MOROCCO المغرب

During the first weekend in November, I went to Morocco.  Yes, that means AFRICA!  I still can't believe that I've been to Africa!  It's so surreal!  I went with a tour group because there was NO way I was just going to go alone with friends, considering none of us speak Arabic or French or are familiar with Arab culture.  Our group left Sevilla on Friday afternoon and drove all the way to the port city of Algeciras to take the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city that is actually located on the Moroccan coast.  The ferry was SO awesome!  I had never really been on a nice, passenger ferry so it was a cool experience.  Upon arrival in Ceuta (in the pouring rain and the dark of night) we picked up our Moroccan guide for the weekend, Mohammad, and headed toward the Spanish-Moroccan border.  This was a nightmare!  It was so busy with vehicle traffic and people running through the rainy streets with overstuffed grocery bags like homeless people carry around.  It was definitely a very abrupt shift from one culture to the next!  After about an hour of waiting at the border, we drove to the nearby fishing village of M'diq where we had dinner at the hotel and went to bed!

Relaxing on our ferry to Africa!

On our first real day in Morocco, we got up at a decent hour for breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to the explore the city of Tétouan.  Mohammad gave us a tour through the medina (an old, walled section of many North African cities), which was full of street markets!  The street markets were full of vendors selling spices, goat cheese, flat bread, fruits, vegetables, live chickens and sheep, incense, handcrafts, and pretty much anything else you could think of!  It was fascinating to see all the colors and smell all the smells (ranging from amazing-smelling freshly-baked bread to dozens of live chickens in a cage).  We viewed the exterior of the Royal Palace and visited some local shops - a carpet store with beautiful handmade and naturally dyed carpets (not of the magic variety) and a traditional Berber pharmacy, where we were introduced to a variety of herbal remedies.  After these visits, we had time for shopping in the medina.  Haggling is a a HUGE part of Arab culture so shopping is much more of an interchange between the vendors and customers.  To start haggling, you're supposed to offer to pay half the price and work from there.  I wasn't buying any big, expensive items, so I unfortunately didn't get to experience the haggling culture as much or make any great deals!  The best I did was get a little handmade camel figure for €2.50 instead of €3.  After shopping, we went to lunch and had a Moroccan salad, couscous with vegetables and beef, and cookies with traditional Moroccan mint tea - everything was good except for the tea.  After lunch, we had a rather unique cultural experience.  The weekend that we visited happened to be the weekend of the Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice) in the Islamic calendar.  The sheep and goat markets were hubs of activity as each family purchased their own animal to slaughter for the upcoming feast.  We were stuck in traffic for probably an hour watching family after family dragging their new sheep or goat down the street (or in some cases the sheep dragging the person).  It screwed up our itinerary, but I did not mind at all since it was such an interesting cultural experience that I was fortunate enough to witness.  Once we got out of that mess, we headed to Grotte d'Hercule (Hercules Grotto), a cave with a beautiful crevice looking out into the Mediterranean Sea - quite awesome!  Then we were off to a beautiful seaside cliff to ride camels at sunset - the most anticipated part of the trip for everyone!  It was awesome!  Not much else I can say about that!  We then stopped at Cap Spartel, where the Mediterranean and Atlantic meet and then drove to our hotel in Tangier for dinner.  I explored Tangier with some friends and it was just like any other modern, Western city - much different from the medina of Tétouan or the sheep markets!  It was a rather jam-packed day, but it was just incredible!

Fruit vendor in the medina of Tétouan

Chickens - worst smell of the entire weekend!

Narrow, covered streets in the medina

The Royal Palace

The first of MANY sheep!

Morocco is so colorful!

Traditional carpets!

Moroccan salad - carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, olives, and rice!
(The beauty of it is that you can just take what you want and mix it yourself!)

Veggies, couscous and beef
(I don't recommend eating cooked cucumbers...)

Shopping in the market

Spices in the Berber pharmacy

One of the many mosques in Tétouan that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

A family walking home from the sheep market in preparation for Eid al-Adha

Morocco proudly flies it's flag...pretty much anywhere and everywhere!

Waves crashing into the Grotte d'Hercule!

Sarah and me on our camels!

I'M ON A CAMEL...IN AFRICA...AHHHHH!

They're so cute and friendly :)

We became friends...after he gnawed on my shoulder a little bit haha

AMAZING sunset on one of the most gorgeous beaches!

Our entire tour group after riding the camels!

Lighthouse at Cap Spartel

Downtown Tangier

On Sunday, we woke up early to leave Tangier and head to the village of Chefchaouen in the Rif Mountains.  It was a really beautiful drive through the mountains with the plumes of morning fog and the sun poking from behind the mountains.  However, traversing the narrow, winding roads in a coach bus was not so friendly on the stomachs.  I'm glad I didn't throw up...others were not so lucky.  The village of Chefchaouen was rather interesting.  EVERYTHING is painted blue!  I felt like I was in some dreamy, Dr. Seuss land.  It was seriously not real life!  We walked through the medina taking too many pictures, cringing at the sounds of bleating goats that may have been being slaughtered, gawking over the abundance of cats and occasionally breaking out into ever-popular and ever-so-appropriate "Blue" by Eiffel 65.  We stopped at a traditional fabric shop and were showed an array of beautiful and colorful scarves and tablecloths, as well as their 100 year old loom!  It was pretty neat!  Then it was once again shopping time, lunch time (same exact Moroccan lunch as the day before - Arab cuisine is apparently a one-hit wonder), and time to head back to the bus!  We had a lengthy drive back through the mountains and then back to Ceuta to catch our ferry back to Europe!

Enjoying their last day of life :(

The poverty of Morocco was evident, from the rotten, missing teeth of the locals to the desperate begging for any change to the half-built buildings sitting in disrepair.  This was one of the few cases of poverty I actually caught on camera: a hungry dog searching for food in pile of garbage in front of a tent village.  This was my first time in an undeveloped country so it was quite a sad thing to witness firsthand for the first time...

My chance encounter with a goat in the Rif Mountains

The Rif - SO BEAUTIFUL!

Entering the medina in Chefchaouen

"I have a blue house with a blue window"

THIS IS THE MOST PERFECT KITTY PICTURE OF MY LIFE!
I LOVE THIS AND I'M SO GLAD IT HAPPENED AND THAT I HAVE THIS PICTURE :)

The mountains that give Chefchaouen it's name! 
Chefchaouen means "watch the horns" in the Berber dialect and the
mountains in the background are apparently the horns.

Yarn at the fabric shop!

The houses of Chefchaouen - such poverty, yet some people have satellite TV!

Daily life in Chefchaouen

Me and my friends with an adorable (and frightened) Moroccan boy who wanted to be in our picture!

Is this real life???

Charming street markets!
None of us had ever been to Peru, however we all felt like we were in Peru...weird.

Ceuta!  Is it Spain?  Is it Africa?  IT'S BOTH!

Boarding our ferry back to Europe!
(This was also my final sunset over the Mediterranean for the semester...)

Overall, my adventure in Morocco was an INCREDIBLE experience.  It was so interesting to have my eyes opened up to a completely new and unfamiliar culture and so refreshing to take in all the sights, smells and natural beauty of northern Morocco!  I would recommend it to anyone!