Casablanca, Morocco

Well, well, well. My stay in Morocco was quite interesting, it just makes me excited for the rest of our ports (not that I wasn’t already) and mad that we have a whole week at sea before we reach Ghana but oh well. We docked in Casablanca at about 8 AM on Saturday and Allison (the roomie….remember?) and I had a trip, “Camel Trek and Nomad Camp” that met at 10 AM to leave. So we basically spent the morning packing and getting ready while the ship was cleared and everyone’s passports were stamped. Our trip took us on a….4 hour, I believe bus ride to Marrakech, one of the biggest, most poppin cities in Morocco. We stopped in the city only briefly to get cash (dirhams) and go to the bathroom. We were warned that once we got to the desert it would be basically squatting behind a rock so we all ran to the bathroom in the city. OH also. This trip was basically all female, which I thought was pretty funny. There were probably…40 of us, maybe a little less, and only 3 guys. They were all pretty chill and one of them sat behind me on the bus and all he was saying for almost the whole ride to Marrakech was “this is INSANE! I can’t believe we are here. This is SICK” it was funny but got rather annoying as it continued for the ENTIRE 3 DAY TRIP.

So after stopping for cash in the city we got back on the bus for another 45 minutes and eventually we arrived at our camels…..and we were all freaking out. They had a camel for each of us and they were all tied together in lines of about 8 camel centipede style. I immediately regretted my choice to ride a camel and did not want to encourage the sort of treatment I was witnessing of these animals for the sake of tourism. Although many others shared my same sentiments as we watched these animals fidget and be prodded by their masters while waiting for us, we all tried to put aside our objections and just do it. Although I “enjoyed” my trek, I have no desire to ever ride a camel again lol.
Also, apparently they aren’t actually camels. Camels have two humps and these only had one, thus being called dromedaries.

Getting on the camel was also one of the most terrifying experiences on my life. As we all loaded our bags onto a truck that would meet us at our camp, we were pushed over to various lines of camels to mount them. After we surrendered our bags, Allison, another girl and I were ushered to a line of camels by a man who spoke basically no English. While I was waiting to load my bag I checked that line out and saw that one of the camels was not the happiest. It did not want to sit down and kept making a lot of noise. Desperately hoping I didn’t get the feisty camel I walked towards them. Allison got the first camel and made it on. Then the man pointed me towards the beast. It took one look at me and started hollering and trying to stand up! I know I’m not the coolest but really! The man tried to force it back down and in order to keep it still had to step on its leg so I could get on, which was a struggle in itself. I have little to no upper body strength and embarrassed myself enough at horse camp in 9th grade attempted to mount my horse every day. This was no different. As I attempted to jump on the pillow like thing on the camel’s back, he started moving to the guy was trying to keep him still and shove me up into a sitting position. I finally was sitting but the seat was a little lopsided which I was not happy about and obviously neither was my camel because he was ready to GO! They had to keep him sitting while everyone else got on their camels but he yelled the whole time.  While the guy was keeping him still I asked “is he ok?” since he was making so much noise but he just looked at me and kind of nodded but obviously had no idea what I had asked. We named my camel Chewy, short for Chewbacca….because that’s what he sounded like. So as I’m sitting there, TERRIFIED of my rogue camel (everyone else’s was all quiet and calm!) they finally decided it was time to stand up. I don’t know if you have ever see a camel stand up…..but they are actually quite tall and usually don’t stand up with all legs at once. As I held on for dear life, the man let Chewy stand and BAM he was the first one up. It was smoother than I expected but I still felt kind of lopsided in my seat which made me super nervous as we started walking because I though I was going to fall off and there were no stirrups like you have when you ride a horse. Once we got moving, Chewy seemed to settle down a little and stopped yelling but would still have outbursts every now and then right next to Allison’s leg and she was worried he would bite her, he certainly seemed testy enough….Chewy also did not seem thrilled at being number two in line because he was ready to haul ass to get to where we were going. Obviously the first camel, Allison’s camel, was no going fast enough for him because he kept trying to get right up next to him to pass him but couldn’t since they were tied in a line. We ended up getting to the front of the procession and would have to stop every now and then to wait for the others to catch up and whenever we did this Chewy would start up again, making his “WOOOOAAAHHHHHHHH” noises and turning this way and that which terrified me every time and had me holding on for dear life! However, the camel behind me was quite different from Chewy and kept getting all up in my business in order to be friends. His head was right next to my leg the whole time and he would rest his head right next to my butt whenever we stopped. He was pretty nice but it was a little disconcerting to have this giant camel head right next to me after witnessing the hostile, feisty beast I had gotten paired with. A couple of the girls swung one of their legs over to ride side saddle which looked way more comfortable but I was scared to even move lest Chewy decided to go galloping off into the desert.


Our camel ride was about 45 minutes (I personally would have been fine with a 5 minute camel trek lol). The sun was out and hot and I’m pretty sure our left legs are all a little darker then our right ones lol. Each string of camels had a guy leading and ours spoke a tiny bit of English as well as his native language of Arabic and French. He tried to be nice and ask Allison what her name was and where she was from but didn’t totally understand. Eventually I reached deep into my brain and tried to spit out a little bit of my high school French and he got it. I tried to ask where we were and what this giant building in the middle of this hot rocky desert area was but when he responded I was lost. He then said “I thought you said you spoke French!” and laughed at me after I made a face conveying that I had no idea what he had said. It was pretty tragic but I was happy that Mme Birchman at FR obviously taught me something. Later he asked us about music and Chris Brown, one of his favorites apparently and said something about Michael Jackson. It was cool to see the cultural overlaps, like music, and how widely known some artists are.

Eventually we arrived at our camp and the fear of having to get off the camel crept in. We all sat on our camels anxiously awaiting the descent. Then they sat down. It was a harsh forward leaning motion as Chewy knelt on his front and then a far back motion as he put his butt down. I quickly hopped off gave on last look at Chewy and said goodbye to our camel leader while avoiding getting squashed by all the other camels. We had lunch in this really nice open air tent with wineglasses and cloth napkins, so not what any of us were expecting. It, like many of the other Moroccan meals we had consisted of an appetizer of bread and various mashed vegetables to put on the bread (sounds weird but I don’t know how else to describe it….like humus but with different veggies like carrots, eggplant, squash etc). then we had tagine, which comes in a terracotta high sided plate with a big cone lid. It’s similar to a stew but less soupy. It’s a bunch of spices, vegetables and some meat. At this point we all though the meal was over but nope! And they brought out a platter of meat skewers. It was quite different than traditional bbq in the US but it was really good. Lastly, they brought us a fruit soup type dessert. We were all completely stuffed but our tour guides, Abdul and Yahyah hurried us out and took us on a walk to a Berber Village. The Berbers are the formerly nomadic peoples of Morocco. They live basically in mud houses that are all open air but they all have satellite dishes, which I thought was really funny.

We followed some kid who were riding donkeys to the “village”/house and were served mint tea, a traditional Moroccan drink as Abdul our tour guide talked about how they made the tea and made crafts to sell. They said their life wasn’t great but it wasn’t bad. The kids all seemed happy. It was interesting to watch them make the tea. They have silver tea pots that look just like what my grandma has sitting in her dining room but never uses, and they put the tea leaves in the hot water and let it brew in the pots. Then they take the pots and pour them into the tea glasses which are kind of like big, tall shot glasses….they are smaller than normal drinking glasses and some are very pretty and other are just plain glass. So they pour the tea from way high up into 2 glasses, then they dump the content of the glasses back into the pot. I’m assuming it mixes the tea somehow or tests when it is done because they did it multiple times. It’s a very sweet mint/green tea. It was good but I don’t like green tea so I didn’t drink all of mine but everyone else loved it.

After the Berber visit, we walked back towards camp with the kids and played donkey polo. Donkey polo is similar to polo (on horse) except you are on a donkey, in case you didn’t gather than from the name. they taped off a small area and had 4 donkeys on each team and a small net at each end. We all rotated through and got to ride the donkeys and play (I once again, struggle to get on the animal, obviously I should only ride in cars because I can get in those….). You basically get on your donkey, get handed a stick to poke your donkey with to get it to go th right way and a broom, to sweep the ball, and go. The donkeys don’t like to move to you have to shout (arrra arrraaa) which also sometimes doesn’t work so the kids had to intervene. By the time I played it was basically a kid pulling the donkey around to the ball so you could try to sweep it into the net. It was very fun and very silly! After our rousing game we walked to our camp (different than lunch) and saw that it was nothing like what we expected. It was this huge row of big tents with cots inside, there were rugs all over the ground and candle lanterns along the path. There was also a large carpeted area with a camp fire area and a bunch of pillows on the ground, as well as  a large eating tent. I would post a picture but I unfortunately only got one of the area because my camera DIED on the first day. Rude. But I will steal some from other people and bring them home to show you all. After putting our stuff away in our tent we all hung out in the campfire ish area and watched a woman make bread. She was kneading the dough and stretching it out on a wooden spatula thing and sitting it in a mini cave of wonders (Aladdin) oven type shindig. It came out looking like naan and was really good. Eventually at around 9 we were served dinner despite the fact that we had just had lunch at like 5….we all managed to try a little bit of everything. This time instead of skewers we had couscous with veggies. A couple people ordered wine and I got to try some Moroccan grown red wine….it said cabernet rouge so I couldn’t determine exactly what it was but it was really good. As we ate we had performers come and…well perform lol. They mostly played music and sang a little, usually drums and giant clacker things, kind of like two sets of mini symbols connected together and I believe there was a sitar. They started pulling people up to dance and eventually everyone joined it and we all stood in a circle dancing and watching the performers as well as some of our people show off their various dance skills. We also happen to have a fire dancer….person on our trip. She brought these lightable fire balls on chains with her and did a dance thing with them. She swung them around like you would with batons but these were on chains not sticks, it was really cool and I think all the locals were quite impressed.

Eventually the dancing stopped and we star gazed for a bit before being overwhelmed by the universe and went to bed. The next day we were in a car most of the day, which was a great break for our feet and it was nice to be out of the sun and with the breeze/AC. We drove out to one of the two dams in morocco and saw there man made lake. Apparently irrigation was a strong theme that they felt they needed to teach us about on this trip…..so we saw that and then we went to another Berber house that was quite a ways away and we had to drive on this steep cliff road (one lane) to get there, luckily I was not on the side with the edge but the girl in the front seat was very nervous and our driver kept teasing her and pretending to push her out of the car. We also had to drive over the bumpiest road I think I’ve ever been on, we were being thrown every which way, there were so many pot holes and non-driveable terrain.
A quick note about driving in morocco: it is insane, if anyone has ever questioned my driving capabilities, I urge you to go to morocco. I was a little nervous for my life, sent up a few quick prayers about getting out of the country alive. People don’t stop for pedestrians, you have to dodge cars and motorbikes and the drivers don’t follow speed limits (if there are any) and narrowly miss hitting donkeys and various people on the side of the road. Very scary.
Anyway. We got to the second Berber home which was really nice, it had a lot of levels since it was built into a steep cliff and it was open air and had a couple of olive and pomegranate trees. We had tea and bread with olive oil there. The olive oil was nothing like I had ever tasted because (I believe) they made it themselves and it actually tasted like olives.
After the home visit, we had lunch at a town near the Berber home, I tried to ask our driver what it was called but I can’t remember. More tagine, bread and couscous. After lunch we did an “irrigation walk”. We walked through the village where the restaurant was and saw how they irrigated their crops. No one was particularly thrilled about the irrigation part and no one really cared. Even our guide, Yahyah (who was the shiznit btw) was like “this is where they collect the rain water…and moving on…” a bunch of locals also jumped on the hike and tried to act as guides and chat with people in hopes of getting money. Apparently they do that in a lot of countries, people try to act as your tour guide then ask for money at the end. We all sweated our way through the walk and eventually made it back to the paradise that was our 4WD (not to be confused with the camels, also referred to as 4WD) and made the hour drive back to Marrakech. We checked into our hotel and had a couple of hours before we had to meet for dinner. Showers were at the top of everyone’s list and after a group of us ventured out (after realizing the free wifi didn’t work anywhere in the hotel) to try to do a bit of shopping. After walking for about an hour we hadn’t found anything so we headed back to the hotel to meet for dinner. Another SAS group was also staying at the hotel and we met them in the lobby and ended up at the same restaurant. Dinner was really good and they had a belly dancer dancing around, she kept pulling up people to dance and one of the kids of professor that was on the trip with his family, got pulled up. He is this super tall 12 year old and he just kinda stood there shyly but we all cheered him on. It was quite amusing. After dinner we walked through the medina some more (the main square) where they had tons of vendors and street performers and just a lot of people. We were all proposed to numerous times and one girl was offered thirty thousand million camels. Some people split up and went to explore more of the square but my friends and I went back to the hotel and headed out to find one of the clubs that are popular in Marrakech. We wanted to find a bar first but our guide didn’t really know what he was talking about so we wandered and asked people until we eventually found it. There were bouncers in suits and I was totally intimidated first, because I haven’t actually ever been to a real club before and second, because I was in jeans and converse. None of us brought going out clothes and looked way too casual so we made one of the girls go in front to make sure we wouldn’t get denied entrance because we all looked like scrubmuffs.
We got in but as soon as we had paid and walked into the main area we were floored. There was no one there. Maybe 5 people….but no one. Since we had already paid we figured we’d get a drink and hang out and hopefully more people would show up since it was like 12:30 on a Sunday. After getting kicked out of the VIP section (oppsies), getting hit on by 50 year old Moroccan men and basically sitting around for an hour we decided to leave. As soon as we rounded the corner outside the club a bunch of other SAS kids approached, go figure. We said it was expensive to get in and wasn’t great and walked back to the hotel with some of them. I got back, tried the wifi again but to no avail and passed out.

The next day we had to get up early and haul ourselves to the market, or souks as they call them. Apparently the movie “Sex and the City 2” filmed a lot in Morocco. The giant grand hotel they stay at in somewhere in the country and the markets they go to are in Marrakech.  We started at the far end of the markets and worked our way to the medina. We stopped at two designated shopping places, which actually was kind of annoying because I know they were charging more and that our tour guide was getting commission from it. It just wasn’t as legit. Either way, I ended up buying a hookah. Its really pretty and they shipped it home for me because we can’t bring them on the boat. So…look for that mom! Lol I hope it makes it home in one piece. We later had some time to wander and go to the other market stalls. Haggling is how everyone does business but the people are really nice about it. It isn’t a super hostile haggling, they believe that whether they make the sale or not, they met new people.

We had lunch and drove back to Casablanca arriving at 7 pm although we were supposed to get back at 5. A big group of us wanted to go to Rick’s Café (from the movie Casablanca) for dinner but we wanted to nap and shower first but since we got back so late and getting through security to get back on the ship took a while we ended up just taking quick showers and heading out into the city. We had a group of like 10 and ended up meeting more people that we walked with out of the port. Our…dock area was a good 20 minute walk from the entrance to the port and the main streets and usually there are shuttles running but since we left too late to make any of them. The walk was fine but my feet hurt and were blistered the next day. Obviously my mom was right and I should have brought really heinous running shoes. Whatever. We had been told that Rick’s was kind of expensive and a tourist trap but I still wanted to go just to say I had been. We got there and the inside TOTALLY did look like the café in “Casablanca”. The food and drinks were really good and totally worth the price, which wasn’t even that bad. A couple of us had wanted to go to a hookah bar after but we were all exhausted and walked home and passed out.

On our last day in Morocco, Allison and I basically just wanted to find an internet café (since the hotel had been a bust), get a couple postcards and maybe some snacks since the food on the boat is repetitive and only mildly appetizing. We met up with one of our friends and her roomie who suggested that we go to Rick’s (again) because they have free wifi (free being the operative word) so we headed out again to Rick’s. Unfortunately, the shuttle was yet again not running (lunch break….stupid) so we had to walk out of the port. It was about 95 F and it was hot. Luckily we snagged a cab but had to attempt to negotiate the price in French, my French only got us so far and it was definitely confusing because he kept acting like he knew what he was saying. But we made it to Rick’s got a couple of martinis (I love being able to order drinks in other countries, coming home is going to suck) and tried to get on the internet. After a couple of failed attempts (apparently it had been patchy that day) we got on for a little bit and checked out Facebook lol. We walked back on the main street and looked for some souvenirs before FINALLY getting the shuttle to the ship. Ship time was at 6 pm and we were supposed to leave at 8 pm but as we were eating dinner they kept announcing “Ben ….and Patrick…..if you are on the ship please report to the Purser’s desk immediately” and then “if anyone has had contact with or knows the whereabouts of Ben…and Patrick…. Please come to the purser’s deck” after 3 announcements they finally stopped but I don’t know if Ben and Pat ever actually made it on to the ship. There have been rumors flying about people who have already been kicked off or left. A couple of people were mugged and one of them was traumatized and went home. I heard that some girl apparently jumped off the ship to save a drowning dolphin (no joke, that’s what I was told) and got kicked off. Its all ridiculous but hopefully people won’t be stupid and will get to stay. We sat on the deck and watched us pull out of the harbor and the Captain came on the loudspeaker and said it would be rocky but we all shrugged it off because he had said that when he were coming into Morocco and it was totally smooth. This time, however, he was serious. It has never been so rough. I haven’t been seasick at all but last night I busted out my seabands (they use acupressure to stop nausea) and went to bed at 10. Allison was feeling it as well and took some sea sick meds but she said it made her feel really weird this morning. But we all survived somehow and are looking forward to Ghana. I’m sorry this was so long, I feel like I’ve left out so much.  And I apologize for my lack of storytelling ability (thanks mom and dad for NOT giving me that gene). A little less than a week until Ghana!