"3,000 Welcomes!"

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Hello dearies!

Ok so I apologize for the long delay in the blog post! We arrived back in London at 4 in the morning on Monday morning only to wake up a few hours later to go to class! I definitely thought of skipping but we got free Indian food after class, and I was not about to pass up a delicious free meal in London! And to boot, I have been recuperating from a weird stomach thing for the past couple of days and sleeping has apparently been a higher priority than letting you all know that I am alive and safe…. Sorry about that…

Ok, so enough of the lame excuses. Morocco was AMAZING!!!

To start off with a bit of the notorious flawed McMillan luck when it comes to flying that I can’t seem to shake, we almost didn’t make our flight because the time read 15:00 on our itinerary and who ever had initially read it (and I swear it was not me) thought it said 5pm instead of it actually being 3pm. Luckily though, Meg double checked our flight info the morning of so we all scrambled around with last minute packing and rushed to the airport. When we arrived we all kind of panicked a bit because we were flying MyTravel Airways and we were wandering around the airport looking for the check in desk. Cconsidering we had booked our flight stuff online, we thought it might have been a huge hoax, but alas we found it and we made it safely on the plane with plenty of time to spare!

The flight itself was not too bad, but we had opted to not get the meal on the flight to reduce our final ticket price. What we didn’t realize was that nothing was complementary on the flight, including any drinks or peanuts. -And to boot, it was all way over priced, which I am sure you all could have guessed. We were all too stubborn to let the airline rip us off so we decided to split a previously bought candy bar to satisfy our dinner needs. It wasn’t quite as satisfying as I had hoped for the six hours of traveling, but I think we were all too excited about Morocco to really care.

We arrived in Agadir in the evening and made it safely to our hotel after wandering around the airport looking for a taxi. The hotel itself was beautiful, and for only £20 a night, and breakfast every morning, it was pretty darn cheep too!

So in retrospect, Agadir was not that thrilling. The city itself was rebuilt specifically for tourism after a catastrophic earthquake destroyed the city in 1960. Most of the buildings were rebuilt in the later 1960’s so they all have this tourist look to them. It was strange how everything looked so out of place even though the entire city matched.

The beach itself was beautiful in Agadir! On the left is the enormous hill which is the Kasbah. On the side of the mountain is the phrase “Allah is Great,” which lights up at night. We could see the mountain glowing from our hotel room at night. We didn’t stay on the beach for long because we were constantly heckled mainly by men trying to either sell us something or just to talk to us. Apparently the engagement rings were not as useful as we had hoped. Amongst other things, we were called the Spice Girls, Fish n’ Chips (b/c they thought we were English), pretty ladies, and “ugly” if we didn’t acknowledge their presence. They did this to every tourist around, but I feel like we definitely got the brunt of it because we were the younger generation of tourists by at least 30 years.

We decided we needed to get out of Agadir so we rented a ‘94 VW Golf. We tried to get an automatic so we could all drive, but we were laughed at by all the car people because “there are no automatics in Morocco”. Luckily though, Ana knew how to drive a stick so we set out on our adventure to Marrakech on Wednesday morning. It was about a 4 hour drive, which would have been a lot more painful had the scenery not been so stunning! We drove through deserts and rolling hills and circled around a snow capped mountain range the entire trip.

When we arrived in Marrakech, we had to wander around looking for a cheep hotel room. We eventually found one that cost us each about £2 for the night. It was a little sketchy to say the least, but it was a cheep place to spend the night, and we were right next to the markets. So after we settled in, we wandered around the markets in the evening and ate some fabulous Moroccan food in the open square. The place was packed with lots of vendors selling orange juice, dried fruit, jewelry, plates, lamps, and yes…even human teeth. There were also tons of snake charmers trying to lure tourists in to paying them money. One of the snake charmers literally lassoed defenseless Alison in by placing (what we later find out to be) a dead snake around her neck and dragging her into the center of the circle. Of course once they do this we have to pay them money to be “let go”. We all learned pretty quickly to watch our backs for fear of being bombarded with snakes and henna. The key was to not stand still for more than five seconds at a time and be firm in the “NO!, Merci.” One of the coolest things was hearing the call to prayer blare over the markets five times a day… although the 4am one was a little painful.

The next day we wandered around the markets in the Medina and bargained like crazy. I had some horrible bargaining skills at first, but I got pretty good in the end. All the venders were very nice men, but it was so funny because they would all say the same things like…
-“I give good price… student discount…”
-“We are friends now, I give good price…”
-“Deal for you and deal for me… we are friends now…”
The Medina was absolutely enormous and we got lost while we were wandering around. We ended up in the non-touristy area where we got lots of stares from the locals, but we eventually made it out. We left Marrakech in the late afternoon to head back to Agadir, but we are all so bummed because we loved Marrakech so much.

The next day we did a smaller day trip to Taradounnt, which was only about 2 hours from Agadir. On the way we saw a dead body on the side of the road, which definitely shook me up a bit. It looked like it was a hit and run but it was weird that none of the cars around us stopped to help. It was definitely an image that none of us in the car were expecting to see. We had thought about stopping but there was nothing we could do. We didn’t know any numbers to call and we were already an hour outside of Agadir.

When we arrived in Taradounnt, we all had to pee pretty badly so we begged this one store owner to let us use his bathroom. The bathroom ended up being a hole in the floor and I almost got sick from the smell alone. It was disgusting but definitely a learning experience! - one that I care to never remember!
The city was much smaller than Marrakech, and in the markets they sold basically the exact same things as they did in Marrakech and Agadir, We ended up walking around for a couple of hours but I was not feeling so good, and we were all exhausted so we made our last road trip back to Agadir. As always, the drive was absolutely beautiful!

Saturday was our last full day in Morocco and Alison and I went to the top of the Kasbah. I had read in a tour guide book that the Kasbah was made in to a mass grave after the 1960 earthquake killed over 18,000 people in Agadir alone. When we were walking along the top hill once we were inside of the fortress walls, a man comes running up to us telling us that “They are sleeping! Use the dirt paths! They are sleeping!” It was only then that I made the connection with what I had read in the tour book and Alison and I booked it over to the edge where there were dirt paths. Apparently we had been trampling all over the mass grave made for those earthquake victims. Those buried were “sleeping”. We felt so horrible!!!! I have a feeling that we were not the first idiot tourists to do that, though that still doesn’t make me feel much better.

The last 24 hours was filled with fabulous Moroccan food, relaxing by the pool and recounting all our fabulous memories from our road trips. Morocco was amazing! The five of us on the trip have decided to all learn stick shift and have a reunion trip to Morocco in 20 years for another road trip!

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Photos

THe Kasbah
This is a view of the Kasbah from the beach of Agadir. You can sort of see the writing on the side of the mountain.

Hotel Tagadirt
This is the view of the pool in our hotel in Agadir. It was so beautiful but so cold!

Agadir
View of Agadir from the top of the Kasbah.

Rock'n the Kasbah
Punk rock on the top of the Kasbah.

Kasbah
Sitting down for lunch on top of the Kasbah wall. To the left is where the earthquake vitcims "are sleeping"!

Kasbah
Riding a camel on top of the Kasbah! The camel's name was Askozi and he was 10 years old!

Road trip!
Goats in a tree on the side of the road. Ask later if you care to hear the full story of how we got this picture...

Road trip!
desert with snowy mountains in the background.

Road trip!
Me standing on a sign that has the kilometers to Marrakech.

Road trip!
me in the front seat taking a picture of megan sticking her head out the back seat window. woohoo!

Marrakech
the markets in Marrakech were so awesome!

Marrakech
our feast in Marrakech at one of the vendors.

Marrakech
night life in the Medina

Marrakech
the open square of the Medina from the top of a food place. It was so beautiful!

Marrakech
another cool shot inside the markets

Marrakech
lamp vendor at night

Marrakech
dried fruit and nut vendor

Kasbah
creepy picture of a man with his snake on top of the Kasbah... he wanted money.

Kasbah
stop sign in Arabic!

Kasbah
walking along the Kasbah wall.

Sunset
Sunset from Hotel in Agadir!

Comments

[momster]

my heart be still
Thanks Kelsey for the posting. The pictures are breathtaking and my guess is they don't begin to do justice to that beautiful part of the world. On the other hand as I read of the adventures (it reminds me of Adventures in Babysitting movie) I am so glad I was not aware of your sketchy plans until afterwards.......so proud of your resourcefulness and thankful you are safe. Love ya bunches

[Martha Stevenson]

How beautiful!
I was captivated by your report and by the photos. I'm also impressed by how resourceful you were.

[Dad]

WOW!
Kelsey,Great Pics from Morrocco! They(pics) show up really well on the black background---Love the market scenes with the light filtering down. And if I'm not mistaken, that's the same camel I rode 30+ years ago while in Morrrocco. We had gotten off the boat in Ceuta and were looking for transportation but an older gentleman,Lawrence I beleive his name was, said cars were unsafe in the desert and convinced us to let him lead us on his camels through the desert. Can still see the camel spitting and smell the dung.

[Kelsey]

Morocco rules
Hi, I came across your blog and just had to comment. My name is Kelsey also, and I just went to Morocco with my Moroccan boyfriend in January! Odd eh? Anyway, nice pictures- I really like your blog:)

[Dad]

Lawrence
Follow up on my previous coment.That guy, Lawrence the camel driver( didn't catch his last name but he had L.O.A. on his belt buckle) was a crotchety old man with a very proper British accent and he also spoke Arabic fluently. He convinced us we would be better off trusting his camels across the desert from Ceuta. We were young and, against beter judgement, said what the heck so we agreed. He was most interesting but seemed to have flights of fancy(almost delusional) with wild stories of his younger days in the desert. As we were coming across the desert and into Fez, we crossed a railbed and all of a sudden he goes ballistic when he sees a train in the distance. He immediately starts into a strong gallop toward the train and it was all we could do to hold back our camels from following along. In the distance, we could see him riding along the side of the train, raising his cane above his head with his turban flying and shouting something Arabic. Because we could see Fez on the horizon, we decided that we would not try to catch up with him but go on into Fez. Suprisingly, some of the locals in Fez who spoke broken English, knew Lawrence very well, showed us where to take the camels(which we had already paid for) and said our experience was not the first time that had happened. We felt a little better but stuck to bus transportation after that when we traveled to Marrakech and other areas.