So this past week, (while I should have been working on
my big project…oops) I traveled around a bit. A girl on our program was
celebrating her 21st birthday and her parents came to visit Morocco.
They then invited all of us down to Marrakech for a birthday dinner. This
dinner get together is something most of our group had been looking forward too
since we heard about it before our ISP (independent study project) time started
because we’ve all become really close. Most of our group was traveling around and
we hadn’t been able to see each other in a few weeks, which is forever when you
have lived through so much with these people in the past three months.
My
roommates and I, as well as a couple others, all traveled to Marrakech
together. So one 4 ½ hour train ride later, we arrived in Marrakech. I learned a couple things on this trip that I
didn’t last time. First off, taxi drivers do not like being shown wrong by
foreigners. We had to take a cab to the Medina where the hostel we reserved
was. Since there was five of us we decided to pay a little extra and take a
grand taxi (since we wouldn’t have a full taxi of six passangers, it’s a bit
more pricey.) So we ask and the driver wanted over 100 dirham. (Which, is
freaking ridiculous) We said, No we want the meter. He tried telling us “In
Marrakech, we don’t use meters.” Okay, this is a lie. We’ve lived in this
country long enough now to know that yes, yes you do use meters. And yes, we
have been to Marrakech before and had taxi’s with meters. We aren’t stupid. So
we tell him, We have lived here and we have taken taxi’s in Marrakech, we know
you have a meter. His response? No. Good
night, besslama have fun walking. Welcome to Morocco, you know nothing. (Real
mature right? I mean he was a grown an acting like a thirteen year old.) We of
course, move on to the next set of taxi drivers that refused to take us for the
price we wanted. They said it was impossible to find a taxi driver to take us
for that little. Factoring in that it was later at night, thus making it more
expensive, we didn’t have enough people for a full taxi and we had luggage, we
allowed for no more than 10 dirham a person.
We of course, found a driver willing to take us for that price. The
original taxi drivers looked highly annoyed that we had in fact, proven them
wrong.
Next
lesson: the people in Marrakech near the big square hunt tourists. We arrive
and I called the owner of the guy from the hostel to come and meet us at the
door to the Medina. He was going to bring us there since it was dark and he
didn’t want us to get hustled. We start walking towards the spot we’re meeting
him and this guy approaches us telling us “I take you, where you go.” First, we
tried politely refusing because you can’t always trust these people to bring
you where you need to be and also they ask for a lot of money in return. He
kept following us and talking to us. Finally, we said, “Sir, we don’t need your
help. Someone is coming to get us.” His
response? (Again, real mature.) “F*** you, you’re bad tourists. You’re rude.”
He then proceeded to wait to see if we actually got picked up or had just told
him that. Of course, when Rachid came and picked us up this guy slumped away.
The people in Marrakech are too aggressive for me and I think they act this way
because it’s so touristy.
On a
positive note, we went to a FABULOUS dinner and great company. We were all so
excited to see each other again. (Can’t even think about how sad I’ll be when
everyone goes back to their universities…)
The next morning, Kelly, Leah, Ronja and I decided to go
to the Sahara. Say what? That’s right, the Sahara. It was AWEOSME but so far
away. We drove all day Wednesday and spent the night in the Atlas mountains.
And then got to Merzouga on Thursday and rode our camels to a camp in the
desert and then spent the night. We drove all the way back to Marrakech on
Friday.
The
drive there, was beautiful. Driving through the mountains, visiting valleys and
gorges and a Kasbah that was in a bunch of movies including The Prince of
Persia (the most recent one) and a bunch of other sites was great. We had a
fairly small group on the tour besides me, Leah, Ronja and Kelly. There was a
guy from New Zealand, a guy from L.A, a girl from Connecticut who just finished
living in Uganda for a year, two guys from Argentina and then two Moroccans
touring their country. Everyone was loving it. The one thing we weren’t loving
though, was how cold it was. But seriously, it was so cold. If you had told me
back in September that I would need hiking socks, long sleeves, a sweatshirt
AND a jacket, I would have laughed. At the hotel we stayed at? Kate, (the girl
who was in Uganda) and I rented a space heater for the room. It was unbelievable.
So okay, it is the mountains, it should be colder there.
When we got to the Sahara though…it was almost as cold
there…it was a bit warmer during the day but then at night it got really really
really cold. We slept under like four blankets and in all of our clothes.
However, despite it being
freezing, it was completely worth it. The desert was amazing, we were about
50kilometers from the Algerian border and the sand just went on forever. Just
rolling dunes of sand was basically all you could see. (We tried dune surfing
but with very little success.) We rode the camels for about 45 minutes to get
to our little spot in the desert, it wasn’t too far but far enough for an
experience. We had a great dinner, a campfire with drums and music and then
proceeded to sit on top of a sand dune and hang out until midnight. There were
a bunch of shooting stars that night too which was great. We had a full moon
too so even at night you could see up to a couple miles of the desert.
The next morning we woke up at 5:50am rolled out of bed
and back onto our camels to watch the sunrise. It was beautiful as to be expected.
After getting back to the place we started and having breakfast, we loaded onto
our minibus, blasted the heat and started the trek home.
We
had an adventure getting home because there was a storm in the mountains and in
Marrakech. We drove through the mountains at night during a hail, snow and
rain. There were a couple accidents we passed along the way. Said, our driver,
handled everything very well though and we all did a dance of happiness when we
reached the bottom of the mountains.
At
the end of a long three days, I can now say I’ve rode a camel in the Sahara
desert and slept there for a night. We had a great time and met some great
people (One of which I may see again since they’ll be traveling in India
starting in February.) It was a fabulous week/break from my project!
Now, time for pictures bizzeff.
The start of our fabulous excursion, hello mountains
Just picture it...Jake Gyllenhaal running around. Oh, and apparently part of Gladiator was filmed here too.
More fabulous mountain scenes
Some Palmeries
Woop, big gorge!
With goats climbing around?
The Sahara!
Our chariots were awaiting us.
Sunset :)
Our house for the evening
Sunrise! (Camels are not animals that like being woken up early...they were making an awful lot of unhappy groaning noises. One even tried to run away.)
No comments:
Post a Comment