Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Week 3! Katrina in Chefchaouen and the Sahara!

So I've had some time to settle in after a couple weekends of traveling! The first weekend we went to Chefchaouen...the Blue City. The bus ride was awful. It ended up taking around 8 hours after bus trouble and random stops to pick up more people/cram the boiling body odors even further. We ended up staying at the hostel I randomly booked online for an extra day instead of leaving for Fez. We spent about $15 USD for 2 nights...not too shabby!



While we were out and about looking around, we stumbled upon an older gentleman, Sayeed, that took us to his family's rug/tapestry store.  We sat and had tea/looked at rugs and blankets for hours, literally.  He later took us for a trek up to the mosque at the top of one of the mountains.  He was a beast for easily being in his 60s!

View from the mosque
There was actually a music festival while we were there and I saw 1,2,3 Soleil performed by Faudel...I was pretty pumped about that! This was our warm up for Mawazine...Rabat's music festival!

Sahara

Soooo....not only were people vomiting on the bus (multiple people had motion sickness? IDK!), but it was another LONG trip.  We traveled by train for 2 hours and a bus for ~8 to get to Merzouga in southern Morocco.  Camels are not pleasant. We took a 2 hour adventure into the Sahara to camp out...and 2 hours back. Delilah, my camel on the trek back to the hotel, was on my level...we were not very enthusiastic about the next morning. Listen to me when I say that 15 minutes on a camel is enough. It's enough for pictures. It's enough for your entire bottom half to ache the next day. It's enough I say!

A quick siesta before camel riding!

I was able to get the sweet shadow pics!

It is my pleasure to introduce you to Delilah!

He decided to come drop us off at the bus stop...last minute. (Hence the hanging on aspect)
Let me explain. This was taken at the train station on the way back to Rabat in the middle of the night. This Moroccan apparel is called a Djellaba. Djellabas are worn by men and women and have pointed hoods. Well, I happened to be the only other person wearing one in the middle of the night at this train station and all I could think of was Platform 9 3/4. 

This was not "my" camel, but we had a great convo, regardless! :)

1 comment:

  1. Katrina,

    I really enjoyed your post! I can really tell how you are feeling by reading your writing! I'm marking this as your post about 5/26-5/31. Is this correct?

    I'm so sorry to hear about your experiences on the buses. I, myself, get very sick on buses, so it is not surprising to me. Regardless, that does not make for a pleasant trip at all.

    That is really great that you were able to connect with the gentleman from the tapestry shop. It seems as thought you felt very welcomed and comfortable. The pictures you took on top of the mountain are stunning!

    I was laughing so hard when I was reading about the camels! I can't imagine that they would be very comfortable. Hey, it's a once in a lifetime experience- so you never have to do it again!! The video was the icing on the cake. So, so, so funny!!

    How is work? I would love to hear about it and see pictures too! I'm really looking forward to your next post.

    Best,
    Tammy

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