Morocco Uncovered, Travel

Day 10 of Morocco Uncovered: Watch your step!

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Let’s continue the recap of my trip: Morocco Uncovered (with Intrepid). It’s been a minute!

I took this trip in December/January. For previous posts (I recommend you at least skim them!) look at the following.

Day 10: I was still in Bou Tharer in the M’Goun Valley. Today we would head off to the next stop, Ait Benhadou.

Breakfast was in the dining room instead of the cave room. But! Barb from the trip read that I hadn’t gotten any pictures of the cave room and shared some with me. Can you tell why it was called the cave room?

I didn’t make a note of what breakfast was, but my memory says bread and jams with juice, as well as hard boiled eggs and yogurt. Then back to the room to finish any last minute packing and get ready to Get in the Van!

We started down the road and after driving a few miles, one of the people suddenly realized she had forgotten to return her room key! Since these were real keys, it was important that the hotel get it back. Aman and the driver flagged down a cab driver going the other way from us and asked him to take it to the hotel. We were all tickled by this, but it made sense: it was a road that only went back and forth so the driver would be going right by it. I believe then Aman called the hotel to tell them to expect the key delivery.

We did a cafe and bathroom stop after an hour or so. I really needed that break, too much coffee or something. They had a lot of rose products for sale as it was a local specialty.

Our next stop was Kabash Amerdil to visit an Amazigh nomad museum. We had a guided tour and it was a really interesting place.

This cat didn’t move while we were there–it must have been used to sleeping through a lot of commotion.

There were beautiful gardens with roses and grapes and other plants.

I enjoyed seeing the old phonograph as well as many other artifacts. Isn’t it funny that a phonograph is an artifact? Is it?

There were a lot of tiny doors and staircases as well. They told us that was to keep out invaders: if they had to duck going through a door it was harder to attack right away.

It was a lovely sunny day as you can see, and we were surrounded by beautiful mountains. It was a bit windy though.

Our next stop was a restaurant in Ouarzazate, called the city of movies, because so many movies are made there. If you have seen a movie with a desert, it was likely made in Ouarzazate. I would have loved to have spent more time there, but we just went to the restaurant. It was in a square, but no time for exploring or shopping.

The food was good: I had a goat cheese appetizer (fried) and an Argentinian meat wrap. After lunch we drove by Atlas Studios and other places where films were made. We also saw the world’s largest solar city, a shiny thing in the distance.

Solar power city/station in the background
Movie Studio

We made it to Ait ben hadou in the afternoon. There it was very cold and windy! We visited the rug collective first and learned how rugs were made. It was quite funny as the guide (a woman!) told us that three of the women working there were named Fatima, so we met Fatima 1, Fatima 2, and Fatima 3. The guide also kept referring to the place as a queendom. Of course they wanted us to buy rugs, but that wasn’t in my budget/suitcase space.

The old city was across the river from the rug collective and that’s where we headed next. We walked through the village and headed up towards the top.

We saw the special art they make there, which is like invisible ink in a way, as it is heated by a flame to bring out the colors. I did buy one print.

The artist!
What a view!
Selfie from the top!

On the way back down, I must have been looking around too much and I messed up my foot down a stair and fell and rolled my left ankle…it hurt like the dickens and I had to sit for awhile and let the nausea pass. Everybody was really nice about it and helped me out. I was a little worried it would be too swollen to enjoy the rest of the tour, but after waiting a few minutes it didn’t seem too awful, so I was able to slowly make my way down to the bottom of the village.

We all had tea and cookies at another women’s collective. While we had a decent amount of mint tea on the trip, I have to say that I actually thought we would have even more than we did, and also that it wasn’t as sweet as I was led to believe. This is probably because I grew up in the south (in the US) where sweet tea is a way of life and am accustomed to tea so sweet it hurts your teeth to drink it. But I enjoyed sitting and drinking some tea and letting my ankle rest.

Our last stop for the night was our hotel, which was nearby, but not walking distance really. In fact, Aman warned us to be careful if we went out walking as there were sometimes packs of wild dogs. NICE.

The hotel was a very nice, old building, and my room was large. I had a balcony but the pigeons seemed to have taken it over. It was cold outside anyway. The room had good heating however.

My room
Part of the lobby

I took a few pictures before dinner as I had some time to explore the hotel. There was a nice looking pool but of course it was too cold to swim.

We had the coldest dinner ever! The heaters in the dining room weren’t working properly so they brought over a few space heaters, which helped a bit. We all shared food: soup, meatballs, chicken and vegetable tagine. There were also little noodles that looked good but then seemed to have rose water flavoring, which I really don’t care for though I know others love it. Dessert was fruit, bananas, and apples. Interesting fact: the bananas in Morocco are a smaller breed than those in the US.

I went to bed early, after dinner, and enjoyed reading before falling asleep.

Random thoughts, Teaching

Admin Work

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One thing that’s sporadically time consuming as a freelancer/teacher, is admin work. This week has had a lot as I’m in the process of signing students up for the Music Club Federation Festival, as well as working out some rescheduling for February, updating invoices due to snow days/festival registration, and more. It varies from week to week: some weeks there is hardly any and other weeks it can be a few hours (Gah!).

I try to keep organized by keeping a running “to do list” on my phone, as well as having a calendar of monthly tasks for the home studio. I have two to do lists in the reminders app on my phone, labeled “work” and “personal”, which works well enough. If something comes up in a lesson or pops into my head at a time I can’t deal with it right away, I add it to that to-do list. And then when I have more time I try to do the task. Some weeks I get everything done, other weeks I get nothing done. I can also add deadlines through the reminders app, and that is good when a task is particularly time sensitive.

This week I’ve been clearing out a bunch of lingering tasks. The rest of the month is going to be BUSY so I don’t want to have too many things hanging over my head. There are usually a limited number of times that I want to do admin: a few mornings a week I like to spend 30 to 60 minutes, or less, and that counts personal admin as well as business admin. This doesn’t count short emails and texts, that I will respond to as soon as I can, or doing basic things like attendance.

This probably seems very boring to read about, but in case you are another teacher, maybe it’s not. I probably spend an average of 1-2 hours a week doing admin tasks, so it’s not very much but also not nothing. Using an automated lesson system (My Music Staff) helps tremendously, and using an automated system for keeping track of taxes and tax deductions does as well. Email is so much easier than phone calls used to be, and texting too. I think back to when I was younger and email wasn’t as popular for contacting parents, and when I needed to reschedule lessons I literally had to call them, one by one. So thankfully it’s a bit easier now…but still annoying.

I am excited to continue writing about my Morocco Trip, but I just haven’t had enough time to sit down and do the next post. I have selected the photos, so I’m making progress–don’t worry: it’s coming!

We have a weekend getaway this weekend (part of the busy-ness, not the main part) which I am looking forward to. We are going to visit Phoenix and my family there, and I can’t wait to see them and perhaps equally, have some nicer, warmer weather. They don’t even have snow on the ground! (We are so tired of the snow here).

I can’t believe it’s February already, but I was also thinking how less than a month ago I was still in Morocco, and that seems like a dream. How times flies as we get older!

Random thoughts

Groundhog Day

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I’m taking a little break from telling you about my Morocco trip to telling you about life now. It’s been COLD and the good thing is that today gets above freezing so more of this snow should melt. Snow: it’s great at first and then it is annoying and you just want to wear normal shoes.

We got about 8 inches of snow last weekend, and it was a “snow day weekend” where everything was canceled, and it was pretty nice to just hang out at home. I didn’t even leave the house for 3 days, and that literally means, didn’t step outside. Louie took a walk over to Forest Park and took some nice pictures, but I didn’t want to get cold and wet.

The front yard, taken from upstairs. Louie was a champion and shoveled it all. Well, the walks.
Art Hill at Forest Park, where people go sledding.

It’s another busy teaching semester: at first when I was setting up my college students I thought I was at a lower number of hours than last semester, and was fairly happy about that as I have too many students, and then in the last two days of drop/add period I got 3 more hour long students and now I’m actually higher than last semester by 30 minutes with one more student. I got everybody scheduled fairly well, but my Thursday starts very early…but we are already 3 weeks in so only 11-12 weeks left to go (every student is supposed to get 14 lessons, so some have gotten 3 and others only 2).

Vegetable Thali dish at Himalayan Yeti. SO MUCH FOOD.
Coming out of Jazz St Louis the other night, what a pretty scene!

There’s been some time for fun: we’ve done a few Jazz Stl shows, we saw a hilarious play at Upstream Theater. We’ve eaten some dinners out just the two of us and also with friends. We did a jazz brunch with a friend yesterday, and we’ve watched a bunch of good TV shows. I’ve spent some time making decisions on our Japan trip in May, and planning some other trips further down the pipeline.

And some performing too: last weekend a concert got canceled but we managed to schedule the entire chorale and orchestra to yesterday! That meant yesterday was a double concert, one with the Metropolitan Orchestra of St Louis, which was especially fun as a student of mine got to play with us too. And then the American Kantorei concert, all Bach Cantatas. Louie and I ended the night hanging out in front of the fireplace chatting.

The cats have been keeping warm the best way they know how: by sitting directly on top of the radiators. It’s adorable.

Note: It’s hard to pretend like life is normal as our country is run by a fascist government. And even worse, is knowing that many people in the country don’t see it, or WORSE, see it and agree that it is great. Every day brings new horrors in the news, children being kept in detention centers, the Epstein files and seeing that apparently almost everybody in the current admin/regime is a sexual predator, the government shutting down and the democrats being more concerned about sending money to Israel who is committing a genocide, the threat of nuclear war with Iran and other countries, the president stealing money from Venezuela and trying to loot the treasury even more, taking money from all the businesses, foreign countries, etc. And seeing people being gassed in the street, murdered in the street by ICE and by police, every day. Journalists and comedians being arrested and sued for exercising their free speech. I could go on for a long time.

I find it’s hard to cope. What do we do? We just keep on keeping on, right? And trying to find joy in our lives amongst the pain and suffering.

Morocco Uncovered, Travel

Morocco Uncovered Day 9: Hiking and more Oranges

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Let’s continue the recap of my trip: Morocco Uncovered (with Intrepid). I took this trip in December/January. For previous posts (I recommend you at least skim them!) look at the following.

Day 9: I woke up and got ready for the morning’s activity, which was a hike through the valley. Breakfast was in the “cave room” in the hotel, which I forgot to get a picture of. We had Moroccan doughnuts with various jams, yogurt, fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee, and maybe hard boiled eggs?

We would not be riding on the van at all today, which was very exciting to know…the van is fine, but we had spent a lot of time in it over the previous two days, to and from the desert.

We met our guide (who also worked at the hotel, everybody here seemed to have multiple roles) and headed out through the village into the mountains.

No shortage of doors in this village either.
We got to see some goats! And the man there was our guide, just an fyi.
I didn’t take this photo or I wouldn’t have been it in, haha.

The mountains reminded me of Utah, particularly Capitol Reef Park. Our hike was pretty easy, but I watched my feet. I just wore sneakers, since I had decided not to pack hiking shoes for one hike, and found it was fine. The dirt would stain shoes a bit, so if you are taking this same trip, keep that in mind.

We walked through the valley, and then got to a river with a bridge over it…the river was flowing pretty well but the bridge was just a log.

It was a little scary, but we all managed to cross without incident. Check out this video to see my crossing.

After that we headed up to the top of a mountain to view the village from above. We could see snow covered mountains in the distance.

Snow covered mountains, do you see them?

Then we walked back down along the river and finally back to our gite.

The Amazigh Flag

We had a short amount of time to clean up and then all met for lunch on the roof terrace. We ate berber omelets, cooked salads, chicken skewers and fries.

The afternoon was free for us to do what we wanted, but there wasn’t much to do. I read in the sun and took a short walk around the village, but I didn’t enjoy the walk because some kids started following me and yelling out, madam, madam and I wanted to ignore them (sorry kids) but it was annoying. It was a nice afternoon though, and the weather was beautiful.

I also explored the gite and took photos.

This was the view of the restaurant from a terrace I found in the main part of the hotel.
View of the main part of the guesthouse from the terrace of the restaurant.

We met in the late afternoon for henna tattoos: a young woman drew on my hand and we had more tea and snacks like the day before.

Dinner was soup and chicken couscous, with fruit for dessert: sliced oranges and pomegranates. The food here was very good.

And that was the end of the day. I went back to the room to organize my things since we would be leaving the next day, and I read after that. I finished reading the Correspondent, which was a really good book. The ending was very sad and I pretty much ugly cried through it for 20-30 minutes. I started worrying at one point that my neighbors would hear me and think something was horribly wrong, haha.

Morocco Uncovered, Travel

Morocco Uncovered Day 8: I get to ride a camel!

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For previous days of my trip to Morocco with Intrepid (called Morocco Uncovered, I didn’t make that up myself) please read the following:

Day 8: At the desert near Merzouga: We had to wake up early for our sunrise camel ride, so obviously it was still dark when I awoke, but it wasn’t raining, yay! I got dressed and got my scarf tied around my head (I couldn’t do this myself, but all of the Moroccan guys working at the hotel knew how to do it) and when it was time, we all walked over to where the camels were hanging out.

I was pretty nervous, but it all happened pretty fast, and before I knew it, I was up on a camel!

I’m the one in the front, riding the camel.

My camel led the way up the dunes. When we got a little ways out, the guides had the camels sit back down and we all got off and took pictures and watched the sunrise. From our group, Travis and Renee walked off and then we watched as he proposed to her, which was very fun and exciting for them (she said yes!). And the guys made a little a fire to warm up.

After the sun rose a bit we got back on the camels (link goes to a video of me on the camel while it stands up, a must watch!) and headed back to the camp to finish packing up and eat breakfast.

Other videos I uploaded that I recommend you take a quick look at: Two of the camels chewing, and my camel breathing. They are strange animals!

My camel taking a little break.
I’m in the front there as well
The view from atop a camel
The camels taking a break
Sun rising over the dunes
We were all a bit sleepy from having to get up early!

Sorry for the pictures being a bit out of order!

Anyway, breakfast was tasty: mostly bread/crepes with various jams, and the coffee was good.

We got loaded into the bus and headed for our next stop, which was a quick stop in Erfoud to try dates and get encouraged to buy some. They were delicious and melted in your mouth and would have bought a bunch if I could have brought them home, but I didn’t think that was allowed through customs.

We drove a long way between the anti Atlas and the high Atlas mountains. It was a beautiful drive, but far. Our itinerary said it was 7 hours of driving today. The desert is FAR away from everything else, but it was so worth it.

Cat resting at the rest stop

We made a few more stops of course: a cafe stop for bathroom and coffee, and then we had lunch at a restaurant that was in somebody’s house in a small village near Todra Gorge. We all got served plates of food and then paid a set price. I never minded this sort of thing as I knew food would be extra, but if you are hoping to really save money on food, sometimes that would mean simply having to a skip a meal or something, and the meals were overall really good! Sometimes we got to order from menus, but not always. In any case, this was a delicious meal. It was a house owned by people who were Amazigh, which are the native (pre-Arab) people of Morocco. This was probably the best lunch we had…or at least one of.

We had a delicious lunch here!
The village
Is this a mule or a donkey? Now I can’t remember what I was told and I am NOT a livestock expert.

After lunch we walked along Todra Gorge. What an amazing sight to see–the road ran through it, but everybody was on foot for the most part. There were some hotels that used to be there but that had been closed down due to rock falls.

The Amazigh flag
The aforementioned closed hotels. Would be a cool place to stay, but getting killed by rockfall isn’t so cool.
Did I buy another scarf? This one seemed more like an Amazigh style. Did I have a great time bargaining for it? Yes, I did.

I believe we made a grocery store stop before heading to our destination for the night, but I didn’t write that down. I didn’t buy any beer or wine, but some people did (the places don’t usually serve it, but we were told we could bring some along.) I enjoy wine, but figured I could have some time without it as well!

The last part of the drive was on a winding road through the mountains and was absolutely stunning. Our driver did a great job with the winding roads and we always felt like he was driving very safely.

A winding road
Very high elevation on the drive!

We got to the gite (guesthouse) for the night. They gave us tea and snacks first and then took us to our rooms. I got one with twin beds. This place was really neat: it was in a village called Bou Tharer in the M’Goun Valley, in a very old, very traditional looking building. We had a little time to unpack (I did some sink laundry), and then went over the restaurant building for dinner.

My room. It was nice to sleep in one and use the other for a suitcase holder, ha!
Fireplace right by our dinner table. It was nice and warm this night.

It was funny, because we were staying here for two nights, and we were one of two groups we saw…and then we realized the other group was our exact tour but that had left the day before. Us, but from the future! The Morocco Uncovered Tour is very popular and has one that leaves almost every day–we also knew there was one behind us so we figured we would see them the next day.

Dinner was very nice: soup, lamb tagine, (bread and olives of course). Guess what dessert was: yes! Fruit! Sliced oranges, bananas, and apples. No chance of getting scurvy on this tour.

Aman serving up soup. You can see the bread bowl too, and somebody’s bottle of wine.
Soup!
A dinner selfie!
Some decorations.

It was cozy in the room, though the walls were a bit thin. I had some internet in the room, and chatted with Louie a bit this night as well. It might have ended up just being a long distance call–my plan has phone calls for 25 cents a minute, which sounds high until you remember living pre-cell phones! Remember long distance calling? Anyway, I was never amazed to hear Louie’s voice clearly from thousands of miles away. And then I read my book until I was too tired.

Morocco Uncovered, Travel

Morocco Uncovered Day 7: To the Desert! But wait, it’s raining.

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Time for another installment of “Morocco Uncovered” recaps. For previous posts, please read these.

Day 7: It was still dark when I headed over to breakfast. The restaurant was in a different building than we were staying: we were all staying in one building but the hotel was spread out, and there was also a campground on site. It was kind of funny to see all the RV’s. And I would be very nervous about the campground bathroom, though I have no idea. It was quite cold for any sort of tent camping for sure, I didn’t see anyone doing that but I don’t know.

The front door to the building we were all staying in.
This was a screencap of my weather app, taken the night before. WINTRY MIX!?!
Breakfast. Lots of sweets.

The sun was up after breakfast, sort of, and I took a few pictures of the grounds.

Another part of the hotel. There were a few other groups staying here, and they must have been in this area.
Looking out the front doors.
Inside the building we stayed in.
Outside the building. Lots of cool vines! You can see an RV coming through as well.

It was cold, and started raining as we set out. We had a long driving day ahead of us. We were headed for Merzouga to spend a night at the desert. We made a rest stop at a cafe and I got a nice coffee with milk. I paid 5 dirhams to use the toilet, because I didn’t have smaller change.

We made a few scenic stops along the way: one was a stop at the largest palm tree oasis in Morocco and perhaps the world.

The Oasis

We stopped at a buffet for lunch and enjoyed some nice chicken, lentils, and other Moroccan specialties such as couscous.

The rain continued and made us doubt ourselves: we were heading for the desert, to ride camels, IN THE RAIN? What are the chances?

We made another stop to buy scarves (for those that wanted) for our desert ride. Of course, it wouldn’t be too dusty with the rain, but still fun. I bought a nice purple and black one for 150 dirham.

And then finally we turned off the highway, and drove along the sand for 10-15 minutes. It was very bumpy and there was no discernable road, though there must have been a route the driver was following? It was hard to tell. We got the desert camp, our home for the night, and it was still raining.

We decided as a group to postpone the camel ride until the next morning in the hopes the weather would improve. We got assigned our tents: this was the one night I had to share, so Sabine and I shared a tent. They gave us tea and snacks as well, and then we had some downtime. It was cold and rainy, and then the power and water weren’t really working–the tents had bathrooms, but you needed power for the water, so that was frustrating, as there wasn’t a non-water bathroom option.

inside the tent when the lights were on.
You can see the tents on the side here, the black boxes.

We took a walk out on the dunes then as a group. The camp was set up right at the edge of the sand dunes, and it was really beautiful even in the rain.

You can tell it wasn’t raining that hard, it kept alternating between heavier and lighter rain. But not what you would expect for the desert!!

We hung around camp a bit after that, and waited for the water and power to start working again. No such luck, so we ended up walking to a nearby hotel for dinner. We were served soup, salad, chicken tagine, and of course, oranges, apples, and bananas for dessert. But we got word during dinner that the power and water were ON, and that was exciting.

After dinner our hosts plus Aman played some drums and sang around the fire. I hung out and listened for a bit as the rain had stopped, but it seemed to be starting up again and I turned in to bed. It was cold in the tent, but warm enough under the very heavy covers! Note: I finished my book that night, was reading “The Frozen People” by Elly Griffiths and really enjoyed it.

We would be up early for a sunrise camel ride! Would the rain hold out?

Until next time–

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.