chefchaouen

chaouen is a gorgeous little town in the mountains; a 5 hour bus ride from rabat. a perilous 5 hours. we left in the late afternoon and were supposed to arrive around 9 pm. we would have made it early too, given the 'skills' of our bus driver. imagine windy mountain roads at night. imagine a maniac bus driver from hell who is on a schedule. imagine passing every bus, car, and truck on the windy mountain roads on on the left, when on either side you just see darkness and imagine cliff edges.

but we were almost there. 10 kilometers from chefchaouen. that was when we hit the hay truck. the hay truck was fine; a few bales fell off of the back. but the side mirror of the bus folded in half and the front window cracked pretty badly. then they had to call the police and we all proceeded to wait in the freezing cold on the side of the road for 2 hours. we probably could have walked the 10 kilometers in that time, despite our bags and walking up a mountain.
we finally arrived around 11 pm and made it to our hotel.

the next morning we woke up and went out to explore.




the streets are all blue and picturesque. it reminded me of greece.

we spent the morning walking around, going to the casbah museum, and going in circles in the medina streets. the casbah museum has an old tower with great views of the mountains.



in the afternoon we decided to hike up to the abandoned mosque on a hill overlooking the city. so, up we went, passing pot fields and the boys who guard them from tourists. when we finally got up we were amazed with the view of the whole valley. we were also amused by the spanish tourists smoking hash in the tower of the abandoned mosque.



last, we went up to the atlas hotel to watch sunset. the hotel is horribly ugly on the mountainside, but has a great view and overpriced drinks.




it was an amazing day. unfortunately, we had to leave at 7 am sunday morning as it was the only but back to rabat. but its such an incredible little mountain town! amazingly beautiful weekend!