Moulay Bousselham

So I’ve officially found my favorite place in all of Morocco…Moulay Bousselham (granted, this is probably a declaration I’m sure you’ll hear me making often). I can’t even begin to describe this small fishing village or describe to you how friendly everyone was. Before we left, every Moroccan we told we were going to Moulay Bousselham responded with something along the lines of “How did you find out about Bousselham?!” I figured this was a very good sign. A group of nine of us SITers (so much for solo…) made the 2 hour train ride to Souk al-Arbaa from Rabat, where we then caught a taxi the rest of the way to M.B. I wish I had filmed the half hour taxi ride, because it was pretty much the most terrifying/exciting experience of the trip. The best way to describe it is by comparing it to one of those car chase video games. You know the ones where you swerve every 2 seconds to avoid hitting another car, road debris, a dead body (none of those on the way to M.B. thankfully)? Well, switch the setting to the middle of nowhere in Morocco, put four people plus a taxi driver and a surfboard in the car (don’t even get me started on the surfboard), add in a half washed out road, random cows and sheep, and speeds maxing out at 80 mph and you’ll have a general idea of what the taxi ride was like. And I lived to tell the tale…pretty impressive if you ask me. We got to our hotel which was looking over the “lagoon” (basically a river with a bunch of sandbars running into the ocean) around mid-afternoon and did the most important thing first: found a restaurant. We ended up going to one the guide book recommended because of the “helpful staff”—they weren’t kidding. The second we walked up, Abdelhak, our waiter, started clearing out a table for us by removing all of the dirty dishes and literally throwing them onto the other guests’ tables. For the rest of the meal, he then proceeded to run back and forth between the kitchen, our table, and the store (to get our drinks, bread, salt, etc) in a very spastic manner. I’m telling you…this guy was either on drugs, or desperately needed them. We later found out that it was just him working the restaurant that day, thus earning it the nickname “one man and a pan” from our group. When I walked down the street the next day, he dragged me (no joke) into the restaurant so he could serve me a glass of Moroccan mint tea, on the house. Looks like I made myself a friend! We were waking up early the next morning to go on our bird watching expedition, so Saturday night we stayed at the hotel and sat out on the terrace with music and snacks from the souk. We could see all the stars perfectly without the distraction of city lights and the fishing boats in the cove below were barely distinguishable silhouettes. Definitely one of those moments that you wish you could capture on camera, but you know it just wouldn’t turn out. The next morning was just as photogenic but a little more camera-friendly. We got up in time to see the sunrise, down some coffee, and head down to the fishing cove to meet up with our guide, Khalib (I can almost see Alexis cringing at the sound of this early morning adventure). We then took a three-hour tour around the river, where we saw our fair share of birds and got to climb up a huge sand dune then run down it. I was so excited to see birds like egrets, spoonbills, and flamingos that when I saw a seagull, I turned to the guide and asked him in broken Arabic “Ooh that one’s pretty! What is it??” He looked at me like I was stupid and said “seagull.” I kept my mouth shut for the remainder of the tour.
We had a little beach Frisbee session that afternoon, and then headed to Souk al-Arbaa in time to catch the train back to Rabat. After returning to the craziness of the city and the stress of schoolwork, I’m already planning my next trip back there. We met so many random people there and got so many couscous invitations (spastic waiter, toothless “taxi” driver, local students on the beach), that I think it’ll be impossible not to return.
We went to Casablanca on Wednesday and I have no desire to go back there anytime soon. The big tourist attraction there (besides Rick's Café) is the Hassan II Mosque, but I was thoroughly unimpressed. Sure it's nice and big and pretty looking, but when only 52% of your population is literate, you think you'd spend that $850 million on something like education or something. Just an idea. Overall, I was unimpressed and wouldn't encourage anyone to go visit unless they had a great desire to see a European city with even less government accountability than usual. I could go on with this for awhile, so I think I'll stop now.
By the way, I’ve gotten several emails about people not being able to comment on the posts. I have no idea what’s wrong with it, but until it’s fixed (itself), just write me an email if you want to tell me something: my normal email dagos101 at mail dot chapman dot edu (but replace the at and dot)
Also, I'm leaving tomorrow for Southern Excursion, which includes dunes, camels, beaches, walnuts, and good food. I'll try and update the blog if I get to a computer at all, but you'll most likely hear from me sometime after the 6th of March when I return. B'slamaa!