I took my first ever Moroccan bus to Chefcheouan- a city in the North of Morocco- with 6 of my friends.
Here's the bus trip in a few key words:
crowded, old women fighting, language barrier, mountain highways, chaos, excitement.
What awaited us as we stepped off of the bus from our 3 our ride was one of the most beautiful towns that I have ever visited.
The entire city is painted a blue that was ethereal it was so beautiful. We stayed in a small hotel in the middle of the medina that was owned by a sweet Italian man who cooked us breakfast both mornings. We wondered through tiny streets painted blue and white, shopped in the medina and bargained with shop owners claiming that we were clearly locals because we go to school in Meknes (surprisingly, this actually worked several times) What was different here is that it's a huge tourist destination so most of the people spoke pretty good english. Additionally, walking around we were not the only white people.
An interesting aspect of the trip was meeting a woman from Croatia who was backpacking through Morocco for a couple of weeks. She was on the bus with us from Meknes and we ran into her several times walking around that weekend. She joined us for a hike into the mountains and we had good conversation about her life in Croatia and her experiences in Morocco.
After a rather intense hitchhike up to the mountains in the back of a hippie van riding with a Moroccan man playing the best of Bob Marley, we made it to the beginning of a trail. Not having dressed for a hike, we only made it about an hour up before everybody was too tired to continue. The views, however, were spectacular.
We spent the rest of the weekend shopping, enjoying pastillas (my FAVORITE moroccan food) and taking in all of the blue.
The ride back to Meknes was an interesting experience because certain routes on the bus were cancelled because it was a nation-wide day of strike to protest the various social and political issues that exist here. We took a bus for an hour, took a grand taxi for another 45 minutes, walked 20 minutes then took another train to make it back to home. Needless to say, it was a very Moroccan journey.
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