Marginalized

Just back from the Sahara yesterday, and I'm still recovering from the camel rides...but here goes:

Strangely enough, it only took 5 hours to fly across the Atlantic to Morocco, but it took about 15 to get from Rabat to Mhamid. We left on a 2 o'clock train Friday afternoon, and got into Marrakech around 7. Then we got on a bus (supposedly departing at 7:30) which left Marrakech for Ouarzazate around 9. We got to Ouarzazate sometime around 2 AM. The trip was absolutely gorgeous, even in the middle of the night. It reminded me of the Polar Express, because we were winding through snowy mountains in the middle of the night. The bus was going a little bit too fast for my liking though. At this point, our tour guide seemed a bit lost...He's normally hired by a tour company to do just the desert part of the tour, and not the transportation. We picked him because it was cheaper. His English was pretty good, but funny in emails...He thanked us for coming with him, because he is just a "poor Saharan boy (marginalized)." So after at least 45 minutes of standing around, he found us some taxis (we were definitely ripped off severely on taxis...) and we went to his family's house where we stayed overnight. In the morning, we took some more overpriced taxis to a village outside Mhamid, where we stayed for the weekend in a Touareg village in the desert. I thought it was pretty funny that you could just hail a cab to drive you literally out to the dunes of the Sahara. And it took about 5 hours. But I guess when you have a bunch of American tourists paying entirely too much for the trip, it's worth going off-road.

Once we got to the tents on Saturday, we spent the rest of the afternoon running around and playing in the sand. It was gorgeous. We watched the sunset from the dunes, and then had homemade tajine with the tour guide and his friends. That night, they played some traditional music for us (and some other French, Brazilian, and British tourists) and we all had tea together. At this point we were having a blast and really just hanging out with the tour guide as friends, because we met him in Essaouira when we had tea in his shop.

The next day we got up at 6 to watch the sun rise, and then we took camels for about an hour to another spot in the desert and played in the dunes all day. We had more tajine and tea for lunch, and then took camels back. The desert was beautiful, and we were all absolutely covered in sand from head to toe. The only problem with our trip: one of the girls who came with us (who is very very negative alll the time) complained and was rude and said mean things about our tour guide - in front of him - enough that he got really offended and pretty much stopped speaking to us for the rest of the weekend, despite all our efforts to be extra nice and multiple apologies for her (she never apologized herself). It was sad because he started treating us just like the other tourists instead of like friends...It was disappointing because he invited us to his home, and I feel bad that she offended him. But at the same time, the rest of us were very nice to him the whole weekend, and he sulked the whole time because of one person.

After we got back from the camel rides we were all exhausted and sore, so we just hang out in the sand (some more) and watched the sunset again. They made us couscous and oranges with cinnamon for dinner. We planned to sleep outside under the stars Sunday night, but strangely enough, it rained...And it rains 5 times a year there. Karma? Maybe. But it turned out to be a good thing, because the clouds kept it from being unbearably hot in the daytime, and no one got sunburnt.

We had originally planned to go to the International Nomad Festival outside Ouarzazate on Monday, and then to stay at the tour guide's house again, but we were clearly not welcome in his house anymore. So we went to the festival, but it turned out to be cancelled because of the rain. So we made our way to Marrakech by about 4, and half of us decided to stay overnight in Ouarzazate, and the rest took an overnight bus back to Rabat. We stayed in a hotel called Hotel Amlal. It was very nice, especially for 100 dh a person (about 12 dollars). The only problem was when Ann tried to take a shower and the pipe pretty much exploded. Our room was full of steam and there was this horrible noise. I ran downstairs and had a humorous conversation with the woman at the front desk (Uh, il y a un probleme avec le douche...Pas de l'eau?...Uh, non, beaucoup - something like, there's a problem with the shower...No water...Uh, no, a lot of water) And then I told her she could just follow the sound...A man came to fix it, and despite the fact that the entire faucet had shot across the room, he told us "The water is just too hot, wait a half an hour and it will be better." More of Ann's bad luck (she's had her wallet, camera, and Ipod all stolen, and then we were rained on, and then the shower...). So eventually we got a new room with a shower that worked.

That night we walked around Ouarzazate with Zakaria's cousin who lives there (Zakaria is Corina's host brother who came with us - his father is my Business professor and the owner of our university). The town is kind of like Marrakech in training, but calmer. It's full of very fancy hotels, because there's a big movie studio there, where a lot of Hollywood movies are filmed (Lawrence of Arabic, the Ten Commandments, Samson and Dalila, etc). The hotels all have pieces of movie sets from famous movies. Because Zakaria's cousin has lived there his whole life, he knew people in every hotel, so we were able to walk through and see them all. We also walked through the old medina and had kefta sandwiches.

The trip back yesterday was very long...We took a bus to Marrakech and then a train back to Rabat. We left around 8:30 AM and I got back to the house around 6. We had a good group of people with us, though, because the one girl who made the rest of the weekend difficult went on the overnight bus. Apparently that didn't go very well...I hear there were multiple "meltdowns." Mental note: don't travel with Mari anymore.

The whole weekend was exhausting, even though most of our time was free. The Sahara was beautiful, and all weekend I didn't get bored of just running around in the dunes. It was nice to be in a quiet place for the first time since I got here, too. I felt like I had a lot of time to think, and I really got to know a lot of the people in the group better. Also, Nicole's friend from school, Anna, who is working in Rabat this semester, came with us. She was really nice and got along with the group really well.

It was definitely an adventure...and I'm definitely glad we had Zakaria with us. It would have been probably a bit too much of an adventure if we hadn't had any Moroccans with us. I have a lot of really great pictures, which I can post when I go back to school, but none of them quite capture how BIG everything was. You can't quite get the whole idea. This was one of the best things I've done in Morocco so far, despite the backache from riding camels and the 30 hours of travel. Even the traveling was fun, because the entire 30 hours of scenery was beautiful.

Anyway, I'll post pictures hopefully tomorrow!
Love,
Kira

PS: We are now only 4 hours apart because Morocco doesn't do Daylight Savings Time :)