Saharan…Snowboarding & Foot Massages?

Morocco Part 3As extraordinary as camping in the Sahara was, I can’t imagine a more tourist-happy activity than camel rides, even if it was on local Berber-rug saddles from a campsite to a puny village. Just like riding elephants in Thailand, the whole idea is exotically enticing but then your butt just hurts and the camel in front of you pees and sprays on your leg and the wind whips sand in your face and…yeah an hour later it’s not so romantic anymore. But it was still good ol’ fashioned fun and who can say that they’ve ridden a camel named Lady Gaga through the Sahara? Or that’s what Muhammad told me she (he?) was named…

So after sufficiently abusing our gluteus maximuses, we gracefully dismounted our regal creatures and staged a photo shoot with them. Camels love having their picture taken. Or they’re just completely apathetic. Probably the latter. Anyway, with that accomplished, we entered the tiny village closest to our campsite where most of the workers live with their families. Virtually all of the revenue in the area comes from tourists, so they haggled us accordingly for just about every trinket. I had already splurged on a Berber rug in Fez, but opted for some amazing jewelry at a shop in town. Rather, the shop in town–it was just a few mud huts grouped together around a few trees, with nothing to distinguish the buildings from each other. As the guides told us, architecture is more about what is inside the house, so that you impress your family and guests, not make your neighbors jealous with gaudy external decoration. So I’m sure French colonial style went over really well when they moved into Morocco to decorate.

The turban is an essential fashion accessory for this season’s desert-explorer look. Keeps the sun and sand out, and your lack-of-shower-stench in!

After a bit of wandering around this desolate village, I wished that I had been aware of the situation of the people that would be hosting us on “their” land. It would have been great to be able to bring toothbrushes (definitely something they needed), or even toys or candy for the kids. Anything would have been great to bring to share, after seeing how little they had and how hard they worked.
That being said, we returned to camp to hang out on the dunes, and promptly received foot massages from a crew of little guys. When we giggled and insisted that they stop, they kept wanting to so…of course we let them? They thought my frostbitten toes were hilarious, which they are, and after awhile they proceeded to climb on us like monkeys rather than rub our feet. How boys change…

After a oddly satisfying foot massage from 7-year-olds, my friend Ashley and I proceeded to make friends with the “sandboarding resort workers,” aka the guys that owned the Burton snowboards that had been converted to sandboards. Converted= ruined. After chatting with them for awhile in Spanish, they let me hop in the bindings, barefoot, and ride the dunes. Shreddin’ the gnar! Well, hardly. The friction on sand is a little much, so the board basically crawls, but it’s a fun ride down. After a few runs of this, our new friend asked me on a date and explained how hard it was to find a wife: girls marry at 17 to 28 year old men in an arranged marriage. “Nunca hay amor,” he told me; there’s never love in marriages, it is just for family connections. So I felt terrible for him, but not bad enough to be his wife. It was also impressive that the local Berbers had never attended school and couldn’t read or write much more than their own names, but many were tri-lingual at the very least, learning fluent Spanish and English just from spending time around tourists. Wish I could do the same in Spain!Global warming is inspiring the next extreme sport!

Our last night at camp consisted of (another) amazing dinner, and after dinner entertainment consisted of a rockin’ local tribal band! I totally would have bought their CD. Or tape. Then some of the locals proceeded to teach us how to traditionally dance, but it just turned into me trying to Thizzle-dance with one of them. He got the idea, and hopefully the Hyphy Movement will now be reborn in the middle of Morocco. Camp at night…wish we could have stayed longer! I love the no-shower excuse.

After two days that far surpassed my expectations for a trip vaguely described as “camping in the desert,” we headed out in 4×4’s to Erfoud. A better description might have been, “a once in a lifetime experience that is too spectacular to put into words, and one that you will never forget.” Goodbye, beautiful Sahara, hello “real” world. In Erfoud, we boarded back onto those dreaded buses for 8 hours to Meknes, a relatively modern city that we didn’t see much of beyond a little wandering around our hotel. A brief night’s sleep, then back onto buses, and then I pretty much passed out on the bus and had an instantly debilitating sickness. I love the way you taste, Moroccan food, but apparently my body doesn’t love you back. So the 24 hour trip back to Barcelona was indescribably miserable, as were the 3 subsequent days of staying in bed. Being sick is always awful, but even more so when every minute that passes by could have been one spent wandering around Europe. Oh well, hakuna matata! Or the Spanish equivalent, ¡manana manana!Crawl on, little beetle. Right on into Kaitlin’s bed…

 

Dunes, Dude.

Morocco Part 2

Waking up at 5:00 am never felt so good.

Back in the buses, back on the road, into the desert. Another 8 hours towards the village of Erfoud (the area in the movie Babel, which we ironically watched on the bus. Ironic because Cate Blanchett gets shot in a coach bus in the same desert.), with minimal pit stops and maximum numbness of the gluteus maximus.

Although the ride was 8 hours through a supposedly desolate desert, my eyes were glued to the scenery and not to the TV. It’s hard to imagine that the impossibly puny, isolated villages that we passed could be self-sustaining, which they must be, being so far from anything and everything. Sometimes we would pass a lonely wanderer, at least 30 km from the next sign of life along the highway, just hiking alongside the road. Stick your thumb out, dude.

Watching the sun go down over the increasingly sandy and decreasingly inhabited desert was stunning. Equally as stunning as taking an hour 4×4 ride across the rocky desert and sand dunes to reach our campsite, where we were greeted by glowing tents, flickering Moroccan lanterns, and a thumping drum circle. We grabbed a tent, grabbed some grub, and laid under the blindingly bright stars. I’ve never seen, and don’t think I ever will see for quite some time, such lucidly glowing stars, or ooed and aahed at so many shooting stars. Then we hit the hay (I’m actually fairly certain that’s what our sleeping mats were made of) to get a few hours of shut-eye before waking up at dawn to watch the sun rise.We arrived at camp so late that first night, then woke up so early the next morning, that we didn’t really have a grasp of where we were beyond the reach of the little lanterns lining the perimeter of camp. Thus, the first glimpses of the endless sand dunes surrounding us were under the light of the rising sun. How’s that for dramatic effect?

The lighting changed every few minutes, going through different phases of colors…Sister Robert and the three poor little African children

And then after the sun had risen above the horizon, the nice man that had been guiding us through the dunes and telling us the history about the surrounding area, Abrahim, set down and opened his knapsack. “Oh crap,” we thought, more coercion into buying trinkets that we don’t want or need. As grateful as I was for Abrahim’s guidance through that treacherous powdery soft sand, we initially thought it was out of hospitality that the local Berbers were guiding small groups of us. BEEP wrong. Although his shiny rocks were pretty, I don’t think Mom is really into soap dishes comprised of deep sea shell fossils. So after a perfect morning just wandering the dunes and watching the sun rise, we had to persistently turn down his insistence that Grandma would just love a fossilized fish. Sorry, Grams.

Sunset, sunrise, then onto those gallantly galloping camels…it’s a tough life…

NO. THANK. YOU!

How Many Camels?

Morocco Part 1

My trip to Morocco started and ended terribly. My actual time spent trekking through Fez, camping in Saharan sand dunes outside of Erfoud, and staying in Meknes were more than magical, but the journey was book-ended by heinous sickness–not the best way to spend over 24 hours of travel each way. A perfect trip in a shitty sandwich. We can’t have our cake and eat it too, though–especially if it’s a Moroccon cake. Bleh.

Day 1: Travel

Bus from Sevilla: 3 hours.

Ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar: 2 hours.

Bus from Ceuta to Fez: 8 hours.

Finally collapsing in a horizontal bed: priceless.

Day 2: The Medina

We started the day early, back in our trusty bus, but this time joined by our tour guide, Mohib, who essentially took our lives into his (over-enthusiastically-gesturing) hands as we later ventured in the Medina of Fez, or the “Old City.”

UCLA does Morocco!

We drove from our hotel in the relatively new area of the city that had been designed by the French during their rule, so that part of Fez seemed unique but still maintained a Western city layout. We drove up a hill to visit a castle and lookout over the city (New Quarter, Jewish Quarter [he told us “there are 54 Jewish families in Fez”], and the Medina), and that was when it became visually apparent we had stayed in the “European-ized” area of the city, laid out in nice spacious city blocks. Looking down at the Medina, we couldn’t make out any space between buildings, much less where one started and the other began. It just looked like a giant clumping of little building blocks. Not so much intimidating, more like, how the heck do we get in there?

“Ok, so now we go into the Medina. If someone says ‘Balack,’ move, or else a Medina taxi will ‘Balack Obama’ you! Ok now we go.” A ‘Medina taxi’ is a donkey, a ‘Balack Obama’ is a nice little euphemism for “move, dummy” that tour guides like to use for stupid Americans. Because of course we won’t forget the name of our own president. Hopefully.

Ok, so, now we go into the Medina. Mind you, I was still getting over a a debilitating sickness so I just happened to be a little woozy with meds. So this whole day was a quite dreamlike, quite magical, in the literal sense. We basically created a human chain and wove through hundreds of the thousands (1600!) of alley ways that comprise the “streets” of the Medina, the largest car-free zone in the world. The alleys are rarely more than a few feet wide, never less than three stories high, and usually filled with rotting animal parts of some sort. At first, the hustle, bustle, and chunks of raw meat reminded me of many of the fresh markets I would frequent in Thailand, but that nostalgia was quickly vanquished by hoards of flies, piles of rotting fish, and mounds of unidentifiable meat-like-things. So, I held my breath, tried not to get ‘Balacked,’ and scurried along until our first stop in a traditional apothecary.

Camel head roast with a side of sauteed snails, anyone?

Lovely apothecary decor. Don’t worry, Mom, I got one for the living room! Kisses!!!

The “medicine man” in the traditional apothecary turned out to be quite the showman and salesman, too. After flowery demonstrations and descriptions of all his “magical” herbs and spices, he enticed us to buy them all. Which I did, if just a few, for cooking. I bypassed the Moroccan oil “Chanel No. 4” and the mystical mushrooms that are supposed to be the Viagra of developing countries, for the “jiggy jiggy” as he so eloquently put it. But honestly, it was amazing to be invited into this puny shop and be shown all the traditional Moroccan medicines as a huge group of American tourists– I can’t imagine being able to do it without our guide, much less find anything inside the Medina without getting lost for the rest of my life. Like my friend said, you might as well forget trying to find directions out of here, just buck up and create a life for yourself. Probably the most viable option.

After the apothecary, we headed to a government funded Fez rug factory where widowed women are able to make and sell their goods. At first, I was impressed my the rugs but not planning on buying one. Fifteen minutes later, a worker was packaging up my new rug for me. Pricey, but it is beautiful and is currently my carpet/bed/desk/sofa for when I return to LA and an empty apartment. And then, the day goes on, and on…We had an amazing lunch in an ornate restaurant off some obscure little alley in the medina, through some obscure little door that gave way to an amazing, palatial interior where, perched upon pillows, we feasted on khobz (traditional flatbread), tons of veggies, and cous cous. I loved the food there, but apparently it didn’t love me back. Anyway, after over-stuffing ourselves as usual, we wound through countless more alley ways and visited a tannery.

All those tubs are massive natural-dye vats for the leather. Didn’t smell so fruity, though, so we were given bunches of mint to sniff on.

So, after marching (ok, more like desperately following Mohib) through the Medina, we emerged through another random alleyway to sunlight, fresh air, and children playing soccer. How joyful! Back on the bus. Curses.

We didn’t drive long, though, before stopping at a ceramic/mosaic (a pottery? a mosaic-ery?) factory, where we watched how pots were gracefully spun, mosaics were smashed and then placed into beautiful patterns, and of course visited the gift shop.

So, here we go, out of the Medina. It was an exhausting, but eye-opening (literally and figuratively) first day in Africa. While we didn’t come across any other tourists all day, I could tell that the thousands of people that live in the Medina were no strangers to gringo tourists. We were mostly ignored, often haggled, and sometimes asked for in exchange for “many camels,” but in a joking manner like this is what the Moroccans expected us to want to hear. Definitely a cultural whirlwind, but not even close to as amazing as our next few days camping in the Sahara desert…