I flew a red eye into Morocco last night with my wife and two close friends. It's six hours ahead so I get a little more wiggle room to write before the end of the day in the states. I'm hoping all the places we go have wifi and I have the energy to post highlights from each of my days. So here we go:
-The flight took an hour to leave the gate and another half hour for de-icing.
-We landed in Morocco with little incident. We rented a car to get to Meknas, our first leg of the journey.
-There were a ton of hitch-hikers outside of the airport. They hugged the road uncomfortably close. We're told some are scam artists so we avoided eye contact and drove fast.
-There is a lot of farm animals out and about. Sheep were the most plentiful and we saw a few actual shepherds herding them. The horses were gorgeous, wild and colorful.
-In the towns we passed, rows and rows of similarly designed cube complexes squeeze together in tight clumps. There's a mosque tower in everyone. Laundry was hung to dry off of balconies and the roofs are littered with satellite dishes.
-I noticed the diversity of the makes of the cars on the road. A few companies I'd never heard of, but most were familiar. I even saw a couple Fords. The licenses were two sets of numbers separated by an Arabic character.
-They speak both French and Arabic around here and there's a decent amount of English too, though pretty broken. This mixing resulted in the signs being these wacky linguistic conglomerates. The kilometer speed limits threw us off.
-The police car sirens there flash red and green instead of red and blue. I assumed this was to match the colors of the Moroccan flag.
-It was flat going for a while but when we got into the hilly more mountainous regions the colors in the landscape were breathtaking.
-In total, the drive was three and a half hours long. We were all pretty tired but with the help of raw excitement at the novelty of it all and some caffeine chews we made it.
-Driving in the city was intense. People spilled out into the streets. Skinny roads and aggressive cabbies. We saw a man walking down the road with a cart full of mannequin parts.
-Parking in the city was stressful too and there were "valets" there who charged us the equivalent of $4 for the two days the car would be there. They tried to force themselves on us as guides (a common thing) and we managed to shake them off.
-We found our riad through a series of thin alleyways. It had a buzzer and we were escorted in and served sweet mint tea as we ordered dinner for later in the day at a sister riad.
-The whole space was a maze of delights. Our room wass up a half a spiral staircase. The space reminding me of a more sane and logic based M. C. Escher painting. The walls were thin and the beds are firm. Our bathroom had no door...but it had a tub and a fancy basin sink.
-We rested a little before heading to the streets. There we explored a huge market space. We first weaved through a crowed, claustrophobic alley full of pop-up shops that mostly sold douchey clothing for young men. This style was reflected the outfits of the hoards of men that poured out of everywhere. It felt like a perpetual stag party.
-We eventually wandered into a huge open-air market that was absolute chaos. There were middle-aged women offering henna tattoos. Massive communities of shoes for sale littered the pavement. Some vendors sold popcorn and cotton candy. There were pots and children's toys and innumerable tchotchkes.
-A innovator sanctioned off a parcel of street for himself with an improvised carnival game. The game featured a long pole with a string attached to the tip and at the end of that string was a small ring (like a fishing pole.) Around the space was a circle of two liter bottles of soda. Folks were challenged to get the ring at the end of the fishing pole to fit over the neck of the soda bottles.
- Another section had a bunch of miniature electric cars for kids to drive around in. We joked that this is early training for them to drive in the streets of the town.
-We dined at the sister riad down the street. The waiter poured the tea high up from the glass. Apparently was a sign of respect. I had couscous and it was delicious. It was cooked in a pot called a tajine.
-After dinner we went through the market one last time so our friend Tym could buy cotton candy.
-We're now to the present, where I write this over the sounds of cats in heat. Emily and I count out our dirham and I lay out clothes to (hopefully) run with Tym in the morning.
Today's Haiku-The flight took an hour to leave the gate and another half hour for de-icing.
-We landed in Morocco with little incident. We rented a car to get to Meknas, our first leg of the journey.
-There were a ton of hitch-hikers outside of the airport. They hugged the road uncomfortably close. We're told some are scam artists so we avoided eye contact and drove fast.
-There is a lot of farm animals out and about. Sheep were the most plentiful and we saw a few actual shepherds herding them. The horses were gorgeous, wild and colorful.
-In the towns we passed, rows and rows of similarly designed cube complexes squeeze together in tight clumps. There's a mosque tower in everyone. Laundry was hung to dry off of balconies and the roofs are littered with satellite dishes.
-I noticed the diversity of the makes of the cars on the road. A few companies I'd never heard of, but most were familiar. I even saw a couple Fords. The licenses were two sets of numbers separated by an Arabic character.
-They speak both French and Arabic around here and there's a decent amount of English too, though pretty broken. This mixing resulted in the signs being these wacky linguistic conglomerates. The kilometer speed limits threw us off.
-The police car sirens there flash red and green instead of red and blue. I assumed this was to match the colors of the Moroccan flag.
-It was flat going for a while but when we got into the hilly more mountainous regions the colors in the landscape were breathtaking.
-In total, the drive was three and a half hours long. We were all pretty tired but with the help of raw excitement at the novelty of it all and some caffeine chews we made it.
-Driving in the city was intense. People spilled out into the streets. Skinny roads and aggressive cabbies. We saw a man walking down the road with a cart full of mannequin parts.
-Parking in the city was stressful too and there were "valets" there who charged us the equivalent of $4 for the two days the car would be there. They tried to force themselves on us as guides (a common thing) and we managed to shake them off.
-We found our riad through a series of thin alleyways. It had a buzzer and we were escorted in and served sweet mint tea as we ordered dinner for later in the day at a sister riad.
-The whole space was a maze of delights. Our room wass up a half a spiral staircase. The space reminding me of a more sane and logic based M. C. Escher painting. The walls were thin and the beds are firm. Our bathroom had no door...but it had a tub and a fancy basin sink.
-We rested a little before heading to the streets. There we explored a huge market space. We first weaved through a crowed, claustrophobic alley full of pop-up shops that mostly sold douchey clothing for young men. This style was reflected the outfits of the hoards of men that poured out of everywhere. It felt like a perpetual stag party.
-We eventually wandered into a huge open-air market that was absolute chaos. There were middle-aged women offering henna tattoos. Massive communities of shoes for sale littered the pavement. Some vendors sold popcorn and cotton candy. There were pots and children's toys and innumerable tchotchkes.
-A innovator sanctioned off a parcel of street for himself with an improvised carnival game. The game featured a long pole with a string attached to the tip and at the end of that string was a small ring (like a fishing pole.) Around the space was a circle of two liter bottles of soda. Folks were challenged to get the ring at the end of the fishing pole to fit over the neck of the soda bottles.
- Another section had a bunch of miniature electric cars for kids to drive around in. We joked that this is early training for them to drive in the streets of the town.
-We dined at the sister riad down the street. The waiter poured the tea high up from the glass. Apparently was a sign of respect. I had couscous and it was delicious. It was cooked in a pot called a tajine.
-After dinner we went through the market one last time so our friend Tym could buy cotton candy.
-We're now to the present, where I write this over the sounds of cats in heat. Emily and I count out our dirham and I lay out clothes to (hopefully) run with Tym in the morning.
Massive culture shock
with just an hour's worth of sleep
in this brave new world
Today's Workout
(exempt due to travel)
(exempt due to travel)
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