A whole new world..aladin style.

Holy cow. Marrakesh. Where to start? When I first got to Marrakesh my thought process was this...ajlkdaklg;laskd;l aksdf;lakslfds;lfkgs ?!!?!whatamidoinghere?!?! haha I was very much on edge when I first got there because everyone I told that I was going to Morocco was like, "wow Morocco, aren't you scared?" And I was like uhhh no...but them asking me all those questions was making me scared..haha. Ok so we have a break in between our intensive spanish class and regular classes so we left Wednesday the 3rd and arrived in Marrakesh around noon. When we got to the airport we took a bus to the medina where there were a million people all over the place asking us if we needed help finding our hostel. We were on a mission to find it ourselves, but then a man asked us what we were looking for and he led us straight to our destination Heart of the Medina Hostel. There would have been no way for us to find it without his help. It was in an alleyway, down a side street off a main street. When I saw it I thought it looked sketchy, but at the end I was so thankful we had some peace and quiet by being off the main strip. Anyway so we moved into our hostel (9 euro a night) and went to meet our other friends who were at a company looking at expeditions.

We walked around the medina before meeting up with them. I'm going to try and describe this chaotic scene as best as I can. I saw monkeys (which are trained to reach into your bag by the way or trained to pull your hair and distract you while their owner reaches into your bag or pocket...its true). We saw snake charmers, a zillion stands of dried fruit and stands selling the best orange juice on any continent I've ever been on, there were men selling water in sheep skin sacks. (Best to avoid if you don't want diarrhea for the rest of your life.) Then there are women who come up to you and practically start drawing with henna on your hand unless you pull it away fast enough. There are cars, taxis, people on foot, scooters, bikes, bikes with motors, horse carriages, donkeys all over the place headed which ever direction they so please. I swear I only saw one stop sign (which was in Arabic) the whole time I was there. It is a free for all. Crossing the street was an experience in itself. People start talking to you in French, English, Spanish wherever they think you're from..trying to guess. When you respond to Bonjour, Hola, or Hello then they start speaking to you in that language. That was actually kind of cool, annoying but it is interesting how many languages they know at least enough to get by/sell you whatever they are selling. They always try to guess where you're from after you speak to them. I got alot of "London, right?" and "Oh, you're Australian" which was funny to me and I always told them they were correct.



Eventually we made it through that madness and our other 4 friends were basically all on board to take an expedition into the desert the next day for 47 euros. It entailed us getting on a bus (which ended up being an 18 passenger mini van with of course no less than 18 passengers) and driving 6 (which ended up being 9 hours) to the desert..along the way stopping at various sights through the Atlas mountains to take pictures, then taking camels into the desert at sunset and sleeping in a tent in the middle of the desert. I wanted to do the one day day trip to , a city on the beach, that is suppose to be absolutely beautiful, because I was scared as SHIT to take a trip into the desert and sleep in a tent in the desert?!?! haha wow. So anyway I took a deep breath and signed up for the trip.



Since we were going to be doing this expedition it left us with only a short time left in Marrakesh so we went to visit Pakais Bahai and Jardin Majorelle. Palais Bahia was okay, it basically looked like La Alhambra to me, but on a less impressive scale, because La Alhambra is the best preserved Arabic palace in the world. I am very happy that I went to Jardin Majorelle (which is a garden). It was so peaceful and relaxing there. There were all kinds of vegetation like cacti and bamboo and bright bright blue and orange and yellow pots and bright blue buildings and fountains and little streams. It was designed by a French designer ..can't remember his name...and his memorial was there where we were told his ashes were spread when he died. When the gardens closed it was time for us to leave and my friend from Korea Bokhyun had friends there as well who live in France, but are Moroccan and his friend Fatima spoke Arabic and French which came in incredibly handy. They took us to a grocery store so we could get some snacks and drinks for the trip the next day. It was really cool to see names of products written in Arabic. After that we had to hail a taxi to get back to the medina, but all the cabs were full. Warning: the next thing I did was probably the riskiest thing I did in Marrakesh. We finally hailed a taxi that said could take 3 of us out of the 9 people we had to the medina...welp that wasn't going to work..so the next thing I know Fatima was yelling across the street to this guy driving a rickety old van..so then I am walking/running across this crazy ass street only to pile into a taxi van...oh wait..its just a van with some Moroccan man who said he could take us to the medina. So I'm jammed into the back back of the van with 2 others, 5 in the backseat and 2 in the front seat sitting on a spare tire. We received quite the looks from the passerbys on scooter and foot. But we arrived safely without going to jail (since that is obviously against the law for a citizen to transport tourist around) and headed to dinner on a terrace above the Jemaa El Fna square which was cool because we could enjoy some traditional tajine while being able to watch all the craziness from a distance.

Fast forward to the next morning: We wake up and head to our meeting place at 7am, but of course it is raining and oh COURSE I have a rolling suitcase. Welp the streets are filled with running sewage so I decide to carry my suitcase ontop of my head for the 15 minute walk to the meeting place. We get there and wait an hour to finally leave. We fit just snuggly inside the 18 passenger mini van with 18 folks and start the drive. We made numerous stop at towns like Ait Benhadou, Ouarzazate, and Zagora while traveling through the Atlas Mountains and then numerous desert towns. At every stop there were people trying to sell you something whether it be walnuts, different kinds of rocks, or figurines. I did buy a marble camel from an old old man for 15 Durhams which is like (1.5 euros) when I think his original asking price was 150 Durhams (15 euros). But after I bought it I kind of felt bad because he was so old and sad looking that I almost just wanted to give him more because I figured he needed the money more than I did. Anywayyyyy we continued our journey taking pictures and stopping for lunch and the bathroom. oh. my. gosh. bathrooms. I almost kissed my grimy bathroom here in Spain after using to toilet (aka hole in the floor) all across Morocco. I've never been so happy to take a hot shower in a 4x10 ft shower in my entire life.

Finally we reached our destination..well almost. We got off the van only to board camels for an hour and a half ride into the desert at sunset. Incredible. I can't believe I rode a camel. It's really cool, the guides get them to get on their knees then you climb on and when they stand up you feel like your going to fall face first into their neck, but then you are upright and sitting on a camel. When we reached our tent site it was pitch black. Actually while we were riding on the camel for about the last 1/2 hour it was pitch black and I couldn't even see a light in front of us and I was being led on camel back by a 14 year old boy. I mean they could have been leading us anywhere..which was a scary thought at the time. But once we got to the campsite our group of 18 got split into two tents of 9. The tents were really cool. They were big with a pallets and blankets all over the place and two tables with a gas light. I started talking to a woman from Slovenia, her name was Jesna (pronounced Yes-na). She told me that she is an artist-director-travel writer etc. and has been living in India, Jordan, and Egypt for the last several months/years because she is writing some fictional stories about the Middle East I believe. She was couch surfing in Morocco and signed up for the desert trip the day before just like us. She invited me into the other tent where I ate dinner with her, 3 Brazilians, 1 Irishman named Dennis, a man from Portugal, and a couple from Madrid who I LOVE. Pipo is from Madrid (he is a cameraman and is working on a show called Fama (Fame) and its like our So You Think You Can Dance. And he was a cameraman for Big Brother in Spain. He also loves American music. His favorite band is Goo Goo Dolls and he loves Matchbox 20 and Counting Crows (how about that Dad!!) And Pau (Paula in English) was awesome she is from Argentina and she is a teacher on the show Fama ..they were great and we had a good time laughing and talking the whole night. It was cool because conversations where going every which way in different languages because the Brazilians only spoke Portuguese and Spanish and Pau only spoke Spanish so it was fun trying to describe what we meant in broken spanglish and hand gestures. Then we shared some mint tea (which is by far the best thing I have ever had to drink) some soup and tajine for dinner and oranges for dessert.

The nomads of the desert are called BerBer (They are basically like the aboriginals of Australia) and they were awesome. They were the people who led us into the desert and cooked for us and that night we went out to the campfire and they were singing and dancing and playing empty jugs as drums to traditional Berber music. It was awesome. They were so great. They were so happy and friendly and spoke to us in broken English and taught us words in Berber. I met one Berber kid about my age and he told me that he lived about 20km from where our campsite was and that this was his job and he didn't have shoes and he walked everywhere with his donkey and tent and slept wherever he wanted. I asked him if he was ever scared and he said no that there were no animals that could hurt him in the desert and I kept trying to picture myself in his shoes. I wonder what he would think if he came back to Illinois with me. And their hands were so big, like my 14 year old buddy had hands larger than my Dads. It was incredible. We sang songs in Berber, Spanish, Arabic, Irish and English which was highly entertaining and everyone had such a nice time. I forgot to mention the stars. I have never seen so many in my entire life. I even saw the milky way. It was a perfectly clear night, not a cloud in the sky...unreal. Then around midnight the moon rose which gave us much more light, but also made it much harder to use the bathroom (which was anywhere you could find) haha. When the fire burned out we went to bed.

We woke up to see sand dunes surrounding our campsite and a delicious breakfast of mint tea and bread with butter (the butter was so thick and buttery tasting ..delicious) and peach jelly. I took lots of pictures and then we had to pack up our belongings and get back on our camels and head to the van.

The ride back was just like the ride there except we stopped at this one town to see a Kabash were part of Gladiator was filmed and to get to the place you had to cross a river on donkey-back which was pretty cool. When we got back we all exchanged contact information with our new friends and headed back into the craziness where we had a nice dinner of calamari, beef and vegtable skewers, soup, and fish. The sneaky little Moroccan man tried to rip us off for dinner, but we caught him...so that was interesting. I think everyone was really getting tired and impatient at this point so we headed back to the hostel where we met two guys from Germany who were hilarious and we spent the whole night talking with them. (I of course fell asleep while everyone was talking...typical.)

When we woke up we grabbed so breakfast (this time mint tea, bread with butter and honey) and then had about an hour to shop around the medina before it was time for us to catch our plane. In this short amount of time I got a henna tattoo that is really cool, bought some bracelets, keychains, postcards, orange juice, and made a terrific Moroccan friend named Matich who gave me his facebook information and email address wink wink :) He told me I was like his American sister and gave me some free keychains. We spent some time talking and laughing..it was nice to meet someone who wasn't trying to rip us off. OH LIKE THE MAN WHO SOLD ME TWO DIFFERENT SIZED MOROCCAN SLIPPERS! haha I discovered that when I was back in my room in Spain unpacking my bag. What a sneaky little rat. Also ran into some trouble on the way back from the airport. We agreed on a price of 10 DH each on the way back and then of course he tried (and succeeded due to my friend's impatience haha) to charge us double. I gave him my 10 DH and started walking into the airport. I mean he took us there it wasn't like he could throw us back into his taxi. So we would have been yelled at until we got in there..no big deal, but my friend just gave him 100DH and we all walked away. So that's something I didn't like about the trip. Everyone thinks that tourist have unlimited amounts of money because they are there and they try to hit you with unbelievably high prices for everything. Like for dinner they have a moroccan menu with prices and a tourist menu with prices about doubled. Once in the airport we changed whatever left over Dirhams minus a few coins back into euros and flew back to Madrid.

Other side notes: There are stray cats and dogs everywhere. Tony I found Treasure..he ran away to Morocco so no worries..he's fine and happy. There are kids playing futbol everywhere and they play on like rocky gravel ground, no grass, in jeans and long sleeves. Kids don't really go to school, they just work and try to sell tourist things, which is really sad. I broke up a candy bar of mine to give to about 6 kids because they were asking for food. Driving through the desert there are houses made of clay, hay, rocks, with flat roofs and you don't see many women and they are all covered up and I see men walking everywhere or just sitting on the sides of the road, I saw men getting their heads/beards shaved outside or playing cards. I don't really know what they do all day if they aren't working. There are irrigation systems everywhere. There are lots of sheep.

arrive in Morocco at 1pm. Sign up for a Sahara Expedition. Spend the remainder of the day walking around, visiting Palais Bahia and Jardin Magorelle.Feb 4-5: Traveled with 18 passengers from Marrach at 7 am, visited Kasbahs (some have been used for scenes in movies like Gladiator), Ait Benhadou, and Ouarzazate. Our last stop was Zagora where we got on camels and rode an hour into the desert at sunset. Spent the night with the Berbers (nomads of the desert) singing songs and dancing after a traditional meal of tanjine of course.Feb 5: Woke up drove back through the mountains and desert. Grabbed dinner in MarrakechFeb 6: Woke up had breakfast, did some shopping/bargaining and headed to the airport around 11:00 am.

Okay, I just wrote a book and I still feel like I could write even more, but I have to get moving this morning. Superbowl is tonight, too bad its on at midnight here and classes start tomorrow. Oh well. I would love nothing more than to be sitting on my couch eating chili and watching the game. What can you do? I will probably go to an Irish bar or something and watch the game with some Americans here. But who really cares right? The Colts and the Jets...psh. Well happy Superbowl Sunday. Have a beer for me.