Hitchhike to Morocco for Charity!

The trip was amazing, really amazing. Everyone that we met and who gave us a lift was so kind and interesting, it was really quite an eye-opener. There were definite high points, and definite low points, but after 2 weeks of travelling I think that it is one of the best things I have ever done. We were luck enough to be able to chill out in Fuengirola for a few nights which gave us a bit of a proper holiday amongst the travelling. Morocco was really nice, and I would love to head back again to do some proper exploring of the country. A massive thanks to everyone who gave us a lift, to you guys who I went with and to everyone who has donated mo

3am in the airport and everyone was asleep. I was barely able to stay awake but people watching in airports is always a bit of fun. At 4am I woke everyone up and we checked in. Everyone looked shattered and just wanted to get home! We boarded the Ryanair flight back to East Midlands Airport and landed at about 8am.

Our last day in Morocco! Don’t get me wrong, Morocco was awesome, but what with having no access to money temporarily, being confined to Marrakesh and staying in the terrible hotel on the first night, we hadn’t had as good a time as we could have…

We checked out of the hotel and had lunch. We then had one last wander around the markets and got royally lost, good fun! We stumbled across a herb shop that sold everything from pigment to saffron… it even sold natural Viagra – Shauns face lit up when he heard this! After finding out way out of the market we grabbed out bags and headed for the airport.

The airport was brand new, and not even completed yet. After a short wait we were sitting on our EasyJet flight to Madrid. The plane was surprisingly comfortable and the flight didn’t take long at all. The airport at Madrid was dead which was a great shame as we were stuck there for 7 hours waiting for our next flight! Everything was shut apart from a café where we ate some dinner. Everyone fell asleep on the floor in their sleeping bags so I stayed awake and read a book so that we did not miss our flight!

10am start. Although it was not an issue we could not withdraw money to go on the tour anymore as it was too late in the day, we all needed to access money as we were running low. After some expensive calls to the bank finally the cards were working again. We had lunch at a small café and retreated to the hotel. Me and Soph decided to have a wander to the Mosque and came across some stunning gardens. We walked about for a few hours and then returned to meet the others and go shopping in the market!

The market is a maze of alleyways lined with stalls. All of the owners were coming up with some cracking sayings to try to make us go inside – ‘Asda Price’, ‘Everything Free’ and ‘Fish & Chips’. Phil bought a lampshade for some reason, Soph bought some ashtrays and I got a United shirt.

Friday was a lot busier than the previous days, especially at night. We headed to ‘Aqua’ for dinner and had another good meal. After eating we had one mission – to find some alcohol!

It took us a long time to find any. We got a 10 minute taxi ride to a place called ‘The Chesterfield English Pub’. It was not too expensive, and its decoration was like something out of a strip club. We only had 2 hours before it shut, so got the drinks down us pretty quickly. It was a fun night.

We arrived back at the hotel at 12.30am and proceeded to anger the security guard in the hotel – nevermind! Before sleeping there was a ‘benchpress Jenna competition’ which provided much amusement. In their drunken state, Dan & Phil were gazing into each others eyes, only being interrupted by Shaun who wanted in on the action!

Waking up in a crappy room is bad enough, but being woken up at a silly time by the Mosque again was even worse. After using the one shower the hotel had, me and Soph headed out of find a better hotel…

Only 20 mins later we had found a really nice hotel that was 1000% nicer than the current one, and which was the same price. We moved to the new one, and everyone’s mood was considerably lifted.

Seeing Marrakesh in the daylight for the first time, I realised that despite being a popular tourist destination, it still had a lot of Moroccan charm. We ate lunch looking over the square and then had another wander about. We tried to hunt out a guided tour for Friday and came across a really interesting looking one to some waterfalls. We were all set to go on it, but upon trying to withdraw money we discovered that all of out bank cards had been cancelled by the banks – gutted!

We went to the square for dinner at a stall where they cook all the food infront of you. It was a good meal, apart from the cous-cous which was a bit of a let down surprisingly. After some more pottering about we headed back to the hotel. None of us had any luck trying to unblock our cards so we got an early nights sleep.