Morocco with the mates

Best Impressions: Everything's Cheap, Beautiful Orange Buildings to Match the Setting, Music and Performances Around the Clock, Mint Tea

Worst Impressions: Hot and Dry Weather, Constant Harassment from Store Owners, The Food Choices Similar in every Restaurants

Morocco has always been a mystery to me. Myriam, my childhood babysitter was born in Morocco and always spoke of her country and family, but that was as far as my knowledge of this NorthWest African country went. When my friend, Jacob, mentioned the idea of visiting I immediately jumped at the opportunity and we quickly found student programs to tour the country cheaply. Marrakesh, the Atlas Mountains and the Merzouga desert with everything in between, all in 4 days.

Tuesday was our first and only day in Marrakesh. A beautiful, but small city in the middle of Morocco. We were shocked to find that temperatures would reach over 40 commonly. The day was spent walking through narrow streets and across the city center where monkey and snake owners would look for any chance to scam you into holding their pets. It was difficult to enjoy yourself without getting scammed, especially as a white male, but our female friends were getting constantly physically and emotionally harassed which was obviously disheartening. I believe this is because they were not wearing the custom hijab that Arabic women are directed to wear by their religion. (An interesting fact - The long dark body suits women wear in the summer actually serve to cool them down. They sweat and the water turns the air funneling through their bodysuit into a cooling device)

The next morning we were picked up by our tour guide and started our tour of the Atlas mountains. Unreal viewpoints, filled with more green passages and creeks than I would've ever expected paved the roads and mountain sides. A constant breeze made the 6 hour van ride to Las Dades bearable, barely. Jacob (Polish), Even (Norweign/Eritrean) and I were looking for hotel pools along the ride to cool off until we finally came across the town of Ourzazate, the scene of the arena in Gladiator. During lunch we quickly ran across to a nice pool and jumped in. Only when we were leaving did hotel owners realize what was happening and started chasing us before we disappeared into the crowd of tourists buying trinkets and hijabs.

From Las Dades we finally entered the sandy area of the desert, the Dunes of Merzouga. Hightop orange mountains littered the horizon, smooth like ice cream or silk. The breeze brought crystal-like bits of sand to bite at our legs or arms, but who were we to complain, if the camels could deal with it so could we. The camel ride was long and bumpy but we finally got to the our destination, a smooth slope with a lone sand board at the top. I was one of the only ones to try the sand board on my feet, and, while it wasn't exactly smooth, I made it to the bottom without falling. The difficult part was climbing back up through soft sand, it felt like you were sinking further at every step.

That night we got to our desert camp. We washed off and ate dinner before a Moroccon show and dance. There were drums, costumes and lots of singing. Of course the Moroccon's saw a long, lanky Oliver and decided to pick on me to dance in front of the 120 people in the camp. I did my best before everyone else followed and before I knew it the entire camp was dancing in unison to the Moroccon drums. Definitely a life moment.

The next morning Jacob and I decided to pay an extra 25 euros to take quad bikes back to the van. 1 hour of gliding through the dunes at sunrise? A literal dream. I almost destroyed my quad bike when I rode down a steep hill to the chagrin of the Moroccon quad guides accompanying us. The sunrise came up in seconds and was worth the entire trip alone. The orange sand created a white aura in the sun that was unlike anything I've ever seen before. It was hard not to become emotional.

The rest of the day was taken over by a 10 hour road trip back to Marrakesh for our 6 Am flight the next morning. In the bus, I got to talking with an Algerian woman named Akila. She shared the history of her country and the history of the Arabic languages compared to North African dialects, it was great to learn about an area of the world that I know so little about. Traveling so extensively through Morocco was was one of the best experiences of my life and I recommend it to anyone that wants to learn about North African culture.

Moroccon Oddities:

• moroccan women wear full body suits no matter the weather (explained in blog)

• roof tops have glass spikes, not sure why

• wild cats and kittens in every store and along every street corner

• motorcycles litter narrow walkways

• there are literal oasis's throughout areas of the desert with water, palm trees, etc.

• the sun is much more white than usual

• coca cola ads in random creeks and on camel shelters