Morocco??

Oh. My. Goodness. This weekend was absolutely insane. We spent SO much of it either traveling or waiting to travel; it was absolutely ridiculous. We left Granada at one on Friday to get to the boat station, only to find out (after the three hour bus ride and being at the port for about 1.5-2 hours) that there were no boats going out because of the bad weather. So we had to spend the night in this sketchy "hotel" that we nicknamed the Bates Motel, because it was seriously that sketchy. It was dirty and the beds were uncomfortable and a lot of the windows didn't lock so they kept flying open because of the wind and the showers mostly just dripped out of the shower heads. We were seriously in the middle of a crazy windstorm, though. I was sitting with Maggie and Kelly and all of a sudden, half of their blind got RIPPED off and flew away. The three of us started screaming and Kaitlin and Katie (who'd walked in just in time to see it get ripped off) started laughing. It was really quite scary.

After dinner, a bunch of us girls decided to brave the storm in search of a grocery store. Holy cow, it was SO windy! Two girls lost their shoes and had to chase them down, and two girls almost got swept away, it was so windy. We were honestly walking at like 45-degree angles for parts of it because the gusts were just so strong. It was the worst when we'd cross a street; Devon actually had to accept the help of this sketchy guy because otherwise she was literally going to blow away. I was really the only person who wasn't really having problems with the wind, which was odd considering I was the smallest in the group. It was a lot of fun, though, and we have some interesting stories, so that's good.

Saturday we had to wake up early to be at the boat station by nine so we could "get on a boat", but we got there and found out there wasn't a boat until eleven. Then when eleven rolled around, we found out that there still weren't any boats, and we might just be going home. About two minutes later, though, they told us that there WAS a boat at one that we were going to take. The boat ride rocked a bunch of people, though, because the water was really choppy so a bunch of people (in our group and not) got motion sickness. It was also really foggy so the boat ride took longer than it should have.

We finally made it to Africa but had to cross the border from Spain to Morocco (because Spain has two cities on the continent of Africa that belong to them, so we docked in Ceuta). There, the travel agent decided to tell us that our guide didn't speak English OR Spanish, and only Arabic and French. We were like, "seriously, can anything ELSE go wrong on this trip?" The guide came on the bus and started talking in Arabic, but then switched to English and Spanish. Dear travel agent: that was NOT funny.

We made it to Tetuaon, but I was really sketched out by it. I swear it was a city FULL of men. There were pretty much literally no women on the streets, and all of the men just stared at us as we walked by them. So uncomfortable. I'm also pretty sure we walked past the black market, because there was this street that was just lined with car parts and electronics and all of this other really random stuff. Then we got to this market-thingy and I was pretty grossed out by that because there was all this fresh meat just hanging out (not refrigerated) and some of it had flies on it. Gag. I think it was the combination of the fact that it got dark really fast and the weather wasn't good and it was just really dirty, but I was not a fan of Tetuaon. They also took us to a Moroccan rug shop (Moroccan rugs are apparently some of the best rugs in the world, second only to Persian rugs, which means they're EXPENSIVE). I thought it was weird that they took a bunch of poor college students to a place where they were asking like a thousand euro for a rug.

Our hotel for Saturday night was MUCH nicer than the "hotel" on Friday night; it was only three months old so everything was brand new, clean, and much more comfortable. The only downside to this hotel was that the showers were definitely all COLD. But the food was good, and it was just someplace to sleep for the night.

On Sunday we went to Chef-Chaouen, and I liked it a LOT more than Tetuaon. It wasn't so much a city as a smaller town, and the weather was nicer, and it was just all around prettier. Everything was blue and white (their colors) and with the nice day, it was just really pretty. We did get roped into going into a blanket shop (they must have had a deal with these places or something), but they wouldn't barter (which IS weird here), so one of the guides took a couple of my friends to another store where they would barter and were selling basically the same things. It was kind of scary, though, because he left with them and then came back alone, and we were like, "what did you do with our friends?!?" They did come back eventually (after we'd left the blanket place), but it was just kind of scary for the moment. I got to go shopping, though, and bought little things for some people, so I'm excited that I actually have stuff to give to people when I get home. (Don't worry, I did get something for myself too).

All in all, with all of the traveling and waiting we did, we spent about 26.5 hours in Morocco out of the 58.5 hours in the weekend (from 1pm Friday to 1130pm Sunday). AND, out of those 26.5 hours we spent in Morocco, I think we only spent 14 hours not traveling or sleeping. It was kind of upsetting, and I think we're going to try to get some of our money back (if for no other reason than the fact that the "hotel" we stayed in on Friday night was no where near as nice as the one we were supposed to be staying at (The one we stayed at on Saturday night). We also didn't get to ride a camel (because we were supposed to do that in Tangiers, but skipped the city all together because we didn't have time). Don't get me wrong, I had a good time, but i would have liked more time in Morocco with less traveling/waiting.