Adventures in Ourike Valley

The day after arriving, we woke up bright and early to take a day trip to Ourike valley where we would learn more about the Berber community, ride camels, and visit a waterfall. Our first stop was at a traditional Berber home where we learned about the home and family structure. We learned about the way animals are generally kept in a room inside the home because there isn't much room for them elsewhere, the way a man's first wife (they can have up to 4) is the one in charge of the household, and how villages grow from one household to a small nucleus in just a few hundred years.

Our hostess prepared us Moroccan mint tea and we enjoyed a lovely Berber breakfast before heading out once more. We drove just a short distance before I spotted our next activity: camels!

I have always wanted to ride a camel - I remember once at Stanford they had a camel in White Plaza for Israeli independence day and I was really sad I couldn't stop by to ride it. But riding a camel in Morocco is way cooler anyway :) After the camels, we made a few more photo-op stops before heading to the mountains where we would have an hour long trek to reach the waterfalls.

This hour-long trek sounded fine in theory, but it didn't take into account how steep the climb would be, nor how long it would take to come back down. Actually, it wouldn't have been all that bad if I had all my toes in non-broken condition - you never realize what important stabilizers they are until you try to climb narrow paths of rocks. I was way too preoccupied trying to climb safely to even think about taking pictures, but some of those climbs were ridiculously steep. On the bright side, the waterfall was refreshing (i.e. freezing) and helped to numb the throbbing in my toe quite a bit.

After the waterfall, we climbed a bit more and were relieved when we finally started going back down. I quickly realized, however, that going down a steep mountain is almost more painful on your toes than climbing up one. I slowed to a snail's pace, carefully assessing every patch of rock I would step on to make sure it wouldn't slide underneath my feet and that I could step down without putting too much weight on my toes. I felt bad because the sun was high and hot and the longer we took to climb down the mountain, the more time we spent in the sun and the longer it would take to eat lunch.

The trek down was tough but was made infinitely better by all the support that I got from my friends- from words of encouragement to holding my hand on the trickiest patches of rock, they helped me keep my sanity and even laugh every now and then.

The last part of the trip was visiting a pharmacy to learn all about Moroccan spices. We were given a tutorial on what each spice is used for and the types of health and cosmetic products made from them. A few of us bought some spices, but most of us were itching to get back to Marrakech to hit the good stuff at the markets. Haggling actually turned out to be one of our favorite pastimes...

[to be continued..]