Morocco Featuring Matt =)

Michael and I flew from Madrid to Marrakech in Morocco, North Africa. Marrakech is one of the bigger cities in Morocco and has lots of flights coming through each day, having said that we did not anticipate the 1.5hr wait in line at customs on our way in!!

Once we finally got through customs and to our hostel (and drank some free mint tea) we decided to have a walk around the centre of the city and just explore. Well, let's just say it was pretty full on. The main square of Marrakech is El Fna Square - it's crazy! Full of vendors selling random good as well and locals and tourists just walking around. There was also snake charmers, which completely freaked me out. 

We headed to the Souks, which are huge markets you could quite easily get lost in. There are quite literally hundreds of stalls and shops selling everything you can imagine. My favourite part was walking past all the herbs and spices because they smelled amazing, although I was never quite sure what most of them were.

The markets in Marrakech are filled with men (mainly) trying to sell things to tourists, they can get quite pushy (and annoying) and it was kind of overwhelming not being able to walk 5 steps without being approached by a local wanting to sell us things.

Sacks filled with every spice you could imagine!

Morocco isn't what I would call a third world country but it is definetly far less developed and has far lower hygiene standards then Australia, we couldn't drink the water and had to make sure we were careful about what food we ate (which pretty much meant restaurant only dining as there wasn't really a supermarket in Marrakech). Nearly all the buildings are rendered in a pink kind of concrete but many of them are broken in parts and all the footpaths/sidewalks (where they are any) are not in great condition either.

Later that evening a good friend of mine from high school, Matt, arrived! The three of us went to explore Fna Square at night as this is when it gets busy. It was packed with people (and more snakes.... ahhh...) and food stalls. We decided to walk through the food stalls which was a huge mistake as we were immediately swamped by men trying to get us to eat at their stall, it was way too much for me! We made a fairly hasty exit and had a celebratory dinner, toasting with OJ and Coke (as there is very little access to alcohol in Morocco). 

The next morning we picked up our hire car and Michael had to learn pretty quickly how to master driving a manual on the right (wrong) side of the road! We set off towards the Sahara dessert but with plans to make several stops on our way.

The first restaurant we stopped at for lunch we all opted to give the local speciality a go, tagine is huge over here - its basically meat and/or vegetables cooked in an oily kind of sauce and served on a hot plate/bowl.

We were headed from Marrakech to Ourzazante (pronounded whaa-zar-zat) and went through the scenic Atlas Mountains. The roads here were crazy, really narrow and Moroccan drivers are pretty crazy. There seem to be road rules but drivers overtake on the wrong side of the road at fairly inappropriate times and don't bother to indicate most of the time!

As you can see we stopped and took a few pictures - there were heaps of amazings views through the mountains and lots of small towns (although it's hard to believe there are people living in some of them) in really dry areas!

We stopped for the night in Ourzazate, which is home of one of the sets for Game of Thrones! For those who are as addicted as me, many of the scenes with Daenerys Targaryen in season one with the Dothraki and then more scenes with her and the Unsullied and many of the other places she takes over are filmed in Ourzazate, Morocco! While we were driving around it was definitely easy to see the resembelence between those scenes and the landscapes here!

The next day we were driving again - this time heading to Tinghir. We took a detour through the Dades Gorge, a windy, twisting road that passes through a gorge that is pretty easy on the eye!

There was actually a fair amount of greenery in this area, which is unusual for the dessert and many houses scattered all through the Gorge!

Again we stopped for a break and took some pictures! It was about 30 degrees and yes I was really hot in pants but it's kind of respecful to cover up a little as a female in a Muslin country so I pretty much only wore tshirts and pants to make sure I was mostly covered up.

We stopped at a restaurant with a panoramic view over part of the Gorge (as you can see the boys were more interested in the menu) and I got another tagine (at the time I thought they were amazing but by the end of the week I was very much over them!)

 Not a bad view from the restaurant!

This is one of the panoramic photos Michael took of the Dades Gorge, probably more artistic than anything I can come up with!

Our next stop was Todra Gorge, we parked our car and started walking through the Gorge. There was a hotel built at the bottom of the Gorge - which we all thought was really strange, can you imagine a hotel at the base of the Grand Canyon!?

Given the long and windy road that we had to drive along to get to Todra Gorge there was a fair amount of tourists and in Morocco, where there are tourists there are locals selling things - although the people out here were not nearly as pushy as the people from Marrakech and since there wasn't as many it was much easier to run away!

 My favourite photo of the boys walking through Todra Gorge

Some of the cute little things sold at one of the stalls of Todra Gorge - it was hard trying to take a photo without being chased by the owner of a stall, I actually literally ran away after taking this oen!

We stayed at a pretty nice hotel that night, Matt ended up doing a pretty good job of bartering with the owner (and distracting them by asking about Tea - which is so common in Morocco it is often free) so that we got a pretty good bargain, a hotel room with ensuite and airconditioning (rare in Morocco), dinner (we sneakily ordered entrees and mains each) and breakfast included! This picture is of me on the rooftop restaurant!

The next day we drove - again!

This time we were on the home stretch, headhing from Tinghir to Merzouga where we had booked a camel trek into the Sahara desert with a dinner and overnight camping! Things don't exactly happen on time in Morocco and we arrived at about 5:15pm (15 mins early) and didn't leave until about 7pm (after more free mint tea of course). Our leader was called Mohammed and he was a really cool bloke who spoke like 8 different languages and also knew how to make jokes in each language, which I was impressed with.

Take note: Matt, the tallest guy in the group, sitting on the smallest camel - pretty sure the locals were trying to take the piss!

We finally headed off on a 2 hour camel trek into the Sahara desert - it was impressive, all you could see for miles was desert! The camel trekking was pretty fun and also pretty challenging, they walk really awkwardly and you always feel like they are about to fall down and take you with them!

My favourite photo of us trekking through the Sahara on camels - pretty good photography by Mohammed!

Me on my cool camel that I decided to name Ruben, we had an understanding! Michael had a slow fat camel and mine kept catching up to his.

A sneaky photo I took of the sun setting while we were trekking. It was pretty lucky because it was ridiculously windy after we stopped and the sand in the air kind of ruined the sunset. The huge red sand dunes were unlike anything I have ever seen before, it was really beauitful.

Desert, desert everywhere!

The boys admiring the view from the top of a high (ish) sand dune in the Sahara!

That night we had a huge Moroccan feast with a giant salad and huge bowl of tagine - probably the best one of our whole trip! We all ate in a huge tent (we kind of had our own little eating area because everyone else spoke Spanish and we got kicked out of the cool club...) and then the tour guys played some local Moroccan drum tunes! The Sahara is supposed to have one of the darkest night skies in the world - although it was kind of ruined by the sandy haze. It was weird not being able to see the saucepan too haha!

We were up until past midnight that night and super tired after a really long day, then we were woken up at 6am for the sunset! Neither Michael or I are morning people so lucky this was a once in a lifetime kinda thing!

The below photo is Courtesy of Matt's photographic skills.

Once again we set off on our camels back to Merzouga. This time it was far less enjoyable, we were all considerably sore from sitting on the camels the day before so the trip back seemed like it went for a pretty long time! 

Note: Matt again on a small camel!!

I took some pretty decent photos of the sun after it had mostly risen and while we were trekking back - it was much clearer than the day before and you could see rolling orange sand dunes stretching out for miles!

 My attempts at taking creative photos of our shadows while we trekked back to Merzouga on our camels.

This photo is the only shot we got of all three of us (somehow we didn't seem to think to get another one) with Mohammed, who was the leader of the tour! He had a really sweet purple turban - I actually saw him the night before once he took it off and he had dreds and looks like he should be in a reggae band!

Riding camels in the Sahara was something Matt and I had been talking about for a while so I was so happy that we finally got to do it together, it was definitely an experience of a lifetime and I am so grateful I got the chance to have such an amazing experience!

Our drive home was not too exciting, it was long and windy and we were all just ready to head back to Marrakech and get a good nights sleep. 

This photo is taken of the El Fna Square at dusk in Marrakech, in the background you can see the Koutoubia Mosque (that big tower), which is the biggest mosque in Marrakech. Every morning at 4:30am I was woken up by the prayer call that is made from the mosque (I was actually woken up by the prayer call in nearly every city we were at but I think I'm a pretty light sleeper). Most of the lit up stalls are food stalls, selling BBQ'd meats (which sit out in the sun for a long time, so I was definitely questioning the hygiene of these stalls...) and closer to the bottom of the photo are other small stalls and vendours selling goods.

These photos were taken from a restaurant with pretty good views over the square and we spent most of our time poeple watching. There were always men selling clothes in the square, they would literally walk up with a huge garbage bag full of clothes and dump it on the ground and the locals would actually flock around them grabbing clothes and sussing it out. They always sold the clothes really fast and got a lot of interest from all the locals in the area. It was the weirdest way to sell clothes I've ever seen but so long as they weren't taking the clothes from our hostel it was fine by me!

We were also lucky enough to get a pretty good sunset on our last night in Morocco!

All in all Morocco was a very colourful and interesting country, albeit very full on and unlike anything I have ever experienced! I would definitely reccomend a trip to the Sahara if anyone happens to head over there! 

Having said that I am happy to be in my nice clean hostel room in Porugal with drinkable water and an enclosed shower!