So we left off last time with me and Jill being sick in Marrakech. We missed the full-day optional tour to Essaouira, a seaside village, including a stop to see how argan oil is made and to see one of the things I was really looking forward to seeing - goats in trees. Yes, you read that right. There are goats in them thar trees! Evidently, seeing this was a trip highlight for many of the people in our tour group. Unfortunately, Jill and I missed seeing it in person, but fortunately, I still got to see them courtesy of my mom and Frank, who I appointed as official blog photographers for the day. Behold, goats in trees!
So cute, right? Evidently, the little critters climb the argania trees to eat the fruit and the farmers not only let them do it, they encourage them to do it. The farmers need the seeds inside the fruit so they can press them to make argan oil. They do not need the fruit that encases the seeds. This is where the goats come in. They happily gobble down all the argania fruit they can find. They can digest the fruit but not the seeds. Let’s just say that what goes in and cannot be digested must come out. The farmers gather up the output, recover the seeds and press them to produce the much-coveted argan oil. So the next time you reach for that fabulous hair product that makes your hair so shiny and frizz-free or that lotion that makes you skin so soft, you’ll have the comfort of knowing exactly where your product came from. You’re welcome.
And here are some photos of Essaouira. I don’t know much about it other than my mom and Frank didn’t care for it very much. Others in our group loved it.
And there you have it, Essaouira in six photos. Thanks to mom and Frank for the photos! I’ll take it from here.
The next day was our last day in Morocco and we traveled from Marrakech to Casablanca. I was kind of excited to see Casablanca, but the reality was a huge letdown for me. It is the largest city in Morocco at 6.8 million people and compared to the rest of Morocco, it is a very new city, most of it being built during the 1900s. If you know me, you know that new and modern is not my bag at all. It’s not that Casablanca wasn’t attractive with all its white buildings. It just lacked the history, amazing architecture, romance and charm of most of the other places we had seen. It also has the distinction of being the only place we visited in the entire country (and we covered a lot of ground) where we were warned heavily by Ibrahim to really be on guard against crime. We were told to remove our earrings so that they wouldn’t be snatched out of our ears, to keep our phones out of our pockets and put away so they wouldn’t be grabbed out of our hands and to not go out walking at night, all things that we didn’t have to worry about anywhere else. Yeah, I could have lived very happily without going to Casablanca, but it is where the airport’s at so it was inevitable that we would have to end up there.
See? Not horrible, just not interesting to me on any level. It’s just another large city with very little to see except this...
Yes, there really is a Rick’s Cafe in Casablanca. Looks nothing like the movie on the outside, but we have it on good authority that it looks very much like the movie on the inside. Unfortunately, we never got to see the inside. Logistical issues.
The only other attraction in Casablanca, and it is a big one, is the Hassan II mosque. It is the third-largest mosque in the world and 60 percent of it is built over the ocean. It is absolutely huge! 20,000 people can fit inside with an additional 80,000 people in the outside courtyard. Ibrahim said that at Ramadan, 1.5 million people crowd into and around this mosque.
And let me just say that the sky really was that blue. I did nothing to the color of these photos. It was intense! I couldn’t stop looking at it. That was probably the best thing about Casablanca, that incredible blue sky.
It was an incredible trip to Morocco. We were so fortunate with our tour group. It was made up of 38 people from America, Canada and Australia and we never had a bad moment with any of them. Everyone was super nice and we all traveled well together. And our tour guide, Ibrahim, was absolutely wonderful and took such good care of us, keeping us happy and entertained and seeing to our every need with a smile on his face and a happy, upbeat attitude.
I truly loved Morocco. It’s definitely in my top two trips ever, right up there with Vietnam. I loved the friendly, warm people. I loved the constant surprises. I loved the history of the place and the culture. I loved the feeling of calm and the lack of chaos. It is a beautiful country full of beautiful people and beautiful experiences. Just thinking about it tugs at my heartstrings and makes me wish I could return. Maybe someday I will....
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