Morocco: a week spent with sand between my toes

Where to begin?

We spent a week in this country on the Northwest corner of Africa, travelling to various corners of the country, visiting everything from small towns to the Sahara desert to metropolitan centers. It will be hard to formulate all the experiences and impressions I had in one journal entry, but I'll do my best.

Saturday, flew out of Madrid, got to Marrakech and started our 8-hour bus ride to Zagora... wait, here's a map of Morocco so you know where these places are.



So we drove from Marrakech to Ouarzazate the first day, passing through the Atlas mountains:



The views on the way there were incredible. The mountains, valleys.. all the houses are made out of adobe (=dried mud). When we got to Ouarzazate, which is on the outskirts of the desert, we took a walk through an oasis.



After spending the night in Ouarzazate, we departed for Merzouga, which would be our jumping-off point for the desert. We drove out into the Sahara in 4x4s, and arrived at a small village/bed and breakfast that was run by a group of Berbers (Moroccan natives). They treated us like kings: once we got there, they treated us to a feast of Moroccan food (which had already begun taking a toll on my unaccustomed stomach), after which we danced the night away to a group of Moroccan musicians. Here's a picture that was taken of me getting my Morocco on:



We all slept in tents that night



and the next morning were awoken at about 5:15 by the sound of a camel that sounded like it was being eaten alive. I think it was just sick, but it scared everybody out of their minds, and we all started saying things like "Please don't let the desert monster eat me." But once we were up, they put us all on camels, loaded up a caravan and we rode out into the sand dunes



where we watched the sun rise across the Algerian border



From thence it was another long bus trip to Zagora, where we stayed the night, and then took another long trip to Marrakech. On the way there, we stopped to see the biggest Casbah (defined as "an older or native quarter of many cities in northern Africa; the quarter in which the citadel is located") in Morocco. There was a small river/stream that we had to cross to get there, and we were flooded by kids, probably 20 of them, who wanted to help us across. It was nice of them, but once we were on the other side, they all started demanding money. I gave one of them a euro, which I found out we weren't supposed to do, and then the rest of them felt entitled. It was a mess.

That's one of the things about Morocco: it's an extremely poor country. Every time we arrived in one of the small towns, we were flooded with people trying to sell us things, trying to get us to pay them for random things, or just begging. A lot of the time it was children, but sometimes it involved adults too. The children, though, would often be happy with a pen (I suppose because they don't have them for school), so Maricarmen provided us with several hundred at the beginning of the trip.

Anyway, back to the casbah.

We walked through an old, mud-built town (which must have constituted the casbah) and then climbed up to the top of a high hill where the wind was blowing probably 35 miles an hour. The view was gorgeous, though unfortunately I didn't take my camera up there with me. I have some pictures taken by others of us having fun though.

Me posing glamously in the wind with my Moroccan-made turban/scarf:




Here's me outside of the casbah wearing my turban (which Britt wrapped herself -- I'll let you be the judge of if she did a good job or not):


After that it was back on the bus for 3 or 4 more hours until we got to Marrakech, where we spent 3 nights. That part of the trip will constitute PART II of the Morocco update.

Stay tuned.

PS I set up a group gallery at moroccotrip.atpic.com for everybody to post their pictures from the trip -- so far only 2 other people besides me have put anything, but you might like to have a look.