After a wonderful day and night in Merzouga, a few friends and I woke up early the next morning to catch the sunrise before leaving. We walked out to the dunes and waited for the magic to happen. After a while we began to wonder if it was just a cloudy day and we missed the sunrise. A few headed back, but most of us hung around knowing that the sun had to peek out from the dunes at some point. And I'm so glad that we did.
The sun appeared and was up in under a minute. We spent a few more hours on the bus and stopped for lunch at a spot in between some gorges.
The drive was beautiful but long and made even longer by my seat buddy, a true character of our program. He asked me questions like "do you believe in hell on earth?", "why is there pain and suffering in the world?", "if anything could be named after you, what would you want it to be?" and a more general "what do you believe?" all within a span of five minutes.
We arrived that evening to "Dar Taliba", a student hostel for girls who live in villages and without provided housing would have no options for schooling. We had sit down dinner with the girls and tried our best to converse. My table had a particularly strong language barrier as no one spoke french and our few arabic phrases couldn't be understood since these students mostly speak Berber arabic.
Although there was not much conversation, it was still great to interact with Moroccan students our age.
We spent the night in the hostel then went off driving the next morning through the high atlas. We stopped along the way to take pictures of the kasbah in Ouarzazet that has appeared in many movies (including but not limited to: The Last Temptation of Christ, The Mummy, Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator).
That afternoon we made it to Marrakech. We were given the next two days to explore the city on our own. Charley, Simone and I headed out with no exact plan. The city was immediately overwhelming to all of us. The streets were busy, filled with cars, buses, and motorcycles. It was also obvious to the three of us how touristy Marrakech is compared to any other cities we've visited. Fez was definitely touristy, but feels different in some way. We ended up at the main square. As soon as we entered, Simone was handed a picture booklet of henna by a woman, then as soon as Simone had it in her hands, the woman went to her stand. Forced to hand it back, Simone went over. The woman grabbed her hand to shake it as if to say "nice to meet you", then immediately started scribbling henna all over her arm. Charley and I watched the whole thing closely, holding our arms behind our backs to avoid the same problem. Simone kept saying "la, la" or "no", but the woman kept exclaiming "free!" and wouldn't stop. As soon as she finished, the woman said "ok, I give you a gift, now you give me a gift." And that's how we were welcomed to the square in Marrakech.
Everywhere we turned in the square, something different was happening. There were monkeys wearing diapers chained under shade umbrellas. Snake charmers ready to play their recorders the second there is chance of pay. Endless carts filled with copious varieties of colorful fruits and vegetables.
For dinner, we were given coupons that would work at pizza hut, mcdonalds, or the grocery store. Charley, Simone, and I decided to put together a little picnic in the hotel room with foods from the grocery store. Our night ended with nice conversation, some bananagrams, and a picnic that looked like this:
To Be Continued......
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