Marrakesh, Morocco

First day: Drive to Charlotte, 2 hour flight to JFK, 5 hour layover, 2 $11 beers, a $10 pizza, and a $4 hotdog. Then a 8 hour flight to Casablanca, where we met our first scam of the trip trying to get a taxi to the train station....lets just say we overpaid. This was followed by a 4 hour train to Marrakech, where we stood for 2 hours of it, in about 99 degree hallway.




Anyway we made it. We upgraded to the hotel with AC after that. Its a nice cheap place, with a cute little courtyard pictured above. The staff is friendly but speaks limited English like most people around.

The next day, we woke up and had a great breakfast at the hotel with the best orange juice either of us have ever had. We walked over to the medina to see the market square with all the food stalls, snake charmers, etc. This is where we learned our second scam, the guy above tried to ask for money after he put the snake on us and let us take pictures. When we gave him some coins he said that was "no good" and wanted paper money. Ben told him he could take our 6 DHR or walk away with nothing. He got nothing. Then we had some mint tea overlooking the square before walking through the souqs (market) where we made little eye contact since we knew we were not going to buy anything.

Donkey Cart and Market

Dried fruit/ spices


Compared to the price of food at JFK, it has been a little cheaper. $1 is around 9 Dirham the Moroccan currency.






Lunch: two bananas from the Market, and two ham sandwiches from a pastry shop around the corner from our hotel = 29 Dirham or about $3.

Dinner: a vegie pizza (twice the size of the one at JFK)

and a tuna melt with fries, and a huge water= $92 Dirham or about $10

We figured we would pay a little homage to Vincent Vega, and get a Royal with cheese today, thats a quarter pounder (metric system) for those who are not pulp fiction fans. Unfortunately Mcdonalds prices are about the same here...go figure.

This took a very long time to post, since the keyboard is not an English one. We are headed on a 7 day hike in the Atlas Mountains, to the highest peak in North Africa tommorow, so there probably wont be another update for a bit. You shoot us an email at benandkristingo at Yahoo.com