Marruecos

DAY 1

I really had no expectations, so when I was dropped off in a random alleyway in Fes, led to our "hotel" buried somewhere in the narrow streets, and served my first glass of mint tea in the beautiful Moroccan home, I was pretty happy.

Moroccan mint tea ("berber whiskey") is incredibly good. We sat around Dar Hafsa, surprised by the tea but starving, and chatted with some pretty strange people from Australia (one may or may not have been hiding the tea pot in his beard). It was bizarre and I loved it.

DAY 2

This is a view from the roof of our house-turned-hotel the next morning. We came up after breakfast. Moroccan breakfast is not a joke. It never ends, and it involves a lot of carbs and if it gets painful you just have to eat through it. But the roof had a beautiful view, and I nursed my food baby as I looked out over the city of Fes.

Abdul Karim (owner of Dar Hafsa, nicest man in the world, only person not trying to sell us something in all of Morocco -- if only because he already had) set us up with a tour guide for the day. He showed us around the medina, and I'm so glad he did -- the markets are complete insanity and I can't imagine trying to get around on my own.

This woman (above) had just come out of a hammam, a bath house. Our tour guide stopped to explain. As nice as he was, he was completely chauvinistic like every other Moroccan man I met. "Women pay double to use them," he explained to us. "Do you know why?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

"Because it's the only place they can do anything!" he said, laughing through his three crooked teeth. He explained that women are essentially confined to the background -- they don't meet up in public, don't even go to cafés or restaurants. The bath houses, then, are the only places they can go to socialize with other women (hilarious!).

FC Barça, can't escape it anywhere.

This was the first stop on our tour. It was a beautiful building with a beautiful view.

Our guide clearly knew the men working inside, and they made and sold a lot of rugs. Lots. People in Morocco tend to speak English really well when they're trying to sell you something, which we quickly realized as we encountered more and more overly friendly salesmen. This one first showed us the view from the roof and explained to us how the rugs were made. Here's a man doing "men's work", and "women's work" is apparently different but we could obviously never see how or why.

He offered us the traditional mint tea. Then he got down to business. We must have seen fifty rugs. This one, in particular, is made from cactus fiber (?) and I ended up buying a blue variation (thanks, Mom and Dad!). I promise I didn't mean to, but all of a sudden I was walking out pretty dazed with a rug in hand. It was a theme of the trip. You walk into a beautiful home, you drink mint tea; all of a sudden twenty minutes have passed and you're walking out with a rug in hand wondering if you've been roofied.

Half of us were sucked in by this man's powers; rugs purchased, we continued to wander the narrow streets of Fes.

One of the most interesting stops was the tannery, below. They make leather here, and the barrels in the photos are full of the different treatments (our guide said one was pigeon poop, but that might have been lost in translation?). Quite literally the worst smell I have ever smelled.

More meandering through the markets...

Mosque; not allowed in but looked quite beautiful from the outside.

Spencer almost roped into buying this fez (our guide took the opportunity to distinguish between Fes (city) and fez (hat)).

Our guide (<33333)

People really seemed to like trying to tie scarves around our heads.

"NO PHOTOS OF MY ROOSTERS"

Men weaving gold thread (above and below).

Man (above) making the tiles (below) that they use for mosques, arches, other incredible architecture.

Arch that marks the entrance to the old part of the city. The outside is blue (color of Fes) and the inside is green (color of Islam).

DAY 3

Sunday marked the beginning of our spontaneous trip to the Sahara. Three of us had been planning on spending these two nights in Casablanca, two on staying in Fes, and one on going back to Barcelona. Instead, Abdul Karim suggested a camel ride and camping trip in the Sahara, and we all ended up in a van at 7 am on a road trip through the Atlas mountains.

Our first stop was the monkey forest (?). They were delightful creatures that sort of stood there with a bemused expression as we poked and took pictures with them, like good Americans.

Things got a little weird when we saw a pair of monkeys fornicating in a tree, so we got back on the road. We drove through the freezing, snowy part of the Atlas mountains and then through the desert. Note the absurdity of driving in Morocco -- I was sitting shotgun and my knuckles were white by the time we got out of the car. By the end of the trip, I was only slightly more accustomed to passing cars in the other lane with other cars coming at us full on.

Our arrival at the desert. We took 4x4s from this town into the heart of the Sahara, where we'd be staying at a Berber auberge the first night and camping the second.

After dropping our things off at the auberge (above), we wandered up into the dunes to watch the sunset. The color...

We made friends with two Berber nomads who were riding the bike above. They tied scarves on our heads and took photos with us.

We should have known they would be trying to sell us something.

Again, I caved and threw 100 dirham their way. After sunset, we ate a pretty questionable dinner and attempted to sleep in the rooms -- with no heat, no electricity and no hot water. And we weren't even in the desert yet.

DAY 4

We woke up early and these two nice men drove us around to see different walks of life in the desert.

Thought this kid wanted to be my friend but he just wanted a dirham.

Believe it or not, there is a gas station in the middle of the Sahara. Berber man tries to pour water on Spencer's face while he takes a powernap.

One of our stops was a Sudanese village. They performed for us, tried to get us to dance with them, tried to (wait for it) sell us things.

And then the best part arrived. We took camels into the desert at sunset, and it could not have been more beautiful.

Camel kiss!!

We camped out over night. It was FREEZING. So cold, in fact, that I was ready to get out of "bed" for sunrise. As the sun rose over the Algerian border, we hopped back on our camels and back to the auberge, ready for breakfast and in desperate need of a shower.

DAY 5

We say goodbye to Abdul Karim. A truly incredible, kind person. For almost nothing, he welcomed us into his home and made our Morocco experience the crazy, spontaneous trip it turned out to be.