We got on the ferry to Morocco for about an hour-long trip. Sea was a little rough. Mr. Lovatt and Gabby disproved my theory that all people from Britain get massively seasick. I am refining my hypothesis: all people from Britain named Ms. Matthews get massively seasick. So far evidence seems to back me up.

I'll explain the camel ride first, as it was a highlight of the trip. The camels kneel down for you to get on them, and then buck to their feet. I got quite a lot of pictures of people looking quite surprised at the effort to stay on. The smell was pretty impressive as well.

Our guide gave us a pretty comprehensive overview of the country as we started our tour. Some Morocco nuggets that struck me:

- 60% of the country is under 25, so the country is experiencing a population boom
- Moroccans learn Arabic as they're young, French at 9, and learn a third language in high school
- university is free for Moroccans, but they are bound to a term of public service of 10 years after they graduate.

You notice significant contrast in Morocco. I don't know what I was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn't condo developments. There has been a real effort to push tourism in the west, and so new, for lack of a better word suburban, developments are springing up. A coastal highway ensures seaside views for all the development.

We didn't see any desert in Morocco. The north coast is green, and agriculture is the primary industry. We went for a camel ride in a suburban park. I guess 12 hours south you'd find a stereotypical desert culture, but the north looked nothing like I expected.

There was, however, a continuous feeling of poverty just at bay, or just around the corner. As we drove, you could see buildings that were crumbling, streets leading to nowhere, slum apartments and impoverished ghettoes. The coastal cities looked like a Spanish city reflected in an impoverished mirror. There were taxis, but they were run-down; high-rises, but shabby; shops, but destitute. The style was the same as the condo developments, but the cities just looked broken.

I was most struck by the people. Ceuta, the port city, is a Spanish possession, but is duty-free to Morocco. We saw a stream of people walking the highway to or from Ceuta carrying goods, to be sold on the market in Morocco. You got the sense these people were clawing out a living. They had boxes piled high on wheelchairs, and cardboard taped to their heads to block the sun. There were taxis on the Moroccan side of the border to carry the goods further, but for the most part the people were walking on foot. The border where they crossed looks a lot like what you might expect to see in Gaza: razor wire, metal cages, and a sea of humanity standing in the sun and waiting. I got the sense that for these people being downtrodden had become the status quo.

The experience was so far out of my own experience that I have trouble putting it into words or context. It was an eye-opening experience before I had even set foot on Moroccan soil.