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I and 10 friends we travel to Morocco as a group, every year we go to a different place. Money permitting, we love to travel, but we tend to stay away from organized tours in the usual sense of the word since so often they tend to protect from really getting into the places, skipping from one tourist attraction to the next. This year we decided to go to Morocco, mainly because it seemed inexpensive, but after the vacation we were definitely in love with the place. We flew into Marrakech and were impressed immediately upon arrival by the airport building: its incredible roof outside is like lace and the sun shines through it, casting beautiful shadows on the pavement: there already was an incredible atmosphere greeting us.
Our hotel was right off the Jeema el-Fna - an orderly chaos of smells, colors and sounds, by day and into the night! We hadn't yet learned to not fall for taking pictures of guys with cobras, but that is how it started! We spent 3 days in Marrakech visiting the traditional tourist destinations before we were met by our travel guides (Morocco-Excursions.com) that we had selected for the real tour: Hassan Mouhou of MoroccoExcursions is a young frendly Berber guide , and Mohamed is a good driver. From the outset, we found Hassan an incredible person, full of joy, outgoing, but never intrusive. We left for Ouarzazate where we visited the Kasbah Ait Benhaddou and then off to the Todra Gorges. Here we stayed in a hotel built in the caves! How wonderful! If you want I can give you its name. The next legs of our trip were the classic ones: Erfoud, Merzouga, Rissani, Zagora and Ouarzazate: you can do them with any tour operator, but what we experienced is unforgettable. At Rissani we had lunch at in a resturant , ! We eat the berber pizza and drank mint tea.
The next evening we headed for a desert oasis on camels, to spend the night in a berber tent distinctly counting every star in the Milky Way (well, almost all). How can we forget our stop on the way to Zagora, stopping to take a picture, when suddenly 2 children leaped out from nowhere offering a pony made of mud, they had made with their hands, in exchange for some candy! And when they accompanied us through the tiny dark inner passageways of a small town in the south, revealing the meaning of poverty, enabling us to quietly and respectfully peek into the everyday life of people in southern Morocco.
And how can we forget our lunch, eating Berber pizza, in a small rug factory, sitting in the midst of all those dancing colors and so many types of fabric! I could go on for hours recounting the feelings, more than the places we visited. Thanks to Hassan (organizing everything down to details like cool drinking water, snacks, SD cards for my camera and making us always feel safe in places that are so strange to us in culture and language) and thanx Mohamed, who, though silent and not speaking our language and understanding little, was an incredible and fun travelling companion. Feelings, understanding the land and the people of the country we are visiting are what we seek when we travel and that is definitely what we got this time, & thanx to our camel man & all " Morocco-Excursions.com" .
Our hotel was right off the Jeema el-Fna - an orderly chaos of smells, colors and sounds, by day and into the night! We hadn't yet learned to not fall for taking pictures of guys with cobras, but that is how it started! We spent 3 days in Marrakech visiting the traditional tourist destinations before we were met by our travel guides (Morocco-Excursions.com) that we had selected for the real tour: Hassan Mouhou of MoroccoExcursions is a young frendly Berber guide , and Mohamed is a good driver. From the outset, we found Hassan an incredible person, full of joy, outgoing, but never intrusive. We left for Ouarzazate where we visited the Kasbah Ait Benhaddou and then off to the Todra Gorges. Here we stayed in a hotel built in the caves! How wonderful! If you want I can give you its name. The next legs of our trip were the classic ones: Erfoud, Merzouga, Rissani, Zagora and Ouarzazate: you can do them with any tour operator, but what we experienced is unforgettable. At Rissani we had lunch at in a resturant , ! We eat the berber pizza and drank mint tea.
The next evening we headed for a desert oasis on camels, to spend the night in a berber tent distinctly counting every star in the Milky Way (well, almost all). How can we forget our stop on the way to Zagora, stopping to take a picture, when suddenly 2 children leaped out from nowhere offering a pony made of mud, they had made with their hands, in exchange for some candy! And when they accompanied us through the tiny dark inner passageways of a small town in the south, revealing the meaning of poverty, enabling us to quietly and respectfully peek into the everyday life of people in southern Morocco.
And how can we forget our lunch, eating Berber pizza, in a small rug factory, sitting in the midst of all those dancing colors and so many types of fabric! I could go on for hours recounting the feelings, more than the places we visited. Thanks to Hassan (organizing everything down to details like cool drinking water, snacks, SD cards for my camera and making us always feel safe in places that are so strange to us in culture and language) and thanx Mohamed, who, though silent and not speaking our language and understanding little, was an incredible and fun travelling companion. Feelings, understanding the land and the people of the country we are visiting are what we seek when we travel and that is definitely what we got this time, & thanx to our camel man & all " Morocco-Excursions.com" .
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