Trip to Tangier

   For the second half of my break, I traveled to Tangier with some friends. These friends were Leo, Thomas, Nat, Jessa, Josh, Sam, and Louise. Louise was staying at a different hotel than the rest of us.

   The first night Sam, Thomas, Leo, and I got supper at this fancy place. We had to pay roughly the price you would expect to pay when eating in Canada. It is at least double to what I am used to. Then we joined the rest at the hotel and got settled in.

   The second day we walked around some and saw some things. We saw a bookstore, a museum, and got some ice cream. The bookstore is apparently very famous. It was an excellent bookstore and had some books in English. It also had books in many other languages as well.

    We went to the beach and Hercules cave one day. The beach was very nice, and of course, I went swimming. After swimming, I stood in the wind reading my book until I dried off because I did not bring a towel. The cave was cool. It was dark in places, but there were lights built into the cave in most places. I found the cave to be very touristy, so it was not as cool as it could be.

   The next day we left to go back to the university. Leo, Thomas, Nat, and I went to Fes to meet a taxi, and the others went to Meknes for a bit. Those of us who went to Fes took the luggage of the others. When the others got back, we took them their luggage.

That was my spring break.

Trip to Dahkla

    To get to Dakhla, the group took a plane from Casablanca. To get to Casablanca, I took a bus and then a train to the airport. My friend Leo, who has actually planned and booked hotels for most of the place I have been, gave me some rough directions to how to get to the train station from the bus station. The directions were completely wrong, and after a while, of following them, I decided to start asking random people where the train station was. When I arrived at the station, I phoned Leo, and he was happy that I found my way because he realized he gave me the wrong directions. Leo is very nice, and he would have felt bad if I did not get to the train station.

   At the airport, there was trouble with some of our bookings. We had to wait for an extra half hour-ish before we got our tickets.

   We then got on the plane to Dakhla. When we arrived, we checked into the hotel and got settled. Then most people went to sleep to get ready for the next day.

  On the second day, we took a bunch of SUVs to a place located quite a ways from the hotel. It was a beautiful beach. It was part of a lagoon so the water was very calm and it did not get very deep fast. It was a very nice place to go swimming. Some people went over to a big white dune. Myself and others did not get to see it close up because we spent too much time swimming. I was fine with that because I really like swimming. Some of us got a water massage from hot spring water. The massage was fun. Everyone then went to get some stuff to eat. The was fish, oysters, and other seafood. My roommate for the trip, Caleb, got a really bad sunburn that day.

   The next day we did lots of interesting stuff. We got a fish pedicure. A fish pedicure is when you stick your feet in a pond and fish nibble at them to get the crap off your feet. We had to go to the middle of the desert get this. Our drivers made us southern tea to try before we left to the next activity. The tea was much more to my liking than the tea made in the north, because it was a lot stronger tasting. 

   The next activity was the ostrich farm. The was a bunch of ostriches, and they would bite fingers when fingers were close enough. It felt really weird when they bit them. The mouth would scrape against the finger as they tried to swallow it. I thought it felt really cool. 

   We also went to a different beach. This beach was a lot more volatile, and it was windy that day. I went swimming for a bit, but most people did not. For lunch, we went to this subpar place to eat. I ordered a pizza that had almost no cheese, and it took forever to come out. I would not recommend it (the restaurant). 

  Caleb left the following morning to go to London.

  We spent the last day at a nice resort relaxing. There was some swimming. The tide had to come in before to go swimming. It took about two hours for it to come in and then it was good for swimming. I went swimming with a couple of people (Mika and Katherin). Katherin has been to Brasil too, so I got to talk to her about that.

The next morning we left to go back to Casablanca.

    I went to Ifrane and had supper with Leo and Thomas. Thomas is a French guy who has been on most trips with me. They had been on the university campus while I was at Dahkla. I spent the second part of my break with them and others in Tangier. My next post will be about Tangier.

3 Times of Stupidity, and Ben's Computer'

The first part of this post is about 3 times Ben and myself were not thinking right.

1. When we left the marche (shopping center) to go to the grand taxi station Ben, and I messed up big time. Instead of going to the taxi station we did a walk around the marche completely oblivious to what we were doing and then wondering how we got lost. After walking in a complete circle, we found the correct road and got to the grand taxi station.

2. When I got lunch the main brought out a sandwich and water. I thought the sandwich just looked like bread and left it waiting for my lunch to come out. After one hour I decided to start eating the bread, and then I realized it was, in fact, my sandwich.

3. We were looking for the grand taxi station in Azrou and asked someone. The person we asked promptly pointed to the sign right in front of eyes, and kind of looked at us funny.


That was the first part. The second part is about what happened with Ben's computer.

   So Ben took it back to the IT people and told them what the person in Azrou told us. The IT people tried to restore the windows system. The system still did not boot, and they told him it was a serious hardware problem.

   I asked Ben if I could try booting it from an USB. It worked, and then I copied and pasted all his files onto an USB of mine. He now is just using the live ubuntu USB to do web browsing. I am going to email him his files.

Back to Meknes and Azrou

   A relatively large group of people, including me, went to Meknes to go see the sites there. Unlike the last time, the entire day was spent going around and seeing different tourist sites.

   The first place we saw was an old underground jail. We got to walk around the prison and see where prisoners were chained up. It was cool to see how little light got into a few places. It was almost pitch black in those locations.

   After the jail, we went to see the Royal Stables. The Stables had collapsed in places, but most of it was still standing. They were enormous. I kept on thinking that I must have reached the end, but then it ended up there was still more. It made an interesting site when the end was reached. You could see the repeating archways, and it was a good reminder how big the place was.

    We also went to a museum and an old school place. The old school place was interesting. The young students had small rooms, and the older ones had slightly larger ones. The professors, of course, had colossal rooms compared to the students.

   The next day my friend Ben and I went to Azrou to see if his computer is fixable. Ben has been on most of the trips that I have written about in this blog. His computer was crashing randomly and did not seem to work well for a while, and eventually, he could not get it to turn on. The IT people on campus said it was a hard drive issue, and told him he had to get a new hard drive.

   The guy in Azrou said it was a corrupted OS and the hard drive was fine. He did not charge Ben anything, and we left.

   We then went climbing the rock that Azrou was named after. It was a short climb, but it was pretty steep. The top had a beautiful view.

  We then went for lunch and headed back to the university.

The next post will be related to Azrou, and will be titled '3 Times of Stupidity, and Ben's Computer'.