Africa or Bust!

I blessed the rains down in Africa this past weekend!

- Had to include the Toto reference since I had the song "Africa" stuck in my head the entire weekend...

Anyway, my most recent adventure involved an intercontinental excursion to Morocco! Now, as spectacular as this exotic little trip sounds, it started out with a few bumps in the road:

Bump One: My flight landed about 45 minutes late, so M and I missed the last train from the airport to the Casablanca train station - ended up having to drop 300 durham (about $38) for a taxi.

Bump Two: Arrived at the train station at about 1am, next train to Marrakech scheduled to leave at 4:50am - night number one in Morocco spent on the freezing stone floor of the train station. Aces.

Bump Three: 4:50am train to Marrakech delayed 30 minutes, which actually turned into about an hour and a half delay.

Bump Four: No room in the sleeper cars - not really an issue for me since I can pass out on literally any type of transportation vehicle, but poor M hardly got any sleep :(

Finally, after stealthily making our way (and suffering through) bumps one through four, we found ourselves in beautiful Marrakech! Our hostel, nestled inside the Medina, turned out to be pretty awesome - delicious breakfast, free tea 24/7, super brightly colored bedding, hookah lounge, fun courtyard feel - loved it!

Our Lovely Hostel!

After a quick lunch, we tackled the Grand Square and the Medina. This essentially meant a combination of the wonderful sights/smells of the market and the dodging of tourist traps, monkey men, snake charmers (literally running after you with snakes in their hands), among any and all other creative methods of getting your money. We managed to be craftily smart tourists and avoid most of their ploys. I say most of their ploys because by the end of the day, all three of the men in our group had acquired genuine(ly fake) Rolex and Tag Heuer watches from the afore-mentioned tourist traps. Way to go guys...

The Square and the Medina - notice all the satellite dishes...

Next, we tackled the camels. Just outside the center city, there are massive gardens. Right next to said gardens are a few (slightly shady) Moroccan men with some camels. Being the craftily smart tourists that we are, we bargained our way to a nice, somewhat reasonably priced stroll through the gardens. Now, despite what you may think, camels are nothing like your typical riding animal - horses, donkeys, etc. You have to mount them while sitting, situate yourself on a makeshift saddle, and hope you don't slide off while the camel proceeds to shimmy its way into a standing position. Yea, accident waiting to happen. But once we were up and somewhat securely settled on our camels, the ride was beautiful :).

Lacking a solid plan of action, we spent the rest of the trip just soaking up the experience of being in the city. Saw a palace here and there, did some more bartering with the locals for cheap souvenirs - the usual Moroccan stuff.

The Mosque

We are in a gorgeous palace. We come across a mirror. First thing that comes to mind: take a ton of MySpace-style pictures... we are so cool.

Our trip ended in Casablanca, just a three and a half hour train ride away from Marrakech. We were so happy to find some of the comforts of home in the train station in the form of a McDonald's and a KFC. But don't be fooled, even these chain restaurants have their own little flair when found outside of the US.

McArabia - enough said

View of Casablanca from our hotel's terrace

The trip was such an amazing experience. Such an incredible culture, so different from our own! Plus, it was almost too much to think that we were in Africa! Holy Moly!