A Beautiful Misadventure

I was determined to ride a camel this semester. Many people can say they have been to France and saw the Eiffel Tower, or went to London and saw the Big Ben, because those are always top tourist destinations, but not many people can say that they rode a camel in Africa so, I booked a trip to Morocco.

The best way to describe my trip to Morocco was a beautiful misadventure but I will get into that later on.

I couldn’t help myself- I started googling camel facts immediately. I found that there is a “camel controversy” of whether or not the camels in Morocco are considered to be camels. When we think of a camel, we think of the animal with the two humps. In Morocco, that is not the case. In Morocco, they have dromedaries, which are part of the camel family but are said to be non-traditional because they only have one hump. Some more interesting information that I came across was that these animals are very gentle creatures that are highly intelligent and patient. Dromedaries are also rarely found in the wild and most of them have owners.

Now that I was slightly educated on the camel situation in Morocco, I was ready to depart for my weekend, or at least I thought I was.

My roommates and I booked our flights to and from Morocco on our own but paid a travel company for our transportation between two towns: Marrakech and Essaouira and for our hostel and hotel accommodations. When we arrived in Morocco, we walked outside the airport to see a man holding our names on a sign. I felt very important at this moment. He drove us to our hostel where we met Abdula who was the guy running the hostel. Upon check in, he gave us mint tea and told us to relax in the lobby seating areas while he looked up our reservations. He saw that we had reserved a room but said that we hadn’t paid yet. We told him that we booked through a company and that the company paid and booked us a room to stay in at that hostel. He seemed unsure, but said okay and brushed it off.

The next morning someone met us in the lobby of our hostel to take us to Essaouira. It was weird because we were told that we were going to have the same tour guide with us the entire trip. This was a lie because we met a different person everyday and we never went on a tour. We didn’t let it ruin our time and tried our best to figure everything out on our own. It was a 3.5-4 hour drive from Marrakech to Essaouira. We were jam packed into a white minivan that fit about 15 people.

As soon as we arrived and stepped off the bus in Essaouira, I was greeted by Habib. Habib worked for a company that sold camel rides, atv rides and horse rides on the beach. He pulled out a card that had pictures of camels on it with prices and asked if my roommates and I were interested in riding a camel. I was ecstatic because this was what I came here to do. No other activities mattered to me as long as I was able to ride a camel. I continued to talk to him about pricing which was a little difficult because he spoke little to no english and I spoke no arabic whatsoever. The total came to 4500dh which, when converted into euro, is €45. I thought this was a good deal because each of us paid €15 for an hour long camel ride. We put down a deposit for our camel ride and planned to meet back on the beach at 3pm.

During the time we had before our scheduled camel ride, we visited the market and did some shopping. The market was packed with many people buying and selling goods. Everywhere you looked there were colorful rugs, coats, scarfs, argan oil, pottery and jewelry. I found it interesting that there were not a lot of stands selling typical tourist items like keychains, magnets and shot glasses. I purchased a scarf and some pants-which happened to be bright red with a blue floral pattern, that I could wear on my camel ride. It was very windy out and we were right next to the water so I wanted to be warm. Once 3pm hit, we met Habib back on the beach. We gave him the rest of the money and he walked us to the end of the beach where we saw many horses and camels. He walked to an area where there were 3 camels laying in the sand. He introduced us each to the camel that we would be riding as well as a man who would be guiding the camels. My camel’s name was Zida. He was the lightest color out of all three of the camels.

Now for the fun part: the actual camel ride.
The camels start off my laying on the ground, or in this case, in the sand. I sat on top of the camel while they were still on the ground. I was instructed to lean back as the camel started to stand up. Having the camel stand up was the scariest part of the whole ride. Zida first stood up with his back legs and then his front legs. Since they stand up this way, you feel as though you are going to fall forward and completely fall off of the camel.

Riding a camel is not comfortable by any means but you learn to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. We were guided down the beach by a man who often stopped to take pictures of us (which actually turned out really well). The camel ride was everything that I had imagined it to be and one of the most beautiful experiences. It was honestly indescribable but if I had to try and put it into words, I would describe it as the type of moment where you reflect on your life and how you got to this very moment. I felt very thankful that I was in Africa, with my friends, riding a camel, on the beach, overlooking people in the water kitesurfing. What could be better?

After the camel ride was over, I was in the best mood. I had officially completed my goal of riding a camel and I definitely got what I wanted out of the adventure. By the time the camel ride was over, it was around 4pm so we decided to do a little more shopping, grab some dinner and go to sleep early because were exhausted.

The next day we hung out in our hotel for a while and then ended up going back to the market to do some more shopping. On the itinerary given to us by the travel company, we were told to meet our driver at 4pm by the beach where we were initially dropped off and then he would take us back to Marrakech. We got to the beach early to look for our driver and didn’t see him. It was extremely difficult to look for him because all of the minivans look the exact same. They are plain white with no distinct details. It was also hard to remember what our driver looked like because we had only seen him that one time. We continued to wait and search for him but he never showed up. We began to panic because we knew that we couldn’t pay for a taxi to drive us four hours away and we didn’t know of any other means of transportation in Morocco. We tried not to freak ourselves out but honestly, deep down we were losing our minds. We called our hostel to see if they could give us any advice but just our luck, nobody answered the phone. Since that didn’t work, we started to approach every white minivan that pulled up. We asked each of the drivers where they were headed and if they had room for all three of us to fit in. We were turned down by many drivers but thankfully, one guy said we could join his van. We had technically already paid for this transportation back to Marrakech but the guy knew nothing about it and made us pay him. At this point, I was willing to pay any amount to get us back to the town we needed to be in. He charged us each 50dh which is only €5. That is an incredible deal for a four hour drive.

Once we got back to Marrakech, it was night time and very dark outside. We went back to our hostel (which was the same as the first night we stayed) and since we had to be at the airport the next morning by 7am, we went right to sleep. When the morning came around, we woke up, grabbed our backs and went outside to find a taxi. Luckily, we had no problem finding one. They took us directly to the airport where we waited for our flight. Our flight had a slight delay but all in all, went very smoothly. After we got back into Italy, we received a text message from the guy who ran the hostel that we stayed at. He said that we left without paying and that we needed to pay since the tour company never paid them. So basically, the “tour” that we booked was all a scam.

Aside from all of the drama and misfortune that we endured, my goal of riding a camel was accomplished and that’s all that mattered.

I also created a YouTube video about my Moroccan adventure so if you are interested in watching that, here is the link: https://youtu.be/bglXkJ9tkfc