We woke up the next morning around 6:30, went downstairs and met Mustafa, and some of the people in our group and began to head over to the main square in Marrakesh to meet our bus and the rest of the group. We got to the square, went in our bus and then started and headed away from Marrakesh. We began by introducing ourselves, we all were going to give ourselves different aliases because of the American thing, Ravi was going to become Ibirhim Nurbhai Reza from India, I was going to become Simon Butterly from Melbourne, Australia (Go Greece!), and Marica was going to become a British girl. The only one of us who kept those, however, was Ravi. When we got on the bus, i heard this girl talking, and from the first word i knew that she was from Australia! When it was her turn to introduce herself, she was Laura from Melbourne! I was like, Really! So i decided to just be plain old Adam Bankhurst, haha. There was a couple from Stratford upon Avon, Andy and Lou Lou, who were amazing, Andy was in his mid 30s and was retired and travelling for 3 years and was like the funniest, awesome guy you could ever meet. There was a guy named Oleg from Lithuania, Laura from Australia, who is amazing and who we know have traveled to two other places with, Denis and Matea form Croatia, Debbie from London, and Anika from Poland. Our tour guide was named Yousef and he was amazing, we couldn't have asked for a better tour guide. Our driver, who we all affectionately called Mr. Driver, was also a really nice guy, and an amazing driver. So we all headed out, and began by heading into the mountains. It already was beautiful and we hadn't even really started yet. We drove for a little while and then stopped in the mountains at a little restaurant that had an amazing view, we had some more Mint Tea (Amazing!) and just looked out into this incredible valley. The land was already very arid here, but there was still a lot of vegetation. We stayed for a while, then we continued on our way. We kept going up through the mountains, and you could gradually see the changes in the environment, it started getting a lot more arid, with less and less trees. The next stop we had was for lunch, and this was the first time we had the lovely dish known as Tagines. It is a ceramic bowl that has vegetables or chicken or whatever, then they put a top over it and it cooks it in a certain way, and they cook it with certain sauces that are delicious. After lunch we kept on driving and then came to one of the coolest stops, Ait Ben Haddou. This is a very small village that has forts and was used in the filming of gladiator and it was a place that was so incredible. We walked through a little city to get there and then we had to cross a really shallow river and just walking up to this place was so cool. There were trees everywhere and behind them you saw this massive village/fort that was built into a mountain/hill. We went inside and went into a cave and all had some Mint tea and met some of the people that lived there. We then walked up to the top and the view was so amazing. We were on a very high point and all around us were the flat plains and mountains way in the background. It was so beautiful, Andy and me raced up to the top and once we got there we just looked at each other and were speechless. It was just such a cool place and we were like wow, we are so lucky to be here. After Ben Haddou we continued on our journey and stopped along the way for other incredible panoramic views, then when it got close to sunset we came to one of the most famous gorges. There was a river running through them and the most beautiful rock formations that had such amazing color because of the time of day. We were all so amazed and in awe at how much beauty is around us, these are places that you see on the Internet or in books, and actually being there is pretty unreal. So we stopped at the top and watched the sunset and got some amazing pictures. We then headed over to our hotel for the night which was in the gorge. It was pretty nice and Marica, Ravi and me shared a room. We went to dinner and had an authentic meal with Tagines! Once again they were really good, but we also got this really good soup called Hairara soup and we all had a really fun night talking about the day and everything. After we all went to bed, and could not wait, because in just a matter of hours we would be on our way to the Sahara desert!
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