Dear Friends and family,
A little background for those of you who I didn’t have time to properly say goodbye to: I will be travelling for the next 5 months with my best friend Myriam through North Africa, East Europe and West Europe (and who knows where else).
This is my first check-in since I left Montreal on March 12th so I will try to keep you up to date on what I’m doing, what I’ve seen and where I’m off too next. I will be writing in English (just for you Erin) since Myriam is writing in French. If I’ve forgotten anyone on my list, please let me know and I’ll add them ASAP.
So the first stop on my trip was in London, we landed early in the morning and were lucky enough to have a wonderful sunny hot day. Our next flight was the next morning at 6 am so we had a day to sightsee. We walked around the downtown area, saw a parade in honour of Ghana’s 50th (Queen and all) and took a nap in a park full of Jonquils. All in all a great day. We made our way to the airport and spent the night on the floor waiting for our early flight.
I guess our real destination was not London but Morocco. Our plane landed in Marrakech and we made our way down to the medina in the center of Marrakech. The city is split into 2 parts, the new city (ville nouvelle) and the medina which is a bustling market full of tourists, donkeys, motorcycles, tourists, food stands, snake charmers, tourists, dancers… We found a great hotel (thank you lonely planet) for 100 dirhams a night = approx 10 euros right in the medina. We spent 7 days there visiting the souks which are a maze of little shops set in categories. The “souk des tanneurs” is where they make leather, the “souk des épices” spices galore, the “souk des souliers” shoes of all kinds… you can walk around and get lost in them for hours. We drank fresh orange juice and super sweet mint tea, ate dates, tagines and couscous and met some interesting people. Marrakech is a crazy city where it is hard to get a peaceful moment. You are constantly being solicited for a million different things and Moroccan salesmen don’t take “no” for an answer.
We decided to splurge on a tour to the desert. We joined a group with 2 boys from Ontario who were med students in Dublin and two Poles who were studying in Glasgow. We got up early that morning had a quick breakfast and got in a van with our driver and guide Ahmed. We drove pretty much from 7 am till 7pm stopping here and there for breathtaking pictures and a bite to eat. When we got to Zagorha, our final destination we said goodbye to Ahmed and hoped on our camels that were going to take us to the “entrée du désert” we rode for 2 hours under the stars. Pretty amazing experience. Now camel riding is not anything like riding a horse, it is a bumpy ride and by the end of the 2 hours I had just about enough of camels. My butt was so sore. I got butt blisters, I’m not even kidding. That night we stayed up late chatting with our Berber guides (the dominant ethnic group in Morocco) and we ate Harira (Moroccan soup) and couscous and mint tea to be sure. We slept in the desert in tents and woke up in the morning full of sand and not so excited to get back on our camels. Another 2 hours of ass chafing and then 10 hours of driving and we were back at our hotel sore and tired but happy to have seen some crazy sights and made some new friends.
We have been in Casablanca for the past couple of days taking it easy because it has been raining. Casa is a huge city (second biggest in Africa after Johannesburg) and has a bit of a Torontonian feel to it, people off to work, no time for play. Not much to talk about in Casa but a good rest.
I am writing to you from Fes which I haven’t visited yet due to the rain but which seems beautiful. Tomorrow, I am off to Rabat, the capital to see some soccer games (there is a big tournament) and then on April 2 I’m hopping on a plane to Madrid.
That’s all for now, if you have any questions fire away, I miss you all and I’ll give you another update from Spain in a few days.
Lianne
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