The Moroccan Experience

Africa! A new country and a new continent, and I can definitely say that things are different here from just about everywhere else I've been in my travels. It always takes some getting used to when traveling through a new environment, and Morocco was no exception. I have the crazy idea of trying to squeeze my 11 days in Morocco into one blog post, and I'm gonna try to stick to it so here it goes:

The Morocco Boys

Alex and I had most of Morocco planned out after an entire day of planning in Toulouse awhile back, so there wasn't a huge amount of improvising that we had to worry about when we got there. We also found some cheap flights arriving there and leaving, so we already had flights booked for entering and leaving the country, which we basically planned around while we were there. We hopped on our flight from Madrid to our first city in Morocco, Tangier, that would serve as a very impressive and promising introduction to our African experience. Alex had found someone who would host us in Tangier so we were excited to once again meet some locals and learn a thing or two about this new place. We met up with Anas shortly after arriving, who would be our incredible host over the next couple days. This turned out to be a perfect situation for us. Anas and his roommates spoke nearly perfect English, being translation students working on their masters, and they were the exact same age as us. We had an amazing time with these guys learning all about Moroccan culture and how everything works, getting to know each other and our similarities, and walking around Tangier seeing some awesome sites. Including a really cool cafe situated on a cliff overlooking the strait of Gibralter and providing us a view of the European continent that we had temporarily left behind.

We had the perfect introduction to this new country, once again meeting some amazing new friends and learning so much about their culture and way of life, always the most valuable lesson from traveling. We actually stayed a second, unplanned night in Tangier because we were having such a great time with these guys. It was hard to leave and move on but we knew there was still much to see in Morocco.

My memory of Chefchaouen

Next stop: Chefchaouen. A tiny touristic town in the middle of the Rif mountains. This place was really neat and extremely picturesque. Our hostel was one of the cooler places we've stayed in as well, with beds situated on the rooftop terrace overlooking the city, and of course we stayed up there on our second night. It's hard to stop taking pictures of this place, and I went on a pretty awesome hike with a couple new friends we met at our hostel to get an even better view of the city. The following day consisted of another amazing hike around some really cool nature-things that were about 30-45 minutes by taxi outside of the city. One hike was a decently strenuous uphill climb to the top of a natural bridge formation called God's Bridge, which connected two sides of a canyon and was obviously really impressive. The second hike, less strenuous but much longer, was a 4 hour round trip hike to an incredible waterfall. We had such a great time out here since we've mostly been so cooped up in all of these cities and haven't had much time to do a bunch of nature stuff. It was really refreshing and gave us a different perspective on Morocco, which turned out to be so much more scenic and beautiful than anticipated.

Aside from a few "interesting" situations that happened with some hagglers in Chefchaouen (which I would be happy to elaborate on outside of this blog), I really enjoyed the couple days we spent here. But it seems that again, as soon as we arrived, it was time for us to continue our trip across the country and head to the next city: Fes.

Fes is one of the old capitals of Morocco and one of the largest cities in the country. It's most famous for its Medina, or "old city," which consists of an enormous labyrinth of maze-like streets, small enough only for people, push carts, and donkeys to travel through. Fes has one of the largest medinas, consisting of over 1,000 of these little streets, walled on both sides by shops selling everything you can imagine, and even more things that you can't imagine. It's impossible not to get lost here, and we spent some time with the one day that we had getting lost and somehow finding our way back to our hostel before heading out on an overnight bus to the desert. It's hard not to go into detail with the situation that happened to us in Fes when we were trying to organize our trip to the Sahara, but long story short: some guy picked us up from the bus station when we arrived there, convinced us to pay for an all inclusive trip from Fes to the desert to Marrakesh, and made us feel really uncomfortable about it the entire time (probably another story I can elaborate on outside of this blog in order to save time, space, and literary energy). But regardless of how uncomfortable we felt, things ended up working out and we continued with the plan, taking an overnight bus from Fes to the Sahara town of Merzouga, close to the Algerian border.

Camel-cam

I gotta say, being in the desert was easily my favorite part of Morocco. After taking a much needed nap at the hotel when we arrived, we set out on a pair of camels with our guide, Mohammed, off into the Sahara. We stopped in a little Nomad village for some amazing homemade couscous for lunch, and then continued on to another small village where we would spend the night in the middle of the desert, with entertainment provided by our guides in the form of sandboarding, playing music around a fire, and having some amazing food for dinner while making more friends from another group that joined us in staying the night in our little village. It was definitely one of those unforgettable experiences that was easily one of the highlights of the trip. The only unfortunate part about the whole thing was the weather.

Usually weather doesn't bother me at all, which is why I don't really mind traveling during the off season in the Fall/Winter. But this time the weather had a direct impact on the rest of our "all-inclusive" desert trip in a big way. There was a significant amount of rain hitting the southern part of the country, and some of it passed through the desert where we were, with scattered showers here and there but nothing too crazy. However, it must have picked up a lot further West into the mountains, because apparently an entire bridge collapsed, preventing us from getting to Marrakesh from the desert. We were definitely bummed, because our next night was going to be spent near the Todgha Gorge, which is supposed to be a pretty amazing canyon on the way to Marrakesh. So instead of continuing our pre-planned trip, the guys at the hotel organized for a private car to take us back to Fes, and from there we had to take an overnight train to Marrakesh. In the end we made it, but had to cope with a massive detour that costed us a day in Marrakesh and the gorge. It was a bummer but we just had to accept it and move on.

On the bright side, we found an awesome host in Marrakesh, and he was able to have us for our last couple nights in Morocco. For the most part we took it pretty easy in Marrakesh. On the first day we did the sightseeing, checking out the big mosque and the Medina, getting some snakes thrown on us, pictures taken and donations requested, and walking around another massive market, filled with the familiar winding maze-like footpaths that consisted of the busiest part of the city. A more notable moment in Marrakesh was that we spent Thanksgiving there, and our host, Redouan, was kind enough to assist us in our Thanksgiving feast by cooking some turkey and vegetables Moroccan-style, with the finished product resulting in a delectable Thanksgiving turkey tagine. It was really cool to celebrate such an American holiday in such a foreign place, and we all had a really enjoyable meal. The next morning, bright and early at about 4:00 am, Redouan was kind enough to organize a cab to the airport for us and send us on our way.

Al and I being apprentice snake charmers

When I look back and reflect on Morocco I think of many ups and downs that we had, but the experience as a whole was something that I'm so glad we got to have. I honestly wasn't a huge fan of the big cities of Fes and Marrakesh, as the Medinas appeared constantly filled with people trying to get as much money from you as possible, and it didn't seem possible for us to peacefully walk through these cities without having to turn down multiple persistent hagglers, trying to get you to buy any unnecessary items that you aren't interested in buying. If things like that don't bother you, it's not such a bad place to spend a day seeing, and in all fairness I wasn't sure how I would react in these situations. It turns out I'm just not a huge fan of things like that, so I much rather prefer the peaceful vastness of the desert. Also, aside from the uncomfortable situations that happened to us in Chefchaouen and Fes, I refuse to let a couple strange people ruin the experience or the rest of the Moroccan people for me. We met some really awesome people during our stay and had some of the best hospitality we've had on this trip. I could also see myself going back to Morocco in several years, as another result of traveling is often the discovery of new places to see that we didn't know about previously, and there's a heck of a lot more to see in Morocco than I thought.

Overall, we had a nice break from Europe but were ready to get back in there and go to our next (and one of my favorite) cities. Back to Torino I go, and can't wait to relive the glory days of studying abroad in my favorite city in Italy.