It began when we left at 5AM last thursday and drove to the port in Algecires where we took a ferry across the Straight of Gibraltar into a Spanish port on the border of Morocco. In this way, we didn`t have to go through customs until we were about 10 minutes into Africa already. ISA group leaders took our passports in a big group to have them stamped and then a customs official walked through the bus inspecting our faces and our visas. My first minor adventure happened here, where I had fallen asleep due to a ton of traffic still on the Spanish side and awoke to the official asking to see my passport. I had given mine to our ISA director before and was asleep waiting to get it back and at the moment was awake to the horror of not knowing where my passport was. The official was very stern with me and another ISA director, upon seeing that a mistake had been made got on walkie talkies and tried to get everyone searching for my passport. Then the ISA director tried to stall the customs man for a bit but he ended up having to take me off the bus and put me in a fenced off location on the side of the road containing metal bear traps to bust holes in bus tires and the like. I was quite angry.
After standing there for a while with an ISA director on the other side of the fence named Eugenio, my passport was found in the bag of another girl on my bus. I was very very thankful to have gotten it back and then finally we were all on our way to Fez, our first destination.
Everywhere in Fez you can see banners of the President hanging. He has a very kind face. Their flag is red with a green star. For the most part, Fez is a pretty modernized city for Morocco. As you can see, it has McDonald`s, sophisticated cars, men and women walking down the streets. This is the city center where our hotel was.
Nearby is the old royal palace. In the middle, next to me is our tour guide. His name was hard for us to pronounce so he asked us to just call him Banana. His friends in the street also called him Banana.
Banana and his colleague Hashi took us into the Medina. This is the ancient part of Fez that still runs exactly as it did during the middle ages. This is the entrance to the Medina. The word medina just means city as in Medina New York for NYC.
This is our other guide (in the red) Hashi
We were looking at giant soup pots. These are exactly like the ones we were fed soup out of in the desert.Here is a close up of the fish market. The things with the tails in the front are sting rays.
This is one of the views into the local school.
The outside walls of the school.
This is the inside of a giant carpet store. They gave us a long presentation about their rugs, served us tea and then tried to sells us lots of rugs.
The rugs are made by women who live their entire lives having children and making rugs and cleaning. It is very sad. The rugs are classified by the age of the woman who made it. Her age determines the style of the rug.
This is a man later on making a silk scarf/sheet/table cloth. It is a full body work out. He has to press down on levers with his feet (like organ pedals) and raise and lover the two metal and wooden lever things using both ands and feet at the same time. He has a very sweet smile and helped me try on all kinds of turbans and scarves. I bought a cushion cover here.
Some of the girls in full turban from the demonstration in the silk shop.
This is the tower where the calls to prayer 5 times a day came from. It is a piercing and beautiful sound.
Below is the leather tannery site. It smelled horrible here.
In order to be there they gave us mint leaves to shove up our noses.
(--- my friend allie with the mint leaves.This is what an art school in Morocco looks like:
Artisan school takes over 15 years to complete. Students are all men. The smoke is from the firing kiln.
They make things like this (pots, table tops, tea kettles, ash trays, candle holders) at artesian school. They hand cut tiles to make these mosaics.
The only tools they really use are small axes and screw drivers. They do this all day and make maybe 100 tiles.
This is a scenic view of the Medina.
This is our room in the 4* hotel. The pillows were super comfy.
Now I will leave you in suspense for a while and let my computer rest a bit.
I still have a lot of things to show and write about.
Adios!!
1 comment:
You sure had quite an adventure. It's like they put you in jail on the side of the road, haha. Were you scared? Those pictures are awesome. So when the Musliim people of Medina would pray would there be someone like in the tower who would like call them all to pray to it. I learned in social studies class a while back that there was a man in the tower who would do that. I forget what the man's position was or what they were called.
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