10 years of my life or Spring Break the rest

...On to Ouarzazate we went!

The bus ride from Merzouga in the Sahara desert to Ouarzizate lasted about 7 hours if I remember correctly. We went through an amazing transformation of landscape. From dry desert sand dunes to green luscious valleys, to cold barren flats with huge snow covered mountains jutting up from behind. We struck up a conversation with a Czech boy, or should I say he struck up a conversation with us. He turned out to be an interesting guy who had lived in Alaska for 4 months as a fisherman and India for 2, we even have an invite to his place in Prague next time we're in the neighborhood. We arrive in Ouarzazate at around 4:30 and went straight to our hotel. We spent the evening walking around the small city center.

We stumbled upon a rural women's art gallery of sorts. There was everything from soap and oils, jewelry and carpets, and pottery and at great prices. We each bought something. We settled into a restaurant near our hotel for dinner and made instant friends with the waiter. He spoke barely any English so we taught him some and he taught us some Berber. Then he brought us free tea and cookies after dinner. He even walked us to our hotel after and invited us back for breakfast on him.

The next morning we learned that there was no hot water for the shower, which shouldn't have been a surprise on account of we were paying 50 dirhams the equivalent of $6 a night. Alas we would have to go one more day with sand infested hair. Our sandy selves packed up and headed to our new friends restaurant for breakfast. We enjoyed a free breakfast with our friend while looking at some pictures of his village which really were his facebook profile pictures which started to get weird when they turned into google image photos of "love" written in the sand and flower petals (romantic much?). Soon it was time for us to leave and Simo, our new friend offered to walk us to the bus station since we didn't even know the way. He mentioned something along the walk about tourist police and to say he was our friend but we payed little attention. Before we knew it we were at the bus station saying our goodbyes when two huge thug looking men approach our friend and start man handling him. He quickly gets out his ID while we stand there dumbfounded and Robin manages to tell them that he is our friend simply helping us but they basically ignore us. Long story short he was taken away to a building across the street and we were of course traumatized. Eventually Robin and I decide to intervene somehow and head to the "police" building. At that moment the two "cops" come out with Simo, get in a car, and drive away. We are all in complete shock, feeling traumatized, and quite guilty. Thus the bus ride to Agadir began this way.

(Sidenote: We have since contacted Simo and he is fine. He was simply taken back to his restaurant and given a warning. It turns out someone at the restaurant next door reported him. Competitive much?)

We arrived in Agadir after dark, got a taxi and checked into our hotel. We got some quick dinner and settled in to our hotel room. Hot showers and an english movie channel and we were in heaven.

Goodbye sand infested hair. Alas I awoke the next morning to a sandy pillow. It seems sometimes I forget that I have 3 times the amount of hair as a normal human thus it holds 3 times as much sand and takes 3 times as long to clean. After breakfast we walked to the beach and were quite surprised to find a resort laden and scanty clad leathery European covered beachfront. Everything that Morocco is not in one beach area. However at this point in our vacation and time in Morocco this is just what we needed. We hurried back to the hotel, stopping at a bookstore and fantastic buy anything store called Unipurix on the way. I then left the hotel in just a dress, no leggings! This way not sound like a big deal to you but for me, in Morocco, as a girl and a foreigner, this is a big deal. It felt strange, I sort of freaked out, then we got to the beach and I felt normal.

We spent the rest of the day sunbathing on beach lounge chairs for 20 dirhams all day. We read, we slept, we turned like sundials with the changing angle of the sun (optimal sun exposure you know?).

We took a leisurely walk down the beach at 4 and basked in the life where that was our most important appointment. That night we made an unsuccessful attempt to got to the piano bar and various other clubs but all were either deserted or too creepy to enter. We settled for the english movie channel showing another of the most terrible english movie ever made. Friday nearing the end of our Spring break saga we hit the beach early and spent the entire day baking. We payed the price after with red painful bodies. The day was beautiful, peaceful, and relaxing, just what the doctor ordered. After our daily walk along the beach we got heaping bowls of ice cream and watched the sun set over the water.

That night was the perfect culmination of our whirlwind, 10 years of my life, week. We ventured to the tourist restaurants along the ocean walkway and found one that was looked active and fun with a french lady singing.

The next three hours were a blur of insanity. There was a drunk crazy french man who was laughing and dancing and trying incessantly to kiss an Australian lady in front of her husband. Then he got dragged away by a mean looking Moroccan guy whom we assume was an undercover bodyguard. The French lady kept singing and a troop of classical Gnawa music players came and played with her. Then a magician came up and did some crazy tricks, one of which included taking a woman bra off, somehow. Then the french man was back sitting at a table with a little Moroccan boy and his mom yelling badly spoken darija loudly. Soon he and the women who got her bra taken off were up front dancing up a storm to a new band that was playing. Another man joined them who was dancing real crazy like. Meanwhile the Moroccan waiters were dancing, singing, running around being crazy and bringing us so much food. We were then brought some free tea, as usual. To top things off as we were leaving a waiter came up to us asking us how our meal was, where we are from, etc. He said he wanted to know what something in english meant that he'd heard from some American army men. He then blurts out, "Fo shizzle my fucking nizzle". We immediately start cracking up and try to tell him that it is funny, doesn't really mean anything, but has a bad word in it. He assures us that he will not say to to women then. We left feeling reassured :)

Finally came the day to return to Rabat, home sweet home. The travels were hot and painful (sunburned bodies) and I was grateful to be back home with my family by the time we finally made it. Transition back into the real world was rough, especially once Monday came. I felt like I had been gone for 10 years of my life in that one week of amazing adventures. Even though I wrote this super long blog there is no way to ever describe my Spring break 2011 to anyone, it was too zween!

10 years of my life or Spring Break the first half

To put it simply my Spring Break a few weeks ago lasted all of one week but in reality felt as if 10 years of my life had passed. Really it was an indescribable experience that in no way can be accurately described in a blog post. But you know, i'll try my best.

The first part of Spring Break I went to the Sahara desert to ride on camels and camp in the desert for 3 nights. It is the craziest, sandiest, wildest, free-est, dirtiest, most epic thing I think I have ever done. We hopped on top of our camels at 4 Saturday evening and rode, bumpily, into the never-ending dunes of the Sahara.

Well it turns out they did end somewhere and we got to that point. The dunes ended but the desert went on, in fact right up to the Algerian border. We "hopped" off our camels here and ran around the dunes until sunset. The rest of the night we spent with our wonderful guides whom we become best friends with instantly. Mustapha is a fun loving desert nomad who is also a rock star, but actually, he plays in a desert blues band. Ahmid didn't speak much english but made delicious tagines in the middle of the desert, had the biggest smile always on his face and ran around participating in all our shenanigans. So the first night at camp we drank tea and sang songs. Then we sat under the stars by a campfire telling jokes and listening to some awesome desert blues music.

It was perfect. The next morning we awoke to Mustapha's clapping at 5 am so we could watch the sun rise over Algeria. Later we trekked on the camels for a few hours, at this point starting to get sore. Our camels all had nicknames some that we gave others than they already had, mine was affectionately named Rex (my doing) Bob Marley (Mustapha's doing no doubt). Midday we stopped laid out some blankets and stayed for 4 hours! Now I'm not exactly sure all we did, it seems this starts to happen in the desert. I do know this is when we started to go insane! We ate lunch, drank tea, wandered, drummed, sunbathed, napped, sang for at least an hour straight every song we could think of, made capes, flew like super-hero's, wrapped ourselves in turbans, and various other insane-like activities.

Then we continued on to a Berber village. We walked this time leading our camels. We passed a wild camel and her baby on the way. The baby camel was as is any baby thing, the cutest thing ever!

The Berber village had about 5 homes all made of dried mud, as all buildings in the area are. We stayed in a small room of one. It was an active neighborhood. Little children running around playing, goats and chickens, women carrying clothing and food in and out, clotheslines swinging in the wind, all on barren windswept land of the Saharan desert. For dinner we had a delicious huge bowl of cous cous and then told jokes, taught Mustapha english, enjoyed Ahmid's drawings, and played with candle wax until we slept. The next day was spent at the Berber village. We ate Berber pizza which is kind of like a huge calzone filled with delicious vegetables.

Then we went a long walk across the desert to find the camels which wander at night. We wore Mustapha and Ahmid's wool djellabas and collected rocks, climbed a tree, and had plenty of fake karate fights.

We left and trekked back to the sand dunes. We left our camels close to camp to be taken back by Ahmid and instead headed to the Oasis with Mustapha. I can now clearly say that we were in the depths of insanity. It was at this point that I began to feel like I had no other life besides the desert, I had been born there, and possibly raised by a pack of wild camels. We made our way to the Oasis where we met our friend Becca and her sister who had just embarked on their desert journey.

There was clearly a divide when we realized they could still carry on a normal conversation and we were reduced to giggles and mindless jokes. We soon ran off headed for camp. We ran up sand dunes and jumped down the other side. We experienced Berber skiing also known as Mustapha grabbing your legs and pulling you down the side of the sand dune full speed ahead. We made it back to camp and spend the night much like the others except our tiny room was crammed with twice the people. We sang songs, drummed, took pictures, laughed (a lot), ate tagine, and surprise incident, Becca's sister's scarf caught on fire after she said, much to our amusement later, "Man it's hot in here". I'll spare you the details except to tell you that she and her scarf are fine. The night ended with us laying on blankets under the most incredible night sky of my life listening to Mustpha's beautiful desert blues. Perfection.

The next morning was not as perfect. We woke up at 5 am to a cold morning and unhappily (and quite uncomfortably) got on our camels one last time. The ride was a mixture of terrible and wonderful. For one, my butt was extremely sore from 3 days of bumpy camel rides and I had sand in delicate places, but I also got to see the Sahara desert transform from a dark magical starry night to a beautiful morning sunrise. Quite a magical experience.

Back at the hotel we ate breakfast, used a toiled (big deal!), took showers, and headed to our early morning bus. I found that I was sad to leave and say goodbye to our new friends, Mustapha and Ahmid, and to the Sahara desert that had stolen our hearts and possible our sanity (in a good way). But alas we boarded a bus en route to our next destination of Ouarzazate....