November 26-

On this trip, our final destination was the Sahara Desert.  We departed early in the morning from Rabat to Erfoud.  Erfoud is an oasis town in the Sahara Desert.  This town is called “The Gate to the Sahara”.  Erfoud is called this since it is close to the Erg Chebbi Dunes.  This was about a 10-hour trip so we had several rest stops along the way.  On the trip, I was able to see the Moroccan countryside and observe the living conditions here compared to in the cities.  I was honestly surprised that much of the countryside was very rundown compared to the cities.  On this part of the trip, we were scheduled to stop at the Ziz Valley to admire the view; however we were not able to stop because it was dark, so we put it off to our return trip.  When we arrived at the hotel in Erfoud, it was around 9 at night.  So we ate dinner and relaxed in the hotel and got ready for the rest of the trip tomorrow.

November 27-

We departed from the hotel in Erfoud early in the morning and began heading to Rissani, a town close to Erfoud.  Once we arrived in Rissani, we parked in front of mausoleum and got out of the buses we took there (the buses would meet us at our hotel later on since our bags were still onboard).  We then got in a group of jeeps that were waiting there and departed for Khamlia.  Khamlia is a small village that is close to Erg Chebbi.  Here we listened to Gnaoua music preformed by some of the villagers.  Gnaoua music is an ancient traditional African Islamic religious songs and rhythms.  This music is very popular in Morocco especially (and I enjoy it greatly as well).  After, we took the jeeps to the hotel, Hotel Timbukto and had lunch and rested.  In the late afternoon, we went on a camel ride.  I think that the camel ride was the highlight of my trip by far.  We rode the camels with our guides to a very tall dune.  Once there, we walked up the dune to peer out into the horizon and see the sunset.  It was absolutely beautiful.  On one side, you could the hotel and small villages, and on the other side, it was just miles and miles of nothing but sand.  After the sunset, we rode the camels back to the hotel and rested for the trip back to Rabat in the morning.

November 28-

We departed the hotel early in the morning in the jeeps to take us back to the mausoleum to rejoin the buses.  The trip back to Rabat was about 10-hours, however it stretched to be a little more.  One of the more memorable stops that we had was in Azrou.  The stop in Azrou was near a forest that is a large tourist attraction, to see wild Macaques in the forest.  I saved my banana from lunch to give to the monkeys.  After we stopped to see the Itto Valley and then the Ziz Valley.  They were both respectively beautiful.  Unfortunately, we were not able to admire them for long, since we were on a tighter schedule to get back to Rabat.  We then arrived back in Rabat around 9:30 at night.

I looked forward to this trip the entire semester and it did not disappoint at all.  By far, this was the best trip that I went on.  It was a great cultural and learning experience.

November 11-

The trip to Granada and Cordoba surpassed my expectations.  When we took the ferry from Tangier to Spain, we passed by the Rock of Gibraltar, which is actually owned by the British.  Unfortunately, we did not go there this trip.  After the ferry docked in Spain, we headed by bus to Granada to check into the hotel.  There was nothing planned for that night, just to relax since we traveled for the entire day.  The next morning after eating breakfast, we traveled for a day trip to Medinat Al-Zahra and Cordoba.  Our first stop was Medinat Al-Zahra.  Medinat Al-Zahra was an Arab Muslim medieval town and the de-facto capital of al-Andalus, or Muslim Spain.  It was the heart of the administration and government at the time.  According to the guide, this city took forty years to build.  After touring the ancient city, we headed to Cordoba, Spain.  This region of Cordoba was conquered by the invading Islamic armies in the 8^th century.  While in Cordoba we visited a mosque that had been transformed to a cathedral after the Catholics and defeated the Muslims.  This mosque/cathedral is known as the Great Mosque of Cordoba, or the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption.  It was originally a Catholic church, but when the invading Muslim forces conquered southern Spain in 711, the church was split into Christian and Muslim sections.  It was like this until 784 when the Christian part was removed; but once the Catholics took over southern Spain again, the remaining Great Mosque was converted into a Catholic church.

The next day we went to Alhambra, which is in Granada.  Alhambra is a palace and fortress complex.  It was originally constructed as a small fortress in the year 889 and then was of little use until it was refurbished and rebuilt around the 13^th century by the Moorish emir, Mohammed ben Al-Ahman of the Emirate of Granada.  Then Yusuf I, the Sultan of Granada, transformed this into a royal palace in 1333.

I was indeed surprised of how much of an impact Islam and the culture had in southern Spain since it was a part of Islamic empires.  As I mentioned in my previous blog post, there are noticeable European influences in Morocco, but Islam influence in Europe are rarely brought up.  Observing southern Spain certainly showed how much of an impact the Islamic culture had on the region as a whole.