Day: April 10, 2008

In Fes

This is just going to be quick because we want to get out there but here’s a synopsis of our time in Fes.

We arrived and managed to dodge all the taxi car drivers standing around the train station. If you didn’t know, Morocco, and Tangiers and Fes in general are known for faux taxi drivers and guides. Everything we read said to avoid this at all costs as they will totally scam you.
The next morning we headed to the Medina and were immediately accosted by a really aggressive faux guide. When we tried to say no and walk away he started getting really mad and even shoving Jon a little! He called us scorpions and told us to go home and drive our Rolls Royces and return to our palace if we weren’t going to hire him! It was a major bummer and a bad way to start out. He finally left and we went to decompress at a cafe. But after that things were great. The Medina was a complete sensory overload! We managed the whole day without getting harrassed again and actually even took on (accidentally) a guide at the end of the day for about half an hour and it ended up being pretty fun, if hectic. More on that later! I have to run!

PS- if there are a lot of typos it’s because I’m using an Arabic co,puter and the letter position is all wonky.

Fes Bound

We finally made it to Algeciras and caught the 2:30 ferry to Tangiers. At this point we realized that we had been far too ambitious in our original plan to catch the earlier train. Things operate on a different schedule here. It took us forever to go through customs to even get on the ferry, and then we had to line up again once the ferry was ,oving to go through passport control again. In the meantime we met an American named Zach who was traveling by himself while on spring break from his college in Edinburgh Scotland/ The three of us decided to take turns watching eachother’s bags so that we could expedite our process through passport control. I was fortunate enough to be standing in front of two pretty funny (not on purpose) old hippy hash dealers. How do I know they were hash dealers? Because they were openly talking about it. But more on that later…

After we arrived in Tangiers Jon, Zach and I went to find authentic Morrocan food. We stumbled upon what might have been the grossest place to eat in all of Tangiers and promptly ordered three plates of chicken and rice. When I spotted the cochroach openly running around to no one’s concern… that was about it for me. Thankfully it seems that was the exception, not the rule as we’ve had GREAT food since then.

After that we parted ways because Zach was heading straight to Marrakech and we were going to Fes first. Jon and I boarded our train and a young Morrocan woman came and sat with us. Turns out she is an English teacher at a middle school and spoke perfectly! She was absolutely lovely and we chatted nonstop for the three hour train ride, until we had to switch trains. Her name was Majouba and she spoke candidly about Morrocan culture and things that might help us on our travels.  Our goodbye was filled with hugs all around and talk of a visit from her to the US.

Ok, as a final word I’m going to leave you with a bit of hippy wisdom I overheard from those American hash dealers standing behind me on the ferry.

Hippy 1- Europe would be great if not for all the Europeans.

Hippy 2- The world would be great if not for all the human beings!

Hippy 1- Nah, because then we wouldn’t get to see it…

 

Trapped in a Hallway


Current Location: Marrakech

Our trip into Morocco got off to a bit of a rocky start. We decided to get up really early to take the train from Malaga to Algeciras and the ferry to Tangiers Morroco from there. We wanted to catch the 11AM train to Fes which meant we had to get on a bus from Malaga by 6AM or so…. We woke up at 4:30, showered and everything. We had told the hostel owner the day before that we would be leaving early and he told us to just leave the key on the dresser and lock the room’s door behind us because he had another one to get into the room. So… we did just that, only to find that when we got to the first floor, the front gate of the building was key locked! So, we ended up having to sit in the hallway of the building for almost two hours before we were able to rouse the owner and get him to let us out. Here’s a pic of us waiting….