Extraordinary Adventure 2018 Day 8: Flying High
The alarm went off at 5 AM this morning. And I'll be honest I thought to myself for a good few minutes, why am I getting up so early on vacation? I looked outside on our patio and could see nothing but black. But thirty minutes later Jenn and I dragged ourselves to the lobby to our first of two excursions for the day. First up was a hot air balloon ride.
We met our driver at 5:30 AM in the lobby of our hotel. With him were two other couples and we then made the journey about 45-minutes into the desert of Morocco. When we arrived we were met by two other vans of people and brought into an old Berber style tent where we had coffee and tea while we waited for the sun to rise and the team to prepare the hot air balloon. It was a really beautiful setup and helped give us a nice place to rest while we waited.
A little before 7 AM we were told to gather towards the basket and within a few minutes, we were up and away. The entire ride was beautiful. We have had such amazing weather here in Marrakech, and this morning did not disappoint. We spent about twenty minutes in total flying over the desert of Marrakech. It was all quite stunning. For the first five minutes, I will say both our legs were a little wobbly at the idea of being a 1,000 meters above ground with nothing but a balloon and a basket. Luckily we landed safely right on top of a trailer dragged by a Land Rover.
Once back safely on the ground, we waited for a few minutes for our drivers to come pick us up and take us back to the tent where we started. There we were served what we were told to be a very traditional Berber breakfast of various bread, olives, fruits, and hard-boiled eggs. It was a lovely light breakfast that we enjoyed although we were so tired at this point that neither Jenn or I ate that much. We left about a half hour later to our cars and began driving back to Marrakech.
On the way back we stopped at a sight for a camel ride. Jenn and I have now ridden camels in Egypt and Dubai and now we've made it a trifecta in Morocco. The ride on the camel this go around was really nice. The weather continued to be quite mild (in the low 70's) so it made the fifteen-minute ride around the park quite nice. Once we had gotten our fill of the camel we jumped off, back into our ride, where we were dropped back off at the Four Seasons a half hour later.
When we arrived back at the Four Seasons we caught the last half hour of our included breakfast. We grabbed a light bite of breakfast and went back to our hotel room to take a recovery nap. We spent the rest of the morning and afternoon at the pool where we lounged in perfect relaxation for most of the day. It wasn't until about 4 PM that we left the pool to get ready for our second tour of the day, a street food tour through the giant marketplace here in Marrakech.
We left our hotel at 5:30 PM and barely made it to our food tour at 6 PM after a fun mix up with our taxi. The meeting spot for the food tour was at a post office, our hotel assumed we wanted to go to the new area of Marrakech so our taxi driver tried to drop us off there, luckily he knew enough English that we were able to work out the confusion and we made it to the tour right on time. There we met up with a married couple with a two-year-old from Holland and a mother and daughter from Florida and our tour guide. After brief introductions, we were on our way.
The first stop was right inside the marketplace. We went up to the second floor of a small restaurant where we were given tea and bread while we waited for the main course. The main course here was beef cooked in a clay pot that was heated for 4+ hours. We had to eat it the old-fashion way, with the bread and our hands. I have to say that it was far and away one of the best things I've ever eaten on a food tour. Both Jenn and I ate so much we were worried we wouldn't have room for the remaining ten stops.
Next up was an olive stand (there everywhere in Marrakech) where we tried five different olives and a pepper. After that, we stopped at a soup stand that was just a man with a large container of soup. Luckily the simple tomato-based soup was delicious. From there we stopped at another stand where we were given some ground up liver with some hot sauce put into a small piece of bread. Although our first stop was amazing, this one was my personal favorite. I could easily see eating this once a week.
One of the oddities of the tour was the next stop. In the middle of the tour we had our first of two desserts, we stopped at a man who was cooking fresh donuts over a huge pot of oil in the middle of a street. We got the plain donuts right as they came out of the oil and once they had finally cooled down dipped them into a Moroccan honey. They were genuinely divine.
At this point, both Jenn and I were stuffed. Luckily for us the tour was smart enough to realize everyone was going to need a break so we walked for almost an hour through the market learning more about the life of the store owners and the history of the market. When we finally emerged after rows upon rows of small storefronts we made it to a stand that sold escargot. There we each had as many as we wanted. They weren't the standard french approach you might get in a restaurant but I still enjoyed them quite a bit.
After we were done eating snails we continued back into the market to a small family run restaurant run by a mother and daughter that specialize in couscous. There we were given more Moroccan tea, two huge plates of couscous to split amongst ourselves and some pomegranate to close out the meal. The couscous was delightful, but the star was the beautiful array of vegetables that paired so nicely with the couscous. We spent about a half hour at the restaurant before departing to our last stop of the day.
After a nice ten minute walk, we made our way to a bakery/smoothie store where we all had a banana mango smoothie and were each given a box of baked goods to take with us. We shared some final stories and conversations with the rest of the group and then began walking to the taxi area. Before we did Jenn did something that completely melted my heart. She won't appreciate that I tell this story, but I will anyways because its a moment I will never forget. As we were getting up to leave the bakery she asked me for the baked goods and walked over to a mom with her two kids who were begging on the street. She gave them our baked goods and the kids eyes lit up and there dug right in. I had no idea she was going to do that and it completely melted my heart. Her love and kindness are some of the things I love most about her.
When we departed from the rest of the group we made our way to the line of taxis where we grabbed the first one. One of the scary things about Marrakech is they aren't metered taxis so you have to negotiate when you get in. We lucked out and got a tour and a cheap ride back to our hotel. We got back with our bellies full, our hearts hopeful, and our eyes set on another great day in Marrakech tomorrow.
