Author: Staci

Staci blogs about travel at TheVoyageer.com.

Quick Update

I’ll write something longer later I think, but here’s a quick note that I uploaded a bunch of pictures from this weekend to my facebook and flickr. Comments greatly appreciated.

Beautiful sunset over the walls of Essaouira
Beautiful sunset over the walls of Essaouira

I kind of went flickr crazy because the month is almost up and I had only used up 38% of my monthly bandwidth, so I uploaded some pics that I really liked from earlier this month. The best way to see these is to click on “more photos” under the flickr sidebar to your right, then when you get to my photo page, click on the  Morocco 2008 set. They’re all in a more coherent order than the order in which I uploaded them.

Marrakech

Today on the way back to Rabat we stopped for about 4 hours in the “Red City” of Marrakech. We visited a Quranic boarding school that had been in use for centuries until it finally closed in the 1960s. It was very interesting… we also got a tour through the medina and the souks (workshops). We saw crafstmen making wood, leather, and metal products. We also stopped in a beautiful museum, and after that, went to the square where there were snake charmers (cobra snakes!!) and monkeys. I totally GOT TO HOLD a monkey!!! He was so cute!!!

So, um, the little guy got to second base!
So, um, the little guy got to second base!

Also (sorry for not posting yesterday, I didn’t get back to the hotel room till about 2AM) last night I saw 80s band Arrested Development at the Gnaoua festival (apparently I have been spelling it wrong) and did a lil dancing, it was great. Before that we visited a vineyard, took a tour of the cave (wine cellar) and had a really intense four-course meal. I think I had more to say on the subject but I am quite weary and can’t remember… so I’ll just have to save it for my next update.

Sand and Camels but no Desert!

Note to self: don’t go tanning on a beach in a city called “the city of wind.” You will most certainly be consumed by sand.

In other news: I SAW CAMELS TODAY! Okay, it wasn’t really legitimate because it was just some guys on the beach trying to make a quick Dirham enticing foreigners to ride them… but I saw like 7 and they are WAY HUGER than I had pictured. I mean, I’m always surprised by how big horses are in real life, but these guys made horses look downright manageable. (The camel guys were riding horses too). My prof got all up-in-arms about it because we aren’t in the desert and thus the appearance of camels isn’t legit but it doesn’t make me want to ride them any less. He said we should be able to ride some in Marrakesh on Sunday which also isn’t ideal in his eyes but it’s better than on the beach.

The hotel does not, in fact, have free wi-fi which is a HUGE bummer so we all went together and bought 5 days worth of unlimited access from Pete’s room and that’s what I’m using now. This is not ideal but its better than not having it at all. Now we get to put our sharing/taking turns lessons from kindergarten to good use.

I hope that’s an adequate explanation for why today and yesterday’s posts have been so lackluster. Sorry readers! Sunday night you will have a super post with pictures of the Gnawa festival and of CAMELS! Now I shall go take a nap in order to rest up for tonight’s festivities. Have a great Friday!