Chefchaouen

It was to be my very last road-trip in Morocco, and it took place as a caravan of a huge group of friends and fellow students of my Sheikh. We were going to Chefchaouen and then to Tanger to visit the mausoleum of Abd as-Salam ibn Mashish.

From there I would be heading to Casablanca airport, and then home, alone of all my family for about a week, so that I could prepare for my third year at University. 

We left at dawn for our first destination: Ouazzane, a city home to many Sufi saints, as well as a holy site of pilgrimage for many Moroccan Jews.

We were invited firstly to the Zaouia Ouazania, a place wherein gatherings of worship take place (almost like a monastery) built within a traditional Moroccan home undergoing partial renovations. 

The next phase of our trip took hours. Our bus was, at first, quite comfortable. It carried about twenty of us. But as time wore on and the sun rose higher, it began to get hotter. The AC had broken. Every rest-stop saw us emerge like a flood to buy drinks. By the time we arrived in Chefchaouen, we had sweated through most of our clothing. The climate inside the bus was something like a sauna.  Arriving at the blue city was, as a result, incredibly refreshing to us, in a way we might not have appreciated otherwise. 

The city is just...incredible. I knew how blue it would be, but seeing it was a different matter entirely. It's so...cooling to the eyes! It feels too as though one has stepped backwards in time somehow. We wandered the streets until we came to a vertical strip of vibrant green. A stream had carved its way down the mountain, and burbling ice cold water pooled and trickled and offered itself to any person or creature willing to splash in it.