Day 2 and 3 in Morocco

Today we left on a really long drive to the Draa Valley for our Camel Trek.  It takes 8 hours to get to the place where we would be camping, and that is without stops.  What was very difficult about the drive is that we spent 2 ½ hours driving through the Atlas Mountains.  Everyone was car sick and there was hardly enough medicine to go around.  We made it through though and once on the other side of the Mountains I have never seen such amazing landscape.  Catherine compared the mountains to Wyoming, but if you have ever seen Babel we were right in the middle of where that movie was filmed.  Actually, one of the bus drivers in our tour group was the bus driver in Babel for the story line about Morocco.  And, if you have seen Babel we were driving and a huge rock hit our windshield and we all thought it was like the bullet that hits Cate Blanchett (pretty funny).  If you haven’t seen Babel I highly recommend it, I got a chance to see it on TV my last day in Morocco.  Anyways, after driving for a little longer than 8 hours we finally arrived at where we were staying, well at least where the camels were to take us to where we were staying.  So, Catherine and I hopped on our camel, which we named HUMPhrey, and started our trek.  It was only 35 minutes but the wind really was rough and kicking up tons of sand, so I wasn’t too sad that the camel ride didn’t last longer.  I actually had to wrap my sweater around my face to keep the sand out of my mouth and eyes.  It was quite the adventure.  Once there we saw that literally we were staying in cloth tents and very suspicious beds.  We had dinner in huge tents and got to see stars that were so bright and beautiful, I even saw a shooting star.  There was a fire and some belly dancers and the whole evening was really fun.

 

I slept fairly well, if you don’t include being woken up by drunk people all night long, but it was still a great experience.  We woke up, had a small breakfast, rode our camels back (this time our camel’s name was Ingrid), and then made the 8 hour trek back to Marrakech.  Once back in Marrakech we went on an another trek to find Pizza Hut, food we knew was safe.  Actually our food options were pretty limited because women are not allowed in most cafes at night.  After walking for about 30 minutes we just went back to the hotel and got some food there.  After we took showers (because we were still in the clothes we had worn all yesterday and throughout the night) we just passed out in our hotel room, exhausted and excited for a real bed.