petite on board
[ Girl meets Girl ]
Joint adventure of two travel bloggers: Unique x Jaime
Destinations: (Morocco) Marrakesh > High Altas > Sahara Desert > Fes
Unique and I met 3 years ago when we were both studying at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. We have never work in the same production, but this time, we decided to meet up in Morocco for a week.
When an actress and a stage manager come together, what could possibly go wrong? One had walked the Camino de Santiago, whereas the other one had chosen to live on her carnival dreams abroad. In fact, everything did go wrong since I missed my flight at London Stansted Airport on the 17 April 2016.
Unique @uniquestraveling
Transportation and bus schedule in Morocco are not very travel-friendly. If you want to get to Merzouga directly from Marrakesh, you would have to spend 15+ hours of your daytime on the bus. Sadly, I only got my license 2 weeks ago which I am obviously not qualified to rent a car. Let's just stick with the classic way of bus-about and hitchhiking then.
01 | GATE CLOSED, SORRY Literally stumble across the entire Greater London to catch another flight to Marrakesh.
Every experienced traveller must have experienced a missed flight. Yep, RyanAir closed the gate surprisingly on time and I missed my flight. Thanks to technology. I dashed to Gatwick Airport while booking the flight online with my phone, and continue making my way to catch up with Unique in Marrakesh a few hours later.
02 | BUS FULLY BOOKED! WHAT! Local bus to Tinghir are fully booked by weekend commuters, what should we do?
Wanna be spontaneous? Not that easy mate. Our rough plan to go to Tinghir on the 1st day afternoon didn't work out very well. I guess it was because of the weekend, buses sold out real quick for commuters who were going back to their village. It was quite a hectic to rearrange our journey, especially when you got a to catch a flight in a week time. If Morocco allows a fresh driver who just acquire her license two weeks ago, I will definitely rent a car.
Thank you IBIS hotel. We dashed in for free wifi and omg - a computers' corner. After all the hassle, we decided to spend the evening in Marrakesh and to take an overnight bus to Ouarzazate. To be honest, we both agreed that it was a good move as we could now visit the UNESCO Heritage of Ait Ben Haddou.
If I would have know about the existence of HitchWiki, we would have got a better strategy to hitchhike in Morocco. Instead, we got on a Grand Taxi to Ait Ben Haddou for 200dh (including 2hrs wait and return to the station). Entering the Ait Ben Haddou was like an introduction to the Berber's culture. Though this was quite a touristic place, people are friendly and welcoming. They even dressed us up as local Berber!
That morning was definitely well spent and well-tanned. On our way to Tinghir, we decided to jump off the bus and make a little detour to Dades Valley. Somehow I felt like Moroccans are slightly over-enthusiastic with female travellers. When we got off at Boumaine Dades, few guys came to us and kept on pursuing us to stay at their hotel and join their tour. Buses in Moroccos doesn't really take you to where you want to go (nor even within a walking distance). You just have to jump on a cab-share in most of the time, unless you are lucky and patient enough to get a lift like us.
03 | THE CLIMB Heading to the next town: Tinghir for our mountaineer x climbing adventure at the Todra Gorge.
We joined a climbing day trip organised by 'Aventures Verticales'. It was quite a mixture of hiking and climbing (definitely suitable for beginners, ehhh but not someone afraid of heights). As advised by our guide, the climb took around 4-5 hours (only if you are not a photoholic). So we started the hike at 10am and hoping that we would be able to catch our bus at 4pm. I guess we have spent too much time looking over the gorge with our eyes and our cameras. Having the fear of missing the bus (which we nearly did), our guide Abhul was so kind and helped us to contact the bus company. We were still running down the hill when our bus was supposed to due at 4pm. Thanks God, the bus itself was late for an hour too.
04 | #CLEANTHEDESERT
Sahara- wow, definitely have to stay more than a night. You only got to stay in a touristic tent if you are just here for a night. The longer you stay, the more you see. One said that there is no time in the desert, because you just go whenever the sun leads. Nomadic life is pretty chill because of the hot weather. Typical Hongkongers might find it hard to relax in the desert as there aren't much entertainment and practical stuff to do. Apart from enjoying the over-sugary tea with the nomads, the panorama Loo' view in the middle of the desert, we also made out first Berber' pizza.
At the same time, we were quite disappointed by the trash left behind by tourists who just come to the desert and party for a night. Africa is not a landfill or a playground, we should preserve this wonderful piece of land. So if you are going to the desert, please bring some bin bags with you and help cleaning up.
Doesn't matter if you have been to #morocco or any #desert before,
we would like to urge your attention and awareness to save the world where we all live in.
تنظيف الصحراء. الحياة تحتاج منا
بيئتنا عالمنا.نحن نعيش فيه
05 | TANNERY SCAM IN FEZ
Everyone go to Fez would like to have a peep of the Tannery. But beware of the people who try to drag you into their factory and force you to buy their products. The so-called official Tannery is the biggest trap! Though all guides carry a tourist pass, I really doubted if they are official at all. It wasn't free of charge as what it listed at the entrance! They took you into the maze of the tannery and at a certain point, the guide will try to ask for extra money if you want to pass through. One more thing, remember to take a deep breath before you enter any of the tannery, the leather and animal skins really stink. After all, we did get to see some coloured-tannery and the cruel process of the leather industry in Morocco.
WHAT NEXT?
That's the end of our 7-days Joint Adventure in Morocco
and hopefully, we will crash to La Tomatina together in the future.
Stay in tune!
Check out Unique's blog here:
