Explorers: Nothing stops us!

This weekend I went for a trip with the Explorers which is the hiking club here at school.  We went to a town up in the north called Chefchaouen.  Some of my groovier readers may know it better as the hash capital of Africa :)  No need to worry about me though, I was on a school trip and don't fancy spending six years in a Moroccan prison, that would really mess up alot of my plans.  Anyways, our trip started out at 1:30 in the morning on Saturday.  We gathered at the bus shelter on campus and were picked up by two buses.  I was looking forward to a nice sleep on the bus since we had about six hours until we reached Chefchaouen.  Unfortunately, the bus driver must have had appointment because the bus ride was crazy!  The only way I can describe the feeling of the bus drive is turbulence.  Moroccan rodes are necessarily the smoothest things and even less so when taken at high speeds.  There were several times when we would suddenly barrel into a construction zone and the driver would merely swerve to avoid the barricade and take the gravel detour with no change in speed.  These areas were generally marked with a giant thump and violent pitching of the bus as we barreled over the lip of the road, effectively obliterating any progress that anyone had made towards making their way to sleep.  We stopped once during the night at a very very odd place.  It looked as though it was from the set of "The Pianist" if anyone has seen that movie.  There was a huge crater in front of the cafe that we stopped at.  There were a couple of pallets set out in the bottom of the crater, presumably to aide in the crossing.  The tile in the front of the cafe ended abruptly and dropped about four feet into the crater.  Since I didn't have my contacts in, everyone was speaking in Dereje, and it was about three in the morning, I felt incredibly disoriented. 
Once we had made it to Chefchaouen, we set off to find some food.  We had a delicious breakfast of fresh crepes with goat cheese and apricot jam with tea (of course).

Chefchaouen used to be a Jewish settlement and they painted their houses blue.  Before it was occupied by the Spanish, Christians were not allowed to enter on pain of death.  The name Chefchaouen allegedly means "Look at the Peaks" although based on some of the smirks I saw, I think it may have an alternate meaning along the lines of the Tetons.  It was a really cool town, much more relaxed than the usual Moroccan towns where it seems like there is a frantic scramble to get every last penny out of the tourists while they're there.

                                             
 After breakfast, we got back on the buses and drove out to the trail head which was about 35 km away through some gravel pits, goat pastures, villages, and most of all beautiful valleys.

The hike was very fun, and relaxed.  It was only about 6km round trip but it was a really big deal to me since I just got my cast off five days previous.  Apart from a little bit of instability due to lack of strength in it, my ankle worked like a charm!  I was so happy, I couldn't stop smiling the entire way.  I finally got to be outside again!  We hiked up to a spring where they get water for a brand of bottled water and went swimming.  I just put my leg in the water because it was rather swollen and I didn't have a swimming suit. Swimming in your underwear isn't quite as kosher here as it is in Montana.

We continued up the trail for a little ways and found a waterfall and a fairly large camp complete with a Moroccan flag!  I don't know why I found this so funny, it was just so complete, almost like a base camp for a large expedition.
                                         
                                             
There was also this guy who was standing at the top of the waterfall who I thought was just joking around when he dove off.  You can't really see in the picture, but there was a very small area that he had to shoot for because most of the bottom was rocks.  Luckily, we didn't have to have a dramatic rescue operation.  We continued on and came across another camp complete with tea pot and Moroccan tea glasses.  There was also a pot of Tajine simmering on the campfire.  My very favorite part was the picture of the his majesty the king in a frame up on a tree.  This is where we stopped for lunch!

After lunch, we returned to the buses and made our way back to Chefchaouen for showers and dinner.  My roommate for the trip, Sarah, and I went out into the square in search of one of the delicious melons that I had seen all over the streets as we came into town.  Apparently the Chefchaouen region is where most of them are grown.  I had had one when I was in Azrou with Amal and was keen to try another.  We tracked one down for only 1$!  Then we got a knife at a drug store for about 42 cents and settled down in the square to eat in it's juicy wonder.  They're called But-ich (as in the German "I").

We spent a large portion of the evening wandering aimlessly through the medina looking for who knows what.  I did get to have my first street vendor snails.  For those who are concerned about diseases, nothing apart from extremeophiles could have survived in the amount of salt that these little guys were cooked in.  The accepted way to eat them is to get a little bowl of them then grab one of the pins out of a lemon and snag the meat out of the shell with it and try not to pierce your tongue as you eat them off of the pin.
We settled on a resturant that was about five minutes away from the hotel after we did a large circuit of the city.  This didn't impress me too much since my ankle looked a bit like a grapefruit at this time.  It was a beautiful evening and we sat outside facing the old fortress which is called a Kasbah.

As we were eating, one of the omnipresent street cats rubbed against Nabila's leg causing her to shriek in surprise which echoed off of the Kasbah walls and effectively silenced the whole square which is the center of town.  We straggled back to our hotel and fell asleep immediately.

The next morning it was cloudy and misty and we could see a procession of people heading up to the Mosque with their goats.  I don't know if they were taking the goats up there or if the goats just happened to be going in the same direction and decided to be sociable.

After another breakfast of goat cheese and tea, we got back on the buses and headed to the coastal town of Tetouan.  Small side note, I kept noticing resturants that said Cafe The on the front and always thought that was a little backwards for the translation.  I took me a surprising amount of time to see the little accent marker and realize that it was saying that it was a Tea Cafe, I felt a little silly about that.  Apparently Tetouan has a marche (market place) where you can get stuff from Spain for really cheap because it's contraband.  We went there and made a few purchases.  There were so many incredible shops there!  I especially liked the fabric shops where there were so many intricate patterns and jewel-bright colors.

Nabila and I found some fruit that look like cacti that were wonderful and juicy, like a cross between the inside of a grape and the inside of a kiwi.

We went to the pier for lunch where they brought us fish that had just been caught and tossed on the grill.  Very low preparation cost! 
Fishes!  They still even had their teeth!

Shrimp kisses!
The king standing on the bodies of the fallen.
After lunch, we headed to a town called Larache to catch the sunset.

Well worth the stop.

Part of the group

The bus ride home was pretty crazy.  I just know that this kind of behavior would never have been tolerated in the good old Absarokee school system.  We were playing several games where you sing a song and then whoever's name is yelled they have to dance around while we clap.  I didn't really know what I was doing and my friend took the camera to record my awkwardness.  The next game consisted of a very intense vocabulary game in which one person says a word and then we all sing a song and then another person's name is called and they have to say something to do with the word that was said before and if you say something wrong everyone yells and hits you.  I should add that almost the entire weekend was conducted in Arabic and Dereje (the Moroccan dialect) and I was the only exchange student on this trip.  So most of the time I had no idea what was going on.

On our way home, we stopped at a roadside cafe to have Mechouli, which is like ground up and barbecued lamb with onions, tomatoes, and spices intersperced.  There were cuts of meat hanging up around the grill and they still had their tails!  When we got back on the bus from dinner, we found that the bus driver had put a chocolate on everyone's seat to thank us for the tip that we had given him!  It was a very nice surprise.  We got back to the school at about 1:00 am and walked back to our dorms through the early morning fog.