Textures and colors at Dar Beldi

Valentine's weekend part 3. 

Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.
Part 4 here.

We woke up the next morning, refreshed by good sleep and quiet, to serenity and beauty.

After going up to the roof terrace, but before our a lovely breakfast spread was served, I explored a bit, camera in hand.

The breakfast was the best I've had at any hotel in Morocco. Varied, fresh, copious and homemade. They even served us gluten-free crepes!

Plus Othman made a friend who was also sitting at our table:

While on the terrace I was intrigued by all the patterns and textures. My 50mm lens was still broken and all I had was my telephoto, so I wandered about in search of photogenic vignettes.

Breakfast over, we headed back downstairs, and I started photographing the exotic and inviting garden that reminded me so much of Brazil with its smells, colors, layout, and vitality.

I can say without hesitation that Dar Beldi is my favorite hotel in Morocco. There I truly felt transported to another place, and the oasis effect was immediate and breathtaking. I hope to head back soon. But at this point in our journey, we packed up, settled our accounts, and went down to the beach for a few more hours before Casa beckoned...

Adventures and mishaps in Oualidia

Valentine's Weekend part 2.

Part 1 here.

Part 3 here.

Part 4 here.

Finally we arrived in Oualidia! The first thing we did was lock the keys in the car, which boded well of course. Luckily our hotel was next to some mechanic shops, and so while I got settled and read in the beautiful garden of the hotel, Othman paid a guy the equivalent of $2 to break into our car. 

So then we decided it was time for lunch.

We ate at a seaside restaurant under the other hotel we might've stayed at. And O was silly.

Across the street was a shop renting ATVs, and Othman just couldn't pass up that opportunity. So we got one ($10 for half an hour) and headed over to the beach. He had fun.

And although I was slightly terrified when Othman was driving, I actually had fun driving it!

We crossed over the big dune to arrive at the ocean...

And he played around (and got the ATV stuck more than once) while I took pictures of the breaking waves.

See the little geyser on the left? It was cool to watch the water spurting up in such a vertical line.

We returned the ATV, both it and us a little worse for the wear (at one point O had to leap off because he was heading straight into a ditch, and he cut up his hands and bruised up his legs a bit. And this was in the first 30 seconds of him driving alone. Sigh). Then we walked over to the other side of the beach and went up into the rocks to watch the tide rush in.

Oualidia is apparently an important bird conservationist area, and during our stay we saw dozens of species of birds. We had fun watching this little guy hop around for quite a while.

Before we headed back to the hotel to rest, I decided we needed some pictures of us from this vacation.

Later that night, after a nice nap, we went out to the beach again to walk along the boardwalk and do some nighttime photography. But as I set up the camera I realized my lens, which I had changed from the telephoto to the 50mm, wasn't moving. My backpack had fallen off the hotel bed with the camera in it, and one side of the lens was jammed in. I was pretty upset for a while but was able to walk off the frustration a bit. (The best part of the story comes a few days later back to Casa: Othman was looking at the lens and clumsily dropped it onto his computer... and it was miraculously fixed! Talk about lucky.) So much for nighttime photos, but after walking a while and grabbing some simple dinner food at a grocery store we went back to the hotel to eat, where I took some still lifes. in the yellow lighting.

And a picture of Othman's banged up hand! It's hard to tell here but it was quite swollen. 

We cleaned up dinner and it was bedtime. We had to sleep to prepare for another day of adventures!

On the road

Valentine's Weekend part 1.
Part 2 here.
Part 3 here.
Part 4 here.

Due to the wonderful Christmas Othman and I had, we were all gifted out when Valentine's Day rolled around last week. So we decided to simply enjoy being in each other's company for a weekend away instead of the traditional gifts-dinner-and-chocolate routine. So last Saturday morning we headed out of Casa, destination: Oualidia, a small beach resort-ish town 2.5 hours south, where we were able to do just that—enjoy each other—despite myriad mishaps (from gloomy weather to keys getting locked in the car to one of my camera lenses falling to Othman flying off an ATV... but more on all that later). As always, I took a gajillion photos, so this will be the first of many posts about the weekend. 

On the drive down, once we got past the heavy rain in and outside of Casa, O suggested we stop on the side of the road for me to enjoy the photogenic scenery.

I had all sorts of fun with some macro photography using my telephoto lens.

While I just photographed the flowers, O gathered me a tiny, adorable bouquet.

And then we found a friend!

While I've definitely photographed them before, I don't think I've ever done a photoshoot with a donkey to this extent!

He was just too cute though. In the Moroccan cities we see so many badly treated working animals (mostly donkeys and horses) and it just breaks your heat. But as you leave the city and enter the rural areas where people are more in touch with nature and dependent on these animals they start looking better and better cared for. 

He and Othman even had a staring contest! But I think Mr. Donkey won.

Eventually we had to leave the cutie behind, and continue on our way...

Happy Birthday Mom!!

I hope your day is as lovely as a cold, snowy day can be for a Brazilian, but more importantly I hope the year ahead brings you lots of love and joy!

Thanks for being a wonderful mother and example. Cheers to you!

Portraits of a 10 month old

A week ago Jessica and Noor came over to spend Sunday afternoon. I made a yummy stir-fry for lunch, garnished with basil leaves from the little plant I'm growing in a pot outside my window! (More on that in a future post.) She brought a nice dessert and later on Othman ran downstairs to buy some baby wipes and with them brought up fresh doughnuts, Moroccan-style, so basically we just ate all day.

As usual we had a lovely time chatting the afternoon away, and being endlessly entertained by Noor, who is now ten months old! I hadn't photographed him in a while so I got out the camera to take some black and white portraits.

This is his concentrated face, he's a smart little thing and Othman, who sees him less than I do, had a lot of fun playing with him.

I love how good Othman is with our favorite baby. They're cute lil buddies.

Life is brighter with friends around.