So after recovering from the traumatic turbulent waves and writing in my journal, I can now sit down and tell you about my trip.
First thing in the morning I departed for the countryside to where the camels were waiting for me. I slept the whole way there on the bus, but don’t worry on the way back I wasn’t able to sleep so I saw 3.5 hours worth of green farmlands.
This picture is from lunch, which I actually ate even though I was prepared with 5 balance bars to avoid getting traveler’s sickness from the food. They warned us not to eat anything that wasn’t piping hot. I’m not sure if you can see the steam in the picture, but it was hot and spicy and DELICIOUS. The spices are key to Moroccan food. Then after lunch we rode the camels. When we got to Marrakesh we went to the Palm Groves to a village inhabited by Berber’s. Berber’s are North Americans who settled in Morocco about 5,000 years ago, they are mostly populated in the Atlas Mountains (which I wish I had time to explore).
This is me about to kiss Omal (my camel) and I don’t know why they put these blue bandanas on our heads but I instantly felt transformed into a Moroccan. The guide told me that I was “trop petite” and that I wasn’t allowed to ride this camel (b/c it was the biggest one), so I said “It’s okay, my friend will come with me” so Ashley and I mounted our camel, but we were thrown forward because when camels stand up they do their hind legs first, and then we lead the rest of the camel squad through a village. Of course we tried to make him start galloping and veering away from the other camels, but there were dogs and guides following to make sure we wouldn’t run off into the Atlas Mountains.
But camel riding was fun, and we went through a very desolate Berber village where little boys ran up to us asking for money, or tried to sell us things. A girl from another group supposedly tried to high-five one of them, and he attempted to physically harm her. This seemed to be the general attitude of Moroccans towards Americans. The middle of the city is definitely a very threatening area for girls to be, and we didn’t know that women are forbidden to enter liquor stores, bars, banks, so we kind of unintentionally brought the attention to ourselves…oops.
The next day we spent in Marrakesh sightseeing. We saw tombs, a mosque, and a palace ( A picture of Ashley and I in the palace courtyard). We also went to the Square of Death, also known as the souks, also known as the market place. There were snake charmers, monkey handlers, henna tattoo artists, vendors selling all handcrafted goods. When we got there, we were listening to Nigid, our tour guide, and a bunch of girls in our group start screaming because a snake charmer came right up to one of them and threw a snake around his neck then asked for money to take a picture. (Moroccans request money in exchange for taking pictures of them…actually they ask for money for almost any reason). One of my friends ended up paying a snake charmer to just keep the snake away. We had a lot of laughs. 
This picture is from the best spice market in Marrakesh, where there were tons of shelves with jars of spices everywhere. We learned about some of the important spices in their culture like aphrodisiac spices and stress relieving spices. They wanted us to buy some—however, a former LAPD sheriff was on our trip with us and advised us that the ship security would probably confiscate anything that looked “blunt-able”. What do you know? At the security door on the ship there was a pile of plastic baggies that looked like the very saffron and nutmeg spices that the spice ladies tried to sell to us.
My French helped me in Morocco. I think it’s so cool that Morocco is bi-tri-lingual. They speak Arabic, French, Spanish, and the Berber’s have their own dialect, and I know one phrase in Arabic, “Bahebic Shamutas,” which I learned from a cab driver in Boston. But French helped me with bargaining especially--I was able to purchase some hand-made pashminas and pottery. We also learned that the weather we had was abnormal and occurred once very 30 years—50 degree weather and raining, and everything to do in Morocco is outside, but at least we had the only nice day for camel riding.
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