Marrakesh, Morocco!

Today's story is that of last weekend's journey to Marrakesh, Morocco! I realize that this blog is supposed to be about Madrid and I have, in fact, rarely talked about the beautiful city I live in, but I promise to do better after this post. It's just that my travels are so exciting that I can't help but talk about them. It will be easier to do better in the future because I don't have any more trips planned until I head to Greece (woo-hoo!) at the end of December...

Ok, first of all, Morocco was exciting because it was AFRICA. Of course, it's not at all like sub-Saharan Africa, but it still counts. That means I have now been on three different continents! My flight left ridiculously early in the morning (6:25). In order to save myself the (financial) pain of taking a taxi by myself to the airport, my friend AJ stayed the night in my house and we split the cab at 4:30 AM. Oh the joys of budget travel. The flight was uneventful, but when we landed in Marrakesh it was clear we were no longer in Europe. It was HOT. Every day the temperature was well about 80 and it was a bit of a shock to my system after the mildness (we're still hovering around 50 and 60) of Madrid. It turned out to be more of a process than expected to get through customs. Since we were Americans (oh yeah, the "we" mentioned periodically is me and the 15 other people I traveled with. Everyone was scared to go to Africa without a big group, but it turns out we needn't have worried) we had to get some weird extra stamp - I think it stated that we were healthy and fever free. They knew this because we had to walk by a heat-detecting machine! Cool, huh? Then we had to go through customs itself. There was another form and another stamp and then we were through! I was pretty excited about the new stamp in my passport! The next step was to exchange our money. Morocco uses the dirham (which some of my friends insisted on calling "dinghys" all weekend). 10 dirham is roughly equal to 1 Euro (and 1 Euro is equal to 1.5 dollars). My mind spent the whole weekend translating dirham to Euros to dollars so that I could actually figure out what I was paying for something and I kept getting so confused. It's really startling when someone asks you for 200 dirham because first you think that's outrageous and then you think "oh, that's not bad, it's only 20 bucks" and then you have to correct yourself and say "oh, no, it's $30". By then end, I was happy to return to just making one conversion in my head.

After the money nonsense we headed by bus to the hostel. The hostel is not really accessible by car (!) so we got off the bus on the edge of the medina, or main square. At 8 in morning it wasn't very busy but tons of dried fruit stands and orange juice stands were already in business. The snake charmers and men with performing monkeys were also getting going! I actually couldn't believe the directions to our hostel. They said things like: at the big open space, take a left. Follow the alley until the blue door and then turn right...Surprisingly enough, we made it without a problem although there was a very persistent Moroccan man who wanted to take us there (and then get tipped) and we had to actually yell at him and he still followed us to hostel. The hostel was beautiful, though. In Morocco if you don't stay in a really nice hotel you'll probably stay in a converted Moroccan home. Ours had a pretty tiled courtyard and rooms with pointed arches and pillows on the floor. Plus, the free breakfast on the rooftop terrace was delicious!

After dropping our stuff, we hit the ground running and got back on the bus to go for camel rides. It was really, really cool even though it was completely touristy. The bus dropped us off on the side of the highway and there were men waiting with camels. We bargained the price down to 60 dirham (it started somewhere in the 300s) and the men had the camels kneel down and then helped us climb aboard. It was two people to a camel and we were on a boxey saddle that had a big metal loop in front that we could hold for balance. Although some people were hesitant at first (camels really are very large), in the end everyone decided to give it a try. My favorite part was when the camel stood up because there was this tremendous lurch and then you were several feet off the ground! The men running the organization were really nice and kept asking for our cameras. At first we were hesitant, but they just really, really loved to take pictures and I have some nice documentation of my time on a camel thanks to them. I also have to mention the baby camel who was possibly the cutest animal I have ever seen. Its feet were hobbled so it couldn't run away, but as we began our trek around the "park" (aka wasteland) it hobbled after the group in the most adorable manner imaginable. It clearly did not want mama to get too far away. We rode for about 20 minutes and then had the exciting lurch back to the ground. It was agreed all around that camels had been an excellent idea (and I have to admit I had been more than a little hesitant at first).

After that was lunch and then our first journey in the souks. I'm getting tired so I will write more fully about the souks in the next post (whoops, so much for the whole no-more-out-of-Madrid promise). What matters here is the dinner we had Friday night. We went to this really touristy and pretty expensive (the source of some tension, but we did get through it) restaurant. If you've ever eaten in "Morocco" in Disney's Epcot, you've basically been to this restaurant. All the walls were tiled, there were candles and rose petals on the table, and half of the chairs were couches. As we dined our way through an incredible five course meal we were treated to traditional Moroccan music, singing, and dancing. The dinner lasted well over 2 hours and it was an experience. We had this "salad" that was really a bunch of different cooked vegetables (no eating raw veggies because the water there can make you sick), fresh sweet bread, couscous, a chicken tangine (a stew-like dish), mint tea (a Moroccan specialty made with endless amounts of sugar), and dessert. I'm really glad we went, but it was sort of poor timing on our part because we had gotten up at 4AM to get to Morocco and the dinner didn't end until almost 11 so most of us were fading at the end. I believe a few people actually fell asleep on the couches, but, hey, what can you do? And all this was only the first day!