If you scroll down far enough there is a video from the trip also. They posted it on December 13 (a littttllleee more punctual than myself!)
All About our Adventures in Africa
It took a long time to get where we were going, but we finally made it to Africa! We took a ferry from Terifa Spain to Tangers Morocco, then back on the bus where we started at Rabat, the capital, a night in the Sahara Desert, the back up to Fez. Rabat was really cool, but we didn’t stay too long. We ate, went down to the beach, and then took a walking tour through a mosque that was supposed to be the largest in the world but it was never finished; that obviously didn’t really work out for them. Cool fact: we ate at the same restaurant in Rabat as Obama when he was there.
After Rabat we were off to the Saharaaaa! The drive to the Sahara was an adventure where we had to take 3 different forms of transportation. We took the bus to a hotel in the southeastern part of Morocco, and it was a beautiful drive the entire way. There were mountains in the background topped with snow part of the drive and then the other part of the drive looked like the Grand Canyon. Off to the side of the road along the way you would see random huts and flocks of sheep guided by their Sheppard off in the distance, something I have only read about. It was difficult to capture all that we saw in pictures, so I guess you will just have to go see for yourselves one day! We arrived to the hotel only to find out that we were all piling in 4x4 jeeps and driving through the Sahara. Our jeep was leading the pack and we were flying through the desert in pitch black dark jamming to Arabian music, it was awesome! After about forty-five minutes of off-roading through the Sahara, just a normal day-to-day activity, we come up on about 80 camels and a group of nomads, who were part of the Berber population. About 60% of the Moroccan people are Berbers and they have their own language while the rest of the population is Arab and speak Arabic. Also, Berber comes from a Roman word that means barbarian. There are different tribes within the Berber population and we stayed with one of these tribes for a night in the Sahara desert.
We rode the camels in the dark to the tents where we were spending the night. The sky was filled with stars and we could see the outline of all the dunes surrounding us. It was unreal. Once we got to the tents the Berber tribe greeted us with a typical meal and then we all sat/danced around the fire and had a few Moroccan beers with the Berbers. We woke up really early the next morning to hike up a GIGANTIC sand dune to watch the sunrise. You know when you climb up a sandy hill and you slide back down with every step, well imagine trying to climb up a sandy mountain…im-po-si-ble. The climb was well worth it though because the view was incredible! After that we rode for an hour and a half back to the hotel on camels, and it was no la-z-boy, I think I’m still walking funny.
After the Sahara it was almost time to head back home, but we stopped for a day in Fez, the second largest city in Morocco and home to the oldest university in the world. In Fez we walked around the medina, which would be impossible to get around without a guide. There are 9,000 streets with no names! You can see us walking through the narrow streets of the medina in our video. There are shops every 6 steps and everyone tries to get you into their shop to either sell you something for 4 times as much as what they finally sell it to you for, or to marry their son. In this part of Africa there are still arranged marriages, and one guy was trying everything he could to get one of the girls on the trip to marry his son. Even though his proposal was undeniably appealing, no one left Africa that day with a fiancé. Walking around, we went into a silk factory, a pharmacy, and the oldest tannery in the world. The leather shop overlooking the tannery was 3 stories and the walls were filled with hundreds of genuine leather bags. We spent a lot of time in those three main shops so our group only had 15 minutes of free time to bargain and shop around before we had to hit the road. It was one of the most stressful 15 minutes of our lives. There was so much to see with so little time and we had dirhams that needed to be spent. Running around the medina on our own truly intensified our Moroccan experience. Overall, our trip was really cool because we were able to experience so many different aspects of Morocco.
If anyone wants to visit Morocco, let us know because we would love to go back!
Love,
Allie & Mary Duncan
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