Shanti Free Bird: MOROCCO: MY FIRST TIME IN AFRICA

Last year, exactly this same time, me and Bruno were backpacking and hitch hiking in Morocco for 5 weeks. This is our almost neighbor country and we didn’t have the chance to visit? That’s it, let’s go in the beggining of 2014, our first travel of the year.

The cool part of Morocco is that you can go by boat so we didn’t have an exact date. We decided to leave 2 days before, it was weird. Basically we packed a mini backpack, our friends drove us to Faro for a drink at night. We partied until 6am and left to Spain by bus to then get a ride from a ride sharing website to Algiras port. We arrived Morocco late afternoon, a completly different continent, actually my first time touching Africa.

I compare a bit Morocco and India because both are super rich in culture and landscape diversity. In both countries you gotta bargain hard, even for your bread. They just have completly different religions but generally indians and moroccans are friendly and hospitable. I think that Morocco is the country I posted more about, I felt inspired all the time and took the time to write while travelling. It was also the trip I felt I was done with backpacking for months.

Since I have tons of tons of pictures I didn’t share with you guys I decided to post them today and bring memories back of the wonderful time I spent there.

I wonder why I didn’t dedicate one entire post about Fez, my favorite Moroccan City. The old medina is incredible, all the handmade products were nicely made with all kinds of materials: lether, metal, wood… And I had a feeling of local because you could also find the shoe repair shop, the wedding clothing shop, underwear and socks shop. Marrakech and Tangier medinas were also fascinating but extremely built for tourists which takes the real essence.

Although Fez is super big (divided in 3 parts) with more then one million inhabitants, you can walk out of the mess and busy life and find peace in the green mountains that surround the city. In the second picture you can find the lether tanning. The smell is disgusting due to the dead skin of the animals but worth a visit.

Assilah near Tangier

From Tangier you can see Spain. It’s a mix of Morocco and Europe, you don’t really get the moroccan culture here. Mostly of the locals speak spanish!

Click here for more Sahara Desert Photography.

In case you are wondering, the picture above was taken in Ourika Valley. While was raining a moroccan invited us for a tea in his small shop and dressed me as a berbier and Bruno as a rastaman. Haha fun times!

Essaouira is a chilled place with a nice (windy) beach. It’s the musicians town :)

Moroccan Riads are my dream house.

We found snails in Rabat! Nooo is not gross, we also eat snails in Portugal (our recipe is best in the World hehe)

We stayed with a couchsurfer in Marrakech Medina. Look at this narrow streets! During the day the medina was full of life and during the night all stores were close and there was a silence that freaked me out.