Morrockin’ Out

Yes, I have two titles in a row which are puns about Africa. No, I’m not sorry about it. Yes, they were totally necessary. Yes, I understand if you’re jealous you’re not this clever. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s go to Africa!

            We took EasyJet over to Morocco – it lived up to its name. We had a quick and easy flight. (Spoiler Alert: not all EasyJet flights are easy.) We had signed up to for a guided weekend, because traveling as a group of girls alone in Morocco didn’t sound like the best idea. Ten of us from Duke went – there were about 45 people in the group all together. After exchanging some Euros for Dirhams (YES! The one time an exchange rate is working in our favor!) we all clamored onto the bus which would become our home for the weekend and headed out, under the careful guidance of Rasheed, to our first excursion. Rasheed was hilarious – he spoke English (“hello soul brothers and soul sisters!”), Spanish (although he didn’t say the same things in Spanish that he did in English), French, and Arabic (the two official languages of Morocco.) Our first point of interest was the caves of Hercules. These caves are beautiful – the entrance is thought to look like a map of Africa. 

Africa?

Apparently, they somehow relate to the Greek myth of Hercules. Hercules slept here before completing one of his 12 tasks – the one with the golden apples which according to Rasheed were actually oranges? It’s a little unclear, but believe me, this place is important.

            After the caves, we headed down to the beach for some awesome views of the Moroccan coast. 

 We then made our way over to a more walkable beach for some CAMEL RIDES. How exciting?! This was pretty much my goal of Africa – who knew we would accomplish it in the first day, let alone the first hour?! Camels are actually pretty gross animals and they’re really not very graceful. They’re a lot taller than they appear. You basically have to straddle them and then hold on for dear life. They get up by standing on their front legs first and then their back, leaving you hanging nearly vertically during the in-between. Erin and I enjoyed a romantic walk down the beach. (Well, it would have been romantic without the guides hurrying the camel, and the other camels in the caravan harassing Erin’s foot, and if camels were less gross, and…okay, so maybe ‘romantic’ wasn’t the right word.)  The dismount is hilariously petrifying. It was pretty much like a rollercoaster but a lot less controlled. I think the following picture pretty much sums up our camel experience: 

Clearly we had the situation under control.

            After the camel we found our way (or rather, sat while a bus found its way) to the northernmost point in Africa! (I didn’t know this at the time, but was looking at people’s facebook pictures from the trip which informed me…and people say facebook is good for nothing!) I had my first experience bargaining in this country – needless to say, I was successful. (I’m too stubborn and not sympathetic enough to not get things for the prices I want to pay.)

            We went to our hotel which was beautiful! It had a lot of tiling in the style of la Alhambra in Granada. During our free time (tiempo libre!) the Duke girls chose to explore the surrounding market and/or nap AKA not bond with any of the other people on the trip – this is a recurring theme. As Kathleen later put it “I already have 43 friends in Madrid – why do I need more?” Smart girl. The market was pretty cool but people are very aggressive, as is the case in most “lesser developed countries” (LDCs if you will.) We met up with the group for a “typical Moroccan dinner.” This consisted of: a delicious Moroccan soup which had vegetables and a cinnamon aftertaste, BREAD (we were reeeeally hungry), some beef skewers, cous-cous (super food!) with chicken and vegetables, some sort of honey pastry for dessert, and a sweet peppermint tea, which Jack Kerouac is rumored to have enjoyed a lot. (Not sure where I saw that but I definitely did somewhere or maybe I made it up – just kidding, I googled. I don’t lie.) Anywhoo, it was all delicious. Unsurprising.

            We headed back to the hotel and went to bed. (Another recurring theme of the trip – SLEEP.) We got up the next morning and after enjoying the hotel breakfast (love me a good free breakfast) we headed out on a walk tour of old Tangiers. We went to a point where we saw Gibraltar (although it was foggy so we didn’t see it very well), we saw the house of some famous American who had 7 husbands (“she was very friendly” as Rasheed explained), and even saw a snake charmer! I didn’t find him all that charming. He basically just took out the snake and held it out. The music really had very little to do with it. I did hold it though, after convincing the nice Arabic man that I had in fact given money to the man collecting. (I had not.) 

We then stopped into a store which sold rugs – they were beautiful and each had a story. They strategically had us sit in a circle then laid out one of every style rug that they had so that it was nearly impossible to escape after the presentation ended – I think their plan was for us to buy our way out?  Clever, Morocco. Clever. We then went to a spice store where they tried to tell us that Eucalyptus cures everything. I’ll have to check with the people who bought it to see if that’s the case. (I’m skeptical – someone who got it for hangovers did not make it to our make-up class this morning.) They also tried to sell us some strong aphrodisiacs to make your husband less lazy. “One drop and all night long – cha-cha-cha!” (Sales is all about the presentation, no?) 

Spain is just across the ocean...

            After exploring old Tangiers, we got on the bus for our first real excursion! We went to Assilah, a town not too far away. Our first mission was to get some lunch. I got a shrimp omelet? Sounded like a weird combination but I went for it anyway because I’m exotic like that. It was surprisingly good. We only spent a short time in the town itself – there was a cool pier type of thing which was pretty cool, and we shopped around another bazaar for a bit. It was fine but I was a little disappointed that we didn’t learn anything about the town. Yep – that’s right. I missed Nuria and Eva.

We went back to the hotel and were on our own for dinner. We got what was definitely my favorite meal – falafel and hummus and Baba ghanouj. After dinner it was time to go “out.” It didn’t seem very Moroccan, but we were down to try. The tour group took us to a bar where we were literally the only patrons. There was hookah, overpriced drinks, and plush pink walls? It was fun for awhile because there were some characters on the trip who definitely got their groove on. We were sort of over it after 2.5 hours. Our next stop was a club. We asked if they would take us back to the hotel. Not sorry about it. We designated ourselves “team fail” since it was only the Duke girls who wanted to go back. To be honest though, I think going back might have been less embarrassing than going to a club called “Club Snob.” Just…why?

After a restful night’s sleep, we got up for excursion number 2, this one to Chaouen. Impressive number of vowels in its name aside, Chaouen was really neat. I wish we could have spent more time there. The drive was excessively long and pretty scary. (We saw a truck flip off of the road in front of us – the guys in it were fine thankfully but it definitely put a damper on the morning.) The drive was almost worth it though for the views and the town itself. It’s known as the little blue town, mostly because nearly all of the buildings are various shades of blue. It’s nestled in the mountains of Morocco – in fact Chaouen might mean “look to the horns” (according to Wikipedia) which refers to the shape of the mountain peaks. It might also mean “look to the waterfalls” (according to our tour guide.) Both sort of applied though – I’d recommend looking at it all. We had time for a quick lunch and some shopping…you know, to change things up from yesterday. My aforementioned stubbornness prevented me from getting some cheap things because I wanted them for cheaper – it wasn’t even that; it was just that I didn’t want to lose. (Losing is one of my least favorite things to do.) 

We went back to the hotel and got some pizza for dinner because we had tried the typical Moroccan food (tagine, cous cous, delicious soup) so why not? We had been on a search for ice cream since arriving, and finally came upon somewhere. It was 1. delicious and 2. cost 5 dirham aka 50 cents. Taking 1 and 2 into consideration, I don’t even need to say that between 4 people we got 7 orders, do I?

Anyway, we made it back to the hotel and – you guessed it – went to bed! Loved it. I had been woken up by the sunrise prayers the first two nights, but I did not hear them this last night – proof that I slept hard because they were loud. I’m glad I heard them at some point though – it was something I had never before experienced and probably never will again. Such fervent and expressive belief in something is just so interesting.

Unfortunately they only offered one shuttle to the bus which got there 4 hours before our flight was scheduled to take off. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the airport wasn’t actually the smallest airport on the face of the planet. There were three “gates” aka three doors right next to each other labeled 1, 2, and 3 respectively. (They ended up changing our gate without telling us! We’re lucky we found it!) There were a total of two stores and one place that sold food – this place of course was out of sandwiches. We were fine though – it turned out there were 4 people from the trip (not Duke people – Erin and I were the only ones on this flight) also on our flight. They came over to talk to us – it was basically our first interactions with non-Duke people on this trip. We’re super social like that. We ended up having major bonding time though because the flight turned out to be delayed…for over four hours. Around 2 o’clock (our flight was to take off at 2:20) a line formed for the Barcelona plane taking off a few minutes later. I went to ask the person at the gate where our plane was – she directed my to the EasyJet employee who casually responded “Oh? That plane? That’s delayed for 2 hours.” And then he walked away. And for the next two hours there were actually no EasyJet employees that I could see in the entire airport. We had no information as to where the plane was nor what time it was actually getting in. Around 6 o’clock they started bringing in sandwiches and drinks. Obviously, as much as I love free things, this was a terrible, terrible sign. Employees sporadically would pop up – I hunted down every last one to ask for more information. They had none to offer. From other disgruntled patrons I gathered that this happens a lot with EasyJet – one person told me how they cancelled his flight and didn’t get him on another one for 3 days. My mom and aunt were visiting Madrid for the week – I could not spend 3 days in Morocco. We had dinner reservations which there was no way I was going to make. I tried to communicate this to my mom but my phones (both Spanish and American) stopped working. Just stopped. WHY? As far as I knew my mom and aunt would be waiting patiently for me at their hotel at the designated time and I’d be in Morocco for 3 more days unable to communicate. This was not cool. I went up to an employee and asked for help. (I hate asking for help.) He was pretty useless. He kept saying he’d help and then walk away for awhile. Eventually they started handing out our rights as passengers, another bad sign. On the sheet it said that under some particular circumstances I had the right to one phone call. I showed this to the employee with whom I was dealing and continued to beg for his help. He went into a back room and another employee who had been there the whole time said “Do you still need to make a call?” No; I’ve been standing here for the last hour because of the engaging conversation. “Buy a card and then you can use that phone right there.” “I’m not going to pay to use the phone. I could have done that an hour ago. What about the guy who was helping me?” “What other guy?” WHAT? This was really the turning point for me. I have the ability to become vocal when necessary. I ended up being first in line to be taken back across security to EasyJet’s company phone where I made a prison call to my mother. By prison call I mean “I only have one call – they’re….they’re telling me I have to go. Don’t forget about me! I’ll see you when I finally get the hell out of this place.”

Eventually, we did get the hell out of that place. Angeles was disappointed we didn’t bring home a Moroccan man (so predictable). Morocco was definitely interesting – I would have loved to have seen more. Although European Vibe didn’t offer us the most cultural experience, I was very thankful for our guide and transportation. I rode a camel, saw some mountains, and was in Africa. I’d say that qualifies as a Morockin’ Moroccan vacation, wouldn’t you?