Family Trip to Oukaimeden

Last weekend the whole family took a day trip to Oukaimden.

The car ride took about an hour. It was relatively uneventful except for watching Karim rock out to Sara's I-pod.

This was Karim's face when he realized I was taking pictures of his car dancing.

But, he didn't let it faze him, and he went back to enjoying the music.

At one point during the ride, Loubna, Sara, and I were all listening to our I-pods. We switched earphones so that I was listening to one of mine and one of Loubna's. Loubna was listening to one of hers and one of Sara's. Sara was listening to one of hers and one of mine. It is kind of trippy to listen to different songs at the same time. We thought it was pretty funny and laughed a lot. Pretty much your basic family road trip (minus the fighting and frequent threats to "turn this car around and go back home").

According to my Lonely Planet book, Oukaimden is home to Africa's highest ski lift. That's right, you can ski in Morocco. Due to an extremely unfortunate incident trying to ski in Girdwood a couple of years ago, I didn't really feel like trying my hand (feet?) at African downhill skiing, but Loubna and I rode up the ski lift anyway.

This is Brahim watching us go up. He was hollering at Loubna to put her hat on (dads are the same the world over).

This is Loubna not wearing her hat (daughters are also the same the world over).

This is me. I didn't have a hat, but I wore my hood most of the way up. I just took it off for the picture. (Hey Loubna! Thanks for taking the picture!)

The Oukaimden ski lift is substantially less scary than many other ski lifts because it has a bar that can be pulled down in front of you. Nice to have because Brahim made me promise not to let his daughter fall out of the lift chair. It also let us relax and enjoy the scenery.

This is what greeted us when we got to the top. It was gorgeous. Incidentally, it may have produced the most stunning picture I have ever taken.

I took a picture of Loubna in front of the gorgeousness, even though she didn't want me to.

Then she took a picture of me...

and another one....

and another one...

I used this opportunity to act like my usual dramatic self and pose in front of the camera.

In order to establish a history of myself as the ultimate cheeseball and poser, I dug this old picture out. This picture was taken when I was about ten years old. It is a picture of my Grandma Slaughter with many (but not all) of her grandchildren. Our family had just experienced a baby burst (thanks in large part to my twin brothers). I am the oldest child in the picture.

Several interesting things are happening in this picture. Mandy is wearing tie-dyed stretch pants (Hey Mandy! Was it the nineties or something?). The baby on my lap is screaming. The next baby is throwing up. Joe (the baby in the middle) is about to fall off of Grandma's lap and is probably beginning to cry or at least grunt loudly. Baby Tom loooks like he either died or fell asleep.

As you can tell from the photo, I am oblivious to ALL OF THIS. I am posing and smiling for the camera despite the screaming, vomit, and babies in potentially dangerous situations. It's a talent I've had all my life. So, when you think about mocking me for my fake smiles and poses, consider that there is a lot of history to this behavior, and it's not something I'm going to be able to kick overnight. Thank you.

The ride down offered similarly stunning views.

It was about at this point in the ride that Loubna said, "Pleeeeeaaaaaaase stop taking pictures." So I did. For a few minutes.

We returned safely to the ground to find Brahim and Karim enjoying a donkey ride.

We also got to walk past these cute little mud houses by a creek on a hill!

I convinced the family to stand together for a picture. Unfortunately, The snow in the back got totally overexposed. Oops. I would have taken another shot, but Brahim decided he had enough of picture taking. ~~Shrug~~

We stopped at a little outdoor restaurant and shared a tajine.

And headed home into a beautiful sunset..

that just kept getting better. (Hey Loubna and Sara! Thanks for letting me lay across you in the car to take this picture out of the car window!)

It was a perfect family trip.

The Badia Palace

This is the Badia Palace. Well, part of it. I don't have a lens wide enough to show you the whole thing at once, so you'll have to be satisfied with pieces.

The palace was built under the direction of Ahmed Al Mansour Ad-dahbi of the Saadien dynasty during the sixteenth century.

Apparently, it used to be pretty spectacular. The walls were covered in marble, and the courtyard was full of pools. Moulay Ismail had the marble removed to decorate his palace in Meknes during the seventeenth century. The pools are now filled with orange trees. (Brahim dared me to crawl down and get one of the oranges. I declined for the following reasons: I wasn't sure it was legal, and I wasn't sure I could climb back out of the pool/orange orchard.)

The palace had a prison, and part of it was open to visitors like us! (Again, I have no idea what the green spots are. I tried to remove them using Photoshop, but it was too tedious, so I gave up caring. It happens.)

The creepiest part of the prison is that it was underground. The only light (before they installed the tourist-friendly light bulbs) came in from grated holes in the ceiling. Definitely not a place I would want to spend any significant time.

The palace is currently home to storks. Lots of them.

I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I spent most of my time looking for opportunities to take pictures of these birds.

Carrie and I also tried to explain the legend of storks delivering babies. Turns out, it sounds pretty stupid when you try to explain it to grown men who have never before heard it...

I was dying for this bird to turn around and face me! I even switched lenses for her (him?). I stood underneath the nest for an embarrassingly long time before deciding that the stork hated me.

I like this stork picture because the stork is roosting on top of a minaret. A minaret is a mosque tower. The speaker you see near the bottom of the picture is used to call Muslims to prayer five times a day.

There! This may not have been exactly the shot I was waiting for, but it's one that made my time at the Badia Palace worthwhile.

Jardin Majorelle

Jardin Majorelle is in Marrakech. It's a beautiful garden. It's very quiet and serene. It was fun to wander around with my camera taking lame pictures.

Most of the plants in the garden were cacti.

Since I spent some of my formative years living in Las Vegas, I was prepared not to be impressed. Until I saw these babies. Can you tell that they look fuzzy? Has anybody ever seen fluffy cacti before? I hadn't. I was duly impressed. Two thumbs up.

Jardin Majorelle was also home to significant quantities of aloe plants. I thought about breaking a leaf (is that what they're called?) open, but I wasn't sure what the Moroccan legal policy was on aloe breakage. I'd hate to go to an African prison for the sake of satisfying a curious whim.

The garden also had colorful flowers.

Good thing I spent $900 on a macro lens so that I could get shots like this, huh Steve?

This was my favorite flower shot. I'm kind of a sucker for purple.

This, however, was my favorite shot of the day. Turtles! I heart turtles! They were so outrageously cute stretching their tiny necks that I couldn't resist taking a pictures. Despite my 105mm lens, this was as close as I could get (they were kind of far away).

Fun fact: people in Morocco (probably tourists) carve their names into stalks of bamboo. It never would have occurred to me to carve my initials (or Steve's) into a stalk of bamboo. I guess my love doesn't run as deep as Ronald's (or did Ronald just exhibit a healthy sense of self worth by carving his full name? I really can't tell).

As a bonus, I got this great shot of Brahim's brother Ahmed. This the person with whom I have spent hours walking through the streets of Marrakesh. Two thumbs up.

I Don't Like Dates

It's really too bad that I don't like dates.

Dates grow on palm trees. There are a lot of palm trees in Morocco.

Fresh dates are supposed to be the very best kind of dates.

There they are in gigantic clumps, and I can't care because I don't like them. Every once in a while I'll try another one just to be sure.

It's especially too bad that I don't like dates because Brahim loves them.

He loves them so much that he's willing to stop the car during road trips and climb trees to get them.

He passes the dates to his brother Ahmed. And the only enjoyment I get from the whole process is taking pictures.

I don't feel ripped off...

Public Bath Experience II

I shared my second hammam experience with Carrie and Khadija. This was the ideal combination of ladies to accompany to the hammam. Carrie had never been before, so I got to feel all experienced, wise, and "with it" as I explained to her what to do. But, Khadija was there to fall back on when I forgot the order of the steps or where exactly I was supposed to hang my towel.

The steps progressed pretty much like my first experience. I was kind of hoping that slightly less skin and dirt would peel off of my body the second time. It didn't happen. I guess it HAD been ten days since my last scrape down. That must have been enough time for the dead skin cells and dirt to accumulate.

Despite it being her initial hammam experience, Carrie noticed something that had previously escaped my attention: the walls of the hammam are heated. Hammams are powered by large fires. The fires heat large quantities of water, and the water runs through the walls, making them warm to the touch. Hmmmmmppphhhh.