18/April/2024
DAY: 1
Today we met our guide for the next 7 days at 9 o'clock in the morning, the tour guide’s name was Youssef, and he seemed to be a super kind, humorous, and friendly man. I thought he would be a great guide. First we (well Youssef) drove to the High Atlas Mountains, we took the Tichka Pass through the wonderful gorges and high cliffs, after a while of looking at the dazzling ranges, we then came across a road work. This road work had only one road worker! It also had no road cones! We were so lucky, because when the road worker was scooping up the fallen rubble, some more rubble fell from the hill and came tumbling down towards us! We were about 2 inches from getting hit! After that ‘near accident’ we drove to our first ‘real stop’: A Berber Village.
Berber villages are made of mud, clay, straw (and sometimes concrete for the rich Berber families) The Berber village blended in perfectly with the mountain side (it blended in so well because they get the clay from the mountain) so it was quite hard to focus on the houses. After admiring the hand made (literally) houses we drove to another berber village, this village was called: Ait Ben Haddou. We did a short walk to an old ruined kasbah (kasbahs are basically Moroccan churches) at the top of a shallow hill, we were super lucky and saw 2 camels on our way to the kasbah! The camels were so huge, they looked around 3 metres high! After we had climbed the hill and looked around at Ait Ben Haddou village, we drove to an Argon Oil shop.
We watched four ladies repeat the process of turning argon into argon oil. FUN FACT: “Did you know that argon oil doesn't come from a seed or nut but a fruit?” STEP 1: first you peel all the fruit of the nut/seed STEP 2: next you crack open the seed/nut with a rock STEP 3: then you grind the insides of the nut/seed into small pieces FINAL STEP: last of all, you pour the tiny bits of ground up argon seed/nut and mix it with water then stir until it's all turned into liquid. We couldn’t buy anything because we didn’t know if mum would have an allergic reaction to it. The final destination of the day was easily the best (for Abi an I at least); An Oasis.
If you don’t know, an oasis is a group of trees (normally tropical trees like palm or date) that grow at the bottom of a gorge with a river/stream going through it.
We arrived at the oasis when there were lots of kids playing there. They were very friendly and waved and smiled at us as we drove by. When we got to a certain part of the oasis that was empty, when I found out that there were frogs just lying in catchable distance, I got straight to work in organising a team (the team was Me, and Abi) (and hopefully dad, because we were hopeless without him 😆) to catch a frog. We (dad, all of it was dad) caught a frog after many failed attempts. Sadly Abi held the frog but didn’t cup her hands (does Abi know that frogs can actually jump?), so the frog got away and I didn’t even get to touch it. Luckily for me, I was a good frog catcher, and I caught a frog but had to let it go because we had to conveniently leave at the second my hands touched the frog.
20/April/2024
DAY: 2,...3,...4,...5,...6,...and 7
SORRY FOR SKIPPING A DAY BUT MUM AND DAD SAID TO JUST PUT YOUR FAVOURITE PARTS IN THE BLOG POST OF THE SEVEN DAYS, I HOPE YOU LIKED DAY 1!
We had a great time touring around Morocco with Youssef, I have nothing bad to say about the tour, so here are all the best parts. (‘the best parts’ because I like all of it so then I would have to name everything!)
BEST PART: 1
The next stop would be the best one: QUAD BIKE RIDING IN THE SAHARA DUNES! When we arrived I was hoping that I would be able to ride my own quad, and lucky for me, the man approved! All he said was that I had to stay behind him at all times. I desperately nodded my head at his comment. We started driving on a gravel pathway, I had to learn fast, but I had a vague idea on how to drive it. We crossed a road at the start, we got lucky and there wasn’t much traffic, when we were driving into the dunes, we saw a camel person with his two camels! It looked just like the movies, with the sunset behind him and the camels and dunes lit up in dark orange. I had so much fun driving around the dunes, going up and down along the slippery sides of the sand hills. The best part of the ride was when we were driving along the dunes and suddenly the guide stopped. He jumped out of this quad and then sprinted across the sand to the side of the dune, from there he jumped into the dune (hand first!), and came out with something yellow and white squirming in his hand! What I had seen turned out to be some sort of lizard! (Later research told us that this lizard was called a sandfish!) We all got to hold the sandfish and take a photo with it. After that excitement, we drove to a good sand-boarding dune. (For those who don’t know, sand-boarding is just like snow-boarding but on sand) I went sand-boarding first. It wasn’t scary at all, it was actually kind of boring, it was boring because you were sand-boarding at 1 kilometre per hour. We then drove back to the quad building slightly faster because the guide knew that I could drive the quad now. I was sad to stop all the fun, but we had to leave the quads behind. We then drove to our apartment.
BEST PART: 2
CAMEL RIDING IN THE SAHARA DUUUUUUNES! (in the afternoooooon!)
We drove to the camel riding place and met the camel-riding–guides, our one was called Mohab. He seemed like a very friendly man. We hopped on our camels, I was at the back on the camel train, then Abi, then dad, and then mum. Sitting on a camel when it's sitting up is not the best experience, but it was fun because it was something new to try out. I named my camel LIttle One because he was the littlest. Camel isn’t the fastest way to travel, but the speed of it does make you take in your surroundings multiple times. We didn’t camel (‘camel’ the newest and slowest way to travel) very far until we stopped for some photos of us on our camels, we then cameled to a good sand-boarding place, but we had to wait for the other group because they had the sand-board. Sand-boarding is even more boring having to wait for other people, because the other people had the board and were talking to each other about some random stuff! After I had finally got my turn on the sand-board, we got back onto our camels and started to camel to the place where we would watch the sunset. The worst part of the camel trip was when mum’s camel didn’t want to go up a sand dune and mum, dad, Abi, and I were all getting hailed with waves of sand! When we finally made it to the sand dune that we would be watching the sunset from, it was blowing something chronic! My turban had come undone, so I took advantage and used it to stop the sandy wind. I skip the time by lying down on a warm sand dune that didn’t have much wind or sand trying to disintegrate my face. After a while of lying there peacefully, I felt something crawl on my leg! (GUESS WHAT IT IS) A DUNG BEETLE!!! (Bet ya thought it was a scorpion, sorry, nothing near interesting) I lay there with the dung beetle on my leg, but then we had to move on to the camp, I quickly let the dung beetle go, then followed it to its home (a bunch of dead grass), I then snapped of the tops of the grass and made a straw hut so it could live out of the wind. We then had the nowhere-near-as-fun trip to our camp, cameling in the wind and cold. I never thought I would actually be cold in the desert! We stopped not to far from our camp, we were the only group left now (because all the other groups were going to different camps), and Mohab took out his backpack and got a bunch of things out, he then tried to sell us the stuff (some geodes, some polished rock camels, some small tagines, and a little mirror), Abi bought a polished rock camel for 50dr. We then arrived at our camp with shoes filled with sand (I could barely move my toes!) and checked into our tent. I loved our ride with the camels. (Almost as much as the quad bikes)
MY FAVOURITE FOOD:
I really liked the dish in Marrakech called Refissa, it had a chicken thigh on the top, some perfectly cooked lentils, and a delicious pancake cut up and fried into pasta! Mmmm.
MY LEAST LIKED FOOD:
My least liked food was a dish from the same place that I got the Refissa, it was a chicken dish that had sweet pastry and nuts with spices. It had some cinnamon which I think was the thing that made me really not like that dish. It wasn’t the best dish I've ever had.
WELL THAT WAS THE (short) SEVEN DAYS IN MOROCCO, SHORTED DOWN. ;)
go down!
(PSSST) (HEY!) (CLICK ON THIS LINK TO GO TO ONE OF THE BEST HOTELS EVER!) (I have never even been anywhere near that hotel) (I found it on maps accidentally)
Comentários