Saturday, August 15, 2009

Roadtrip III

*So I haven't had time to upload any of these onto a computer until now (sorry about the wait..) We are in Luxor, Egypt right now and being surrounded by all this history is humbling (more on that in a few days.) It might be easier to scroll down and read the post "Granada" first and make your way up since then it would be in chronological order...but that's just me ;) And I apologize for the typos as these were all typed on my iPod haha.

Our last stop along our roadtrip was Ifrane. Another long six hour drive from Merzouga, Ifrane is far different from the rest of Morocco. To begin with, it snows in Ifrane during the winter - and it snows quite a lot. The city, which is home to 100,000 people in the summer and only 5,000 in winter, was a lot like the decidious forest back at home. The trees help create lots of shade, even though we didn't really need it since the temperature didn't go past 21 degrees celcius when we were there. It was such a welcomed drastic change from the 45 degree temperatures of Merzouga. While we were there we visited our friends's university which was also one of TSS's partner universities, Al Akhawayan University. It is such a beautiful school and is in a great location, I'm jealous of my friends who get to go there. After Taha gave us a tour of his school, we headed to a park where went horseback riding. We walk over to this little fence and there's no one around. The foreigners looked around at each other wondering where the horses were when all of a sudden we look up and see a cloud of dust moving towards us. Nine horses, under the command of young boys, charge towards us. Each boy wanted you to pick his horse and I settled on what seemed like a happy chestnut. I love horses so I was really excited to ride through the forest. However, my horse wasn't as excited as I was. In fact, he didn't even want to move. To top things off one of my stirrups was higher than the other and the kid couldn't figure out how to fix it. So me and my horse were led by my kid in the back of the pack. I felt bad for the horses because the kids would walk up behind them and smack them with thick branches to make them run fast. The kids learned our friend Haitam wanted to go fast, so one of the kids snuck up behind him, grabbed a huge, thick branch and hit the horse so hard that the branch snapped in half. Needless to say, Haitam and his horse went really fast, and the rest of cringed feeling so bad for the poor horse. Me and my horse eventually caught up with the others and while we went at a slow pace, it still was enjoyable, and definiteley with our group of friends hilarious. We returned to Tangier and spent the last couple of days just relaxing and hanging out with our friends. I really did not want to leave Morocco. It was sad to say goodbye to both our boat friends and our new friends, but I know I will see them again soon, because we really can never stay apart for too long. If we hadn't already booked our flights to Egypt, I have a feeling we would have stayed longer. I really liked Morocco and I can't wait til the next time I get to go. If you haven't already gone to Morocco, I highly recommend it!

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