Day 22: Waterfalls, Food Stalls, and the Jad Mahal

Another 7:30 morning today after our 3 hours of sleep. The whole canyoning crew, Meredith, Ariel, Marissa, Elle, and I, managed to rouse themselves and make it to breakfast at 8:30. More delicious pancakes and OJ before we left to meet the canyoning van at the same part of the square where we met the ATV'ing van yesterday. There we met our guide, a Scotsman named Andy Robertson. Too funny! Soon after, we left for the Ourika Valley in the Atlas Mountains two hours away. There were two other guides in our car, one from South Africa and the other from the UK. They had such cool stories and told us all about what we would be doing today. Unfortunately, we were dropping them off so they could lead a whitewater rafting trip, but Andy and his girlfriend took us to the canyon. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous and we could see snow-covered peaks the whole time. We got to our destination just before noon and stopped at a small restaurant to put our wetsuits on. We all had blue or black wetsuits, yellow helmets, and borrowed trainers. My borrowed shoes were a size and a half too small, so, by the end of the adventure, my toes had poked through. 

From the drive out

We spent about two and a half hours canyoning. It's a relatively new adventure sport that combines mountaineering and hiking. The critically-acclaimed movie "127 Hours", about the man who gets trapped in a canyon and has to cut his own arm off, is about a canyoning expedition gone awry. You basically hike through a river, rappel down waterfalls and climb up small rock faces. It's all about getting from point A to point B and doing some really cool stuff in between. It was fun, jumping from rock to rock in the river and being in the outdoors for once. The water was pretty cold and it was in the 70's all day. We got really wet and everyone had a good time except for Marissa who couldn't stand the cold water. We rappelled down a 15 foot waterfall at the end and then, 10 seconds later, down a 35 ft waterfall! Because of the rain on Thursday, the river/creek was very full so we got huge facefuls of water as we rappelled. It was crazy fun though. Afterwards, we went back to the restaurant, changed and warmed up, and had some tea. I didn't take my camera on the trip because it's not water proof but Andy took a bunch of pictures that he is going to put up on his website for us. We returned to Marrakech at 4, had a warm and delicious KFC lunch, and met up with Joe and Tash. They had slept in and gone shopping all day. Joe is by far our best haggler so he got them some good deals (knocked a carpet down from 1800 dh to 300 dh!). We walked through the medina to the grocery store to get some wine o'clock preparations and then went home to shower and nap before dinner.

For dinner, we went to a food stall that Andy recommended to us, #117, cause it "takes you to heaven." We had delicious mixed meat kabobs and fries. Afterwards, we went back to drink the 60 dh vodka we had bought (that's less than $7.50) that tasted and smelled like sharpies washed with moist towellettes. We made friends with three other young people in the hostel and drank with them on the roof top. Their group was a 19 year-old boy from the Netherlands, a 21 year-old girl from Rochester Institute of Technology, and another 21 year-old American girl. The two girls had just finished studying in London and had met the boy in the morning. I got some nerd talk in with the girl from Rochester which was fun because everyone else on this trip it seems is an anthro or humanities major. 

We convinced them to come out with us at 10:45 to a bar Andy had told us about called Jad Mahal. It ended up being a really fun night. Firstly, the cover was only 100 dh and included a drink, so it was much cheaper than the night before from the get-go. Secondly, the bar had a ton of tables and a live band that covered Michael Jackson and a bunch of other fun 80's music like that. We had fun dancing to it and Joe kept flirting with the female back-up singer. He tried his hardest to get invited on stage, but to no avail. The final reason why it was so fun was that it was also connected by a hallway to the fancy club next door called Silver, so we didn't have to pay the more expensive cover to get in there but could go between the two as we pleased. Silver was underground and not nearly as large as Teatro was, but had a couple hundred disco balls on the ceiling. We danced there to the DJ's beats till like 3:30 and then decided to go home. 

In Club Silver with one of our new friends

On the way back, we realized we could take the 5 am train home, so we woke Marissa up when we got back (she hadn't been feeling well) and packed up. Although we disturbed our roommates again, we were in too big of a hurry to care. Marissa, Elle, and I speed-walked and ran in order to make it to the train station on time but the rest of the group took cabs. The three of us made it with like 10 minutes to spare! The train was packed though, so the three of us just got in a cart with two guys and fell asleep. It ended up being a long and loud train ride home, but it was worth our early morning hustle to make it home a couple hours earlier.