Spring Break Stories, part 1

It’s long past time for another blog post, and my fantastic Spring Break might be just the motivation I need. All photo credits go to my lovely traveling companions Mackenizie, Amelia and Hila, as I left my camera’s memory card in Rabat. Luckily, through the magic of Facebook, it’s easy to share, and I took lots of mental photos.

We left Rabat by train on Friday, March 11. We somehow squeezed our bodies onto the most crowed train this side of the Nile. After briefly considering the possibility that we would all run out of oxygen and die before we ever got to Meknès, we had the good luck to find ourselves next to a couple of seats at the moment they happened to be vacated. These seats happened to be located in a compartment full of friendly Moroccans having an animated discussion about the price of living in various cities in Morocco, which I was very excited to be able to understand. Everyone passed around the food they had brought, because that’s just how public transportation is done in Morocco. Our fellow travelers turned out to be animal lovers, and pulled out their smart phones to show us pictures of their pets. I was the only member of our party who spoke French, so I had to serve as an intermediary for most of the conversation.

After we arrived in Meknes, we ran to the bus depot adjoining the train station and caught a bus south to Merzuga just moments before it started rolling. If you’ve never taken a night bus, there’s probably no way to truly put into words what it is like. I had never taken a night bus before, and somehow I had imagined that there would be something special about the bus that would make it more bearable at night. Perhaps I should chalk this up to the Night Bus scene from Harry Potter, in which Harry accidentally hails a bus with a second floor full of beds. As it turns out, however, a night bus is just a normal bus that runs at night because, I suppose, its route is so long that everyone would rather sleep through it. The problem with this theory is that buses are incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on, particularly if you are on your way to the desert and packed accordingly but your route takes you through mountainous terrain where there is actually snow on the ground. At least we had almost the entire bus to ourselves.

We had a rest stop at about 2 AM. My friends and I piled out of the bus to stock up on snack foods. Because it was 2 AM and we were eating convenience store potato chips and cookies on a freezing cold bus in the middle of the mountains in Morocco, everything seemed hysterically funny at this point. At some point we noticed that one of the covered older women sitting at the front of the bus was gesturing at us. We decided that she was pointing to the bottle of water in the overhead compartment across the aisle from her seat. I decided to go get the bottle down for her and offer her a cookie from the bag I had just opened (because that’s how it’s done in Morocco, see: people on the train). When I held out the bag to offer her a cookie, however, she seized hold of the entire bag! Before I knew what was happening, the bag was out of my grasp and all the way on the other side of her seat. The old lady smiled at me victoriously. I made a vague attempt to give her the bottle of water, but she stopped me and waved me back to my seat. I retreated to the back of the bus.

We arrived in the tiny village of Merzuga at a little before 7 in the morning. It was barely light outside, but we could tell that nothing was open. “Oh, no,” I thought. “How are we ever going to find the hotel?” My mood did not improve when I got to the top of the bus’s stairs and saw two men in djellabas waiting just outside. “Here we go again,” I grumbled internally. “They’re undoubtedly going to offer me a 1,000 Dh taxi ride or try to direct me to the wrong hotel, and that’s assuming they’re not just here to heckle some American girls for their own amusement. Better get my game face on.” Sure enough, as I stepped off the bus, the djellaba-clad Moroccan men pushed forwards. I started to assume my “no” posture when suddenly one of the men held out a piece of paper that read “HILA,” which is the name of one of my traveling companions.

He was a taxi driver sent by the Auberge Les Roches, which I highly recommend if you ever happen to be in Merzuga. Half-asleep and half-crazed, we were ushered into a carpeted salon where the owner of the auberge introduced himself, explained that we would be given a room where we could rest until it was time to start our trek, and brought us breakfast. After feasting on a delicious Moroccan-style breakfast, we spent a few hours trying to recover from the night bus. None of us got much sleep, though – maybe it had been too strange a day already. By around noon we wandered outside into the auberge’s lovely little court yard, where we discovered a staircase up to a rooftop terrace. It was only at this moment that I really, truly grasped that we were at the edge of the Sahara[1] The view was literally breathtaking, as views in Morocco so often are.

Lunch on the terrace. Notice the epic dunes in the background.

The terrain changes from unremarkable, flat, rocky plain to mountain-sized orange sand dunes with no transition whatsoever. One of the auberge’s many employees called up to ask if we’d like to eat lunch on the terrace, which of course we would; lunch turned out to be a fabulous tagine with eggs and tomato sauce.[2]

After lunch we explored the little town, which was eerily empty. I wondered if people weren’t taking a long lunch-and-siesta, which they often do here[3]. We bought nine liters of water, as well as several rolls of toilet paper, to take with us into the desert, and Hila acquired a scarf from a man who was very happy to see us for the chance to practice his English. He and I had an animated conversation in French about whether English is a better language than French, and he showed us how to tie a scarf in the traditional Berber way.

Yes, that's me in the lower left-hand corner. Observe Berber-style scarf.

We walked back to the auberge, and soon enough it was time to pack our bags and head out to where the camels were waiting….

TO BE CONTINUED, because it took me a week to write this much and it’s so long I think it might take you a week to read it! There’s a program excursion to Tangier and Chefchaouen this weekend, but I should be back by Sunday so maybe I can write a little more then

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[1] Did you know that “sahara” just means “desert” in Arabic?

[2] Moroccans use eggs in ways I’d never have thought of, but it almost always turns out well.

[3] Also, Moroccan lunch time is usually closer to 1:30 or 2:00 than to noon.