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Published: March 20th 2012
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I'm just gonna write something about one trip I did last year to Morocco to start this blog and to try to figure out how the thing works here.
Well, first at that time I was living in Portugal and I took the flight (return tickets for 30euros by
Ryanair) from Porto to Marrakech with 2 friends. The idea was do the whole trip using
couchsurfing (http://http://www.couchsurfing.org/). We've chose CS 'cause we're really interested in talk to the local people, knoe more about their way to live, culture and so on. We changed our itinerary along the way a bit and basically we visited 3 totally different parts of Morocco.
Marrakech It was the only big city we've visited, and was really nice. Like many cities there, they have the old fortified city (called
Medina) and the neighbourhoods. Our host lived outside of the Medina and from his house takes around 45min walking to reach the Medina. Into there, the streets are very narrow and quite confusing. To don't get lost, we're just walking without care about directions (rs..) and in the end of the day we had to 'practice' our French to try to find
the way home. Inside the Medina is not allowed cars, but be careful with the motorcycles, they're everywhere and quite fast for the narrow streets.
The largest market (
souk) of Morocco is in Marrakech and believe me it's really big and you can find everything. Just be careful 'cause the gonna rise up a lot the price for tourists, but talking you can get nice bargains!! Actually, they love to talk about prices and in some of the places you're ask how much you wanna pay for. There's a very big a famous square called
Djemaa el Fna where you find musicians, dancers, monkey and snakes to take picture, story-tellers, acrobats and a lot of cafes around. By the way, one of the cafes over there suffered a terrorist atack 1 month before I go. You must be patient because they stop you to try to sell everything, even is very common people offering drugs in open air.
Walking around the city, we bumped into a celebration on the street. We couldn't realise what they were celebrating but some were playing instruments, others were carry on kind of big puppets, what reminded me the carnival in some parts
of Brazil and even the camels were celebrating (rs..)
Hassi Labied After around 12 hours by bus and a lot scary narrow streets and big mountains we got in Merzouga, which is near Hassi Labied, the small village (nearly 100 families living) that we planned to stay. The village is in front of Erg Chebbi dunes. I swear I don't know how we found a couchsurfing over there, but we did and fair to say that Mohammed was a lovely person. He had a house with 3 rooms just to host people. We went for a walk and saw the community garden. It was really amazing, they construct all the pipes to bring the water a make possible grow different kind of vegetables. Every family have a part in the garden but the exchange of fruits or veggies is very common too. Mohammed introduced us to Hassan, who is a guide, and we could enjoy one night into the desert, included meal and full moon (hehe) for a really nice price. So we took the camels and arrived in the tents after a hour and a half. At the beginning is difficult to ride the camel but then you
hostel2
top floor of the hostel... just get used. At night, we put the mattresses outside the tent to enjoy the most beautiful sky I've ever seen cause we didn't have any lights around. I've to admit the silence sometimes is scary, cause you feel so alone with yourself.. it's difficult to explain, but it's very deep!Back to the village I've got the opportunity to know Mohammed's house. He invited for a Berber whyskey (which is mint tea) and introduced me to his lovely daughters.
Chefchaouen We headed to Fez (11 hours by bus) to meet our next couchsurfer, but in the last minute we couldn't stay. It was 1am and we changed our plans. We decided go to Chefchaouen which is in the northwest, situated in the Rif mountains which is one of the main producers of cannabis in Morocco. But the problem was that the bus to get there just depart in the morning. So, we transformed backpack as a pillow and we slept in the train station. The trip was very nice, and the landscape changes a lot during the way. The city is blue. Wait, what I mean is, most of the houses are painted blue and I don't if is
true, but one local told it's to avoid the mosquito near the houses (??). We had no accomodation, then we found a cyber cafe and booked a hostel. The hostel was nice and cheap. The cheapest 'room' was 4euros per night, but it was actually a tent in the top floor. I loved! To separate the 'rooms' they put beautiful curtains. We met lovely people from around the world and the landscape is stunning. We're planning to stay 1 night but we spent 3. The city is really cozy and we just forgot that every single place we wanted to go, we needed to 'climb up' the uncountable steps around the city.
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Luiz
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Beautiful trip, beautiful friends!