirham (7 euro) a piece, along with cokes and bread for the table. It was delicious and very fresh.

YUM

It was a beautiful last day in Morocco. I literally couldn't believe I was in Africa (or "the gateway to Africa" as Muhammad called it). It was such a surreal experience. It was so cool to be in the city one day, driving through the desert, the valleys, and then on the ocean the next. Being near the water again was one of my favorite parts. There was much more poverty in Morocco than anywhere else I have been and it was heartbreaking to see women sleeping on the streets with their babies. On our last day we all went around and handed out our left over dirham to them. Everyone was very kind to us and we felt very lucky to get to experience such a different culture. 

We got home just in time for Halloween, which I was too tired to celebrate. It was an amazing weekend. 

Next stop: Amsterdam!

marrakech, morocco: oct. 29, ourika valley

The next day, we woke up bright and early and had free breakfast at our hostel which included, bread, pancakes, and more bread! Moroccans love bread. A little feral cat decided to join me for breakfast.

The pictures below are of our hostel. I just wanted to show you how nice it was! For about 15 euro a night, we really lucked out with a beautiful place to stay. There were lots of little common areas like the ones below for us to hang out and rest between adventures.

Our personal van with just enough room for the 11 of us, and Mohammed on our way to the Ourika Valley. The drive to the valley was about an hour and a half but we made a couple stops along the way. Our first stop was to get our first look at the Atlas mountains and the Moroccan countryside. I was really surprised by how green everything was, because I was expecting desert everywhere.

Sofia, Jenna, Me, Kaity, and Jordan

The boys: John, Roy, Joe, Morgan, Amit, and Gavin

(These boys are all juniors at USD also studying in Madrid)

The whole group of hooligans. The whole trip we all just kept looking at each other saying "How are a bunch of idiots like us lucky enough to be in AFRICA?" We felt incredibly lucky and didn't take a second for granted. It was a great group of kids (or i guess we're all almost adults now) to experience this with.

Our next stop was at a Berber house. The Berbers were nomads who were some of the first people to live in Morocco. The house we stopped at is a traditional Berber house with about 15 people living in it. Muhammad told us that a year ago, a man visiting from France offered to buy the house for 1 million euro, which is a really insane amount of money for anyone, and the woman of the house turned him down. She said that she was raised in this house, and she intended to raise her family, and their children after that in the house as well. I thought this was really beautiful that her culture and her history meant so much to her. It also showed how little value money has in their culture.

In the house, the first floor was home to the livestock. I made friends with a little cow.

We went out to an open deck with a beautiful view of the Atlas mountains for a tea ceremony with the woman of the house, Malika. Her granddaughter was quite enamored with our friend Morgan and wouldn't get off his lap the whole time.

Malika showed us how the tea is made and went through the whole ceremony for us. It was delicious and we drank it with some homemade bread, butter, honey, and olive oil. It was a great treat on our way through Ourika.

We got to our final destination in the valley, which was a hike up to the water falls. We all discovered the hard way the canvas Toms shoes are not ideal for hiking. The hike was a little less than an hour. For a large part of the way up, there were vendors along the sides of the trails. This one pictured above was selling hand-carved stone figurines.

We also learned the hard way about the "all natural toilets"... basically a hole in the ground. Good thing I packed toilet paper for everyone. (Mom, I felt like you when I was distributing it to all the girls.)

Moroccans supposedly invented the wooden bridge.

 

After our hike and stopping for a lunch of more vegetable couscous, we stopped to ride some camels!! I had no idea how tall camels are and honestly it was really scary to be up that high. All of them were incredibly sweet animals and they gave me lots of kisses. In truth, it was kind of a sad experience because they did not treat the camels very well. I tried to make them feel better with lots of hugs though. 

When we got back to our hostel that night, we were all exhausted so we just went up to the roof deck with a beautiful view of the city and rented some hookahs. 

marrakech, morocco: oct. 28

Last weekend I went to Marrakech, Morocco with 10 of my friends who are also studying here in Spain. It was my favorite trip so far and it was such a different experience. I am going to do three separate posts for the three days I was there, because I have so many pictures and we did so much!

We left Madrid around 10 am, all of us on the same little flight, and arrived in Morocco around lunchtime. Our tour guide, Josef, picked us all up from the airport and took us to our hostel which was located pretty close to the center of the city. We had two rooms, one for the girls and one for the boys. After we dropped off our stuff, Josef took us to a rooftop restaurant to get lunch. The meals in morocco all consisted of a starter, main course, desert and tea for about 800 dirham (which is equivalent to about 8 euro). Morocco was definitely the cheapest place I've traveled to so far.

The view from the restaurant

Jenna, myself, and Kaity at lunch

I had vegetable couscous, and a lot of my friends had kebabs. The food was really good!

After lunch, Josef picked us back up, and took us on a tour of the palace. The most impressive part to me, was all the incredible hand carved designs in the ceilings of all the rooms. Something Josef talked about a lot was the relationship between the king and his wives. He had four wives, who each had six kids. All of the wives shared one room with their kids, except for the "favorite wife" who got her own set of rooms. The favorite wife was the one who had the first male child (the heir). If the child died, then whoever had the next male child would be the favorite wife. According to Islam, the man can have many wives as long as he treats them all equally. We obviously had a lot of questions about this.

The girls (Sofia, Jenna, me, Kaity, and Jordan) in one of the palace courtyards

There were cats literally EVERYWHERE in Morocco. They were cute, but they ate all the trash, kind of like rats. And two people in our group were deathly allergic, so that was interesting.

We toured the different religious areas of the city, because in Morocco, there are people practicing Christianity, Judaism, and most popularly Islam.

Then we went to the tombs. The tombs were intricately carved just like the palace, in a similar style. In Islam, none of the graves are marked. The only way to distinguish between graves was by the colors of the patterns on them. If it was only green, that meant it was a soldier buried there, and different combinations of colors symbolized different roles in the government or church.

Next we went to a natural pharmacy, where we took a little class on all the different kinds of natural medicines and spices. Morocco is famous for argan oil, a kind of natural oil extracted from plants that is supposed to be good for hair, skin, and cooking. Our teacher also showed us lots of different perfumes, roots for headaches, and of course we drank Berber tea. Berber tea is called "moroccan whiskey" because people will drink it in Morocco ten times a day if they can. It's basically just a mint tea with sugar but it's really yummy and thicker than most teas.

After the pharmacy, we went out to the "souk" which is the outdoor market that Morocco is famous for.

I made a monkey friend!

We also stopped to get henna tattoos. These women did our tattoos in less than 5 minutes for about 5 euro.

We ate dinner at one of the many booths near the souk. They just kept bringing out more and more small plates of different kinds of food. My favorite was a little fried potato that was so delicious.

I loved all the lanterns, but sadly I didn't get one because it would've been too hard to bring back to Madrid, let alone the United States.

Jordan and I at one of the many vendors.

After shopping through the markets for a couple hours, we were all exhausted and headed back to our beautiful hostel to sleep until our early morning with our new guide, Mohammed, the next day.