We got into Marrakesh about 2 this afternoon and the first thing after checking into the hotel, I headed to the pool. The problem was, or rather is, since that’s where I’m writing this right now, is that it’s overcast and looks like it may rain shortly. Oh well, it’s still warm and the water in the pool was just perfect.

So the weather is warm, I’m sitting beside the pool writing on my blog, I don’t think it can get more relaxing that this. The day started when we left the hotel that we stayed in last night. I find it hard to remember names, but the hotel was at the base of a Kasbah that has been used in many Hollywood movies, including Gladiator and I think Kingdom of Heaven. The Kasbah, or collection of buildings, is built on the side of a mountain/hill and is an impressive mix of old world crumbling and renovated houses crammed into a tight space separated only by very narrow roads or alleys. I always enjoy seeing old buildings and when you add the fact that I’ve seen this structure in many movies it makes the whole experience great.

Tonight we’re going to the medina to do a little bit of shopping and to watch some of the entertainers. When we were in Meknes, about the second day of the tour we got a little bit of a taste of the street entertainers, but supposedly Marrakesh has a lot more. I expect to see snake charmers, magicians, and other fun stuff.

I’m writing this several days after the experience, so bear with me. I haven’t had much of a chance just to spend the time to write. I do get some free time, but it is usually used for necessities, and unfortunately this blog is more fun than a requirement.

One of the things that I really wanted to do while in Morocco was to go camping in the Sahara. In fact probably the reason I chose this tour is that it showed people riding camels in the Sahara desert to go camping. So today I was pretty excited to be heading towards our base camp. Before leaving though, the day before, I got a bug, I’m not sure what kind, but I think it was food poisoning. It didn’t knock me on my butt, but it did slow me down and because of that, the trip to the base camp for the camel ride I wasn’t very good company. It’s was about a four hour drive and it’s hard to explain what was going on, but the best way is that I had the normal symptoms that you get from a slight case of food poisoning (which I don’t think I need to explain) but one major symptom was that I was super tired, so tired that I could barely raise my head and because of this I ended up sleeping in the van most of the way. We got to the base camp and our tour guide got me a room so I could lie down before we headed out.

About an hour later we were on camels for the ride to our camp. If you can imagine  the movie, Lawrence of Arabia then you can imagine the type of dunes that we crossed- large, golden mountains of shifting sand.  I still wasn’t feeling that well, but I did feel good enough to enjoy where I was and how it felt to be doing what I was fortunate enough to be doing. About time for dinner I could smell the food cooking and it was making me feel a little bit queasy so I decided to head to the side of the dune near the camp. It was kind of cool in a weird way to be close enough to be hearing what was going on with everyone else but surrounded by the darkness of the desert. I eventually faded into sleep only to be awakened by a noise off in the distance. I could see a silhouette of a man about 50 meters away, but it was dark and I couldn’t tell what he was doing. It looked like he was just stopped staring at me. I tried to shine my flashlight on him, but it was too weak. I eventually lost my nerve and got up and headed to my tent, it was then that I made out the form in the distance as a grazing camel. Okay, so I felt a little embarrassed about it, but it did make me laugh.

I’m adding two entries here because of the way the blog works I want the entries to be chronological and it just easier to do it this way.

Wow! It’s so hard to remember what I did in the order that I did them and now I’m trying to write about my time. It seems that so much of what I’ve done has ended up becoming one big day in the van traveling around Morocco. I’ll do my best though to weed through it and give it some order.

Midelt

After leaving Fes we headed to our next big adventure riding camels in the Sahara, but before we get there we will have about three nights at smaller stops. The first was a one-night stop at a town called Midelt. I say town, but to be honest, I don’t really remember much of a town, I remember a very picturesque farming village where we stopped for the night. Our tour leader took us out for an evening walk to a gorge about 5 km away. I really enjoy walking and when you’re in a new area, everything is just interesting. The people you pass, the mud buildings, the mosques all seem to be interesting. At one point there was a donkey that was loaded with so many sticks that all you could see of the animal was its legs, just a bundle of sticks walking along. There was also a progression of about 12 women walking into town, you could see them from a distance walking in single file, all very brightly dressed. Some of us were speculating that they were coming in for the night to visit friends, or maybe to go to the mosque.

Along the way to Midelt, we stopped at a place where monkeys ran free. Although I can’t seem to spell the type of monkeys they were, it sounds like miccack (and spell check isn’t helping). They were everywhere and they roamed where they wanted. I had seen shows where the same kind of monkeys in India will attack people and steal cameras, watches, and even break into homes, so the fact that these were well behaved was kind of nice.

The gorge

The next night we spent on the outskirts of the small town, Erg Chebbi. This was kind of surreal in some ways. We made our way through the town until we ended on a very narrow road. The road was packed with cars and people everywhere, there was a riverbed, with a small creek running on one side and on the other was a huge cliff. There was another cliff on the far side of the river bed as well. Anyway we made our way through the cars and came up to a couple of hotels on the farside of the riverbed. So strange, there was a creek with a board as a makeshift bridge, a dry riverbed, then the hotels. What happens when the water really starts to flow, do they close the hotels? Regardless it was beautiful. The cliffs on either side rose probably 100 meters, but maybe even higher. Except for a small sliver of sun everything was in the shade.

After we got settled we headed out for about a 10km walk through a valley not far away. The area was what you might imagine Vietnam to be like. It was very green, different crops growing in every useable space, the irrigation was done by either blocking a stream or opening it. Each plot of land was marked by small mud fences that looked like rice paddies like Vietnam. According to our guide, each farmer has a day or time that they can divert the water to their own crops. It was a long walk but very relaxing wandering our way along watching the farmers groom their crops and donkeys hauling other crops out. I haven’t mentioned it, but donkeys are big here, I mean really big, they’re everywhere you look doing much of the hauling.

After our walk we headed back to the hotel for dinner… which I might add I didn’t eat. I was still feeling bad and the thought of eating was the furthest thing from my mind.

Today was a day to relax, at least that was the plan. After yesterday’s hectic trek through the honeycombs of the souk, it was something that I was really looking forward to. Getting up late, about 8 this morning, my first stop was to get a bit of breakfast. There was one break-off of the group that was going to a spa about 70 kilometers away and the rest of the group was going to stay here and do “whatever.” I was part of the “whatever” group. After breakfast the remaining four of us went for a swim in the pool, then headed for lunch in a café a little ways away from the hotel.

The café is well known for being a backpackers haven, a necessary stop for any true backpacker… least that’s the feeling that I got while we were there. To get to the café, we had to go through a souk very much like the one that we went to yesterday, but not as big, and not as crowded. It was nearly perfect. There weren’t as many people as the day before so I didn’t feel as if I was being rushed, and enough people to make the experience feel like a normal souk. It was really idyllic just wandering along looking through the shops and taking our time… plus I had the added prestige of being one guy with three women… always a nice thing ☺

The café was pretty cool, there was a total hostel feel to it, a feeling that I don’t know if I can actually explain, but if you’ve travelled using hostels you know when you’re in a good hostel if it has kind of a relaxed, hippie feel. This café had it. I ended up having a camel burger.  The camel burger was mentioned in Lonely Planet, and I felt that I just had to try it.

We headed out to see the mosque that I had been to earlier. Kind of a let down in some ways, but since I saw more of it today than I did on Saturday, I enjoyed myself. It’s kind of difficult to really describe the inside, except possible to say that it is very ornate and opulent. It’s huge too.

After our trip to the mosque we went back to the hotel and then hurried to catch our train to Menkes. It was one of the best train rides I’d been on in a while, maybe the best of all times. I spent most of the time just talking to the people that I’m touring with. It really makes all the difference when you’ve go people to talk to. At one point I heard a girl yelling for the train to stop, I mean really yelling, and I look out to see that she is caught half in the train with her bag outside… or was it her bag was in and she was outside… anyway, the next thing I see is the conductor rushes into our cabin and pulls down on the emergency stop. The train stops pushing my backpack that was in an overhead bin out. The backpack fell about a meter hitting a girl in the head and leg. I saw the back fall right before it hit the girl but I was so stunned that I didn’t have time to do anything. I felt so bad, my backpack weighs about 40 pounds, and the girl wasn’t prepared for it. She was cool about it, saying that she was okay and all, but she had a scratch on her leg and was obviously in pain.

Once we made to Menkes we got our room and headed out for a tour of the city. With all the cities that we’ve been to in Morocco the old part of the city is call a Medina. This was the first medina that we’d been to, so I was pretty interested in everything that we saw… later I’m sure that that will change, but for now just visualizing the history that this city had gone through was enough for me.

Our day ended with dinner and back to hotel.

It’s about 8 in the morning… actual 8 this time. I still can’t believe that I didn’t know the actual time for the last two days. Anyway, I’m scheduled to be leaving here in about forty minutes, the destination isn’t completely clear, but I do know that I will be visiting a mosque. Supposedly this mosque is one of the largest around.

I woke up to rain today, and although it’s not too cold it’s overcast and it looks as if there may be more rain today. What do I know about rain? The last time I saw rain was about five months ago, and before that it was last Summer when I experienced any real amount of precipitation. I going on history here, it looks like it may rain. :)

There’s not much to talk about, and in reality I’m doing nothing more than killing time right now. I didn’t sleep very well last night mostly because I was too lazy to turn off the air conditioner. About 4 in the morning I was shivering under the covers and still I wouldn’t turn off the AC. I mean, I would have had to get out from the blankets to turn off the refridgerator, which I eventually did. The result is that I’m kind of “out of it” this morning. So out of it that at breakfast I was going for a large scoop of scrambled eggs, and was having problems getting the eggs to come off the spoon. I finally figured out, after asking someone, that what I was scooping out of the bowl was butter. Talk about feeling dense.:)