Archive
December 16, 2005
Thats All She Wrote
My time in Spain is up. Tomorrow I will get on a flight from Granada to Madrid. In Madrid I will spend the night in a hotel near the airport, its a 4 star hotel, and I managed to score a cheap room. The next morning I get a flight out to Newark, there I have a layover of almost 4 hours, and then back to wonderful Seattle.
I think when I first get to the Newark airport I am probably going to eat every fast food that reminds me of America. Then when I get home in Seattle, I am going to have a massive bowl of sugary cereal, as I have not had cereal for my entire stay here.
My time in Spain has been great. To think that last spring i was almost to afraid to even attempt something like this, and here I am now. I could write a long sentimental piece about the cultural differences between Spain and America, and how I am a changed man, etc etc. But i don't think that would be entirely accurate.
One thing I am sure of, is that I cant wait to get home to see my family and friends, all of whom I love very much.
Ok, I have to go pack
December 13, 2005
Morocco
More photos will come later, the computer I am working on makes it extreamly difficult to sort, and select what photos I want.
Once again, the usual suspects (Stephanie, Freya, and yours truly) were headed for one final trip together, this time to the mysterious land of Morocco. What follows is an abridge account of our journey.
The trip to Morocco started out well, nice 4 hour bus ride from Granada to the dirty port town of Algercerias. There we bought the ferry tickets, and sat down and waited for the boat. Because they fail to put up helpful signs, and the woman who we asked where to go just said "this isn't the right spot" we were sitting a ways from where we needed to be, so with 15 min till our boat leaves we finally got it figured out and ran to our boat, which we got with no problem. the boat was nice, modern and fast, the crossing was only slightly bumpy, and we were amused by a table of 6 old Japanese tourists next to us who brought a 6 pack of beer and a bunch of liquor on board. after the 1.5 hour crossing we just sat outside of the harbor for nearly another 1.5 hours, reason: no room in the port for us. we finally got in, and disembarked.
My arrival to Africa was marked by the incessant calls and hassling of fake guides and taxi drivers willing to take me just about anywhere. We got a cab and went straight to the train station, where we bought over night tickets to Marrakesh. Having 5 hours to kill before our train and not wanting to go back into the city, we walked around a bit and were generally stared at with amusement and/or suspicion. we found a restaurant and sat there for a few hours, then attempted to cross a street to get to the mini mart and were almost killed in the process. this was out first introduction to how absurd Moroccan roads are.
Finally back at the train station we get on our train, we bought a sleeper car ticket, so I had a nice little bed, where in I laid down and almost instantly fell asleep. waking up eventually in the morning, just in time to watch the last little bits of the sun rise, looking out the window the scenery had changed considerably from the normal Mediterranean I am accustomed to. It was bleak, lots of dirt, and at the same time beautiful with the occasional mosque towering over a little village or a nice hedge of prickly pear cacti. After 12 hours in the train, we got to Marrakesh, unloaded and got a cab to our hotel.
The cab driver didn't speak any English or Spanish (everyone so far on he trip had spoken one of these languages) he tried to speak to us in french, but we didn't understand a single word (so much for all those years in french class at Villa). We finally negotiated a proper price and were off. Only about 1 min after starting we screeched to a halt next to a group of men huddling around a cart which had a little stove like thing on it, with a kettle of tea and some other breakfast foods cooking. our driver hollered out some Arabic, and a few seconds later a man brought our driver a cup of Moroccan mint tea. After this minor diversion we were headed to the hotel. Driving in Marrakesh is exciting, then again most death-defying experiences are. There are no lanes, and where there are they never taken seriously. the roads are shared between cars, trucks, more trucks with shit stacked sooo high you would think the truck would fall over, donkey drawn carts carrying various loads (large quantities of people, fruit, etc..), motor scooters, men on bikes, and old men pushing large hand carts down the street. all of these various things in the road, and coming at you from any direction at any given moment makes it a rather frightening experience.
The taxi drops us off somewhere near the vicinity of our hotel, we are not quite sure where, he points out the street it is allegedly on, and then promptly leaves. We cant find the hotel we planed to stay in, so we find another that is listed in the book. This place turns out to be excellent, a wonderful courtyard, nice rooms and fantastic roof top terrace. Quickly stashing our bags in our rooms we head out to the streets with the goal of an old royal palace, and some other buildings of noted Muslim architecture. They were all very nice, but after having seen the Alhambra, and been practically inundated with this stuff in Granada and in Andalusia in general, it seemed relatively normal to me.
At night we headed to the Djema al-Fna, which is this massive open square in the middle of the town, during the night it fills up with food stalls selling everything from your traditional Moroccan fair of Cous Cous and grilled meats, to the obviously french influenced steamed snails, along with the slightly more strange (exotic if you will) sheep brains and some delectable scorched sheep head. Also there are carts stocking vast quantities of dried fruits, other carts selling fresh squeezed OJ. All this accompanied by an array of story tellers, acrobats, snake charmers, musicians and general lunacy. It was amazing. I was instantly captivated by this place, walking through the food section the chefs call out beckoning you to come to try their food. One of the most satisfying aspects about the Djema al-Fna was that the majority of the people there were local people, out for a night of fun. Sure, the snake charmers and henna tattoo artists are just there for the tourists, but most everything else was predominately local.
The next morning we wandered around town a bit. Towards the afternoon, we caught a cab to take us back to this Mosque and museum in the center of the old town. This taxi ride was even more frightening than the first. This one took us through the absolutely insanely narrow streets of the Medina (old town), along the way nearly crushing multiple old women, taking corners so sharp, we would turn once, then have to back up a bit to re-angle the car, and then complete the turn. We got to the mosque (which non Muslims are forbidden to enter) checked out a museum, some other sigts like an old theological college. From where we walked through the Souq´s which is an area of markets and general insanity. These places sell tons of stuff, mostly Moroccan crafts and stuff to tourists. we found a nice shop that had a good selection of stuff that wasn't entirely shiny and brand new and looked as if it were actually an antique. Bartering with the old man who I think only had a few teeth, I managed to score some nice items. Continuing through the narrow streets of the Souq, crowded with people, donkeys loaded down come pushing by, and then people actually attempt to drive their motor scooters through the crowds of people. That night we headed to the Djema al-Fna square again.
For the next day we had hired a guide/driver to take us out to the mountains. We drove up this beautiful valley dotted with little towns. It was all very nice, but the highlight was when the guide offered to take us back to this little Berber village for tea in his family home. This village was off the main road a ways, down a dirt road. the village its self was quite primitive, we met some of his friends and he showed us around a bit before taking us to his home. We went into a communal room with some padded benches, and was served mint tea (or as he called it, Berber Whiskey) another one of his old friends came by, he the same type of Berber bag i had just bought earlier that day up in the valley, so we posed for photos. I think he thought it was fairly amusing that 3 Americans were sipping mint tea trying to learn phrases in Berber. We headed back to Marrakesh, the next day we would be off for the city of Fes.
In the morning we caught a train to Fes, the 7 hour ride was made easier by the people who we shared our compartment with, a french woman now living in Morocco, and a middle aged British couple. We all talked for most of the trip. In Fes, once again we couldn't find the first hostel we had planned on going to, so we went to another one the book mentioned. this place was slightly sketchy, so we located another place. we spent the afternoon wondering around. From the start I did not find Fes as captivating as Marrakesh. I can not quite pinpoint why. Its still a very interesting city, with an extensive Medina (over 9,000 little twisty roads). The next day we went and checked out the tanneries. here people tan hides, the tanner in Fes is the oldest in all of Africa. The Smell is absolutely terrible, we went into a shop and they took us onto their rooftop terrace for an areal view of the tannery. they gave us sprigs of mint to hold in front of our noses.
After the tannery we saw some mosques and other interesting buildings, did a little big of shopping and just wondered around checking out the strange sights of the Medina. One street where there were a lot of butchers lining the streets had a gutter running down the middle which had a nice little stream of blood flowing down it. we got some dinner and then headed back to the hotel where we hung out until 1am, when we caught a taxi for our 2am train ride back up to the port city of Tanger. The train ride wasn't much fun, it was hard to sleep sitting completely erect in a car with 5 other people. After arrival in Tanger we headed straight for the ferry docks. We hung out waining fro our boat, when some guy comes running up to us telling us that our boat would not be coming so we needed to get onto a boat that was leaving in 1 min. we sprinted down the dock, but the boat we were allegedly supposed to get on was already closed, so we waited in line for another random boat thinking that this might actually be the boat the guy was talking about, but no that boat was headed somewhere else.
Back at the terminal, we got it figured out and got onto a large ferry boat, this boat is one of the slow boats, making the crossing in 3 hours rather than 1.5 hours. oh well, it appeared that none of the fast boats were running today. this boat left 1.5 hours late, the crossing wasn't that bad, there were a few points where it was kind of rough (we later learned that he fast boats went running because the seas were too rough). I spent most of the crossing out on the deck playing in the wind - which was extremely strong, you were able to lean soooo far forward without falling, and could jump up in the air and have it push you back a bit.
We passed just under the Rock of Gibralter, and then proceeded to once again sit outside of the port for over an hour, because once again there was no room in the port. People on the boat were getting a little heated and started to yell at the waiter who was working the on board bar. The boat leaving late, combined with the hour plus driving in circles in the harbor made us miss 2 of the earlier buses. we eventually landed and caught the last bus to Granada. Having been traveling for just under a hair of 24 hours with minimum sleep, when i got home i went promptly to sleep.
Overall it was an amazing trip. Morocco is an amazing country, it is completely different than anything else i have seen or experienced. I was little bit timid to be traveling to a country where I didn't speak the language at all, along with Morocco known to be, lets say, slightly rough around the edges, however I found the country to be easily navigable, and everyone was willing to take their time with us. Some day like to return and spend some more time there trekking up in the mountains and seeing the other parts that we missed.
More Photos have been added:
Photos of Morocco
December 03, 2005
Hello,
I am going to Morocco tomorrow.
Currently the tentative plan is to take the bus to Algecerias on the South-western coast, and from there take a ferry across to Tangier, Morocco. then hop on an overnight Train to Marrakech. later on in the week hopefully we will work our way back up to the north going to the town of Fez, and then back in Spain on Friday or Saturday.
I have exactly 2 more weeks here in Spain.