Last month, my mom came to visit—she was our first visitor and the first to show off our wonderful community here and the beautiful country we are lucky to call home. She arrived on the busiest travel day of the year. The combination of train and bus delays, lots of luggage, language barrier and no cell phone could have been quite the disaster—but she learned quick how quick Moroccans are to help strangers. When she finally arrived to Essaouira, we whisked her off to the countryside for the largest Muslim holiday of the year. Eid a l-Adha or Eid Kabir, the holiday of sacrifice celebrates the servitude of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his first born Ismail for god. As the story goes, at the last minute an angel stopped Abraham and gave him a sheep instead–Humdullah (praise god). Now, Muslims all over the world slaughter animals of their own, usually sheep or goats but sometimes cows and we have even heard camels. But the most common is by far a sheep or goat.

Our host family with the sheep that would soon be sacrificed for the biggest Muslim holiday of the year.

After we watched our family and the extended family slaughter, bleed and skin their sheep we proceeded to eat it. We barbecued the liver, heart and lungs first. Shortly after that we had full tagines (plural because each family within the greater family killed and shared their own animal) of apricot, almonds and meat (not exactly sure what part of the beast these were made out of). A couple hours and a nap after this, we ate the hoofs and head which had been steamed and dressed with onion, cilantro, cumin, and salt. This went on in much the same fashion for the next three days.

Steamed head.

Digging into the head..not so excited about it…

Breakfast..made up of insides wrapped in fat

Traditional Eid tagine w/ dried apricots, dried plums, carmelized onions and almonds

Mustapha stripping the fur that will later be turned into a rug

We returned to Essaouira painfully full, tried to relax, readjusted our backpacks and left for Marrakech the next day. We were in a bit of a time crunch considering our work schedule. We spent the night with a friend in Marrakech, and left for a three-day tour through the south of Morocco at 7:30 the following morning. We had not been to the south yet and were hesitant with going through a tour company–but it is the way to go if you want to see a lot and only have a short amount of time. Much of the time was spent in the car, but the views out the window made the drive go by quickly:

The tour took us through many of the iconic Moroccan images: massive gorges, lush oases, narrow switched mountain roads and eventually, the deep dunes of the Sahara. The first night was spent in a sky lodge type hotel in the Dadas Gorge and the second under the stars. We climbed atop camels at the sandy edge, lurched up and wobbled out into the desert as the sun went down. We ate and watched the nearly full moon rise and glow like the forty watt reading lamp after the world’s overhead was flipped off. We drank tea and talked quietly as the guides lit a fire and drummed for what must have been for them just another trip, just another night, like the one they had a couple days before and the one they will have a couple days after, but for us it was special and unlike anything previously comparable.

Across from out hotel on the first night

Sahara at before sunset

The Dadas Gorge

Date palm oasis

The south’s Rose Valley has the largest rose crop in Morocco

Ait Ben Haddou’s old kasbah

-K

**Looking for a good tour from Marrakech to the south? The tour that we used was great, but next time we will go with our good friend and great guide Omar at Fikra Travel and so should you!