MOROCCO (April 17-20)

Now I can actually say I’ve been to Africa! I was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Morocco on a trip organized by my CIEE human rights interest group. As with all traveling, we had to be up bright and early on Friday morning to start the bus ride to Tarifa, Spain and then take the ferry across the Mediterranean Sea to Tangier, Morocco. There were about 30 people total on the trip, but we divided into 3 smaller groups once we got there to make traveling in Morocco a lot easier. In what seemed like an instant, the world around me had changed completely. Different people, different clothes, different language, different architecture, different smell... i could already tell I was going to love it within those first few seconds! We met our group leader Darren, a Californian guy working for the Moroccan Exchange program. He is probably one of the most interesting, educated and nicest person I have ever met! He greeted us with a big back full of nuts and tons of chocolate bars... ha. Obviously we were going to be friends.
Alright so we went to Tangier as our first stop to walk around the city a little, go to the fresh market, and then to visit a women's center called DARNA. There we talked with students about the role of women in an Islamic society and how things were changing (while eating the best pastries and moroccan sweet tea). Soon after that stop we drove, in our little bus, to a small coastal town called Asilah to get lunch (a lot of this trip was centered around food ha). We got a tour of the city and old palace by this really skinny moroccan man. There was this international center there that has anual expositions and I guess all the countries that attend paint murals throughout the city every year= a lot of artwork on the walls). He was telling us how traitors of the king were either thrown off the cliffs of Asilah or built/cemented into the walls of the palace. After the tour we went and sat outside to a wonderful lunch of the typical chicken tangine, which is couscous with chicken and a ton of cooked vegetables. (I thought i wouldn't like it, but I was obsessed and actually miss it now). I couldn't finish it all though, so I decided to give a little scrap to one of the stray cats that was by our table. BAD decision! about 20, 000 other street cats came bolting in my direction and I didn't know what to do. ha. There are stray cats EVERYWHERE in morocco!
When we were done in Asilah, we continued to our more permanent destination, Rabat, where we stayed for 2 days and lived with a Moroccan host family! Although they only spoke Arabic and French, (we had an arabic language session 101 , but you can only get so far with hello, my name is..., and thank you) ha, I felt so comfortable and welcome at their home. I stayed there with Franny and they showed us to a room, completely filled with couches and giant rug and said we could stay there. I really did feel like i was in a genie bottle :) To get to the eating area we had to climb up this almost ladder and walk across the roof to another room. All meals in morocco are eaten from a common dish in the middle of the table, which was a new experience. You just have to be careful that you don't take food from someone else's make believe food triangle. ha. The family was a mom and dad, with their 3 kids, 21 yr old girl, 18 yr old boy, and another 8 yr old girl. They were all so funny!
The next day in Rabat, we did a little sight-seeing to the Roman ruins of Chellah and to see the Mausoleum of King Mohammed V. At the ruins, there were literally hundreds of storks and egrets surrounding the place in their nests and in the trees. All of the paths were surrounded by so many cool plants and flowers, that I actually felt like I was in a tropical place. There was this one area, called the "fertility pool," where there is a legend if you throw an egg into it and one of the eels eats it (there are 2), then you will become pregnant. (Hence, all of the storks surrounding the place! ha) A couple girls in our group threw in eggs, but the eels never came out. Then we drove to the Mausoleum, which was beautiful and covered in so much detail, inside and out (so much gold!) Across from the Mausoleum was the famous incomplete minaret, Hassan Tower. It was supposed to be the tallest minaret in the world, along with a giant mosque, but construction stopped with the sultan died. Now the top of it is unfinished, and the area around it has about 200 incomplete columns and some started wall construction. Pretty interesting story.
So after returning to our families for lunch, our whole group met up with Moroccan university students and were taken on a little personal tour of the city and especially the giant marketplace in Rabat. I had thousands of things to look at in the marketplace and couldn't focus on anything... i just knew that I wanted to buy everything! They were selling everything from shoes to blankets, to olives and turtles. It was quite overwhelming (I need to go back again!) Then the students we were with, Karim and Adil, took us to this little bar/pool hall to get some tea. It was kind of awkward being in a bar because 1- they don't really drink in morocco and 2- you don't really see that many girls out in places like that there. But it was still fun.
Later that night we had a guest speaker from a memeber of the Peace Corps to share her experience. (She was not very interesting and also not very convincing) But after that... I went to my first public bath! Ha. All the girls in my group were really nervous about what it was going to be like, but everyone in Morocco was telling us how much they loved the Hammam (that's what public baths are called there), so we finally all decided to check it out. Darren's host sister, Widad, took us all down the street to go (she was so excited!) ha. Basically you walk in, change out of your clothes, (we had to bring washcloths and soap and stuff), then you walk into this sauna like tile room where the women there give you a ton of buckets filled with hot water. and then basically you just relax and clean. ha. Some people paid to get scrubbed down, but it looked kind of painful... so I voted against that. We went back to our family and were so relaxed and tired that we basically just ate dinner and then passed out in our beds.
We had to wake up really early the next morning to drive through the Rif mountains to our final stop in Morocco, the city of Chefchaouen. Saying good bye to our family was really sad, even though we had only been with them for only 2 days, I knew I was going to miss them. The ride was quite bumpy and curvy, and our bus driver was a little crazy. He had an obsession with passing cars and sometimes around the curves I thought I was going to die! Also our bus driver had "pimped out" our little bus the previous day. We had kind of complained how there was no music, so Darren was just going to bring his little ipod speakers, but when the bus came back, he had installed a complete stereo system and a dvd player for the trip. ha. We were trying to get lunch in this little rural village along the way, but got a little lost (after asking a ton of people though we finally found it). There we had some lunch and little discussion about the growing ecotourism industry that was developing in the area, where they invite people to stay in their village and offer outdoor activities, such as hiking in the area. The guy told us that ecotourism is their alternative to growing marijuana (it's more profitable ha). He took us on a little hike, even though it was really muddy, and when we got to the top of the hill it was such a pretty view of the valley.
Then we were off to Chefchaoen, a city founded by Moorish exiles from Spain during the Spanish Reconquista of the 15th century. "Chef Chaouen" literally means "look at the horns," referring to the shape of the mountains that tower over the town. One of the most noticable things is that every building in the city is some sort of shade of blue, which was a tradition from the former Jewish population. We got there kind of late in the afternoon, and once we checked into our hotel, only had a couple hours to do shopping before dinner. Like I said before, I wanted to buy so many things (a hookah being on the top of my list), and 2 hours was definitely not enough time! Especially with bartering with the shopkeepers, you need way more time to get the prices down. I had time to buy a few things I liked; I didn't want to stray too far from where we were meeting from dinner though, since it had gotten dark and I didn't really know my way around the town. We had dinner quite late and then went back to the hotel for a little debrief session, since it was our last night together. Our whole group talked about the highlights of our trip and what we learned (we all agreed how amazing everything was). Then Darren gave us all Moroccan bracelets, a desert rose from the Sahara, and this little perfume block that is very typical of Morocco. We had all (group 1) gotten so close to in the past couple days, that it was actually really sad to think that we would be going home the next day to return to Sevilla.
Before driving to the Moroccan-Spanish border the next day, we took a little farewell hike to the top of one of the closest mountains to get a view of all of Chefchaouen. We were all so tired since we had to wake up at 6:30, but everyone still enjoyed it (plus they brought us amazing breakfast!) Soon after we were on the bus again, sadly. I did not want to leave at all!! We got to the border, which was actually really scary with a ton of patrol and barbed wire and people waiting. Darren warned us not to take pictures because if the police saw us they would destroy our cameras (really intense!). We got there a little early and had to wait for the next ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar. We had to say our final goodbyes, and as sad as this is, I started tearing up when I had to say bye to Darren... he was really the best guide ever! He had taught us so much about Morocco and Islamic culture and I really learned so much by experiencing everything first hand. Then finally we boarded the ferry and were off to Spain again!

Morocco was hands down my favorite travel destination this semester!

Travel turns all the fairy tales and stories into reality.

More pictures...
Tangier, Asilah, & Rabat
More Rabat & Chefchaouen