The weekend after Semana Santa, the day my parents return home, I headed out with some friends to Morocco! We went with a tour group out of Sevilla, called Discover Excursions. Basically everyone on the trip was a college student studying somewhere in Europe- some in France, Italy, and a lot in Spain. On Friday afternoon, we left Sevilla and took a 3 hour bus ride to Tarifa, which is the southern most city of Spain. It was wild because from the shores of Tarifa you could see the coast line of Morocco. I had never realized just how close Spain and Africa were until then. Our fairy was supposed to leave at 9pm but ended up being almost 2 hours late due to bad weather. So when we finally made it to our hotel in Tetouan it was 1am Moroccan time, which is 2 hours behind Spain. We had dinner as soon as well got to the hotel- dinner at 3am Spain time! The hotel was very nice, and accommodating, and the beds were like heaven!
The next morning, Saturday, we left the hotel around 9 for a town called Chefchaouen, which was about an hour and a half from our hotel. When we got there we had a walking tour of the city. Some people call it the blue city, and it's obvious why once you visit. Everything is blue! It's said that the people of Chefchaouen think that blue helps to keep away the flies and mosquitos. It was such a beautiful and ugly place all at the same time. It was such a strange thing to take in because the town was situated on the side of this beautiful mountain, and all the blue and white made the city look like something from a painting, but at the same time you could see the poverty in the faces and dress( or lack of) in the people. Also, there was lots of trash and old, used goods just laying around the streets. After our tour, we had a delicious lunch on the rooftop terrace of a restaurant named Aladdin! After lunch we had free time to explore and shop, so I took full advantage of that time! Carly, Jordan and I found this huge shop that had everything moroccan you could ever imagine- pants, sandals, shoes, purses, clay dishes, lanterns, the list goes on and on. I'm happy to say that I made some good purchases for myself and got some great presents for friends and family. After about 2 hours of shopping we all met back up in the center of the city, where we found a lady doing henna and all got henna tattoos on our hands. We got back to the hotel around 6:30ish, had another delicious dinner, and afterward the tour group leaders threw a small party for the whole group for a few hours.
Sunday morning we woke up early and left the hotel around 8:30ish for the beach town of Assilah. As soon as we got there we had a very short tour of the small town which had the most unique doors that I've ever seen, and then had more free time for more shopping! I found some great moroccan sandals, and more presents for friends and family! After our very short visit in Assilah we had lunch at a restaurant 10 minutes outside of the town where we ate a delicious salad of tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, beets, rice, egg, and cabbage. We had salads similar to this one each day we were in Morocco, so I assume it is the typical way that Moroccans make salad. After our lunch, we headed out back toward Tangiers to catch the ferry back to Spain, but before we could leave we had one more important thing to do- RIDE CAMELS! It definitely was not how I had pictured my ideal camel riding, but it was amazing nonetheless. There was a pretty large group of us, and only 5 people could go at a time, and they lead us around their land which took about 3 minutes. One of the cutest things about the whole experience was that we got to see a baby camel. It was only 1 week old, and every time it's mother would come back around the two would nuzzle together. The camel riding experience was definitely my favorite part of the trip- but it was partially why I signed up for the trip in the first place. After the camel rides we had a little bit of time to kill so we got to explore the Cuevas de Hercules (caves of hercules). They were very interesting because they opened up right to the ocean. They get their name from an old legend that says that the god Hercules used to live there. Unfortunately, we only had about 15 minutes to explore the caves because we had to make it back to Tangiers to catch our ferry.
This trip was definitely unexpected, but I'm so glad that I got to visit Morocco! It is definitely a beautiful place, despite it's rough edges. I hope to go back one day- without the hustle and bustle of being herded around in a tour group and really experience Morocco more.
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