Marruecos

Can you believe I went to Africa two weekends ago?! I now have been to 4 continents. North American, Asia, Europe and Africa. My passport is filling up with stamps already and I still have so many more places to travel.

A company offers this Morocco trip every semester to a few universities around Granada. The travel time for the trip was a lot longer than expected. We visited 3 cities in Morocco in just one short weekend. Friday afternoon we took a bus from Granada to Algeciras, a city on the southern tip of Spain. From there we took a boat across the Strait of Girbraltar to Ceuta, a city in Northern Africa that is Spanish territory. It took a very very long time to get through customs and Morocco is two hours behind Spain. So although we ended drove to our hotel in Tétouan an hour away and ate dinner at 10pm, it felt like midnight to us and we were exhausted from the long day of traveling. They promised us a traditional Moroccan meal but I think we got the tourist version of it. We had soup and a lot of bread as well as fish and egg-tasting flaun for dessert. Luckily, we all made it upstairs before falling asleep at the dinner table.

Susan, Molly, Me, Elise, Niki and Chelsesa

We had an early start the next morning and visited a medina in Tétouan. A medina is a community where people live, work, shop and spend time with friends and family. We walked through the market part of the medina first. We were all throw by the smell of fish as we walked in. I have honestly never seen so many fish in my life. There were a lot of fruits and vegetables too. The worst though were the live chickens. Reluctantly, I watched one get its head chopped off. This may be normal if your are from a small town in Iowa :) but this was a first for me. The picture above shows my friends and I standing in front of one of the few churches in Morocco.

I've got a Dirham, hey, hey, hey, hey :)

I was able to change my Euro into Dirham, the currency in Morocco. I feel super rich in this picture but 200 Dirham is really only 20 Euro.

Una mezquita

Here is one of the many, many mosques in Morocco. Our guide explained to us the significance of the 5 points on the star on the Moroccan flag. The 5 points symbolize the the country's religion and faith - the 5 pillars of Islam. One of the pillars include daily prayers, 5 times each day.

Can you tell I am still smiling? :)

During one part of our tour we met these old Moroccan women selling typical farmers clothes. They were so sweet and dressed us up in these clothes so we could take pictures. I must say, I am a pretty convincing Moroccan farmer woman.

Muchas alfombras

Later that day we found ourselves in somewhat of a tourist trap. Our guide brought us to a rug/blanket store where they took about an hour to show us dozen of rugs. It wasn't until the very end where we found out each rug cost about 500 Euro. In case these men didn't know... college students studying abroad for a semester do not have that kind of money. However, a few girls did bargain some rugs down to 200-250 Euro. They thought is was a steal until we went to two other rug place that weekend where the rest of us bought similar rugs for about 20 Euro. :)

My new Moroccan hat!

 We went to an excellent restaurant that day for lunch. I think I could eat pretty well in Morocco. :) Noodle soup, spicy chicken kabobs and fruit for dessert. The minty tea at every meal is a little much for me though. There was a lot of entertainment for us at the restaurant also. The men in the picture played music as we entered and left the restaurant and there was a double-jointed man inside that juggled fire!

Mom, Dad!? Can I keep him?

 Later that day we drove to Tangier where we had a chance to shop and ride camels. I was a natural! :) It was a very touristy location because we paid 1 Euro to basically ride the camel around the parking lot, but I think its safe to say it is the best Euro I have spent so far!

A typical hostel in Chechaouene

The second day was awesome! We traveled to Chechaouene and had an extremely knowledgeable guide who was ecstatic to be able to share his culture and hometown with us. We visited a medina here too but it was a lot cleaner. He told us about how it was a goal of his community to keep there homes clean and safe. He also explained a lot about the architecture as well as the significance of the color choices and how it all related to the Islamic culture. Again, we visited a weaver but this time it wasn't a scam. We actually met the man the worked on the rugs and blankets and the guide shared with us exactly how much time went into each item. The man was happy to have visitors and kept asking us if we wanted to see a magic trick. He was would break the yarn he was using into two pieces and pretend to be scared that he would not be able to work this into his rug. Then with a sneaky grin he would waved his hands over the two pieces of yarn and it would once again be whole. Magic? Or maybe 40 years of weaving? :)

Cutest old man weaver ever

Overall, we were very pleased with the trip. If we planned the trips ourselves instead of going through the separate company we might have saved a little money and spent a little less time traveling but I do not think we would have seen everything we did. Hasta luego Morocco! :)