You didn't think there was snow in Africa? Oh yeah, there's snow in this part of Africa! We got about a foot of snow on Friday, complete with ice and freezing cold, but without lots of snow plows or good communication about the state of the streets. Our plans got canceled. I was quite bummed.
Saturday, we made peace with the snow and had a snowball fight, hiked around AUI and found some awesome views of Ifrane (for more photos see link to photo albums on the right) and then went into Ifrane for dinner which was quite fun.
By Sunday, luckily the roads were much clearer and so a group of about 11 of the international students had the chance to go to Volubilis, ancient Roman ruins, which are located outside of Meknes about an hour and a half from here. It was quite the adventure. We left mid-morning and trudged into Ifrane where we entered the fray of taxi drivers...utter craziness. One of the girls who speaks French negotiated and soon we found ourselves faced with two grande taxis. Now I realize grande taxis may sound like they are beasts of the taxi business made to haul large groups of people aross miles of Moroccan landscape. No. Not so much.
I soon found myself stuffed into the backseat of an 80's Mercedes Benz with leopard spotted interior with three other people and two others + the taxi driver in the front. For an hour. Always good times bonding with your fellow travelers! But we made it after going across the varied Moroccan landscape (we started with snowy hills and pine trees and passed, rocky plains and farms, cactus and palm trees, and rows of olive trees!) and then arrived in Meknes, where we climbed into our 2nd set of grande taxis and headed to Volubilis.
Volubilis is the remains of the 1st and 3rd century Roman city on Moroccan soil. The ruins are beautiful, here's a little taste.
My personal favorite however is this one where I decided to climb on top of the side of the basilica. A couple of my friends joined me and then we promptly hear the whistle and remembered that we were climbing on a structure that was a couple thousand years old. ;-) Oops. Anyway, we had a great time and I still can't decide what was the better view, the actual ruins or the view around. As one of my fellow travelers remarked, the Romans knew strategically where to build their city and you could see for miles around. Facing one direction were the rolling hills of the Middle Atlas mountains and this beautiful little moutain town Moulay Idriss, turn around and there were plains as green as could be! (The snow disappeared about 15 minutes from Ifrane, so it was warm enough in Volubilis to not wear a coat! A rare luxury in the past couple weeks!) Unfortunately, the trip back to AUI was not so fantastic. I felt bad in the shorter trip to Meknes and after not eating since breakfast...well, I got dehydrated which luckily one of the guys recognized. But I had done the damage, so the rest of the afternoon was pretty shot. I slept in the taxi ride back which apparently was quite the accomplishment as the taxi driver was a bit crazy.
So that was the weekend, nice to get at least a bit of travels in but hopefully I'll get to do some more this coming weekend, insha'allah (God willing!) but my roommate says it may snow again, so who knows.
Classes have started back up...a bit in the 2nd week rut but still overall good!
Love to you all.
1 comment:
Volubilis looks simply beautiful. :)
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