Lucky Number 13

The final country.  The last hurrah.  Go big, then go home.

 

These were the thoughts going through all of our minds as we packed our bags and headed to the dining room to debark for our trip to Marrakech and to the Sahara in Morocco.  This was the trip that I had been waiting for.  It was my only overnight through SAS where I didn’t have to worry about planning what to do in the country.  The trip was a 4 day, 3 night venture to Marrakech with a camel trek through the Sahara.  As we walked outside, we had about 200 people heading to the little 16-seat vans, ready to venture out into the great and final unknown.  Our group of 14 who had all planned on sitting on the same bus together went out to get on the bus with two of our trip leaders.  When we went to the bus that they were planning on going on, there were a couple of other students sitting there and we knew that all of us weren’t going to fit together.  Because we were running out of time and needed a bus, we got on the one beside it, 13.

 

The trip began.  We decided to be all organized and to number ourselves so that we could make sure everyone was always there when we got back on our bus.  Of course, we also made a chant and named our van: “Hot Fez, Hot Fez, Ya, ya, ya!” and then the van would erupt with ridiculous sounds.  It was a 3-4 hour trip to Marrakech from Casablanca and we found out rather immediately that our air condition didn’t work.  As we were sitting there with beads of sweat rolling down our faces and popping out of our sweat glands over our entire bodies that we didn’t even know we had, I looked at Emily and said, “Lucky number 13.”  At this, her face drooped and she said, “Oh man…you’re right! What were we thinking?”

 

After a very long 4 hours, we made it to Marrakech where we got off our bus and headed to lunch.  My first impression of Morocco was the smell.  As soon as we got off the bus, the stench of urine hit me like a ton of bricks.  Everyone said that it was the horses that were lining the street we were walking along, and all I could think was, “This is not what horses are supposed to smell like.”  At that point, I realized it was the smell of malnourished horses.

 

We went to a restaurant beside the famous square, Djemaa El-Fna, and had some interesting food.  It started out with little appetizers of various vegetable platters, then we got some great chicken, and it ended with oranges and pastries.  Surprisingly, I enjoyed the food a lot even though I expected to really not like it at all or to even try it for that matter.  After lunch, we went and walked around the souk.  Souks are the name for Moroccan bazaars more or less.  I was horrified by the sight of small monkeys on chains being put on people so they could get pictures with them, snake charmers and snakes being shoved in your face constantly, and women sitting around grabbing at you to paint henna onto your skin.  I quickly got away from this situation and we headed into the souk.  My initial reaction was, “We’re back in Turkey.”  Shop owners were back in your face, calling us Spice Girls and Shakira, trying to get us to come in their shops and buy their stuff.  And again, I didn’t like it.  The souk was rather dead while we were there.  Most people were lying outside or inside their shops sleeping and no one was really walking around.  We didn’t have a large amount of time to walk around because of the fact that we had to go to our hotel, so we decided we’d come back another night when the place is apparently really hopping.

 

We went to our hotel, the Meriyam (or something like that).  As we pulled up, my initial reaction was that it was really nice and that we were going to have a good stay.  After Aeriale and I opened the door to our room, our feelings changed a little bit.  Our room was tiny and looked like it was stuck in the 60’s.  The bathroom was dirty and the toilet was difficult to flush.  The TV was barely existent and the floor was tile and cold.  The shower beat against my skin as if I was being whipped and we could hear pretty much everything that was going on in the room beside us, which happened to be Paul’s room.  When we were lying in our beds trying to regain our strength for the evening, I heard Paul in the hall…practically crying.  I walked out and yelled at him and he came into our room and started laughing hysterically.  He’d gone mad.  After 4 hours in a non-air conditioned van, crazy people throwing animals in our faces, and now a gross apparently four-star hotel, he couldn’t take it anymore.

 

About an hour after we arrived at our hotel, we had to go to dinner and our folk show and horse fantasia.  As we were walking into this large, palace-like building, streams of music and dancing by Moroccan performers greeted us.  People were dancing with them and clapping and there was a large rodeo-like arena in the center of all of the buildings.  We walked around to the other side of the area and found where all of the SASers were seated for dinner.  This time, we were given soup as our starting course.  It had a different taste.  It seemed like a tomato-y soup, but not as thick and strong, with a bit of a hot taste and I’m pretty sure there were vegetables in it also.  I thought it was pretty decent.  After that we got this odd looking dish of meatballs and eggs.  I’m not sure why type of meat were in the meatballs, but it kind of reminded me of deer meat which I’m pretty sure they don’t have in Morocco, so I’m not even going to ask.  It was actually pretty decent.  After that we had couscous, which when I tried it the first time a few years ago I hated, but this time, it was also rather tasty.  As we were eating a number of random musicians and dancers streamed in and were performing for us.  One man walked in and had a bag and he pulled out a telephone from his bag and pretended to be talking on it.  It was one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen, but it was kind of hilarious.

 

After we were done eating, we noticed that people were starting to go outside to the arena where we assumed the Folk Show and Horse Fantasia was going to take place.  As we were discussing what the show might be like at dinner, all any of us could picture was the Disney movie Fantasia.  Needless to say, we had no idea what to expect out of it.  It started out with men riding around on horses.  They would ride back and forth and fire guns, which was rather startling.  Then a woman came out and did a belly dancing show on a float.  That was really cool because I had never seen a belly dancing show in any of the countries we had been to like most others had.  After that it kind of was like a rodeo to me.  There were men in vibrant shirts (not flannel and cowboy hats) that were riding around and doing stunts.  It was really impressive and fun.  Then a little boy rode out on a little donkey and was doing his own stunts.  It was so cute!  He was pretty good at it too!  The show didn’t last too long, but it was long enough for the day we had previous to this.  Then we went back to our somewhat scummy hotel and went to sleep so that we could get up at 5:30AM the next morning to head out to the Sahara.