Morocco - Sellers Girls Explore

Our time in Morocco is one of the first official “tours” we have done on this entire trip. The company is amazing - the places we have stayed are very unique and wonderful - but after traveling for so long and so quickly - this pace is a bit grueling and we’re tired.

Our guide said that some people will do a similar trip in 3 weeks to a month. We are doing this in a 10 day trip…did I know this beforehand? No of course not - my planning of things has had to be more basic and hasty. Without that we wouldn’t have made it out our front door last December. Given our quite expedited schedule, I’m getting a lot of sighs from the kiddos. Our conversations go about like this:

Kid 1: how long are we driving today?
Me: I don’t know - as long as i takes. Just go with it.
Guide: about 8 hours.
Kid 1 and 2: muffled complaints and sighs from back seat.
Me (inside my brain): well (bleep bleep) …that’s longer than I thought. oh well at least I get to look out the window and relax!
Kid 1: ok I guess I’ll go to sleep…lays head down and falls asleep immediately in back seat.
Kid 2: will there be wifi? I still don’t understand why I have full bars and the wifi doesn’t work.
Me: cause we’re in the middle of the Sahara.
Kid 2: but I have full bars
Me: desert - Morocco - lots of sand dunes - bad wifi. Just look out the window! It’s beautiful!
Kid 2: UGH and lays head against window begrudgingly…

8 hours later
Kid 1: wakes up and says “oh that wasn’t so bad”
Kid 2: yah not so bad - it’s pretty here - can I call my friends once we get to the riad? I hope the wifi works!

🙂

Anyhow we spent two days in the Sahara - in a camp that we accessed over sand dunes by camel and then stayed at a Berber camp. We then went quad biking in the dunes (probably one of my favorite activities of this entire trip - which I was very surprised by). Maddie and I rode individual quad bikes and katie hopped on back with a guide. We felt alone out in the dunes and I got to watch Maddie sprout her wings as she rode up and along high dunes in the sunset. I then got to ride on the back of her quad bike with her driving which made me flash forward a few years to thinking about her driving. She did a great job!!

Then we spent time in Fes, a large city with meandering pathways only understood by someone that is from the city. It’s very easy to get lost and some of the pathways were so skinny we almost had to tuck our arms in to get through!

My favorite city other than Marrakech was Chefchaoun, a small city nestled in the mountains, with predominantly blue colored buildings here in the north. We spent the afternoon “getting lost” in various narrow walkways through town and amazingly ended up coming out at an ice cream shop. Delicious. Then while the kids stayed happily in our room, I got a traditional hammam, a cleansing of the skin in a steam room. The woman was amazing, scrubbed so much horribly dead skin off and sang in Arabic. It sounds cheesy but it was this beautiful connection and while I was having my body cleansed, I feel a bit of my soul was as well.

While we’re happy to move on to Venice today - all day travels once again - and will be happy to explore on our own rather than on a tour I’ll miss some things:

- tagine
- the hammam (I’m not great at taking care of myself but loved this)
-being so surprised by the varying landscape - some of the country felt like wine country - some like Virginia - other like you would expect sand dunes.
- the beautiful mosaics on every wall/building/mosque
-prayers over the loud speakers
- pathways where each time, you don’t know what you’ll experience around the next turn
-watching the girls yell out “another kitty” around just about every corner in every town. Their love for animals is special.

So we are leaving the continent of Africa now after 4 weeks…we have experienced so much here…but I’m ready to wander along canals with the girls.

We’ve been FaceTiming Brian multiple times a day and while he’s missed so much, we are so happy he’s back home with our pups - and we’re just about ready to be back too!

We’ll write more soon! ❤️もっと詳しく