Morocco:: deux

The day before we left for Spain, we took a short day trip about an hour outside Marrakech to the Ourika Valley.  We wanted to take a sweet camel ride into the desert and go on a 2-day, 1-night excursion, but who knew the actual "desert/sandy" part of the Sahara desert was 10 hours outside of Marrakech....  so we settled for an hour into the mountainous part of the desert.  We liked it.

We visited a few Berber villages, saw 1/2 a waterfall, several dromedaries (not camels),  haggled for rugs, visited a donkey market,  and relaxed in the nice weather.

Berber village in the background.

I see a dromedary toes.......... get it?! klasdjfklasmnvuiaejrkfdm

Emma could pay 15 Euros to ride one for 15 minutes.  But we can do that at the county fair...  for free.

friends.

 Earlier when I said we saw 1/2 a waterfall, I meant that I flush more water down the toilet sometimes than what this waterfall trickles down.  When we booked the tour, our transportation AND tour guide were both "included" for a flat rate..........  He seemed nice and reasonable and I even told the man, in exact words and kind of joking but not really, "Now I better not find any surprises at the end of this trip and have to pay more when I get to Ourika.  I am paying XX amount and that's it...." He laughed and reassured me that he gave me the best deal he's got....

Sooooo when we got to our destination, the tour guide said if we paid 4 Euros, he would take us to this waterfall.....  "transportation AND tour guide included" probably meant we had a guide, but that didn't mean he would take us anywhere for free...   haha needless to say, we didn't go to the 2nd waterfall that was further up the mountain for 4 more Euros.  We decided to explore ourselves.  Take that.

The faucet/waterfall.

Me scaling the waterfall.  And blending in with the rocks.

The donkey market.  The only place in the world where donkey's trade and buy stocks.  hehaw.

My broker here tried to get me to invest in some mutual funds, but he ended up being a jackass.  Hehaw.

Snow in the desert desert.

On our tour, we ended up being the only Americans.  There were Canadians, Germans, Australians, Spaniards, Brits, and many other people who spoke three times as many languages as we did.  It's definitely great getting to communicate and share with a gazillion other cultures, even though Canada doesn't really count.

Emma and our friend from Germany talking about life.

Me probably looking at some kid using the bathroom in the creek next to me... 

Our last night we took a few more laps around the Medina central square in town to mark the last few things off our list.  We ate some tanjine, kabobs, and snails!  We even saw an underage, free-form boxing match between two 7 yr olds.  I might have tripped up a few old ladies too with the mounds of nuts.  I thought they might have been following us...

What a joy it would have been to knock these over......... until next time, large mounds of nuts.

Snails are a delicacy here in Morocco, as well as Sevilla.  We haven't tried them in Sevilla b/c they are not really in "season."  Who knew?  But we definitely had to try out these guys as an appetizer for 50 cents!! 

The top half is the best part.  The bottom half might have been poop.... oh well.

MMMMMMMMMmmmmmm!

They were really punching each other.  Hard.

Dancing in the streets.

We can never get away from them.  She's the cat lady.  Even in the airport.

She named him Miel (honey) awwwwwww.  Good thing he didn't have a ticket to get on our plane.