Ethan Rivest

Today was a surreal experience. We left our hotel at 8 am. Our first stop was an oasis and a gorge. It's pretty much the only green I've seen in Morocco so far, so it was really cool. There was a river that ran through here and something like 30 villages share and help each other with farming in this one oasis. They dig irrigation ditches for the water to flow to their crops. When they have enough water, they just block off the stream they made with dirt and rocks. We walked along the banks of the oasis in the shade, which was much needed. It was only 10, but it was already a heater. The tour guide took us into a so we could enter somebody's home and learn about how rugs are made. We learned that women will sit and work on these rugs for 4 hours a day for months at a time. They are hand woven with crazy detail. My favorite rug took 6 months to make and full of symbolism about her life. It has her Berber tribes symbols on it as well as mountains, obviously meaning her tribe is from the mountains. I'm sure there's more symbolism I don't understand in the rugs, but those are the two I remember. While we were being taught about these rugs and watching a demonstration of how they were made, we were brought tea to enjoy. They call it Moroccon whiskey. It's really good with a bit of sugar in it. These people were so hospitable while we were there. It was really cool to see how welcoming they were. They laid out about 30 different rugs, all made of different materials. Sheep wool, camel hair, cactus silk, and more. Basically, whatever they had and could use, they had a rug for it. They kept flapping the rugs in this tiny room, and I felt like I was having allergies to something. My nose was leaking, and my eyes were so itchy. Up to this point, it was a really cool experience. They had the opportunity to try and sell us a rug just like everywhere we've been so far. It's their livelyhood. It started getting awkward at this point, though, because everyone on our guided tour is either young and backpacking with nowhere to put a rug, broke, or just not interested. I'm all 3. They made us watch as they started folding all the rugs up and told us to put one aside when we saw one we liked. It was 15 minutes of absolute silence. I felt bad because of the looks on their faces, but I just kept telling myself it's part of their bit. Make the tourists feel bad and they'll buy something. Even after all the rugs were folded up, the guy thanked us for coming into his home and said, "I keep smiling, no problem." Pearse and I ran out as fast as we could before the hard sell could start back up, plus I was actually dying from whatever was making me itchy. Some of the guys were inside for almost 10 more minutes because they got targeted. Other than the little bit of awkwardness, I thought it was a really cool experience. We were just in a berber families house, made of clay, learning about these insanely complex rugs. After everyone was out, the tour guide walked us through the village and back to the oasis. While still in the village, 2 little kids, maybe 8 years old, came running up to me, begging me for money. I said no, sorry, nicely. Like how I would talk to a kid anywhere. These kids were trained, though. They knew what they were doing. I had to talk to them like an adult and give them the silent treatment like I do 55 year old street vendors. It was a shitty feeling because they're children, but I know that's how they get you. It was still just a weird feeling. When we finally got back to the oasis, we got some awesome pictures with the surrounding gorge. Lucky for us, we got to walk through the gorge. The gorge is very famous for its rock climbing. For weeks, I've been telling Pearse that when I go home, I want to try a rock gym, and seeing these people climb here made me want to even more. How cool would it be to scale up a straight vertical wall? After spending a bit of time in the gorge, we all packed into our tiny bus to go for lunch before we hit the Sahara desert. My lunch was not bad it was roasted chicken, soupy rice, and vegetables. The rice was nasty, and I hate zucchini. I wanted the tagine with an egg, but I've had it 3 times since I been here already, so I wanted to change it up. I think it was a mistake. After a quick lunch stop, we drove a little longer to get to a store where we could buy our get-up. I swear I've never had more fun shopping in my life. When we came out of the store with the head dresses on and covered from the sun, I immediately knew next years Halloween costume. What could go wrong. Pearse and I looked like true locals. We were finally ready for the desert. We still had a ways to go, but I was so excited that the rest of the drive flew by. When I saw the first sand dune is when it began to not even feel real. We got out of the van and into the 32-degree mid day weather in our traditional berber outfit and onto a camel. I had to call mom and dad to just show them, which is crazy I had bars in the desert. We've done some cool shit on this trip, but it'll take a very long time for me to do something this cool again. I had to share it with them. We walked for an hour on the camels, which was more than enough for most of the fellas, I think. These harnesses were so uncomfortable to sit on I couldn't imagine doing any longer on them. We got to the tent where they gave us welcome tea in 35-degree weather. We got sorted into our tents and immediately went sand boarding. It was fun when you got going, but getting back up, the dune was terrible lol. Everyone did a couple of runs and gave up on that noise. Pearse and I went on a walk to explore the dunes where we made more of our classic videos of us acting like idiots. It was actually a lot of fun making them. I was doing flips in the sand. We were jumping off the dunes and doing summersaults down. To sum it up, just being children. We sat down to watch the sunset with a couple of people from the tour and then went for dinner. After dinner, there was a fire and a drum circle, which was cool, but a way cooler alternative was to lay in the pitch black on a sand dune watching the stars. Kinda creepy knowing there's weird fucking critters out there that could kill us lol. I wasn't worried it was just a thought. We just laid there and talked for a couple of hours listening to the drums in the distance. I don't know if there was supposed to be a meteor shower, but we saw 4 massive meteors. It's easily the biggest I've ever seen. They were flying right over us, bright orange from fire. They were so unreal. For me, today was the best day of the trip and the most fun I've had in recent memory. I'm so happy, dad told me to do this, and I'll remember this forever.Read more