Also known as: My Trip to Morocco!
At 7:00 am, we left Granada to go to Tarifa, which is a little province in my favorite Spanish city, Cadiz. It's a little port, that rumor has it, is owned by the British? I haven't fact checked that one yet, but I'm sure it's true... they own everything up in the EU.
Anyway, we hoped on our little cruise liner to cross the Mediterranean/Atlantic ocean meeting point at 1:00pm. We went through customs from hell before we boarded, and then stood in the line from hell on the boat to get out passports stamped again.
The motion sickness wasn't too bad, but I'm about the worst person to sit next to on a boat, or anything that moves that much... At 2:00pm we landed in Tangier -- a lot of the Spanish signs just say "Tanger"... which looks like "Tanger outlets" from far away... I miss my outlet stores in America...
So in Tanger our first stop was lunch, thank God! I was so hungry it was unbelievable. We took about a thirty minute bus ride to get to a woman's shelter in Tanger where we filled up every room in the place, and we were fed the most delicious couscous that I've ever had. Granted, it was a little drier than I'm used to, but it was amazing. They had this sauce on it, that consisted of caramelized onions and raisins with brown sugar, oil and water. OMG. It was like Thanksgiving in my mouth. It was so good. I sat next to our tour guide "Durah"? and she told me that if I wanted her sauce that I could have it. I felt really weird about taking it though, because who the hell doesn't want that?! She said it was too sweet... apparently her palate isn't as sophisticated as mine... maybe it's the other way around. Anyway. After lunch we all took a walk around Tangier. It's a little dirty, not much unlike Mexico, for people who've been. It reminded me a lot of Aladdin, I know different country, but it looked like street rat territory.
The streets were all very small and very windy, more so than here in Granada. You could see a torre de mesquita creeping through every break in the buildings. It was really beautiful. It's equivalent to the amount of cadetrales in Granada. (Spanish spelling, yes I know it's 'wrong'). In Tangier we saw a lot of black market material, such as counterfeit jerseys, sports paraphernalia, lots of designer bags, and then there were markets with decapitated chickens, live chickens, lots of delicious looking fruit and veggies and flowers EVERYWHERE.
At the end of our walking tour we stopped in a scarf making place. There was this little, company like thing of this guy with a huge loom who made scarves, blankets, and all kinds of things ALL DAY LONG! But the guys were super over priced, soooo I skipped over buying things there.
When we finished our walking tour we got back on the bus to go ride CAMELS! We took a sort of bus tour of Tangier and saw the Castle. We saw a bunch of pictures of the King of Morocco. One of the girls said "HEY LOOK! IT'S THE KING!" so of course me response was "How do you know he's the King?!" .... and nobody got it.
After my epic fail of movie quoting we stopped and saw camels. Just sitting there, waiting for us! There were four big ones all kind of tied together like the horses at fairs, and three babies tied up a little farther away. The first round of people just jumped on without a second though, and everyone started taking pictures. I hopped up on mine and immediately regretted it, because for some reason I just didn't think that I'd be that high off of the ground. The guides spoke enough English to say "Don't worry be happy." .... really reassuring, thanks man.
When I got off of 'Ol Bess, I walked over to play with the baby camels. My previous horse experiences have taught me to have your hand out flat, not to sneak up behind the animal and to stay calm. The baby was SO cute! All it wanted was some loving, and it literally pushed into my hand when I pet it. It was SO cute! I really want a pet camel, that's real life.
(P.S. Peta needs to get on these camel wranglers... the camels aren't happy with their lives, clearly... let's do something about this yeah? I'll take them all... seriously.)
After I had a slight maternal feeling for the camel it was time to go, so I slathered myself up with hand sanitizer and passed out on the bus to get to the hotel.
When we made it to the hotel, we weren't sure what to expect. I'd heard horror stories about roaches and bed bugs and wasn't looking forward to what we were getting into. However, we walked into the lobby to something that looked a LOT like the inside of the Alhambra, meaning it was really nice, and the rooms were HUGE! Turns out the hotel was only a year old, so it was too soon for there to have been an infestation. Lucky us!
That night we were treated to a three course meal. Bred. Olives and other apa-tease-ers. Couscous with Chicken... again. And a fruit bowl. Everyone was scared to eat the fruit just because we didn't know where it was from. Our rule of the trip became "If Jorge and Juan eat it, we can too." (those are our program directors.)
After dinner my room mate and I went to R and M's room to watch a movie. We watched "Requiem for a Dream"... have you ever seen that? Not really a bed time movie...
The next morning we woke up from some very weird dreams, had a four star breakfast and headed out to Chechauan... or something like that.
It's the blue city in Morocco. It was SO beautiful, but extremely cold, which I was not prepared for. And so the first thing I did after our tour and lunch with a host family (which was Hummus and a Salad because I got stuck with the allergy/special diet group), was buy a nice hand knit sweater from a nice Moroccan man. It was 17 EUROS! 17 EUROS FOR A HAND MADE SWEATER! AHHHH. I bought a few other things, but I'm not giving away present spoilers. :)
Once everyone finished shopping we headed to the middle of the city via bus to go to a nice restaurant for dinner. I think the only thing that's safe for foreigners is couscous... because that's what we had... again. During the dinner there was a live Moroccan band that performed for us. It was really cool. The violin sounded a lot like Irish dance music, but it was set to Moroccan drums and a tambourine, which made it way cooler. Once everyone was finished with their meal, a Moroccan woman came down in a conservative (believe it or not) belly dancing outfit and danced for a good five minutes. She wasn't as good as the woman who we took belly dancing classes with, but she was still pretty impressive. After her, a man came down all dressed up with a tray of candles and a tea pot. He did a cool balancing dance and moved around a bunch without dropping ANYTHING! He did a lot of fun balancing tricks and physics moves. It was so cool! After that another band group came in. Two men jumped around a bunch with a huge drum and some tiny little cymbals.
After the seriously amazing dinner show we headed back to the hotel. Of course, everyone passed out on the way home, but not before Jorge could tell us a funny story about some woman who put a dead cat in a bag and then she got mugged... Yeah, Spanish humor man.
The next morning we woke up pretty early, to yet another four star breakfast and headed out in the rain to tour Tetouan, the city that we were staying in. We took a bus for the majority of the tour, but once we got to the smaller roads we got out and got to exploring. We walked through a bunch of old side streets and talked a lot about the history of the city, the mosques, and other things. There were a LOT of cats, everywhere and I really wanted to take a kitten home... but I don't think it would have made it through customs... yeah.
Halfway through our tour we stopped at a pharmacy type place that specializes in natural medicine. They had saffron lip stick and chap stick that change color from person to person, some natural version of vicks, some medicine that helps with motion sickness, head aches, and insomnia... so I got three bottles. :)
After that we headed back to get on the boat to go home. We got a sack lunch and boarded the boat from hell again... But apparently there was a severe storm in Malaga (on the coast of this ocean we were crossing) and it SERIOUSLY effected the ocean. The boat tipped so much that things started falling off tables, and people were freaking out so badly. I had a mild panic attack and thought about barfing. Thankfully I had my motion sickness bottles... which surprisingly worked. It's real.
We hopped on the bus after we landed safely and got to Granada around 9pm.
That was my weekend in Morocco. :)
Buenas Noches
<3
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