MOROCCO

We went to Morocco!!! Woohoo! We did a lot and it was really hard to remember it all when we got home... So this is the way we're going to do this . . . I'm going to say a day then put my highlights in a line and next to each one I'm going to put more information about it. 

    

Day 1

Tortoises + turtles

 Throughout the day we had seen tortoises everywhere: in the tombs (more information about the tombs later) and for sale but we only saw the turtles in this place called the Secret Garden (the Secret Garden was actually quite boring and not worth a  mention if it didn't have turtles).

 Palace (the palace of Badii ) 

In Marrakech there is this abandoned palace were pigeons and stalks live. There are also pools (not the type of pool you're imagining), gardens, cool tiles and rooms all around the outside. I think my favourite thing about though were definitely the pigeons that were nesting in the holes on the palace walls!

Tombs 

The tombs as you can probably guess is a place where there are heaps of tombs but not just any tombs, special tombs with tiles on them. There were also fancy rooms with tombs in them and gardens with tombs in them and in one of those gardens there was a tortoise... wait a tortoise? Wow that's amazing! The whole place is amazing!   

Souks / medina

In Morocco there are these big markets that are in the medina (the medina is the old town, so the bit in the original walls). They are on every day and there's heaps of different bits in the souks, like there's a leather souk, a pottery souk... you name it they've got it. They also had motorbikes going crazy and nearly running us over, which was scary. And they were using donkeys  instead of cars! It was CRAZY for me!  

BAD ANIMAL TREATMENT!

They made me feel really sad when I saw how they were treating their animals:(  There were putting tortoises in cages, letting cats stray and killing wild animals for there skin. It made me feel awful:(

DAY 2 

Long car ride

We woke up really early in the morning and walked to this place where this van/bus thing came to pick us up. It took us to these other stops where these other people got on... BUT THEN! They moved us to another bus where we had to sit on the back seat!!! It was really annoying because we couldn't see anything! This made me really annoyed but I stopped feeling really annoyed when we started playing car games like Cows and Bulls and Mr Scribble. 

Village

After AGES OF DRIVING we FINALLY got to our first stop, this really REALLY cool village, made entirely out of... MUUUUUDDDDD!!!!! Well, and some bamboo. We had to cross a river to get to the village. There was no electricity or water but they still survive! Only four families are living there now though. When it isn't full of tourists, they use the village to film movies! Like the Game of Thrones and Gladiator! When we were there we walked to the top of the watch tower. It was beautiful with the desert and the snowy mountains in the back ground (The mountains are called the Atlas mountains.). After that we learnt how to put on a traditional head scarves. I was the example for the kids! It felt really weird. Then we went to lunch.

Missing tourist!!!

After lunch we hopped in the van and . . . we realised someone was GONE! What were we going to do??? We looked and looked all over the village. but no sign of him! We drove, backward and forward and backward and forward... Still no missing tourist! So we went back one last time to the lunch place and.... HE WAS THERE! We had found the missing Orange Dude (he wasn't orange but his top definitely was!). 

Hotel

After another very looooooooooooooooooong bus ride, we realised that more people were missing! Nah, just kidding, people were getting off at different hotels along the way! Soon it was our turn. We got off the bus, feeling very confused, and went into the hotel, signed a form and found our room for the night! Woohoo! 

Day 3

Bus Rrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddddddddddeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssss:/

Today we went for another long bus ride which took up most of the day, so we had to stop twice... Once for lunch another for a break at a . . . GORGE where we took pictures of the CLIFFS surrounding it and played in the river which the water was supposed  to give you good LUCK. It beautiful and really relaxing. The water was coming straight out of the ground. It was a spring. 

  CAMELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When we got to our stop we got out of the van and HOPPED ON CAMELS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was awesome! I was on one with Esther. It was really fun, although going up and down was scary. We named our camels and rode our camels through the SAHARA DESERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (Caramel me and Esther's Punk was Mummy's and  Jimmy was Daddy's!)!!!  

At sunset we stopped and took pictures looking over the huge dunes!  It was really AWESOME. I loved it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

But the camels did have some dirty habits like drinking each others WEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Camp

When we had finished on the  camel we went to camp and . . . no-one was there? Ooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh they were there, they were just cooking dinner and the other tour people weren't there  yet so we chose a tent. When everyone arrived we had dinner and went to sleep!

Day 4

Camels

The next day we went on camels again but this time I went on one with Daddy and another . . .

ALL BY MY SELF!!!  And we saw DUNG BEETLES plus (or minus) the camels liked biting each others tails!!! This was really funny because it was mostly my camel doing it! (this time my camels were called Creme Caramel and Caramel Fluffit plus Esther's was called Kit Kat!

Home

After the camels, we had to ride on the back of the ute to get back to the bus. We hopped in the bus and drove back to Marrakech. When we got there we found our riad (which had a pool) had dinner and went to sleep.

Day 5

Souks 

We went in the souks again the next day. We walked around for a bit... and then I saw it! An amazing. A beautiful. A ... leather bracelet. It caught my eye and I loved it! We got it for 10 dirham. I loved it. We offered to get Esther one too but she didn't want it. 

Haggling

While we were at the souks we figured out there was a secret way to get things for how much we want to pay. It is called haggling. Haggling is where you just tell them the price that you want to pay and if they say no, you just say we can find it somewhere else and walk away. And then they will keep on lowering the price down until they get to the price that you want to accept! We liked doing that. But I still would have liked the souks better if there weren't so many motorbikes everywhere! 

Painting

In the souks Mummy and Daddy found a really cool painting. They practically fell in love with it. So we went in the shop and asked how much is it for that painting. They said they didn't know which made us confused.. Then we realised it belongs to the other shop! So we went into the other shop and asked and they said something like 3000! We weren't doing that! We managed to haggle it down to 100! So we bought it! It was beautiful.. But once Daddy nearly forgot it at our lunch shop! But luckily the shop person came running after us with it! Phew!

Henna

After the painting and the haggling and the souks we were walking around the big square and we saw a henna station. We asked how much but it was too much so we said no, until it wasn't too much anymore and we got the BEST henna done. BUT I went first and she put glitter on mine!!!! Nooooo!!!! But we knew it would be fine because once it had dried we would be able to get the glitter off. And then I accidentally smudged mine and I was very upset that I had done that... But once it had dried we realised that it was okay and didn't make much difference! 

Day 6

Bus Ride

On day 6 we went on this bus ride. Yes another BUS RIDE. We went to this place... but I'm not telling you where yet! On the bus ride we had our first stop... and guess what it was???? It was GOATS IN ARGON TREES! They were so cute and so amazing! Esther and I got to hold baby ones with cute little horns! It was adorable! At the end we had to pay the lady who was with the goats some money, which is what you always have to do in Africa. Next up, back on the bus. We drove for a short while and then we stopped again! This time it was at an... Argon oil making spot. We saw women making argon oil from nuts. Esther and I got to try crushing the nuts and we got to keep some. It was really cool. Did you know that only women worked there? They were women whose husbands had died or couldn't make money. Even though they were using their hands for everything, I wondered if they ever used machines.

Essaouira 

When we had finished on the bus we got out at a place with a beach. Wow! We hadn't seen the sea for ages! And we hadn't been to a place that looked like this ever before. Essaouira had souks where we bought baskets and plates made out of straw, it had loads of cool clothes and HARDLY ANY MOTORBIKES (compared to Marrakech). For once we weren't in a car or nearly getting squished by motorbikes! In Essaouira Daddy got his hair shaved and we saw these really cool groups of people doing gymnastics in the street! they were doing aerials and going on top of each other. It was super cool! Then we had lunch. While were having lunch some people came by and played music like drums and singing and this guitar violin thing. But we couldn't look because then we would have to pay and we didn't want to do that. 

After lunch we went to the fishing area and we saw all these boats that all looked EXACTLY the SAME! And there were also heaps of seagulls because there were all these people there selling their fish out of buckets. After the fish place we went to the beach where we pulled up our pants and walked in African water. After the beach we got out and hopped back on the bus back to Marrakech. 

Day 7

Souks (again)

The next day we went in the souks to spend our money becasue we were leaving that day. We had a look around and we bought bracelets, wallets and slippers for someone (Tilly, our baby cousin!). We still had time left so we kept looking and Mummy got some smelly things for her clothes. In the souks there were these little squares that were still the markets but NO MOTORBIKES! It was amazing! After the souks we still had a some time so we went to the park near the big, tall mosque. After we had played for a bit we went back to the riad and got our stuff. It was time to go to the airport. 

Plane ride home

At the airport we finally got on the plane and chillaxed! We couldn't do much on the plane other than play games in our books and pretend to sleep. It only took 1.5 hours hours to fly from Marrakech to Seville. So it wasn't too bad. But it was very late! 

Driving to Conil

When we got to Seville we went through all the checkout and stuff and then we had to find our car. It took a while but we finally did it. When we got to the car we drove 1.5 hours back home to Conil. It was midnight when we arrived so we quickly got dressed in our PJs, brushed our teeth and went to sleep. 

AND THAT IS THE END OF OUR TRIP TO MARRAKECH AND MOROCCO

Word of the post: moto = motorbike 🏍