Story & Photos by Jacquelyn Zeman – News Editor
From May 18 to 30, a delegation of nine students and four professors from Grand Rapids Community College traveled approximately 4,146 miles to Morocco. Collegiate News Editor Jacquelyn Zeman went on the trip and documented the experience each day. Read on for her photo-illustrated travelogue, and her updated introduction post to her trip right here. For a day by day look back at Morocco, follow her on Instagram and Twitter at @jacquelynzeman.
Day 7 – May 24
Cities: Ouarzazate/Essaouira
We drove among the High Atlas Mountains to get to our final destination of the day in Essaouira. The roads that go through the mountains there are winding, and turn very quickly. I was a little nervous as we drove through them, even though our driver was excellent.
There was one point where we were at a lookout and we could see the road going down the mountain from the point we were at. I could not believe the route we were about to drive.
We bought our lunch that day at the general supermarket. It was surprisingly similar to what Meijer, or any big box store in the U.S. is like. Every label in the store had an Arabic label on one side of the product, and a French label on the other side.
Later that day we stopped at an oil co-op. Before we got into the store section of the co-op, we had an opportunity to see how all the different oils had been made. Women sat in a room and crushed up seeds with their hands to make the products.
We arrived at Essaouira, in the afternoon. Essaouira was my favorite city we went to throughout the trip. It was along the Atlantic Ocean, and the different views of the ocean made the whole experience unreal. There were lookout points all along the wall outside of the medina, and due to the time of year it was windy everywhere.
That night we went for a walk in the medina. The medina always seemed to be more busy from my perspective later at night, than in the middle of the afternoon. I found this quite interesting that more Moroccans seemed to prefer shopping at night, rather than during the day. Many tourists are out in the medina during the day, so I would assume that Moroccans wanted to shop at a time when tourists did not populate the medina.
