UNSEEN TRAVEL AGENCY

Living here in Europe, I’ve become quite the victim of spontaneous purchases. Sometimes it’ll be a train ticket here or there, maybe a nice shirt when I’m out shopping… Other times, I seem to lose my mind and do crazy things, as I recently did when I got myself a shiny plane ticket bound for Morocco. After all, there was a RyanAir seat sale! It would have been irresponsible for me not to. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Fast forward to the end of January, and there I was in a plane over the Sahara, with the biggest, dorkiest smile on my face. Stepping off the plane onto the tarmac, I became a giddy mess. Morocco has been one of my dream trips for so long and here it was: “MARRAKECH MENARA”, before my eyes in giant block letters. It hit me right then… Guys, I was in  Africa. Could life get  any better? We cleared customs rather quickly and soon found ourselves in a cushy shuttle, en route to ...

I’ll be honest: travelling solo through Morocco was tough. My four weeks in the country were challenging, exhausting, frustrating and disheartening — and yet, they were also full of joy, awe, wonder, and rewards. Morocco is one of my favourite countries but it was also one of the hardest to travel in. It’s hard to explain. How can one of my favourite countries in the world have left me with such unenjoyable experiences that I cut short my time there by several weeks? I don’t know either. But I loved Morocco. I loved my time there. I loved the places I wandered through and the people who proved that Moroccans can be kind and welcoming and helpful. However, I was so frustrated that the local men I met acted in a way that made my trip far less enjoyable. I’m frequently contacted by women who feel that same pull as I did to visit Morocco, but who have also been put off by the negative articles and sexual harassment horror stories. They contact me looking ...

I was about a quarter of the way up the dune, my lungs burning and my boots slowly filling up with sand when I remembered something I always manage to forget: climbing sand dunes really sucks. Standing at the bottom of a sand dune, it never really looks *that* high. You tell yourself you can easily climb it; that all those kickboxing classes surely have prepared you for this moment. You start climbing, feeling good. But then you literally get “that sinking feeling” as you sink at least one step backward for every two you take forward; the top never seems to get any closer.  But when you find yourself in the Sahara Desert just before sunset, you can't NOT climb the dune. Climbing a golden sand dune for sunset was just one of the many highlights of my trip into the Sahara Desert in Morocco. Doing a trip like this has been on my bucket list for years, and I'm happy to report that it 100% lived up to all my expectations! Riding camels into the S...