Thursday, August 20, 2009

Afreeka, Afrique!



This morning, we got our round-trip tickets to Casablanca. (Wow. It sounds cool just to say that!) I’m taking a month off work. This will be the first time in years that I’ll have had that much time off at once. At the same time, we’ll be so busy traveling that it will probably go by so fast!

Tentative itinerary: Head straight out of Casablanca to Rabat. Head to Tangier. Go wine tasting in Meknes. Fez. The Great dunes at Mirzouga. Marrakesh, Essaouira, Casablanca. Over all, spend about two weeks in Morocco. Fly to Dakar, Senegal. Spend a week on the beach, catch some live shows (perhaps even Orchestra Baobab). Take the train to Bamako, Mali. Go looking for Selif Keita and Tinariwen. Hopefully succeed. Fly to Timbuktu. Join a tour group to head out into the Sahara for the Festival in the Desert. Hopefully see Amadou and Mariam, Selif Keita, Tinariwen, Orchestra Baobab, tons of others. Bus/Drive back to Timbuktu. Fly to Casablanca. Spend a night or two. Fly to Madrid for a night. Be on our way back to San Francisco.

In between, will probably be lots of photography, making friends with locals, love, some nice hotels, some hostels, some camping, photography, some shopping for Moroccan rugs and tea glasses and lanterns and wine and just about anything else we can bring or ship back to the US, love, photography, photography, photography, bettering my Arabic skills, shopping, picking up bits and pieces of French, eating, photography, lying in sand dunes at night watching the stars, listening to awesome music, not wanting to return to the US, not wanting to return to work, not being able to wait to get back home asap, missing tofu, photography, making friends with other travelers, heat exhaustion, a fight or two with Chris, mad sex, photography, starvation, dehydration, camel rides, suntans, sunburns, forgetting things in hotels and not realizing until the next day or next week, awesome music, sand, sand, sand, love, photography, running out of places to charge my camera battery, eating yummy vegetarian tagine and couscous and hummus and olives, bad wine, good wine, being forced to drink funny-looking water, running out of toilet paper, having to pee in the sand, photography, debauchery in Madrid, hangovers, shopping for Spanish wine, running around trying to figure out ways to bring the wine back to the US, and coming back very tired, very dark, very gaunt, and very, very poor.

The trip of a lifetime!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Morocco is pretty much my favorite place anywhere. I went on vacation there about 6 years ago and I have been dreaming of going back. Marrakesh is by far my favorite city. A lot of these places in North Africa have that same feeling. Tunisia is also amazing. I'd love to learn Arabic although I got around just fine with my French and Spanish. That totally sounds like a trip of a lifetime.

Twinkie said...

Oh how I envy thee!