9/12/10 9/13/10 – Camel Adventures!

The camel trek we did was so much fun and was full of twist and turns. We headed out on our way pretty early. We had a long drive ahead of us to the Zagora desert which was about 7 hours from Marrakech. The ride wasn’t too bad but there were people who were complaining about AC / windows open or closed .. ect. So it got a little annoying at some points.

Driving through the Atlas Mountains was so beautiful all you could do was just stare out the window and take in the scenery. There were spread out villages along the way and there would be random small shops on the side of the road. One of the shops had “Welcome In My Beautiful Shop” hand painted above the door I’m sad I didn’t get a picture of that.

About 2 – 3 hours into out drive we got into a car accident! It was so scary I didn’t really know what was going on before but the people towards the back saw this huge tour bus coming towards them. We were driving around the corner on the outside, on the EDGE of the high atlas mountains and the tour bus was on outside of the road and didn’t slow down enough. It was scary at first, I could jest envision the bus going over the edge of the mountain but we were lucky to have a good enough driver to know what to do in the situation so everything was fine. One thing I found interesting is that every male got off the bus but all of the woman stayed on while we were waiting. The only damage that was down was to the back tire and once it was changed we were on our way!

The rest of our ride was nice and smooth :) our tour guide Farid even sang an Eagles song for us and we all became obsessed with the song Waka waka. Oh and there was a wicked good song on one of the radio stations that goes something like “M-O-R-O-C-C-O I’m from Morocco where you from!” .. someone should find me the name of it :) After driving for a longggg time lol :P we got the the camels! We were all so excited to finally be there. We picked out our camels and up we went!! It was fun riding them but I don’t think I could participate in the 52 day camel trek to Timbuktu. My camels name was Kitty :P I named it myself but then I found out it was a boy haha! We road our camels into the desert as the sun was setting. It was so gorgeous!!

We arrived to the camp and it was very dark, we were met by some of the nomads and they showed us to our tents where we would be eating and sleeping. The tents were really cool and very big. We were served mint tea (yummy) and got to know the nomad his name as Jesus. That wasn’t his real name but it was a name he gave himself to make it easier for us to say. Kind of a funny name to give yourself right?? Lol. He was very nice and gave us each a name so he could remember, mine was Naomi. We all hung out there for a while and had dinner then sat under the start and chatted, told stories and jokes. Our tour Farid had some really funny jokes! I’ll post them once I can get them. After that they had a fire where they danced and played the drums which was really fun!

The next morning we woke up to watch the sun rise over the mountains in the distance it was so beautiful. Shortly after that we were on our way back to the vans to head out. We said our goodbyes to our camel friends and where on our way back home. Along the way we stopped at the Ait Ben Haddou Kasbah it is a 16^th century fortress built into the side of a rock face where famous movies like Gladiator, Laurence of Arabia and kingdom of heaven was built. We stayed and explored for a little while then grabbed lunch and we were on our way back to the ship.

On my last day (9/14) in Casablanca I took it easy and got free internet to put some pictures up. Morocco was a great country I had such a good time!

9/18/10 - update from sea!

I’m doing a quick update about what’s going on around the ship while I get up to date on my Morocco posts. (I still have to post about the camel trek adventure). Right now we are on our way to Ghana and only about 15 miles away from land (which I’ve been told but I’m not sure if it’s true) but we can’t see land at all – but there are a lot more ships then there were when we were on our way to Spain!

Today in class we stopped because there were dolphins outside. A while ago at dinner I saw a whale too! So cool :) It’s pretty hot now and when people aren’t in class they are usually by the pool. Today was the first time I really laid out – but instead of going to the busy loud pool Ross and I went to the front of the ship which was nice because there wasn’t a ton of people. I did some studying while I was up there and attempted a tan. ;)

Something I’m doing on the ship which is really fun is called the extended family program. It’s where you have a “mom” or “dad” and “brothers” & “sisters”. You sign up for it and the families are put together randomly. I love my family they are so nice. My “moms” name is Kathy and she’s so so sweet! And I have a “brother” names Kevin and a “sister” named Carolyn. We had dinner the other day for the first time and have another one planned for this Sunday before Ghana. I’m not sure what else we’ll be doing but sometimes families will have game night, do things in port, or just hangout. I ran into my “mom” last night and had a little chat with her and my friend which was nice.

Other than that I’m just working on classes and hanging with friends. There is a lot of work because there is such little time in the classes so it can be a lot. But there is a lot of free time to work on it .. as long as I can force myself to do it. ;) Keep the emails coming! I love hearing from you :) HLCOOEPR@semesteratsea.net

9/11/10 - Shop till you drop - Marrakech style!

Got to sleep in a bit which was a nice thing – traveling can be exhausting! I got up around 930 to catch breakfast at the hostel which was delicious! We wandered out around 11 to start our bartering adventures! I didn’t really have anything set in my mind that I absolutely NEEDED to get but with all the bright colors and cluttered shops you HAVE to buy something!

In the souks (shops) prices are set really high and most of the shops don’t have the prices listed. A blanket that a shop keepers says is 500 dirham (about 50 bucks) can easily be bartered down to 200 dirham (20 bucks). For instance on the first day in Marrakech I ended up getting a beautiful blanket (bright orange of course!) and a green throw for 400 dirham. And on the second day I scored a wicked cool camel skin back pack for 120 dirham (which was originally set to 400 dirham) – I’m just waiting for that lovely Moroccan shop smell to disappear! Haha. Some of the girls wanted spices so we stopped in the shop.  The guy was showing as all the different kinds they have & having us smell them. It was really cool! He even made us some mint tea (I miss it so much already!) while the girls shopped.

Needless to say – I’m glad I brought an extra suitcase. The group of us are pros are bartering now.  A big purchase that I think about every SASer on the ship got was linen pants. I got a few pairs and I love them – sooo sooo comfy! I’m wearing them in my camel pictures. The lowest we got the price down to was 40 dirham (they usually start at 150 or 200) for one of the pairs! Score!! Bargain shopping ;)

Anyways – enough about shopping. Like I was telling you before about the square – At night it transforms into a HUGE outdoor restaurant with entertainment and very competitive vendors. The night before we didn’t go to far into the square because we were just so tired. But tonight we wanted to eat in the square & I guess we stood out - 6 hungry looking girls with shopping bags in our hands- like vultures, the men waving their menus in the air started to swarm towards us! Being so hungry we didn’t even look at the menus and just went with the first one to reach us. I got couscous and it was delicious as usual – it’s really popular in Morocco and soooo good!. After din din we headed back to get the final things we wanted (more comfy linen pants) and then went back to the hostel for the night to hang out there. We went swimming and played with the underwater cameras which is always a fun time! We had to be up early the next morning for our camel trek which I was sooo excited for!

Oh a little side note. Everyone was so concerend about it being 9/11 in Morocco but we did not have any issues what so ever. Everyone is so nice in Morocco!

09/10/10 - On our way to Marrakech

I learned from Spain that it was a good idea to pack the night before lol so this time I didn’t forget anything. J A group of us headed to the train station and grabbed a taxi outside of the gate. The ride was pretty fun (I love the public transportation in different countries!) and along the way we passed a big demonstration – I’m not sure what was going on but there were TONS of people all sitting down listening to a guy yelling into the air horn.

We got to the train station at 850 and lucky us the next train to Marrakech was at 850! We rushed to buy our tickets then went over to the platform. It was really easy to spot, not because of the sign reading “Marrakech” but because of the huge crowd of SASers! Of course after all our rushing the train ended up being about 1 ½ hours late. By the time the train came we had both the 850 train and most of the 1050 train there waiting to board. Needless to say the train was PACKED.

The way the train is set up is a long narrow hallway where you can barely squeeze by people and on one side is a room that seats 8 people comfortably. & there is 2^nd class and 1^st class (but I never made it to first class). The train arrived and everyone started to head to the doors – then right when im in front of the door I feel people just pushing me out of the way to get in the door (while the train is still moving). But that’s normal for the trains in Morocco, so I’m told. I caught on and pushed my way on with my friends. It was pretty interesting! When we got on the train it was PACKED already – all the compartments where full and the hallway was full of people. So we just set up camp and dealt with the fact that we would be standing for the ride.  We didn’t end up getting a seat for about the 1^st hour into it but eventually people started getting off and places to sit started filling up.

The train ride was about 4 hours long from Casablanca to Marrakech and I slept on and off for most of the ride once I sat down. It was so hot! Once we arrived and got off the train the heat seemed like it multiplied by 10! It wasn’t so bad though because it wasn’t humid (or UMID lol dad). I was just so happy to be there. The group grabbed a few  taxis to get to the medina (old town) which is where our hostel was – it was just a quick ride away. On the way I noticed there were much more motor bikes then there are in Casablanca and even saw one that had a family – mother, father & daughter in front – on it!

Arriving at the medina was really cool! The entrance had a HUGE street lined with horse drawn carriages that lead into the enormous open square called the Djemaa el-Fna square (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djemaa_el_Fna). It was filled with orange juice stands, henna, snake charmers & monkeys. Off the square in every direction you could see the shops multiplying (they are called the souks)! They are never ending. & the shopping is endless and EXHAUSTING!

Our first adventure was to find our hostel the directions where in the form of a scavenger hunt – and it really was! But the directions where spot on. They reminded me of something out of Alice in Wonderland – with the winding alleyways & little remarks like “you’re almost there!”.  The hostel was AMAZING!! It’s called Equity Points Hostel – It was gorgeous we lucked out! Once we were settled in 6 of us (Shannon, Kate, Shelley, Loryn, Elouis & I) went out and spent most of the evening exploring the markets and getting some good deals. But before we hit the shops we had the most amazing ice cream at Café Argana. SOOO yummmmy! I got the coffee flavor – so delicious! (I put a picture up of it on facebook!)

When it got closer to dusk the food vendors started setting up and within just a few hours the whole market transformed, the whole Djemaa el-Fna square was a completely different world! It was packed with locals & tourists there was not one spot you could see that wasn’t alive! We got dinner at a roof top restaurant in the medina and watched the sunset over the Djemaa el-Fna square and it was such a beautiful view with a mosque in the background, the wave of people & the hustle and bustle of the markets. One cool thing to see was an old man surrounded by a huge crowd of locals- after asking around I found out he was one of the story tellers that are known to be in the square. Over the course of the our dinner the crowd grew so big! We spent the rest of the evening hanging out and taking it easy –wandering- then went back the hostel after another stop for some mint tea & more ice cream ;)

Casablanca, Morocco!! 09/09/10

The overnight from Spain was a long night! I spent most of the night getting my blog up to date - which was a success! But now I have SO much to say about Morocco. We pulled into port around 12 PM and spent the afternoon having to sit through a bunch of meetings and getting a debriefing from diplomats about what to expect in Morocco .. ect ect. I was so antsy during the meetings and decided to head out early to go up to deck 7 to see the ship pull in. The ship was cleared and we were allowed off around 2.
Casablanca is a very VERY industrial & dirty port. Where we docked was about a 20 min walk to the main gate for the city. Luckily we had a shuttle that took us from the ship to the entrance but it only ran from 9 AM to 9 PM.

I spent the first day exploring Casablanca with a group of us. We headed off to the Hassan II mosque right when we got off the ship. The mosque was about a 15 min walk - right away we started getting the stares, honks & people even pulling over to say something to us. Trying to navigate through the traffic & crossing the streets was an adventure in itself!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassan_II_Mosque

Once we arrived to the Mosque the long, hot walk was worth it. It is gorgeous! Right next to the mosque there is a huge concrete wall where the locals jump off into the water below. There were tons of people hanging out there and jumping into the water below. I went over to the wall and sat on it next to some of the locals to get a picture of the kids jumping in and about a minute later a HUGE wave came crashing RIGHT ON ME!! I screamed and we all ran from the wall, laughing. Even though i was soaked I was dry in about 10 mins because it was SOOO hot out. The group of us hungout at the mosque and waited for the prayer to call - we were going to go into the mosque but there was sooo man SASers just standing at the entrance looking foolish so we stayed away and just sat on the steps watching the people around us. 

After the mosque we decided to try to find the markets in the medina (old town) which was another adventure. We all knew the general direction it was in but didn't really know WHERE it was. We headed in the general direction and asked for directions a few times and ended up stumbling upon it. This is were we got our first taste of what it meant to be a tourist in the markets. Every which way you looked someone was saying "Hello, come look in my shop" ..."I give you good price" .. "come look! come look!". None of us bought anything that day because we were heading to Marrakech the next morning and that is where the REAL markets are... One thing that happened and there were a lot of comments to the all females along the way was a comment I got form one of the locals in the markets. He said "Hey blondie how about 3000 an hour" I didn’t say anything or even acknowledge what he said but i was shocked!

For the rest of the day we wondered the city then headed back to the ship for dinner & went out again. I ran into a different group of people along with Chris & Eloise and we all went to a hookah bar for some shisha, orange juice & mint tea. The orange juice is AMAZING!!! (gen remember what I said about it’s a good port if there are oranges haha!!) And the mint tea is soooo good! I got it every day, multiple times a day .. They call it Moroccan whisky since alcohol isn’t too big in Morocco. There really aren’t many bars in Morocco either – I didn’t see one (besides in hotels ect).

That was pretty much my first day in Morocco & I had a ton of fun! Just keep in mind if you ever go to Casablanca DO NOT base the whole country on that one city. It’s really dirty & very industrial so make sure you get to other cities like Marrakech or Fez (although I didn’t make it there) So you can get a real Moroccan experience.

I'll blog about the rest of my days soon. It's so busy back on the ship with classes and all! But I'll try to keep my other posts shorter :P & remember to email me!!! HLCOOPER@semesteratsea.net

Miss you all!

Granada y Cadiz, España! Day 4 & Day 5 9/7/10 -9/8/10

I forgot to mention the night before we met a guy from Ohio named Rich. He was really cool! He was living in Spain and learning Spanish for the past 6 months (I think it was 6 months) But anyway we ran into him the next morning at breakfast and he joined us. I love meeting random people and so far I’ve meet so many great people who are just so nice.

After breakfast and chatting with Rich for a while we headed to the bus station in attempts to get an earlier ticker back to Cadiz which was a success! We swapped our 630 tickets to 330 tickets. We spent the next few hours hanging at the bus station catching up on facebook & writing in our journals. The bus arrived in Cadiz around 8.

That night a small group of us (Shelley, Ariel, Loryn, Damian & I) decided to take it easy and go out to dinner back to where Ines worked. She was so happy when she saw us it was so cute! Anyway we enjoyed our tapas & sangria while laughing and sharing stories of out travels. Ariel, Damian and Loryn went to Savia so it was nice to hear what they were up to over the past few days. Ines hooked us up again with 2 free shots each. After dinner we headed back to the ship around 1 and had an early night to rest and get ready for our last day in Cadiz. Some rest that I really needed!!

My last day was very low key. I decided to skip breakfast on the ship and slept until about 9 then headed into town to meet up with people who were taking advantage of the free wifi at the Cathedral. After posting some pictures to my blog there I ran into Maria and grabbed some breakfast with her. We ended up hanging out for most of the day and filled out postcards & searched for peanut butter (which was not a success) – So we just stole it from the ship at dinner time (shhh!)
We ran into Jeff who was grabbing some food and found out that he hadn’t tried paella yet!! So we told him he had to try it and headed to the Cafería Andalucía and grabbed some paella & sangria (of course). We spent most of the remainder of the afternoon there chatting and drinking and snagging people who were walking by to join. We headed back to the ship around 4 to beat the crowd who would be rushing to get there by on ship time (6 pm).

Well now im sitting in my cabin and we are on our way to Morocco. We left Spain around 8 (I was napping) and tomorrow at 9 AM we have a diplomatic debriefing which is where someone form the embassy will come and tell us what not to do/ what to wear/ how to cover up ect.. It’ll be really interesting going to Morocco. I’m really excited for it but some people are nervous. We’re going to be there for the last day of Ramadan – which is a month long of fasting where the Muslims will refrain from eating, drinking & sex from dawn to sunset. I’m pretty sure it ends on the 10th. We also have to dress really conservative. We can’t show our knees, shoulders, and absolutely no cleavage or tight clothes at all – It’s going to be a change for sure!! Well its 1230 (really 230 but we gain 2 hours going from Spain to Morocco – they don’t have daylights savings) so I’m off to bed! Glad I’m done with all that blogging :P

Adios! I’ll add more after Morocco. Thanks for reading & email me :) HLCOOPER@semesteratsea.net

Granada, España! Day 3 - 9/06/10

We got up early for La Alhambra which is a huge palace built in the 14th century. It is so big that after spending 4 hours there exploring the palace & gardens there were still things that we did not see! Every corner you turned there was something even more amazing there. The thing I like the most about La Alhambra was the walls and how intricate everything was. There were carvings and bright tiles everywhere you looked. I can’t imagine how much time went into building this!

I also love the Palacio de Generalife which was a summer palace for the kings in the 1300s. The palace overlooks the cathedral and la Alhambra and is just a short walk through gorgeous gardens and tall hedges with openings overlooking Granada. I can’t really describe how amazing this place is I’ll be posting a lot of pictures once I can get to some good wifi & have the time. So you’ll just have to wait :)

After spending the morning at La Alhambra we headed to a bar nearby and had some tapas & lunch – it was really good after that we had a nice siesta (nap) and took advantage of what the Spaniards do! That evening after our siestas we got ready to head for some drinks before sunset to watch it set one more time over La Alhambra. We took the bus to an area called Plaza de San Nicolas where we were told was a very nice area to watch the sunset. We wandered around the area (which was very small) and found an outdoor restaurant called Juan Ranas and enjoyed our company & drank sangria while the sun set.

Once it got dark we headed back into the town and we headed back into town to grab some dinner. Over the past few days I’ve gotten so used to eating dinner around 9 or 10 - or even later like almost everyone in Spain does. We found a really nice restaurant and then headed back to the hostel to drop off the girls who wanted to stay in for the night.

Maria, Sarah & I took advantage of our last night in Granada. We went bar hopping for a few drinks then ran into 2 guys at an Irish pub who recommended a “disco” around the corner. One of the guys names was Romeo which we all got a kick out of!! Romeo did not speak English at all so Maria was our translator once again and his friend (I think his name was Ismial) did.

Well anyway the 5 of us walked around the corner to the disco – and because it was a Monday night it was pretty dead but it was still a blast. Romeo was an amazing dancer! It was like the stuff you see on the movie step up – I tried dancing with him but oh my god I could NOT keep up! Haha We ended up hanging out with the boys till about 3 or 4 then they left and we headed back to the disco so we could keep on dancing .. It was so much fun. We didn’t end up getting back to the hostel until about 6 AM that night!