My 1st impression of Morocco was the industrialized port of Casablanca. They told us in the preport to watch out for cranes…great.
We huddled in the union at 0930 and awaited instructions. After the most unorganized process of handing out passports, we grabbed a box lunch and got on the bus. Turns out we didn’t even need the boxed lunches – lunch was included. So now we had a boxed snack. I feel sorry for whoever made those – there are 150 of us on this trip.
Mackenzie and I were bus buddies and we sat in the very back of the bus. It was not the most encouraging thing when the first thing we saw was a guy give our bus a thumbs down. What a great way to start. The 4 hour bus rides to Marrakech was pretty uneventful. We did get to see the 2nd largest mosque in the world. It is only second to the mosque in Mecca.
When we got to Marrakech, we were herded off the bus and mass chaos ensued. For some reason they divided our buses by sexes. Here they are telling us to make sure we have a male companion and then they take all of them away. So here is this big group of girls in the market and the only male in sight is our tour guide Jamal and Charlie (the psychology teacher on the ship). All of us were overwhelmed. I have never seen ANYTHING compared to what I had just stepped into. I basically glued myself to Jamal while he gave us time to go get money exchanged. Luckily, I already had some.
Once we had all met up, we were escorted to a restaurant for lunch. The place was beautiful and the tile work was so colorful. The room was a rich blue color and the chair and plates matched. Drinks were not included sp I bought a big bottle of water for the table because I needed to break some of the bills that I had. The first round of the food was bread and an assortment of dishes. One I know was potatoes, another was carrots (but they were gross – they tasted like flowers). One was a type of salsa and the other two I have no idea what they were, but they were delicious. The main course was brought out in the dish that looked like a volcano. Inside I was chicken in this lemon salsa. At first we all thought it was pigeon because that is a very popular dish here. They consider it a delicacy. There were these doughnut like pastries and some little cakes covered in powdered sugar. Both were delicious. Lunch was concluded with a glass of mint tea. I felt really bad during lunch because it is Ramadan and they are fasting from sunup to sundown and here we are stuffing our faces.
After lunch, we had some free time so we set off into the souks (markets). Mackenzie and I attached ourselves to Carol and Charlie because some sketchy guy was trying to pretend to be a tour guide and get us to follow him. Apparently, this is really common. One quick not on the marketplace: There are birds in the restaurants (or at least in ours at lunch), cats in the shops and snakes in the street.
Once we ere free of the creeper, we meandered through the marketplace. We walked through the produce section and the smell was amazing. I was overwhelmed with the smell of citrus. We also passed some snake charmers who yell at you to take a picture so they can then charge you 2000 dirhams or something crazy. The exchange rate is roughly 8 dirhams to $1. We saw fabrics of all kind and silver pots, shoes, backpacks and wnything else you can imagine. Mackenzie got run over by a donkey cart. Balek! Balek! I really felt like I had stepped into a Indiana Jones movie and at any moment Harrison Ford (or maybe if I was lucky Shia LaBeouf) was going to swoop in at any moment and save me from the aggressive vendors.
We had only been in the market about 30 minutes, when about 30 minutes when it started monsooning. We found some shelter to wait it out. We still had 30 minutes until we had to meet the bus. When it lightened up we made a break for it. Mackenzie went one way and ended up basically in a pond. I climbed up on a wall to avoid the water, but almost got kicked by a horse…so either way you went you were screwed. We figured the buses would be there because of the rain, but no we all had to stand in the rain. Normally, this would have not bothered me, but 1. I had my camera and 2. I was wearing a white shirt. So I was attempting to not flash the locals. I’m pretty sure that would fall under the unwanted attention category.
We finally made back on the bus and went to check into our hotel. The hotel was pretty nice except for the fact that our room didn’t have AC. Luckily, the rain had cooled everything off and we had a balcony so we just kept the door open. Even though we didn’t have AC, some people had brown water…eww. Mackenzie and I did have some issues trying to figure out how to flush the toilet. You had to squeeze this lever and then the toilet basically exploded. After that excitement, we passed out for a nap before dinner.
Dinner. I don’t even know how to describe what we experienced. We went to a place called Fantasia Chez Ali. The only way I can think to describe it is a cross between Medieval Times and Morocco at Epcot Morocco in Disney World. We were led into this palace type thing by men on white horses. As we walked in, performers representing the different regions of Morocco greeted us. They were dressed in what I would assume would be traditional outfits and singing songs. The Sahara people were the best. We were then led into the dining area. Each dining area had a different color – we chose red. Mackenzie and I ate with Eddie, the Assistant Dean of Students, Dr. Charlie Morris and his wife Carol, Christie, Lucas and Louie. We hardly had the chance to enjoy our dinner because the various groups we had seen at the entrance kept interrupting us. They took a liking to Mackenzie. A belly dancer pulled her up to dance with her and then in a separate group one mouthed something to her that looked a lot like “I love you.”
The main course was veggies, cous cous and chicken and dinner was rounded out with a HUGE bowl of fruit. It looked delicious, but none of us could eat it because of the fear of getting traveler’s diarrhea because it was washed in their water. Louis, Eddie, and Charlie all had an orange after bathing it in Purell. Mackenzie debated on a peach, but decided against it. But this spawned one of the most hilarious conversations between Carol and Charlie. Apparently, whenever they travel Charlie always gets diarrhea when they travel and she wasn’t going to take care of him anymore. He was going to have to do it himself. Haha (“You know you are going to get diarrhea.” “Carol can we please stop talking about it?” “I’m just letting you know I am not going to take care of you this time.”)
We skipped out on the mint tea to watch the horse show. Again, probably the most bizarre thing. There was a parade of the performers we saw at the entrance and a fire dancer. Then they drove this stage-looking thing out in the middle of the field and this belly dancing girl pops out of the middle of. While belly dancing it neat and all, I really don’t want to watch one girl dance for 20 minutes. The belly dancing was cut off by the Darth Vader theme song and all these horse galloping forward while the riders did tricks. The next thing I know the “Fantasia” is comes galloping forward and fire their guns. It was SO loud. After doing this about 4 times and thoroughly scared the horses, I guess this cued it was time for the finale. All the performers came back out on the field and out of nowhere comes a flying carpet. Yep, a flying carpet. Too bad the people on it looked nothing like Aladdin and Jasmine. Then in true Disney fashion, they ended the night with fireworks.
After the most unconventional dinner of my life, we made it back to the hotel about midnight. Mackenzie and I just laughed about today. Way to say hello Morocco. We get a thumbs down from a guy to start the day, get harassed by a sketchy man, we got adopted by Charlie and Carol, got caught in a freak rainstorm, the hotel had no AC, there were birds in the restaurants, cats in the shops and snakes on the street, and then we rounded out the day with Medieval Times/Epcot Morocco. I think I will count today as a success.