Morocco Day 5

It was sad saying goodbye to the desert, but it was a beautiful farewell. I woke up bright and early to see that glorious sunrise, and then I immediately went back inside my tent because wow was it cold. The wind against my exposed calves was more than enough causation to change out of my pajamas. Once I was sufficiently bundled up and ready for the day I braved the cold morning yet again and I was glad I did because that sunrise was godly.

The sun steadily rose over mounds of dark orange and filled the world before me with light. As the wind carried sand across the dunes, I filled an empty water bottle full of desert earth in the light of dawn, and I cannot describe how I felt.

I took photographs of this beautiful morning, had a delightful breakfast, and packed into a car once again to return to civilization.

We piled into the bus and damn was it surreal. My time in the desert had already come and gone and now we were headed somewhere new. Bryan’s concluding statement on our time in the desert was an excellent summation. “It was both everything I wanted, and nothing I expected at the same time.”

We stopped in a town called Rissani where I bought family made jewelry, and decorative glass bottles to properly display my sand. There were beautiful gardens and not so beautiful bathrooms. I was faced with the second squat toilet I had come across since arriving in Morocco and no time for an alternative, so I took one of our group members advice, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

After some lunch and several long hours of bus travel through the dry Moroccan countryside, we arrived at our hotel in Ouarzazate. I was a bit concerned as we pulled up to the hotel because it was surrounded by half-demolished buildings and rubble. Definitely a strange neighborhood for a classy hotel, but once the building fully came into view everyone was impressed. The hotel was movie themed because Ouarzazate is a popular film site. The surrounding area had several novelty movie sets and large Hollywoodesque props. Inside the hotel were murals of famous actors scattered throughout the premises. I took a picture hugging Daenerys Targaryen's beautiful regal face. I am an avid Game of Thrones fan.

Kaitlyn and I scoured the halls of faces till we found our room, but getting in was much more challenging. The lock on those doors was the weirdest and most stubborn lock I've come across, and I have broken keys in locks before. It took at least three big turns either way and some brute force to pry that thing open, and it's not over when you get in. To lock your room you must repeat the process. This was only the beginning of my Ouarzazate troubles.

The hotel was lovely but dead boring. In past years, there was a group of students who had too much to drink and broke a fountain in Ouarzazate, it was at a different hotel, but the same city, and I now understand what drove them to drink with such abandon. Drinking is the only thing to do in Ouarzazate. So a few of us students sat down and shared a drink over a game of Uno, and luckily no fountains were harmed, but it did make things a little more stressful as we grappled with the rest of that chaotic evening.

After a long day of travel, a shower was sorely needed. This shower, however, had some interesting qualities. It had no curtain and the shower head holder was located on the wall facing the rest of the bathroom, but I wasn’t going to let that come between me and hygiene. I just fiddled with the showerhead till it directly hit the inside wall. Unfortunately, the result of my early trial and error shower antics paired with the absence of a shower curtain resulted in the makings of a small lake in our hotel bathroom, and then some. The puddles stretched out of the bathroom and beside Kaitlyn's bed, and no amount of towels would absorb them. I remember vividly Kaitlyn's reaction to the great lakes of room 131. I tried to warn her, but it was too late and she full-foot splashed into the flood on our floor. Our first instinct was to go to the front desk and ask for help. Their solution was a new room. This was surprising, but not unwelcome, so we packed our things and to the new room, we went.

An audible gasp escaped my lips as I entered the new room. Sitting before me on the queen sized bed was a small black and white cat, cozy on the comforter. Our arrival startled the stray, and it ran out the ajar patio door. The words 'there's a cat,' stumbled out as I stood agape in the entryway. Kaitlyn came forward and noted the open doors and the paw prints on our sheets with disdain. I tried closing the doors, but the handle came off. I just nervous-laughed in response.

After some deliberating between the two of us and Bryan (we woke him up to help with the door) we made a game plan, she would tell our trip leader and I would go back to the front desk to try and get someone to replace the sheets, since this was the only room available, but that isn't what happened. There was only one guy on duty, and he explained everyone else went home at eleven, and our professor didn't have a solution. So new game plan: the front desk worker helped us switch the sheets from our previous room with the cat room, and we slept at the foot of the bed. The front desk worker managed to jam the door shut after pulling off the handle once or twice, and from there we attempted to sleep. Usually, a cat cuddling in bed beside me is a joyous occasion, but these were unique circumstances. So our fifth day in Morocco began in a desert tent and concluded in an oversized cat-bed.