Morocco

Thursday: So. Met Ben at Correos at 4:30, instead of going to my last class (which started at 4), to walk to the train station (since I didn’t know where it was). Except we decided to take the bus instead… I’m so glad I decided to buy that bus pass now! We got to the train station just before 5 (it was just before Ethan’s house), which was good, since that was the last train of the day. Heh. Had to take a number and wait to buy tickets, like you would at the DMV. Very strange. Took the train to Rhonda, which was about 2.5 hours, and then had to transfer onto a bus for the last leg of the trip, since apparently the train tracks don’t go all the way to Algeciras (last leg being another 2 hours or so). There had been a pretty sunset on the train, but it was pretty much dark by the time we got onto the bus in Rhonda, so we really couldn’t see much after that. I had brought food for the trip (dinner for myself, fruit, two glazed, pre-packaged donuts and my dried pears – thank you Mommy). Ben hadn’t thought about bringing food, so we split most of it and decided to eat something small when we got to Algeciras. Since it was between 9 and 10pm when we got into town, we asked for directions to a nearby hostal. Walked to it, which was made slightly more interesting due to the construction going on all along the side of the street we needed to be on… there was one small footpath bordered by chain link and road blockades that we had to follow for a few switchbacks before we could even see the hostal. The man working there was very nice though, and I think we only paid 20 Euro for a room with two twin beds, which was cheap. Private, with our own key, and so we dumped stuff and asked for a recommendation for food. Basically walked across the street to a little restaurant with small sandwich tapas for a Euro each (Granada is the ONLY city I have found with FREE tapas). Ate, then walked down the street towards the ocean, trying to scope out where we needed to go in the morning for the ferry. Wandered around the port for a bit, which was kinda dirty, but fun to watch at night with all the lights. City scenes at night are always so magical to me. Ben and I have had the opportunity to share a lot with each other so far with all the travel time, and it’s only day one.  We walked back to the hostal and pretty much just went to bed with the intention of getting a full night’s sleep for the next morning.

Friday: Up at 8am to shower, pack, and walk down to the harbor again to buy ferry tickets. *Side note: the shower was in the same space as the toilet and sink – for those of you who have or have seen a small travel trailer or camper, it was like that. Ben showered first, and then it was my turn. But by the time he was done (all 6 foot+ of him), there was water EVERYWHERE. Nowhere dry to keep my clothes and towel but outside. I almost fell at one point because everything was so slick… that would have made an interesting start to our trip… “Hi, I know I barely know you, but could you come in here and help me – I just broke my leg, and sorry, but have nothing to cover myself with in here…” I can see it now. Anyways, on our way to the ferry, we asked this one guy standing near the entrance where we were supposed to go, and he said something really fast in Spanish, then started marching back the other direction, back across the road. Neither Ben nor I caught what it was he said, but the signs where he was headed mentioned ferry tickets, so we chased him down through 2 lanes of traffic. In retrospect, probably not a very good idea. We paid about 55 Euro for out tickets to Tanger, Morocco, and then the guy wanted money for his service in getting us to the right place. We didn’t pay him much, since he hadn’t really done anything… but he did take us to the cheaper of the two agencies (after we complained at 65 Euros). We got back to where we started, only to find that if we had just walked in the first time, we could have bought the tickets there. For about 25 Euro – half the price what we had just paid. So that was a bummer. We waited a little for our boat to come in, and then went through customs and boarded. We took a table near the front of the ferry, but we didn’t leave until almost an hour after scheduled departure, so there was, again, lots of stories exchanged between us. I broke out the pears, and we munched during the trip (which I think was about 2 hours, but I don’t remember). Upon arriving in Tanger, we got off and proceeded to march PAST all the guys calling activities and tours (we were both still mad about the ticket prices for the ferry). Got passports stamped, and then met a guy working for the government to encourage good tourism experiences for travelers, so he told us all about procedures for returning to Spain, and brought us into town to help us find a hostal and such. At first Ben didn’t want to trust him either (really, Ben isn’t a very trusting person, which I found surprising), but he had told us right from the start who he was, what he did, and that we didn’t have to pay him anything. So I followed him. He got us a room in Hostal Olid which had a decent reputation for about 15 Euro total (they showed us a more expensive room, but we didn’t need the extra bed space, so we took the cheaper one). It wasn’t a great room, but we didn’t care, and the door locked. We took our stuff with us and continued to follow our guide to a restaurant that was touristy and overpriced, but clean and served classic Moroccan dishes. He was going to take us to the bank to get the best exchange rate also, but it was closed until 3, so we ate first. He had to leave at that point, but the young waiter spoke English (which he was learning at school), and he was supposed to take us around when we were done. We got a three course meal and mint tea for 10 Euro each, which was slightly cheaper than in Europe (we knew it was expensive for Morocco, but we were both really hungry at this point). We ate a thick spicy soup (some of the first REAL spices I’ve had since coming abroad – Spanish food is very plain) with wheat bread, followed by a course of ‘pastel’ which was a yellow-green patty with curry and deep-fat-fried (NOT in Olive Oil), sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon. That was my favorite thing I ate in Africa by far! Following that was the main dish – Ben got a chicken, potato and olive dish, and I got couscous with chicken and potatoes. We each ate half and then switched. The sugary tea was a dessert. After the meal (which took about 2.5 hours… not sure how we managed that) the young waiter took us to the market which was happening that day (in Islamic countries, Friday is their big religious day, instead of Sunday). We walked around while he pointed stuff out, then dropped us off inside a herb/remedies shop where we were given a shpeal on everything the store carried, what it was used for, and why we should buy something there. We listened, bought some small things, and then moved on to a shop that sold rugs and tapestries. First, we were brought up onto the roof, where we could see much of Tanger – it was a fantastic view! Then we were taken downstairs for more tea while being shown many possible rugs to buy. The owner of the shop was certain that Ben and I were ‘together’, and that he should buy the rugs I liked for me. Ben and I both chuckled about that one. He was a very nice man, but we really just didn’t have the money to buy anything. So he was in a huff when we left. The boy didn’t take us to the bank, which was probably a mistake, but we did get money exchanged at the common street conversion rate, so it could have been worse. Finally we went back to the hostal (with directions from the boy after we gave him some money for touring us around – jerk) and dumped stuff off. We proceeded to wander around by ourselves, walking up the hill we had been on all afternoon (with the tiny old streets) into a newer, very busy part of town. Markets lined the streets, and people hung out in a large park across the road. We walked up to an old cathedral/castle looking thing where we encountered a man telling us we were too late, that it had just closed. He asked if we wanted to see something else, and we told him we were just wandering around. He recommended we see a few different buildings, which he tried to point out to us, and then said he would just take us there. He said he worked for the tourism group there at the old building (I wish I could remember what it was called…), so we decided to trust him. He navigated us through all the little old streets in the area, showing us the most expensive residences, sharing the histories of the area, and other really cool little factoids. He also took us outside the old city wall and showed us the Port of Tanger by night (it was getting dark by this point). We ended up back in the part of the city we had toured earlier with the boy, and got to go onto another roof (for more, better views – although I don’t think those pictures turned out on my camera…). We were taken full circle back to where we started, at which point our guide asked for his payment. Ugh. Apparently, he works AS a guide, but is PAID by whoever he gives the tour to. Ridiculous. Ben and I were going to give him just a little (we had NOT asked for the tour, and he wasn’t actually supposed to be working anyways, and he didn’t tell us what he was doing to begin with), because I thought I had only a 20 Durham in my wallet (we had left most of the money around our room in the hostal). Turned out to be a 200 (about 20 Euro), so that’s what we gave (I pulled it out thinking it was a 20). Oh well. Ben was really bummed about the transaction, and how we had been tricked out of more money than we had been planning. I had been expecting it, and so wasn’t surprised, but he had honestly thought to avoid ALL of it. We wandered back towards the park, bought some cheap baked goods and bananas from the street vendors for dinner and sat in the park to eat. From there we wandered back down to the main street along the water, bought a water bottle and sat on a bench people-watching for a bit. But then we began to be hassled to share our water, so we ended up just going back towards the hostal. Stopped one last time at a café right next to it where Ben got a coffee, and we each got a sweet roll bun. Then it was bed for us, although I don’t think it was very late.

Saturday: So, I couldn’t sleep… I was up at like 5am. Had to go to the bathroom, but didn’t want to go and leave the door unlocked when Ben wasn’t awake yet (yeah, it was that sketch). So I rolled around in my (VERY solid) bed, trying not to think about how bad I had to go. For about an hour and a half. I finally got up around 6:30, and since I was up, brought my apple out into the hall with me after and ate it sitting on the floor outside our room, watching the swallows swoop in and out of the unsealed roof. Ben finally woke up, and we both took showers – today was my day to go first. I don’t think I took a picture of the shower, but I WISH I had – it was in the room with us, but there was no door, just a curtain. And no ledge to keep the water inside the tiled space. The pipe itself was duct taped together and falling off the wall, and the handles for hot and cold water were different. Although, that was because the one for hot water didn’t work. So the shower was ICE cold. I managed to take my shower silently, so Ben didn’t believe me when I told him it would be cold. Heh.  We packed and left, heading for the bus station (Ben was so proud because the hostal manager spoke in French, and we managed to say little enough that he thought we spoke French too… but he pointed, so we got the idea anyways). Got there without too much incident (Ben loves asking people for directions, even when he knows where he is going. So we asked someone every couple blocks or so if we were going the right way). Bought ourselves pastries from the window there for breakfast, waited about 10 minutes for the bus to Asilah, then paid the man standing in front of it and got on. The bus took about an hour and a half, but it was because we stopped along the way for people standing on the side of the road, who would run alongside and jump on as we drove by. Therefore, the bus ended up being really full by the time we got to Asilah. It was lunch time, and Ben was really hungry, so we walked down the main street in Asilah looking for a nice café. I already could tell that I liked Asilah WAY more than Tanger – much more space, much smaller, and way fewer tourists. There were a few, but not ANYTHING like Tanger. We walked through an open market before stopping at a cute little café just past it. W got toast (meaning BAGUETTE – Lots of toast) with butter and jam, and café con leche – which they served with 4 sugar cubes! I was very excited. I like the coffee in Morocco WAY more than the coffee in Spain. After eating, we were about to walk across the street to a Hostal when a man approached us in the street asking if we needed a place to stay. We told him yes (not that that wasn’t apparent, with our backpacks and all), and he told us about a family that was renting out a room upstairs. We said we would look into it, and so followed him across town to the apartment, which was RIGHT on the beach and about 2 blocks from the old castle-part of town. The woman didn’t speak Spanish or English, but Ben and I could share the room for 250 Durham for two nights… which is about 25 Euro!! That’s about 6 Euro a night per person!! So we ‘thought about it’, and agreed. If we pay a little extra, she will cook us meals too, but we decided to hold out on that for now. We paid, dropped our stuff and went out exploring! Wandered around the town, through the old part and into the new part (where I asked a shop owner to hold a winter coat for me that I was looking at, so I could return with enough money later). We stopped by a restaurant where Ben got a meal, and I just munched on his olives (there were LOTS of green olives in the dish he ordered, and he isn’t a huge fan). Then down by the beach, where we sat on these really big concrete THINGS dropped as rip-rap for the cove/harbor that had been made there. We decided to get a tea at a little café on the way back towards the center of town (we had walked pretty far down the beach), and it was weird because it was full of older men watching a movie that appeared to be a Ballywood chick flick, dubbed in Arabic… kinda a strange image for two young American teenagers. Upon looking for dinner, we ran into this little bakery looking place, but it wasn’t advertised as anything. We walked in and asked to buy some of the bread there. We were told that we couldn’t, that it was house bread. We didn’t understand what that meant until one of the newcomers explained it in Spanish: the local families used that bakery for their own cooking – it was their flour and ingredients that the owner baked for them for a cheaper price. The guy that explained it was very nice and gentle, and after telling us, broke one of his two loaves in half and gave it to us. We tried to pay him for it, but he wouldn’t hear of it. We talked to him a little longer, and he told us he was a musician, and played guitar. Ben plays saxophone, and so upon our interest, the man lit up and asked if we wanted to see him play. We said yes, and so followed him home as he carried his loaves of bread and walked his bicycle, talking to us the whole way. I liked him immediately, and his name was Hamin. We got to his house, and he brought us upstairs to his ‘room’ on the roof, where his friend was currently preparing weed to be smoked by them that evening! His friend didn’t speak English or Spanish, but Hamin spoke both, so he would jump back and forth with us. We were served mint tea (the tea here is REALLY good), and he put a CD in of traditional music while he showed us his guitar – which has 3 strings and the top is animal hide… so it’s a guitar and drum in one. It was really cool to hear him play, so we sat there and enjoyed his company for a while. He asked us if we had eaten, and before I could say yes, Ben blurted out “No”, so of course, we were invited to dinner. Which was actually REALLY good – little fried fish and a tomato sauce to dip the bread in. We stayed a little after his friend left, and then said our goodbyes after promising to come back and visit. After that we just went back to our house (which we were given a key for) and ran up onto the roof for the sunset. Which was ABSOLUTELY STUNNING. Africa has the most beautiful sunsets of anywhere I have ever seen – none of our pictures do the colors justice (except one of Ben’s, which comes close). After that, with nothing else to do, we decided to call it a night. We were planning on getting up for the sun RISE too, so we talked for about an hour, then went to sleep.

Sunday: So I didn’t sleep much again, but it was good because it meant I was up at 6:20 to wake Ben for the sunrise (since we hadn’t set an alarm). Up we went, Ben with his camera, and we watched as the world woke up. It was very peaceful, and a great start to the morning! But then back down for showers… which were NOT hot, as advertised. Perhaps they just don’t understand the concept of a hot shower here… I dunno. But it WAS better than in Tanger, so I was excited. I stood in the shower (which was part of the rest of the bathroom, as before – although the toilet was in a different room – again without a real door) with my head UPSIDE DOWN, to keep as much of me OUT of the water at a time as possible. Dad – it was very much like how we shower with the camper – I just stuck my head under the faucet. We were both ready to hit the town at a pretty early hour, after being up so early, so we wandered around into the newer city a little, along the way purchasing a few baked goodies/egg-breads from stands that were open. We ended up back by the bus stop and the main street with the [clean] cafés. Ben is bound and determined to eat at one of the little shops that smell good, but look like they could have just fried something out of the street gutter – you know, the places EVERYONE warns you NOT to eat at, because you’ll get sick. I swear, that boy… so we settled on a Clean corner café and got coffee while we people-watched. I was really self conscious of my tank top – but it was all I had had clean when I was packing (for some reason our host mom decided to do laundry on the WEEKEND instead of Wednesday…), so I decided to change it when we went back to the house. Since it was midmorning, we decided to stop by Hamin’s house and get his address, so we could mail him the pictures we took the night before (in case Ben doesn’t make it back to Asilah when he returns to Morocco, which he is planning on). His wife actually woke him up for us (oops), and we sat and had tea again with him and listened to some more music before telling him we had to leave. Hamin told us the first bus in the morning was at 6am, and the next was sometime in the afternoon. We said our goodbyes and went back to nap/lay down in our room for about an hour around noon (since we’d been up so early). We encountered our ‘host mother’, and managed (with much gesturing and acting) to ask for her to make us dinner around 6pm, and paid her for it. Then back out in search of more food! Got more pastries, and walked through another outdoor market that had been set up with overflowing booths of vegetables, spices, and other such things under a makeshift roof of scarves and fabrics. Everything was so colorful and rich in sounds and smells! It was tucked back into a space that was probably a building at one time, but not anymore. From there we sat down at another café in the center of town to order some tea and eat our pastries. We sat there and took pictures of people for probably about an hour, before wandering back to the beach. We sat and hung out there for a while, watching all the little crabs scurry around the cement figures and click at each other. By that time the shops had re-opened from the lunch break, and we went back to buy my coat. Brought it back to the house where we decided to hang out and wait for dinner. At 6:30, when we had still seen no sign of her, we went downstairs to ask if the food in the kitchen was for us (it was all covered and didn’t appear finished… we didn’t want to eat something that wasn’t ours). It was, and with the help of her two young daughters (who are very rude, but can each speak a little English and a little Spanish) we went back upstairs and were served dinner (which was AMAZING)!! Salad (which Ben ate), followed by the main dish: a whole fish in a dish of spicy sauce, with potatoes, green beans, carrots, and onions, served with the flat ‘house bread’ (in addition to a baguette she purchased for us). It was FANTASTIC, and we polished all of it off – Ben looked like he was inhaling his the entire time – I laughed at him and told him I wasn’t going to steal it… but he didn’t slow down. After that we were on the roof for the sunset again, this time a level lower watching the water as we sat on the railing of the balcony. Went to bed early again because we were planning on being up to catch the 6am bus Hamin had told us about.

Monday: Up at 5. Showered (still cold), packed, left, walked to the bus stop, paid, got on the bus, and got back to Tanger without issue. Bought pastries at the window there again, and ate them on our walk back to the ferry. Bought tickets for a ferry to Tarifa, Spain, which included a free bus to Algeciras (just a different way back). No wait involved – we got our tickets, and almost ran to catch the ferry, crossed the Straight and got directly onto the bus. In Algeciras, we walked to the train station (where we take the BUS to our boarding destination – heh) and bought tickets back to Granada (leaving in 1.5 hours). We sat down in the café at the train station where I ordered toast and a coffee (which is really just NOT the same in Spain) and Ben got a bocadillo – poor boy needed MEAT. It started raining as we got on the bus, but it didn’t last long. Ben and I shared my iPod for a little, going back and forth on who chose songs, until he was so tired that his head was bobbing – so I told him to lay down (we had the back row of seats again), and he slept for most of the ride. Which means he missed the most beautiful view I have ever seen! It had been dark when we drove through the first time, but now, with the sun breaking through the clouds, as we climbed back up the winding road along the mountainside towards Rhonda you could see all the way down the forest-covered valleys, past the white city on the coast, to the water itself – there was a low mist way out that glowed pale pink in the light, and everything was mystical and peaceful. I couldn’t get to my camera, because Ben was using my backpack as a pillow and my lap as a footrest, but Oh, I wish I had record of it!! When we got to Rhonda, we got on a train (I kinda watched the movie Donnie Darko on the computer of the two guys across the aisle with them… which I’m pretty sure they DIDN’T realize) and got back to Granada in the early evening. By this time we were both sick of traveling, so Ben took a bus back home, but I decided to walk. We said our goodbyes and each headed out. Got home and did my homework for my class the next morning, (leaving the rest for later), and went to bed pretty early after eating dinner with Alex. The weekend of not sleeping much had finally caught up with me. Great trip though, over all!