October 1 through 11, 2022
I was originally going to only cover Marrakech in this post (we were there for the first few days of October) but then our group tour started, we've been on the go, and not always with ready access to wifi. So now we're a week into our group tour and we've been to soooo many places in Morocco, I will try to lump them all into this one post 😀.
We signed up for this tour with Atlas Obscura several months back because it looked interesting and off-beat and we were (kinda) familiar with the AO concept. Art and I wound up arriving on separate days in Morocco due to a fiasco involving someone (I won't name names) forgetting their laptop and pillow at security and therefore missing their flight (okay, it was me 😓). Art was super nice about it, not making me feel bad about the added costs and the need to shlep my suitcase as well as his, not to mention figure out a new city without me. For my part, I got to spend an extra 15 hours in the Oslo airport, and then another 20 or so hours flying to Morocco (thanks to 2 long layovers 😒). I can personally attest to the lack of good sleeping options in the Copenhagen and Munich airports. Happy to report that we both made it safely to Marrakech! I was thoroughly wiped out so I treated myself to a massage on my first night there. Turned out to be a special form of massage called "Hammam" which Morocco is famous for, that includes a full bath and black-soap body scrub which thoroughly exfoliates your skin (not for the faint of heart 😮). It was followed by a lovely massage which made everything alright again. Our Airbnb turned out to be just fine although in a slightly sketchy part of town 😐.
Our tour started the next evening so we took a city tour to get the lay of the land and checked out the market (souks) in the main square. Marrakech is unlike anywhere else I've ever been - it's a developing country with some infrastructure and tons of history. We were a bit overwhelmed by the number of people, the chaotic atmosphere in the souks, the aggressiveness of the vendors (including people who routinely attempt to rip off tourists), and the sheer busy-ness of it all. We met the rest of the tour and our tour guide (named "La") that night, had a delicious introductory dinner, and we were off and running 💨.
The tour itself has been pretty good and included quite a lot in 12 days. I'll assess it fully when it reaches its conclusion.
Highlights have included: learning how to make the local specialty dish (tajin 😋), awesome night markets, shopping in the souks for groceries for dinner, trekking to the Sahara Desert in 4x4's, riding camels in the desert at sunset, glamping in the Sahara, staying at a camp site in the literal middle of nowhere, climbing up and down the sand dunes, visiting a Berber village where they make pottery by hand, visiting the old Jewish quarter, staying at an oasis/hotel in the desert, seeing an ancient 800-year-old granary on a mountain top.
Low-lights have included: desert heat, shopping for live chickens (soon to be dinner) in the souks, oasis hotels with spotty wifi (one of us really has an issue with that 😑) and tiny pools, 4x4's whose A/C doesn't always work, dealing with bio-toilets when you're camping in the middle of nowhere, tour guides who talk wayyy more than necessary, eating tajin (almost) every single day, steep mountain treks to see an ancient granary 😅.
Fun aside: one of the people on our tour is big into geo-caching and he has been looking for some while here. Today we all helped him find one under an argan oil bush. It was my first geo-cache find (his 11,500th - no joke!).
Other fun aside: I loved the fact that we happened to wind up camping in the Sahara right around the time of Sukkot (that Jewish holiday celebrating Jews wandering in the desert for 40 years). I even managed to find a "lulav" and "etrog" (or something close enough) to mark the occasion. That was super cool 🍋🌴
We have a few more days to go on this tour, then we head to Casablanca on our own for a few days before Greece. So much more to see and do!
Deena and Art
No comments:
Post a Comment