And so I went to Morocco. For the day. Because, you know, flitting across to Africa for a spot of lunch and afternoon shopping is no more difficult than nipping down to the Gold Coast for an afternoon swim.
Or so the glossy brochure said. I didn’t believe it.
Still, I signed up. When I first realised that where I am staying in Spain is close enough to pop over to Tanger for the day, I decided immediately that I would do it. I have a major soft spot for Africa, ever since I spent a year in South Africa as an exchange student half a lifetime ago (quite literally, I was 17 at the time).
Only I discovered that Morocco, or at least the very small part of Tanger that I saw, was less like Africa and more like Spain just with dodgy street wiring, men wearing dresses, buildings that look like they’ve been hit by a stray allied missile, hundreds of stray cats and people trying to sell you shit you don’t need. And lots of it.
My day did not start out well. Which was always going to happen since I just wrote a blog about how great solo travel is. Sometimes it is great. And sometimes it most definitely is not.
I was booked on a bus to take me to Tarifa at 8am – it was the only bus that would get me to the ferry on time. So I set out from my apartment at 7:30am for the long trek down to the bottom of the hill. I got there with plenty of time, enough to start thinking about how sore my legs were from the big walk I’d done the day before. I thought about stretching them out but there were a couple of people waiting across the road from me and I didn’t really want to provide them with a private yoga exhibition that early in the morning. I wondered briefly where they were going. They couldn’t be going the same place as me. I’d specifically been to the tourist office the afternoon before to ask which direction the bus would come from. The girl assured me it would come from the south and I should stand on the right. She even marked it on the map.
At 8:05am a bus trundled into town from the opposite direction. I looked at it with a small amount of interest, insofar as I looked at the destinations listed on the front and didn’t recognise any of them. I was just happy that the other people were going to be carted off so I could start limbering up. On they got and off it went. I watched it drive about 20m up the road, suddenly make a hard turn left into a small backstreet, travel about another 100m and turn right onto the highway.
The direction I was supposed to be going in.
Of course I knew at that moment it was my bus. Still, I waited another 10 minutes staring hopefully at the horizon for another bus to appear (which it didn’t) while cursing the girl in the tourist info, and wondering why on earth I hadn’t just popped across the road and checked with the bus driver instead of being so fascinated with my glutes. I knew I wouldn’t have been in this predicament if I had another, smarter person travelling with me.
Eventually I conceded defeat and walked up the road to ask a taxi driver how much it would cost me to get to Tarifa. He broke away only briefly from spit polishing his dashboard to inform me it would be 52 Euros. I stared at the bus ticket in my hand that had set me back 3.90 Euros, cursed, and got in.
On a positive note, I made it to the ferry on time. The ferry that promotes itself as Tarifa to Tanger in 35 minutes when it actually took more like 75 minutes. But no matter. We were on Africa time now.
I was one of the first to board the ferry and after dealing briefly with a surly bloke in passport control, I took a double seat by a window. For the next 60 minutes I had at least a dozen couples come and stand next to the spare seat where they hovered shooting me looks of contempt that were obviously intended to get me to decide the floor would be far more comfortable. I ignored them all and looked out the window. Not that I could see much – the skies had opened up bearing the kind of rain you only get when you’ve left your umbrella at home. Which of course I did. I was going to North Africa for chrissakes. Everyone knows it never rains there.
When we finally arrived in Tanger, it had miraculously stopped raining, and everyone offloaded onto the dock in a manner that would have made an outback muster of wild brumbies appear tame. At one point we came across a security checkpoint. People were piling suitcases, handbags and small children one on top of each other into an enormous scanner, then striding two or three abreast through a metal detector unit that was switched off, before a mad fight to recollect all their belongings and slip off. I noticed a large number of people were not even bothering to put anything on the scanner; they were just walking straight through, suitcases in tow. This was all being overseen by five very bored looking Moroccans. What they were looking for I have no idea, but suspect it might have been something to eat for lunch.
I’d signed up for a tour – something I never do. I hate organised tours, being told where to go when and for how long. And there is truly nothing worse than being stuck with a group of people who insist of stopping every five minutes to take photos of themselves in front of rubbish bins and other important tourist monuments.
But I’m blonde and female and I’ve experienced being blonde and female in Turkey. So I booked the tour.
There were about 200 of us. And this is the off season. They gathered us together and ushered us onto a number of buses without thought to doing a roll call or even a basic head count. I realised immediately that I was at high risk of being left behind in Morocco to work my life out in an illegal spice mill since no one would even notice I was missing (another hazard of solo travel). I decided I had better quickly befriend someone who might at least notice if I didn’t return to the bus, but on looking around realised I had chosen the same bus as several former Eurovision contestants – you know, the types who wear black plastic leggings and high heel sneaker boots. Thankfully I was eventually rescued by a couple of practically pre-pubescent American university students – Sarah and Alex – the only other English speakers on the bus. Alex was young, gay and extremely confident, three things I am not, and Sarah was wearing almost exactly the same trousers as me and thought I was 27. I loved them both immediately.
The tour was interesting. I’m sure. I wouldn’t know though since the guide only spoke in Spanish. It looked like we passed a few mosques and maybe a palace – obviously things of significance because every now and then everyone in the bus would rush to take a photo of something out the window, no matter which side they were on. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there somewhere looking back on lots of photos of bus curtains and the tops of other people’s heads. After about five minutes of driving past all these mosques and things at about 100km/hour, we climbed a steep hill on the outskirts of the city where all the rich people clearly lived. He was talking quite animatedly as the bus chugged along, and I could only imagine he was saying ‘And this guy made his fortune in hookah pipes’ and ‘this guy made his fortune in ceramic tagines’ and ‘this guy made all his money through illegal arms trafficking.’
And then suddenly we happened upon a small car park where 10 very sorry looking camels, being tethered by a handful of even sorrier looking Moroccan men, were waiting. The bus parked, everyone jumped out, and all the fat people started climbing on top of the camels for a quick ride and a photo, as if they were suddenly in the Sahara Dessert instead of a car park in suburban Tanger.
Excuse me a moment while I have a little rant but I just don’t get it. Why? Why? Why do people think this it is acceptable to treat animals like this? Couldn’t they see these camels were enjoying this experience about as much as an Iraqi prisoner enjoyed Abu Ghraib? It was horrific. Yet tour bus after tour bus kept turning up to deposit more and more fat tourists who wanted to sit on these poor emaciated camels. I couldn’t stand it. I wandered off to a clearing at the edge of the car park to take some photos of the city off in the distance, only to realise that I’d discovered the dumping ground for about a year’s worth of camel poo. Delightful.
So back on the bus we went.
We were offloaded somewhere in the old town just as a monsoonal weather system hit. The water started swilling around our ankles courtesy of a 500 year old street drainage system that would give a drainage engineer a cardiac arrest. Within 30 seconds we were surrounded by a hundred Moroccan men selling umbrellas and rain ponchos. I briefly wondered how they’d organised that, then handed over five Euro (yes Euro – see, I told you it’s more like Spain than Africa) for a uniquely Moroccan tartan umbrella. It was the best money I spent all day.
Most of the tour group did the same, and once the rain slowed to a steady downpour, we all slopped off down the street together like a group of Scottish golfers.
I’m not sure what I expected the streets of Tanger to be like, but something similar to the spot where Brideshead lived during the height of his alcoholic stupor in Brideshead Revisited comes to mind. The kind of place with lovely whitewashed alleyways full of goats and men selling hessian bags of yellow spice, maybe a snake charmer or two. This was not it. The Old Town of Tanger was just another overdeveloped city full of people in desperate situations. And animals too. I rounded one corner to find two young girls kicking a feral cat for amusement before scampering off when they saw me staring. I looked around to see if anyone else thought this was wrong, but hurried on quickly when I realised all the tartan umbrellas had disappeared from sight and only a few shady men were lurking about, no doubt eyeing off my organs. |
| Sarah checking out some spices |
We were eventually given about half an hour of free time in which to madly dash off and spend all the money we hadn’t already spent on expensive taxi rides, before we were deposited back on the ferry under the weight of fez hats, hookah pipes, bongo drums, lurid kaftans and other assorted paraphernalia that people would surely look at within about two hours of leaving and wonder what in the hell had possessed them. I was not immune. I bought about five kilos of beautiful but breakable Moroccan ceramics, which I immediately regretted and will continue to do so at every bus station and airport from here until I land back in Brisbane.
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| Some of the ceramics I actually left behind |
Thankfully I made the bus back to Vejer (at a modest run, slowed down only by a bag full of ceramics) and arrived home at 10pm, tired and broke. I’ve dipped the corner of my big toe into Morocco, albeit a tour group organised one, and kept all my organs intact. A successful outing indeed. I can’t wait to get back one day to discover more, including hunting down some clever fellow who’s set up a shipping service for stupid tourists who insist on buying ceramics.
In the meantime, I just need to work out how to get a slice of Morocco into my novel (keep an eye out for the appearance of my soon-to-be-well-travelled ceramics in Chapter 11) and what on earth to do about all those poor camels.
* I have no idea what a Kasbah is, nor how to rock it. I assume it is a Moroccan boat. According to Wikipedia, however, it is a type of medina, Islamic city, or fortress. Just in case you were wondering.
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