Winter Break- Morocco!

After several trips to various European cities it was finally time for our trip to Morocco, Africa! Morocco is actually closer to Spain than a lot of European cities because the top of Morocco almost touches the southern point of Spain. Because we wanted to spend more time in Morocco we planned to go for winter break where we had monday and tuesday off school, and since I never have classes on Fridays we had plenty of time for a long trip. We left friday afternoon for Morocco and began a 3 night 4 day tour on Saturday morning.

Funny Story- Our flight was Friday afternoon so the entire group of 15 had planned on meeting at the airport a few hours before our flight. As the flight was about to board we are still missing 3 people. 2 of them come running up(literally running) so we were thinking that everything was good and we would all making our 3:30 flight to Marrakech, Morocco. However, it turned out that one of the boys Joe, hadn't printed off his boarding pass. Normally this wouldn't be a big deal in the US but on this airline it was. He had to wait in line to get the boarding pass and pay 40 euros just for them to print it off. We were all hoping he would somehow be able to sprint through the airport and still make the flight but he ended up missing it because they wouldn't let him go to the gate since the flight was already boarding. This was a huge bummer because there is only one flight to Morocco per day so he wasn't going to be able to make the tour. The whole trip we were wondering what Joe was doing, assuming he was still in Madrid. The last night Joe just shows up in the middle of a desert while we were eating dinner. It turns out he had gotten on a flight Saturday and had gone with a group of strangers until he was able to meet up with us two days later. It was crazy! We couldn't believe that he was there!

Ok so back to the trip! We arrived in Marrakech around 5 in the afternoon on Friday and were on our own until Saturday morning when the tour began. Once we arrived we took a bus to the center of town and attempted to find our hostel with a map we had been given that literally had 2 streets on it. Needless to say it was an epic fail. Luckily our friend Kevin had gone on a different flight the day before so he was already there. As we were aimlessly wondering around the very crowded streets of Marrakech we ran into Kevin who just looked at us and goes "Hey guys, the hostels this way" just like it was no big deal. Once we checked into our hostel we decided to go find somewhere for dinner. All of the restaurants there are outside and are in huge tents that have tables in them. We chose a tent and had a traditional Moroccan dinner of cous-cous. The food was very cheap which is a nice change from the rest of Europe. You could get a plate of chicken cous-cous, soda, and tons of bread for about 3 euros, it was great! Afterwards we walked around all of the vendors. The streets are lined with tons of stands that sell various goods. Some people got sunglasses(they had a ton of good knock-offs) and the boys bought weird scarves and hats that made them look like Crocodile Dundee (typical). After walking around we got AMAZING 90 cent ice-cream and then headed back to our hostel.

The next morning our tour began at 7:20 am. We had a bit of a rocky start because of confusion on where we were supposed to meet, but eventually we found our bus. Since we had 15 people in our group we had a bus to ourselves. No one really knew what the plan was but we all hopped in and were excited to begin our Moroccan adventure. We drove through big mountains and stopped at multiple paces to take pictures. Around lunch time we stopped at a village where a lot of movies including Gladiator have been filmed. One of the locals took us on a tour of the entire area before we sat down to lunch. Afterwards we continued our drive towards the desert and continued to stop for photo ops. That night we slept at a hotel that was literally in the middle of a huge gorge! It was actually really cool. There was also a terrace where you could sit and watch the stars which were SO pretty there. We had another traditional dinner of soup, cous-cous, chicken, vegetables, and bread! The food was pretty much the same everywhere we went but it was pretty good.

The next morning everyone was so excited because it was the day we were going to ride our first camels! We drove the rest of the way into the desert that day, stopping at various places along the way. One really cool place we stopped was a village where the make beautiful hand made decorative carpets. The designs are so complex that they take up to a year to make. We toured around the village and then went to where the carpets were made. The local man in charge invited us in for green tea and then showed us all of the carpets. Everyone was so impressed that many of us ended up buying one. My roommate for next year, Maggie, and I bought one for the wall of our apartment next year, its going to look great! Each one had different designs which all had different meanings that were explained to us. After doing that we continued on our drive towards the desert. We stopped in the middle of this big canyon type thing where there was a small stream, the rocks were so big that it was a really cool site! That afternoon we finally made it to the Sahara desert! After having another glass of green tea( very popular in Morocco) we boarded our camels for an hour and a half ride to our campsite. The camels were bigger than I had pictured and getting on and off of the was scary. However, I really enjoyed riding them. It was also perfect because they timed it so that we rode them during sunset which was absolutely beautiful. The Sahara was so pretty, the dunes were huge and all you could see was sand! As it was getting dark we made it to our campsite for the night. The camp sat at the bottom of a huge dune which everyone attempted to climb to sea the end of the sunset. My friend Jackie and I didn't quite make it to the top(climbing huge mountains isn't really my thing). Everyone who did said it was literally the hardest thing they have ever done, worse than two-a-days for high school sports, some were crying, needless to say I'm glad I decided to turn around!

The next morning we woke up at 5:30 so we could ride our camels back to civilization during the sun rise. Even though it was chilly in the morning(and SO early) the view of the desert during sun rise was completely worth it! Once we were out of the desert we stopped, had breakfast and changed clothes and then headed off to another desert to ride more camels before heading back to Madrid the next evening. That afternoon we rode camels to our campsite again, this time for a shorter amount of time which is good because everyone was pretty sore from the first two camel rides! The campsite for this night was so nice! There were huge tents with mattresses, bathrooms, showers, etc. The first one had not been quite as nice (there were no bathrooms) so this was a nice change. We played around on the sand dunes that afternoon and watched another beautiful sunset! We had another traditional Moroccan meal that night that was made so much better when our friend Joe(who I mentioned at the beginning) randomly showed up! The next morning we had to get up early again so we could drive back to Marrakech to catch our afternoon flight.

After we reached the airport we thought that everyone was good to go, we were all making the flight this time, and that everyone had a boarding pass. It turns out that two of the boys couldn't print there boarding passes off before so they figured they would just get them at the airport. Well, they had actually booked their flight for March 22 not February 22 which is why they couldn't print off their boarding passes(you can only print them up to 15 days before you flight). Unfortunately they had to pay 240 euros to be able to come home with us. You could say there were a lot of flight issues on this trip(only for the boys...). We all made it home safely with all 15 of us. Accomplishment!

Morocco was a great trip and an amazing once in a life time experience! It is definitely something I will never forget! The group of people I went with, 6 girls and 9 boys, was great and everything worked out perfectly!