Viva Morocco

We have two “spring breaks” this semester. SCORE. The catch is – two great things happen in Sevilla while we are on these breaks. The first week in April was Semana Santa, or holy week, leading up to Easter. This city pulls out all of the stops to celebrate this week... 24/7 parades, or “pasos”, celebrate the saints. This is something that can’t be missed in SVQ, so many students plan to split their SB2012 into travelling and soaking up this rich tradition in Sevilla.

With that being said, I split up my Semana Santa between London, Morocco, and Sevilla! What a time.

Left for Morocco on Saturday morning at 4. Yep. 4:00 AM. Yowza! We hopped on a bus (I’ll be saying that a lot) and headed to Tarifa, a city on the southernmost tip of Spain. Took a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to AFRICA. Check that continent off the list! Holla!

Although they’re really close in proximity, Spain and Morocco are DIFFERENT WORLDS. There are very few similarities... the money, time, language, and alphabet are different. Forget euros, meet dirhams. Say hello to 2 hours that you didn’t have before. Know your ABCs? Have fun with Arabic! Culture shock is an understatement.

The first thing we did was bus to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. We had a seaside lunch and ate one of the weirdest, most delicious meals I’ve had over here.  It was basically chicken, spices and peanuts wrapped in a pastry with cinnamon and powered shuga on top. Dessert? Sliced oranges with cinnamon on top! TRY IT. Understated delicious. We got to see some of the old city and stretch our legs after going on a bus tour of the whole city. Next, we bussed to Fes where we stayed in a snazzy hotel for the night. What a change from hostel life!

The next day was a lot of driving. Along the way, we had a little pit stop because someone saw wild monkeys on the side of the road. There was a little market there, too. I bought some Moroccan garb – some crazy looking pullover – because I was freezing. Turned out to be the best investment I made in Africa! Who knew it would be so chilly? Not me.

That night, we took our backpacks and drove into the Sahara Desert in 4x4s. I have a new dream job. Our 4x4 driver drove like we were in a video game. I swear my rump wasn’t actually on the seat about 40% of the time – we were flying, weaving and dodging the natural obstacles in the Sahara.

We made it to our destination – a line of 100 camels. NIGHT CAMEL RIDING! So neat. I named my camel Cous Cous. He was a sweetie. After about 45 mins of camelling, we made it to our campsite for the night. We had a great dinner, Moroccan tea, and a fun night full of the unexpected, to say the least. Camping in the heart of the dessert is something I won’t soon forget. Talked to Berbers half the night, and learned the secrets of making true, sweet, Moroccan “cous cous.” Yeah, won’t forget that one either.

After two or three hours of sleep in our tent, we woke up to climb a big dune to watch the sun rise! INCREDIBLE. GLORY GLORY HALLELUJAH that’s one of the neatest things I’ve done in all my days. It was beautiful. The dunes are incredible... add a sunrise and, man. I could’ve died happy. Once the sun came up, someone played the Lion King’s “ahhhhh sabennnaaa walla wa heeeee schida mohhhhh” and I felt like all was right with the world.

My favorite part of the trip was DUNING. We thought we would just walk down back to our campsite, but jumping down the dune proved to be too great. Gravity! We would just start skipping down the dune and it turned into tucking & rolling & laughing & having sand in every crevice. I’ve never had so much fun before 7 am.

Next, we rode camels again for another 2 hours to our next fancy hotel. 2 hours on a camel... leaves a lot of time for thought. I whipped out my camel-riding playlist and some podcasts and had a grand ol’ time. It also gave me a lot of time to experiment with camel riding positions... after much internal debate my preferred position was Indian style.

 Camel riding thoughts: Dunes can’t shape themselves; they’re at the mercy of the wind. The wind shapes them so naturally and beautifully, there’s no way a dune could imagine what it would look like at the end of the hour, much less day or year. A dune will never look the same as it does at any given moment because the wind is ever changing, yet constant.

We spent that day chillin’ out max & relaxin’ all cool poolside, wandering around the desert, and in a nearby town in their market. We then drove back to Fes, and had a great night in the hotel of story swapping, laughs & make it or break it.

The next morning, we got to go into Fes and the old city, Medina. This was my second favorite part about the trip, MARKET TIME! If you know me, you know I love a good market. We had a tour of a leather tannery, and then were given an hour to go wild. And go wild, we did. There were so many sights, sounds and especially smells in the market. This place was huge. I made out like a bandit with 2 new pair of leather sandals, homemade oil, hand-carved wooden spoons (I like lame things), some good surprise gifts that I can’t type, and a henna tat! Got the henna in the comfort of the artist’s home, while watching Arabic soap operas, and even got served some tea. Score.

We drove back to the Strait of Gibraltar, crossed back over into Spain and made it back to Sevilla in the wee hours of the morning. Five days in Morocco were really great. Seeing a new continent, playing in the Sahara and navigating a crazy market... good times were had.