Morocco!

The trip to Morocco was really neat! There were several things I didn't know. Morocco is and Arabic and Muslim kingdom, although it used to be controlled by France and Spain. The languages are Arabic and French, but it seemed that everyone also understood Spanish or English.
We left for Morocco on Saturday morning with a big group of Americans and a tourist agency. We rode a bus for two hours to the ocean and took a ferry across to Cueta, which is a Spanish controlled city in Morocco. It was extremely scenic with the Atlantic ocean on one side of us and the Mediterranean sea on the other. We went through customs and into Morocco to our hotel.

The countryside is beautiful. The mountains are all very green.
Sunday morning we rode to a small town called Chefchaouen. This was my favorite spot in Morocco. We walked through the old part of town with a really old crazy guide. He was really big on entertaining and kept throwing out Spanish and English phrases. He even described part of the city as "super duper".


The roads were narrow alleys, with tall buildings on either side. All of the walls were plaster and painted blue. There were no windows and the doors were tiny, like hobbit doors.

We went into a rug store and walked upstairs to see the loom. We did some shopping in the little stores and I bought a scarf.
We had lunch in another town, in an Arabic palace. There were performers and musicians and we ate with maybe two hundred people in a huge room. We had salad and chicken, and for dessert we had Moroccan mint tea. The tea was my favorite food from this journey.

After lunch we went on a second walking tour in a more crowded city. We went into a pharmacy slash spice store. At first I was skeptical as to our purpose, but the man gave a very interesting presentation and was a persuasive salesman, making buy two - get one free offers. They sold saffron, which is apparently expensive in the states, mint tea, and things like stress relieving oil, products to help the skin and the allergies, the memory and the bug bites. My favorite moment was when the man referred to them as "shpices." This place was not as quaint as the first one and the alleys were full of people and food vendors.
Dinner was another show affair with a magician and acrobats this time. After dinner we had a disco with the other Americans on the tour. It was fun to do some dancing.
Monday was a Holiday in Andalucia. We rode camels, which was uneventful and more related to a pony ride, owing to the fact that there were tons of Americans waiting for their turn. Each person got to ride in a circle for about two minutes. The plus was that there was ocean in the background.
We went into a cave that ends by the ocean. It was very spectacular with the waves coming in against the cave rocks. The ferry that we take across is very fancy and huge. The boat seating area was all inside, with a variety of table and chair combinations.
Overall I was glad that I went to Morocco and experienced part of Africa and Arab culture. I don't like being a tourist; I prefer being in other countries for a purpose and learning the daily life, but being a tourist proves to be sometimes unavoidable.