This series will go country by country through my two-year trip. I plan on sharing some experiences, thoughts, and photos of each country that I visited.
Country by Country 16: Morocco
When I was planning this trip I asked my family members to tell me what countries they were interested in visiting. I was surprised when my mom suggested Morocco. It shouldn't have been a surprise because my mom has always been pretty adventurous. I didn't have any feelings towards Morocco, one way or the other, so we decided to go to.
After we left Portugal, we spent a few days making our way through Spain (the linked post is about my first time in Spain). In the southern town of Tarifa, we boarded a ship to Morocco.
Our schedule was fairly tight, and the reviews of Tangiers weren't the greatest. Once we landed in Morocco, we took a taxi to Chefchaouen.
A street in Chefchaouen.
A stall for tourist goods.
Another little street.
A dog in the window.
A salesman told us that Chefchaouen is painted blue because it reduces the number of flying insects. I'm not sure if insects really do hate the color blue, but the city looks pretty awesome.
After spending a night in Chefchaouen, we went to the bus station and rode a bus to Fez.
When we arrived at Fez, a guide at the bus station gave us a pretty good sales pitch. We agreed on a rate and he took us to our riad. It's a good thing we had the guide because the streets in Fez are impossible for foreigners to navigate.
Inside our riad.
Another interior shot.
We freshened up and a few hours later we met up with our guide. He took us to a lot of the tourist spots in Fez.
A graveyard overlooking Fez.
A famous gate in Fez.
A different view of Fez. 1 SBD if you can tell me how many satellite dishes are in this picture.
One of the activities that we did in Fez was a cooking class. We first met everyone, then went into the market to buy our ingredients. Then we cooked up some food. Overall, it was pretty fun. It's not the type of thing that I would have done on my own, but I enjoyed it. That's one of the benefits of traveling with someone else.
Cooking class.
After the cooking class, we went out with our guide and he took us to all of the places where guides get a commission on sales. The rug shop wasn't too bad, but he couldn't understand why we wouldn't want to go to the tannery.
Another tiny street in Fez.
The kitchen of someone vaguely related to our guide.
Our guide asked if we were interested in doing a tour that included a camel trip in the Sahara. It sounded interesting and our guide hooked us up with another guy. This new guy brought out his laptop and made a good sales pitch. We agreed to the tour and paid a deposit. The guy told us that a new driver would meet us at our riad in the morning. It sounded good and we went back to our riad to sleep.
In the morning, we checked out of our room and went outside to wait for our driver. The time for our appointment came and went. 15 minutes after the meeting time, we started wondering. My mom said, "Now that I think about it, we didn't even give the tour operator our names. I hope we didn't just give that deposit away."
Luckily our driver/guide showed up a few minutes later. He was a super nice dude and soon we were driving across Morocco. Here are a few photos from the drive to the Sahara.
We stopped to feed some monkeys in a forest.
The land in Morocco is mostly arid, but beautiful to look at.
Another Moroccan landscape.
Crumbling old buildings like this are fairly common.
This lush valley is almost impossible to see until you get right next to it.
We hit a sandstorm as we approached the Sahara (that's a multi-story building on the far left).
Our hotel on the edge of the Sahara.
We made it to the Sahara and got checked in to our hotel. We ate and went to sleep not long after arriving.
On the next day, our guide took us on a tour of the area. We had most of the day to kill before taking the camel trek. One of the stops was a local market.
This is a parking lot for donkeys.
This is an herb shop in the market.
Eventually, it was time to get on the camels. For those of you that don't know, camels usually aren't ridden. The locals only ride camels at festivals and it's kind of a joke. I wouldn't recommend riding the camels, but I would recommend spending a night in the dunes.
Our little camel train, waiting for a person to lead it (camels can rarely be controlled by a rider).
The camels taking a break.
This is what a whole bunch of sand looks like.
Our camp.
The camel camp.
A camp cat, chilling on a tent.
After a night in the dunes, we rode the camels back to the hotel. We met up with our guide and started making our way towards Marrakesh.
A town spotted while driving.
Another town.
A road.
A cool looking building.
The Atlas Mountains.
Eventually, we made it to Marrakesh and spent one night there before taking a train to Casablanca. From Casablanca, my mom flew back to the USA, and I flew back to Germany. In Germany, I spent a month moving my things into storage and getting rid of my apartment. From Germany, I flew to Bangkok Thailand. So check in on Monday for a post about Thailand.
Morocco was a cool place to visit. The people seemed friendly and welcoming. The food was OK, but our guide kept taking us to tourist places that all sold the exact same food. If I never see tagine again, I'll be OK with it. Morocco is a fairly difficult place to navigate and getting a guide is recommended.