Morocco: From Beats to Sahara, Watch Your Back!
Morocco is an odd place, to be sure. It's an Arab country in northwest Africa, close to Europe, and as such it has elements of Arabia, South Saharan Africa, and Europe all mixed together. It's interesting, but it's also taxing. Morocco is infamous for both needing tourists and harassing them endlessly, it's a place where conmen abound, but women don't get in on the action to con the men, and where men are actually harassed much more than women. On top of all that, it's a very Islamic country and seems to be at odds with the modern and outside worlds. So, in short, Morocco is the perfect place for one to expand their mind, both naturally and chemically, which is why I decided to go there. Except like most other things, I really wasn't even planning to go there when I did...
I was actually on my way back to Japan, in the midst of being driven mad by sedentary stagnation. Finally something had seemingly worked out. The World Kudo Championships were being held in Tokyo Japan, and I was planning to go liaise for the U.S. National team which was slip-shod cobbled together at the last moment. After the tournament I thought I would hang around for the last month or two of the year and get some good training and adventuring in. Perfect plan! No plan survives contact with the enemy though, and the enemy in this case happens to be the world I live in.
The usual way I would go about staying in Japan would be to just rock up and stay with some friends. The problem with that however is a lot of my friends have moved away and those that haven't have now got legitimate big-boy things to worry about such as kids, careers, wives, etc, and so can't really afford to have me hanging around for an indeterminate amount of time getting into shenanigans like I do. So, that method seemed to be out. I turned to couch surfing. No luck. Then it looked like I was getting a break when a usually busy friend said I could crash with him. About a week later I thought I should double check to make sure it was OK, and I was still good. Now I needed to find a cheep way to get to Japan, and the clock was ticking! It just so happened I knew a guy who was getting ready to leave the mid-west USA and drive to LA via Las Vegas. Great! He said I could ride along, no charge! That means I could fly out of LA to Tokyo fairly cheap. The plan was to drive to Denver Colorado and adventure a few days, then spend Halloween weekend in Las Vegas, then the guy would drop me off in Death Valley California where I was to rendezvous with my buddy Mr. Gibbs. I would camp with him and his friends in Death Valley for a week then ride back with them to LA and fly out. Things were finally looking up. I hopped on a computer and got ready to buy my airline ticket, and as I did so I had this feeling that I better triple check with my friend that it was OK if I stayed with him in Tokyo. I'm glad I did, because it turned out to be very not OK! “Oh yeah, I just moved and got a new job, and I live with a roommate now who's very OCD; there's no way you could stay for more than a couple days.” Crap. At least I had my free ride to LA, which meant a cheep flight, so I could wing a place to stay. Then my ride hurt his back, so the trip was postponed a week. Fine. I used the time to try and arrange some accommodations. Work-stay at a hostel? Nope. Then a long-shot of mine came through; an acquaintance knew someone in the real estate business who could get me a Tokyo apartment for a couple months for 300$US a month! Talk about connections! It was nice to have something go right for a change, I felt. It was a feeling I quickly forgot when the day came to leave and my ride told me he'd been hospitalized for kidney stones and was now bed-ridden. Ride to Los Angeles canceled, cheap flight null, awesome road trip shredded and travel postponed.
With the LA part a no-go the flight was insanely more expensive, and the constant delays had been gnawing at my finances, so by this time I couldn't even afford my ridiculously low-rent Tokyo apartment. I tried to get the Kudo fighters to go in with me, but they all had other plans. I tried to get anyone I knew to go in with me, but to no avail. Time had run out. The tournament had come and gone, taking with it half my purpose for going to Japan, and the year was winding down which meant dojo would be closed and friends would be gone and busy doing holiday things, negating the other half of my purpose for going. “The best laid plans of mine and men...”.
So now I wasn't going to Japan, but I had already allotted a certain amount of time and money to the venture, so I turned my attention to other places. Where could I go that would cost exactly the same, take just as long (or not long), that I had never been to, and that would expand my world view and offer me new experiences? I narrowed it down to Santiago-Chile, or Morocco in Northwest Africa. I had bigger plans for Chile, plus I'd never been to an Arab country before, so Morocco won out. After a shitty two-week stint as a grunt at an “Amazon” warehouse to raise my funds back up, I was off. More or less.
I'd been packed ready to leave now for a couple months, thanks to delays, and now I didn't even remember what all was in my bag. I swapped some Japanese specific items with some Moroccan specific ones and was content. Then I had four workouts the day before I left because I was sure there would be a shortage of opportunities in Morocco. Once I'd squared myself away I set off for the airport, arriving four hours early. I'd hitched a free ride so I was happy to take what I could get. In fact, I had been faced with so many delays and so many plans falling through, it didn't even feel real that I was finally actually leaving!
It started to feel more real after I received the most thorough airport security pat-down of my life though, exacerbated by my passport no longer scanning, courtesy of china. It seemed the TSA's oppressive regime was worse then ever, but at least the employees seemed to be in good spirits for a change. I had bought the cheapest ticket, which meant I would be living in airports for a couple days, so I brought rations. If I'd have relied on buying food in an airport I would have spent my entire meager budget before I even arrived!
I had plenty of time in various airports which meant lots of time to people watch, and read. One thing I noticed overwhelmingly was everyone passing exceedingly long time (or all their time) on their phones and tablets. I go out of my way to avoid those things while traveling, because I don't travel to be surrounded by the familiar and comfortable. The solitary time forces my mind to get where it needs to be, clear and creative. Eu-stress is important. No distractions! My traveling is not an escape from “real” life, but rather a condensed and concentrated version of it where everything is heightened and exaggerated; a kind of “super life”.
The people watching at the airport was sub-par, what with the techno-zombie-ism and all, but the reading was a bit more interesting. According to the CNN report another Asian airplane had just crashed en-route to Singapore that morning, making me even more hesitant than usual to go rocketing through the sky in a tube. I strayed from the news to the news stand. There I saw a popular adventure magazine with a list of the “100 things to do as an adventurer before you die!”. I enthusiastically looked it over, and anti-climatically discovered I had completed around 90% of the list... I guess it's time to take it to the max!
Out of the airport and onto my first of many flights, it was business as usual. It was a Delta airlines flight. I had kids wailing at me in stereo, only made worse by the fact that the plane was blasting Christmas music during the ride. A country-music version of “Frosty the Snowman” to be exact. Dinner was a choice between Mexican and Italian... I hate them both, so, so much. Also , there were no leg rests. What Delta lacks in everything, it makes up for with a needlessly hilarious and entertaining safety video, though I would rather have basic amenities instead.
My second flight was out of Detroit, my third out of Amsterdam. While there I met a guy with the craziest dreadlocks I have ever seen; they were down to the floor and he wrapped them around his body like a scarf. He looked like a Dervish! The Amsterdam airport staff directed me to a help desk so I could deal with connecting flight stuff. “Show me your ticket.” said the staff. I did. “This isn't a flight. This is a ticket for a flight that doesn't exist.” Of course it doesn't exist... “There's no flight from that airline, or a flight with that number, in our system.” So I got to play the “How do I get to where I'm going and where is my checked bag” game. Thankfully I was in the Netherlands; phantom plane? The Dutch don't suffer that shit. The clerk immediately put me on a new, very real flight. I had 6 hours in Amsterdam to fill, and decided against leaving he airport. I'm fully aware of how the place has the uncanny ability to make one lose track of time, having experienced it first hand. The people at the Amsterdam airport were actually doing things, so I just spent my time people watching.
Once I'd arrived in Morocco I still had to get to Casablanca, my first destination. I knew there was a train station somewhere, but my lack of skill in both French and Arabic made it incredibly hard to find. I got lost, and wandered out of the airport looking for it, were I was pretty sure it must be. Nope! The train is inside the airport. Now, in order to get back in the airport I had to re-do my security scan and take off all my metal, jacket, belt, shoes, etc., and send my gear through the scanner. Then re-cloth myself. What a hassle. All the kerfuffle had taken enough time for me to miss my train, and I had to wait for about an hour for the next one. By the time I arrived in Casablanca proper, it was the throws of nighttime. The first thing I witnessed was a street fight between two guys over some kind of traffic incident. Cops were watching, forming a pit-fight ring even, but didn't seem to care. I continued wandering around, looking for the first nights hostel. I passed it, orbited it, met a Casablancan who tried to help me find it who also got lost, the whole thing was made all the more complicated by the fact that all the streets have multiple names! Original French names, new Moroccan names, and sometimes mysterious unrelated names. Maps can't agree on which should be used, and many people only know them by one name, so you must be very specific when asking for directions, and even then you're probably not going to get much help. We did eventually make it to the hostel though.
My roommates were a motley crew: a Dutchman who I recognized from the plane ride over whose name was Twan, an Irishman named Declan who bore a striking resemblance to Harry Potter, and Mustafa, the guy from Casa who helped me find the hostel was staying there even though he had his own apartment down the street. That night we all got to know each other, and we went out walking... which was really just me on a quest for a sandwich. During the quest we met a talkative ex-pat American who looked so much like my friend Gibbs I thought it might really be him somehow. After my hunger was sated we all went back to the hostel and went to sleep.
In the morning we were given free Moroccan breakfast! Breakfast in Morocco consists of cakes and pastries, served with a sugary tea. In fact, almost everything in Morocco is cake or pastry and loaded with sugar. Did you know Morocco is towards the top of the list of countries with the most diabetes? I am not surprised. The Dutchman, Twan, opted for coffee instead of tea. He said it was terrible and dumped it out. As I said, the Dutch don't suffer that kind of shit... or any shit really.
Twan and Declan decided they were going to travel to Marrakech that day, and wondered if I'd heard of any good places to stay. I told them I had preemptively booked a place there for New Year's eve, thinking things would get crazy, so they should stay there. They called and it was full. Declan found a new place for the night, and said I should stop by when I got to Marrakesh. I told him I would. They left, and I spent the day exploring Casablanca.
Everything in Casablanca seems broken and full of trash, but you can explore the giant rotting corpse of a once beautiful, port town. Disgusting, Derelict, Dilapidated, Dissolving.... any other condescending D word. In fact, most of Morocco looks like it's recovering from a fairly serious war, and then you find out there never was one and you're left with a great feeling of uneasiness. Casablanca as a whole has no specific tourist attractions per se, save for one: The Hassan II mosque. So, obviously that's where I was headed.
The Hassan II mosque is the third largest mosque in the world, and the largest outside Saudi Arabia. It's also, as far as I know, the only one that non-Muslims may enter. To say it's big and fancy is an understatement, I’ve seen castles with less! It sits on a rock platform overlooking the sea, and is made of only the finest gold and titanium to protect it from the sea salt. It's 210 meter high minaret is the largest in the world and features a laser beam that blasts the way to mecca. It's got a giant retractable ceiling, for those days when the sun is nice to bask in. If it's cold, the place has heated marble floors to pray on, and can hold 25,000 people inside. The main hall could hold Notre Dame Cathedral or St. Peter's in Rome it's so big! Outside it can hold another 80,000 people in the courtyard. It's got some see through parts of the floor were a Muslim can watch the sea below as he prays and some gigantic doors and an inside stream that come into use when the king stops by. The place is truly amazing, having cost a huge fortune to make and utilizing over 6,000 workers to build. That being said, in the basement is their Hammam, or Turkish style bath, which when considering all the money and time and craftsmen involved, features very inadequate looking bathroom tiling. I felt great about the whole hour long tour though, because I used my international student ID card to get in at half price, and it was about to expire in two days! Brilliant.
Once I'd had enough of Casablanca I decided I would head to Marrakesh and stay at the the same place as Declan and Twan, which was a Riad. I boarded a train, since the bus was supposedly terrible and the train ticket only cost 45cents more. The scenery on the train was great, but I didn't realize that he seating situation was similar to other countries in that you have to fight for your seat. Before I knew it all the seats were gone, and I wound up in a derelict seat-less human cattle car, sitting on some kind of radiator-like thing. The train also broke down, pushing my initial departure back over half an hour behind schedule, and not filling me with confidence in it's ability to get me to Marrakesh. Halfway there, the staff found someone who had snuck aboard without paying, and they stopped and booted him out. They left him in like 300km of nothingness! Oh, how many times that could have been me...
I arrived in Marrakesh in the typical style: Under cover of darkness and disoriented. I hitched a ride with a Spanish guy and his girlfriend in their cab towards Djamaa-el-fna, the circus of a center in Marrakesh. They paid for the cab! I navigated the center trying to find the riad. Djamaa-el-fna truly is a circus posing as a town center. There's snake charmers (which, knowing Morocco, probably have fully dangerous snakes), story tellers, dancers, bands, magicians, children boxing, henna tattoo artists, dentists pulling teeth and all manner of stalls selling food and tourist junk. I had to navigate all this, plus the normal winding mess of the medina. A medina is the old walled, winding alley city with a fortress, or kasbah. I was finally almost there when an old guy convinced me he would lead me there and wound up becoming more lost that I was. Finally arriving he demanded I pay him. I begrudgingly gave him 20dirham because I thought he could use it. Then he demanded 50MD, so I took my 20 back. We exchanged words before he agreed to piss off with my 20. Finally I'd arrived at Twan and Declan's Riad.
A riad is an old courtyard mansion, and many have been converted to guesthouses and hostels. They area very Moroccan thing, and are quite nice with an open courtyard in the middle and rooms surrounding it. Most of my stay in Morocco was in riads. I found Twan and Declan were out when I checked in, so I decided I would go explore. I headed back to the square.
At the square I was “befriended” by a man named Hassan. He came up speaking good English, showing me his “guide license” which for all intents and purposes is a tourist molestation license. He told me he just wanted to talk. I didn't believe him, but listened to him as I went about my meanderings. Soon he said “I want to show you a place I know for tea.” I know that it's considered quite rude in Morocco to turn down tea, and I love tea, so I said “No thanks. I don't want any tea, and I don't want to go there.” For a Moroccan that means maybe. He wouldn't let it go. I finally said I would go see the place, but that I didn't have any money and I would absolutely not be buying anything. He lead me down a series of alleys to his preferred tea shop. “Great, well I'll be going now.” I said. He implored me to have tea. “I'm not buying tea.” “No, No, it’s my treat” came his response, and he ordered a pot of tea. “I'm not paying for this.” “It's my treat, I just like talking with travelers”> and talk he did. He went on and on about how he was an emmam, or Islamic cleric, and did Arabic calligraphy. He produced a piece of paper and began to scribble Arab words and phrases such as “hello” and my name in Arabic. This went on for an hour or so. My guard started to loosen, but then he grabbed my hand and started talking about religion, which immediately reignited my suspicions. He said he was going to clean my spirit and started rubbing my hand and chanting, he then put my hand on his thigh under the table, which didn't have a “clean spirit” kind of vibe to it. His chanting continued, and I was sure something was up. In case he was trying to hypnotize me or distract me with the chanting I was vigilant to block it out and pay attention to my surroundings to make sure a partner wasn't about to pick – pocket me or anything. Once he finished I said “well, I'll be going now, thanks for this paper with things written on it that I didn't ask for”. At which point he demanded 40 dirham for the tea, and 200 dirham for his time, for tutoring me in Arabic. I reminded him I said on multiple occasions I wouldn't be buying tea. He did not seem to recall. We went back an forth for ages, before I said “FINE” and gave him the 45 dirham in my wallet, as an appreciation for the fine con he was running. “Great, that covers tea, but what about my time?” he said. I told him I didn't care how he allocated the money but that's all he was getting, and it was all I had. I showed him my empty wallet. He told me of his sick old dad he needed to take care of (of course) and offered to walk me to the ATM so I could pay him what I owed him. What!? No! That's not how ATMs work, they don't just create money you don't have. If that’s the case HE could just go to the magic money box and leave me out of it, when I say that was my money for the day, I mean it! I didn't eat that night! He made me promise to meet him the next day at 1pm in front of the post office and bring him the rest of the money. If I didn't show, he said he would think “maybe this Nash is a bad man, I don't know...” Of course I didn't show. It's sad, but the overwhelming majority of interactions by foreigners to Moroccans in Morocco is with thieves, conmen, and beggars. They're aggressive and abrasive, and in the worst cases you can't make eye-contact with anyone, touch anyone, talk to anyone, or glance at an item without getting into a long-con. Sad.
Returning to the riad I found Twan and Declan, and met Blake from London, Deri from Wales, and Johanna from Germany. Johanna was a student in Germany, getting ready to go to University in Finland and spend some time in Nepal. While I was telling them about my getting got by the conman Hassan, Blake chimed in. Turns out Blake had also been got by Hassan, and had the same dumb bit of paper to show for it. Deri was a barefoot runner and barefoot enthusiast. That night the six of us hung out and had “Story Time With Nash”. I was told by multiple people passing by through the course of the night that I sound like “Brian from Family Guy”. Fantastic.
Soon it was New Year's eve. I spent it my usual way, e.g. working out. “Barefoot Buddies” Deri and Nash went to a dilapidated broken glass-filled “park” were we found a tree to do pullups on, and then back up to the roof terrace of the riad for more exercise and my martial arts. Afterwords I went on a quest to go find the hostel I had booked for New Year's before I'd even left for Africa. I found it, decided it had bad vibes, didn't go, and stayed at the riad. This was great because there was a huge party that night! The riad went all out with decorations, had a big cake with fire crackers on it, and a giant free dinner! Everyone went to the super market and got beer and wine, both were terrible, and had a blast. I also bought a pound of figs and passed them out to everyone evangelically. Everyone in the riad wanted to go out and party for the midnight changeover so a group of about 30 people marched over to some club/bar. Twan, Declan, Blake, Johanna, and myself decided it sucked so we left. I'm glad we did, since New Year's isn't really celebrated in Morocco, the club wound up closing before midnight and throwing everyone out. Meanwhile my party of five had found a nice cafe to enjoy the year-change in. It was nice. Declan wound up stuck in the toilet for the midnight change, which was funny. After our lovely New Year's tea we all walked around the square and relaxed. Johanna invited me to stay with her in Nepal, which I was fully interested in, and some drunk Moroccan ex-kickboxing champ tried to fight Blake because the Moroccan was sad his dad cut his hair... but then he apologized and wandered off talking about being a street sweeper. The whole thing was confusing. We all went back to the riad and hung out till around 2 until the staff forced us to go to sleep like children. Turns out it was just so they could have their own private drug-fueled party, making us feel even more like children. I didn't mind though, because they forgot I wasn't supposed to be there that night, and so stayed for free!
The next day Declan, Twan, and I decided to travel together and went to leave Marrakech and go to Essoeria by bus... but missed it by 20 minutes. In desperation to leave we just took a bus to Agadir. On the bus one of the passengers was an old lady that could have been about 1,000 years old. She looked like Brendan Frasier had accidentally released her from her tomb. Super old. I felt bad that she was so old, but she was holding up the bus ride at every opportunity. If she had moved faster though she would have burst into dust. After over 4 hours with the mummy we were dropped off in Agadir, in the night. We were starting to wonder if we'd made the best decision....
Agadir appeared to be a smoldering crater, Mad Max like dystopian landscape. It looked like a derelict war zone, not the Atlantic beach hub town we thought it was going to be. All we knew was which direction to walk to get to downtown, so that's were we went off to. The walk was a long one, and the scenery wasn't improving. We did see a guy selling live goldfish on the side of the road though... the fish were dangerously close to being hit by cars... Then we arrived downtown and everything changed. It WAS the Atlantic beach town we though it was going to be. It had a beautiful beach and board walk complete with bowling alleys, bars, and even strip clubs. We decided we would celebrate our victorious arrival with a cold pint, but it WAS still Morocco, so all the bars were closed by 11:30 at night. We celebrated instead by going to bed.
We all spent the next day at the beach, where some guy tried to sell me a rock for 2 U.S. Dollars. He specified dollars, which was extra odd. We couldn't even enjoy our freezing cold swim because people kept trying to sell us crap. They tried to sell us fruit, sunglasses, jet-ski rides, henna tattoos, four wheeler rides, camel rides, the aforementioned rock, and some rugs. Sometimes they would get down on one knee like they were proposing which was extra fun to deal with; they would go through there English speech they'd memorized, but they had no actual grasp of the English language. They would have a comically one-sided conversation at me trying to sell some junk, and I would have a comically one-sided conversation at them telling them that their junk was junk. Good times. For lunch we had an amazing 3 course meal for 48 dirham (5$), and to prove once again why the Moroccans are king of diabetes, my fruit dessert was sugared. Bits of fruit, such as orange slices, had sugar poured on it. It's already MADE of sugar! Then we went to an Irish bar that wasn't Irish at all and finally had our victory pint. We drank it in the sun and people watched.
The next morning I thought we may be able to sneak out of our riad early and not pay, but the Islamic prayer horn that went off at 5:30am alerted everyone to everything, so the jig was up. The damn thing was right next to where we were staying, and projected a very loud, but very low quality, “call to prayer”; It sounded like an old record recording of a bunch of cats fighting with the speaker it was playing out of put up to a microphone and then that was blasted across the town. Unenjoyable.
Unenjoyable like the hour-long ruck back to the bus station in the blazing Moroccan sun, where we were again given bad directions by a Moroccan guy but somehow still got where we were going. Not before one of the pockets on my NEW bag blew out though. That's what happens when you get Hong Kong bootlegs. On the bus I sat directly behind crying babies.
Once the ride was over, we arrived in our next city: Sunny surf spot Essoaira! We checked a guide book for the supposedly best spot to eat. It failed us again. The place was WAY too expensive for what was included, and featured a dueling band trying to get money by playing over music that was already playing. Not to be outdone, there was a baby that was WAILING, and my favorite: BEES! We couldn't leave the place fast enough. We left and meandered along the medina, kasbah, the port, and the beach. As we did we found that dealing with all the Moroccan harassment in such quantities had callused us to the point where we were blowing off and walking away from everyone we met, including fellow travelers who may have actually needed our help.
Our time in Essoueria was spent well, including a long hike to a grocery store we weren’t even sure existed. This resulted in me being so hungry by the time I arrived I wound up eating a full kilo of yogurt mixed with a bag of granola. Classic Nash. Also, a bird pooped on my shirt. Although I reminded everyone that some cultures consider it a sign of good luck, it didn't feel very lucky. I still wore the shirt for a few days after that though. Declan, Twan, and I naturally spent some days lounging around the beach soaking up rays, but it was the first day we did so in Essouria that really stuck out. We were all walking around when Declan declared he could go no longer without sunbathing. He found a spot, right then and there, and we stripped down to our undies and layed out. It looked like a scene from an 80's buddy action style movie. A couple minutes later we realized the spot he had chosen was right in front of a child's playground! We did not move. Parents came and got their children though. Accidental pedophile! Classic Nash? We were breaking both religious and social law, so I felt pretty good about myself until a mounted policeman rode up. I was pretty sure we were going to Moroccan jail... but he said nothing to us and instead stopped some children from playing sports on the beach. Good job, cop. Once we had our fill of being creepy we went back to Marrakech. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention, on more than one occasion, people touching all the bread for sale, knocking it into the dirty road, then putting it back like nothing happened. Classic Morocco!
After an uneventful bus ride back to Marrakech we showered, I changed my poop shirt, and we sorted ourselves out for our early start the next morning; we were headed on a desert excursion to the edge of the Sahara Desert. Declan and I spent the rest of the evening walking around with Johanna who still enthusiastically welcomed me to Germany, Finland, and Nepal. Money willing, I planned to take her up on the offers. While the three of us walked around she told the story of a Moroccan guy who tried to giver her a massage in a tea cafe and undid her bra strap. Creepy! I’d heard many similar stories in Morocco.
The next morning Declan, Twan, and I were up at 6 to have breakfast and take our 6-plus hour bus ride southeast into the desert. The driving was terrifying through mountain passes, and as we teetered on the edge of cliffs I was reminded that Morocco is 6th in the world for traffic collisions. Great. It also struck me impressively how much the landscape reminded me of Arizona. On the way we stopped of at the village/site of Ksar Ait Ben Haddou which was a filming location for all kinds of Nash-tastic films. Films such as: Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jewel of the Nile, Legionnaire, Gladiator, The Mummy, Prince of Persia, and Sahara! I was happy to go there to say the least, and exploring the area was a treat. After the tour the group was sat down at a posh tent-restaurant. Of course, food was not included in our tour. I didn't mind because I had anticipated this and brought my own food. Yeah, I'm THAT guy...the smart guy. I ate my food, then finished everyone's leftovers, then took some complimentary oranges to go. Well played, me.
We continued our bus journey through the cities of Agdz and Zagorou, passing rugged mountains moving to mud-brick villages, and rising stretches of emptiness broken up by the occasional desert oasis with it's water and palms. The natives had built a beautiful system of aqueducts through them to make the most of scarce water. Finally the paved road just stopped, giving way to the desert. Here we met up with some Berbers, the desert nomads of Morocco, mounted camels and took an hour or so ride across the desert to their permanent camp of sprawling desert tents. We were given tents to sleep in, in groups of 4, with Dom the Englishman joining our group of 3 to round us out. After we'd gotten situated we were scuttled off for “Berber Whiskey” i.e. tea in the desert. It tasted of mint, sugar, and cigar ashes. Tea was followed by dinner in the Giant dining tent. Dinner was a comparatively lavish version of the standard Moroccan fare consisting of harira soup, bread, tajin, and fruit. During dinner I managed to pocket a considerable quantity of bread for the following day.
After dinner a bonfire was constructed, rather unskillfully, by our Berber hosts, around which we sang songs, talked, warmed ourselves, and generally huddled up and did normal bonfire things. I did hear that one girl was pressured by the Berbers to have a 3 or 4 way in the dunes, but I wasn't a part of that, and sure wasn't into it, so thankfully she got away. Around midnight we all went to bed, since we had to be up at 6:30 … though we didn't know that at the time because as per the usual in Morocco, things were disorganized and communication was at a minimum
Our sleeping tent was about what you would imagine, if you're imagining a tent with a floor made of sandy desert. The sleeping gear we were given had most definitely never been washed, and felt like an expert combination of paper mache and burlap potato sack. I'm fairly certain my blanket was a camel saddle and my pillow was used BY the camels. All that being said, I slept as well as I ever do, not being cold or wearing pants. The starts were expectedly beautiful and the moon full and bright.
I was a few minutes into my morning exercises when the Berbers began banging around pots and pans corralling everyone for breakfast. Again, typically Moroccan fare, though this time there was nothing lavish about it: Bread with butter and jam, with a small cup of tea tasting vaguely of ash, all served in the dark. Immediately after breakfast and before I could go to the toilet, my group of 4 was immediately grabbed and put on camels for the long bowel and bladder jostling ride back to our drop zone. We got picked up, found the road, found the toilet, and began our turnaround to Marrakech. On the way back we stopped at a textile Arabian Gallery, which of course tried to sell us Berber carpets. I'm sure I would have gotten one, but I couldn’t' afford food or shelter and was taking bread from restaurant to stay alive, so a rug was out of the question. They're pushy though, and refuse to relent, so it's a good thing this guy called Mike, a Vietnamese-american, said he wanted one. I tossed him to the sharks and escaped. He wound up not getting one, but had a fantastic learning experience: He'd only been in Morocco a couple days and had never been to a similar country. The clueless guy had a hard time with everything. He was sick, allergic to cats, didn't like dates, and was extremely naïve; Morocco may have been the worst place for him to go!
Continuing our trip BACK to Marrakech, we were taken to a film museum. If had sets and props from movies filmed in Morocco, which sounded super cool. It was not. On the flip side through it had signed pictures of the stars who had visited, and Jean-Claude Van Damme had by far the comicaly gayest portrait I'd ever seen. Oh, we also left that guy Mike there, waiting on the steps for some transition bus that likely never came. He's probably dead now. Our final stop before getting back to Marrakech was at a restaurant on the side of the mountain we happened to be on. The floor looked like it had a gravel floor, but actually the “gravel” was olive seeds. Other than that it was completely unremarkable. Some Moroccans tried to rip us off, and I ordered nothing and ate bread I'd pocketed the night before.
Walking back into the riad in Marrakech the staff said “Nash, You've changed Color!”, I said I was just attempting to blend in. Declan still looked like Harry Potter, and Twan still looked like a Dutch guy. We went to the store to get provisions to celebrate our success and to party in honor of Declan returning to Europe the following morning. On return we met 8 English travelers who where on their way to the place we'd just come from. One of them was a dead-on ringer for Russel Brand. We bonded quickly. We all partied well into the night. I got up early to see everyone off, especially Declan. Unfortunately for me the staff realized I hadn't paid in awhile and asked me about it, fortunately for me they thought I only hadn't paid for 2 days, so I gladly paid that and mentioned nothing of the others.
Our first day without Declan, Twan and I wandered about Marrakech eventually coming upon some fat douche claiming to be an emmam/ prayer caller who said he was with Oxfam. He was clearly running a scam. He made the unfortunate choice of picking me, a person who truly has no money and didn't give a shit about his story, and Twan, who was Dutch and so wouldn’t suffer such scams. “I know you money, I can smell it!” said the creepy guy who was not doing a good job of not coming off as a scam artist. “I really don't”, I replied, really not having any. “I do, I just won't give it to you.” said Twan brilliantly. The guy then started screaming and shouting at us to get out of his shop, which he originally very literally pulled us into against our wills anyway. The guy was a dick.
That night Twan and I went to a hammam. A hammam is a Turkish style public bath. Everyone's descriptions of them made them sound lovely, and a quintessential Moroccan experience. It was definitely a Moroccan experience all right. I was expecting something akin to a Japanese onsen, but that was not the case. First there are 3 bathing rooms: cold, warm, and steamy hot. You pick which one you want to bath in, then get down to business. You could wash yourself like a normal person, or you could have someone do it for an incredible bee, which also comes with a massage. The person administering the rub down looked like some homeless old guy fresh out of the gutter, so I elected to have him NOT touch me as much as possible. Once in bath mode, like an onsen you use buckets of water, plus your cleaning product of choice to clean yourself off. Not like an onsen, there's nowhere to sit. However, the first problem you encounter is the Moroccan's rampant homophobia, so you must publicly bath with your underwear on. Not only is that super weird and uncomfortable, it's also massively impractical. Plus I hate the feeling of wet underwear. I was told that people go to these places to relax by sitting in the steam room and having a soak, which is what put the image of an onsen in my mind, but the “steam room” turned out to be the room that you bath in that’s hot. “The soak” was not a hot pool of water like I’d imagined, but was just sitting on the floor of the poorly drained bathing room, in inches of other people's stagnant filthy bathing scrub water. I felt like I was getting a fungus just looking at this, I certainly didn't want to sit and stay awhile. Twan and I washed up, looked at each other decidedly un-relaxed and decided to leave. I brought extra undies, Twan left commando.
Twan left Morocco the next morning. I set off for the Sadian Tombs against everyone's recommendations. I'm glad I went, I had a blast; I like tombs! I'd noticed Morocco becoming slightly more unruly than normal that day, which I later found out was the result of Muslim extremists blowing up a newspaper building in Paris and killing some 17 people. This was not making my life easier, or it easier to appreciate the more eccentric parts of Islamic culture. I decided it was time to get on getting' on, and bought a bus ticket for Meknes leaving at 1:30 that morning. I went back to the riad and reunited with Russel Brand-man and his crew, as well as none other than Deri, my barefoot Welsh friend! I told him my plan to take off for Meknes, and on a whim he decided to join. To Adventure! I snuck out of the riad without paying, and Deri and I rucked to the bus station where he bought a ticket for my bus. Soon we were off to Meknes, and according to a guy from Casablanca we couldn't leave Meknes without trying their wines for which they were famous: Their red, white, rose, and the rarest of all: gray. Not even the wine dealer in Meknes knew what the hell gray wine was, so that one was out. The rest were a go.
Oh, the bus to Meknes: 8 hours of wailing babies, while literally everyone on the bus had their seat reclined, except me because the guy behind me didn't want it. Also, I'm pretty sure our bus had a minor collision with another vehicle. I'm not sure, but the driver and a bunch of people from both vehicles got out and started yelling at each other.
Once we got off at the bus station we checked our Map and my compass and set off in the direction of our next stay. Turns out, there's more than one bus station and we weren't at the one I thought. We walked an hour in the wrong direction, then an hour to retrace our steps, then an hour to actually get where we were going. These things happen. We found the hotel we were to stay at which let us sleep on the roof for cheaper than staying at a campground. “But it's cold” said the receptionist, trying to get us to pay double for an actual room. Yeah, maybe for YOU, I thought. “we'll be fine” we replied smugly. And we were. Though there was what appeared to be a casino close by and the music it blasted made sleeping on the roof feel like trying to sleep on the floor of a night club. Other than that, it was great.. We had a roof on the roof, meaning we wouldn’t' get rained on, and warm blankets; It was great. The shop-keep was right though, being much further north, Meknes was considerably colder that it's southern counterparts, but nothing too off putting. The place was definitely designed with help from it's colonial overlords (the french), and was very western in it's construction There was even an exercise park! Deri and I made ample use for the several days were were there.
There really wasn't much to Meknes, tourist-wise, but that's what made it such a great place. It does have the biggest palace gate in Morocco, but outside of that, it's just a relaxing well built town. Their meat market featured such things as an automated chicken plucking machine, and copious cow heads, plus every part of fa camel: feet, brains, liver, heart, stomach, and ball sacks. They also had amazing sausage sandwiches that we became mildly addicted to, and I had Sharon fruit for the first time. It blew my mind, and was love at first taste.
During our stay in Meknes we took a bus to Moulay Idriss, the number 1 Islamic pilgrimage site in Morocco. Supposedly the locals say that 5 visits to Moulay Idriss equals one haj to Mecca, but I'm pretty sure that’s just to drum up tourism. From the city we hiked to Volubilis, an amazing Roman Ruins. Outside of a few roped off tile mosaics you're free to go anywhere and do anything you wish, with no supervision. I spent several hours exploring and having an archeologicaly anthropologic good time. Deri found a sunny spot and took a nap for almost the entire time I was there. Once I'd had my fill we hiked back to town, where I went to go get some pastries that turned out to be full of bees! Go figure. Deri and I got an excessive amount of nougat and then probably diabetes, like the rest of Morocco, trying to eat it all.
Our final day in Meknes was spent drinking tea in cafes and trying to find some of their legendary wine, which we did. Then we went and got steak and supplies for a glorious home cooked dinner, which Deri expertly prepared since he's a chef back in Wales. As he prepared dinner I did my own things like sow up my ripped gear, and go buy badly spoiled milk. Our steak dinner with quality wine was amazing. Afterward we went out for more tea and dessert to celebrate our successful celebration.
Our final morning in Meknes we left the hotel, I didn't pay for all my time there, which I let Deri rationalize as bargaining for a lower rate, and we took a train to Fez. The train ride was fine, but we were planning to stay at an “official” youth hostel, which meant that they were extremely authoritarian and locked all the time. Extremely inconvenient was what it was. We spent our time in Fez doing what most people do in Fez, getting lost in the largest medina in all of Morocco. We went to the tanneries, then watched them from the roof, and then people watched at various cafes. Deri hated the medinas, but he loved coffee, so he would suffer through to get his fix. I couldn't blame him for hating the medina. Everything that makes Morocco a grating place to be is amplified and condensed in the medina: more beggars, more thieves, and really really aggressive touts.
On our wanderings we also found an elaborate (for Morocco) martial arts school. They taught a variety of arts: several Chinese styles, but focus on Taekwondo. The place even had a live peacock! It was sitting at the snack bar they had, across from where they also trained ping pong. Talk about a mix of styles! They were only doing self defense training while I was there, so I didn't join in. Next time.
Also in Fez, one of the times Deri and I were people watching having tea, a child beggar came up to me to beg for some money. I was using my normal technique of ignoring the boy, but the cafe garcon was having none of it and came up and beat the shit out of the kid with his waiting tray. I guess that’s one way to take care of the situation.
Our final day in Fez we crammed as much in as possible. We went to beautiful Jnana Shil gardens, which even had a huge bamboo forest somehow. Of course I carved my name on the bamboo. We then went on the first mall in Morocco, feeling quit under dressed all of a sudden, and rode the first escalator in Morocco. We then went to the supermarket, where Deri got back on his medina hate-train stating “If I lived here, I would exclusively shop here. I would never go to the fucking hell-hole medina.” I retorted the medina is cheaper, to which he replied “yeah, but here there's no horses stopping to take a shit on you, no cats fucking in the aisles, no one about to stab you or rip you off, you can actually fine what you're after, and it's air conditioned!” … Touche.
Deri seemed to be reaching his limit for tolerating all the thieves and humbugs and everyone trying to sell us hashish, and I knew I was reaching my limit for the whole damn country being covered in broken glass, so we decided to head up into the mountains, to a town called Chefchauan. It was probably for the best, especially considering I just figured out that what I had been pissing on in the bath room up until then, which I though was some kind of urinal wall, turned out to be an Islamic washing station. OOPS. I was pissing on their religious thing, and they were washing with it. Time to go!
Chefchauan is a beautiful mountain village famous for it being painted a very specific blue color. It's also known for being very laid back, and for producing the majority of the world's hashish. Too bad I don't smoke, because the locals get pissed when they find out your there NOT to buy hash. Every time the conversation would turn ugly the Arabic sounded like someone having a VERY heated argument while at the same time their throat was being forced full of equally angry bees.
At the bus station Deri met some guys from the U.K. Who were frequent visitors of Chefchauan, and took us to their super-cheap hostel, where we once again made our home on the roof top. We liked the town so much we stayed for a full week. Though the town itself was nice, and the roof was comfortable, most nights we would be awoken by a series of unpleasant sounds: cats fighting, dogs barking, crying babies, and a 20 minute long prayer siren war beginning at 5:20 in the morning.
One of the big to-dos in Chefchauan, outside of drugs, is to climb the mountain Jebal El Kalaa, so of course I set out to do so. I wasn't just going to climb it the regular way, of course, but barefoot. Nash-style! Nature had other plans though. The day I was to attempt the climb a torrential mountain monsoon blew in, pouring rain for 6 hours, hard, delaying me a day. During our downtime, Deri and I found the workout park in town and made use of it during all available time in the city. Once, during one of our many workouts, a stall owner challenged me to a pushup competition. I won, 54 to 53, doing one more than he so I could secure the win. The children watching still said I lost, not being able to accept a loss to a foreigner. I won!
The next day was clear, so I decided I would climb. Deri was to also attempt the climb barefoot, as training for his barefoot London Marathon run in 4 months. As we approached the start of the climb we met another climber named Mike, also from Wales. The three of us decided to attempt it together. We got to the official start of the climb, and Deri and I ceremoniously removed our shoes. 10 minutes in, Deri decided it was too excruciating and put his shoes back on. This left the group with two fast walkers with shoes, and one excruciatingly slow walker without. Soon, we were two groups. I was OK with that though, as it gave me the contemplation time these Shugyo afford me. Overcoming the discomfort and donkey poop I pressed on. I passed the only “village” on the trail which consists of a couple shacks, livestock, and a broken car, and kept going. Hours later I was walking through snow. Te cold wasn't as bad as the slippery ground. Eventually I rejoined Deri and Mike, at a peak they were gazing out from. I quickly joined them and found what we were looking at was the Mediterranean sea, and across from it: Spain! It was an impressive site to behold. Though we were at “a” top, it wasn't “THE” top we set out to find. It turned out we had gone hours out of our way because a landslide-like event had caused the trail we wanted to to become completely covered up. It was no wonder we missed it. We looked out into the distance and saw terrible weather was coming in, and the mountains are no pace to get hit with that unprepared. We were now in a race against time to get the hell off the mountain, as both the setting winter sun, and the horrific clouds blowing in exponentially lessened our chances for survival if we became stranded. The temperature rapidly dropped and I became aware of the fact I had no shoes, jacket, gloves, or hat. I had at least put on my “emergency shoes” which were of course just flip-flops, s o I could keep up with the pace of the rest of the group. We vigorously hurried back, just barely making it before the night time storm, and my body was wrecked, but we called it a success. To celebrate Deri prepared another another victory meal, and the 3 of us ate and shot the breeze well into the night. As we were eating, one of the other hostel residents walked by the dining area and told us he went to go climb the mountain. He said, speaking to Deri “ I saw your footprints at the top of the mountain! I saw your 5-toed shoe print, then I saw Nash's BARE foot print! I can't believe you really did it, that’s awesome!”. Awesome indeed; just leaving my mark. We all parted ways for the night, and I took a much deserved shower.
It's a good thing I seized the opportunity to climb the mountain when I did, because from the following day onward the once mild Chefchauen was besieged by a torrential mountain monsoon. The weather forced most of us to gather inside the hostel, though this wasn't really a bad thing. The first night of this we all threw in a few dirham and had a giant home cooked tajin, over which we all shared stories. During this exchange of tales I met an Australian named Leo. During conversation he had an odd look on his face for a bit, before finally asking “ … wait. You're a martial arts cage fighter?” Yes. “ AND and adventurer?” Yes. “And you backpacked around Australia?” Yes. He looked like he didn't know how to phrase his next question before finally saying “ … do you know Fin and Pia?” What!? Yes. They lead the hippy convoy I hooked up with in West Australia! “Fin's my best friend, we grew up in the same town, he told me about you! I've seen your Ice bucket challenge video! I knew there COULD NOT be two people who fit your description. This is crazy serendipity!” Indeed. I was just as shocked as he to be running into the best friend of the Australian “King of the hippies” I'd met in Australia, in North-West Africa. What are the odd, I wonder? We talked all night and exchanged stories before going to bed.
I didn't have long to be blown away by fate though, because at 2:30 in the morning I was blown away by something far more sinister: the most concerning diarrhea of my life. The diarrhea was accompanied by stomach cramps and nausea, prompting me to immediately take an anti-diarrheal drug. That's how you know it's serious, because I don't even take aspirin. I'm really not keen to die of diarrhea though, so I was not messing around. The diarrhea and convulsions continued until noon, at which point I took another pill. It didn't seem to help much though; I suppose I should keep a sharper eye on my kit, because as I went to go take the second pill I saw on the package that they had expired 5 and a half years ago! I shambled into the medina to get some water and some green bananas, shivering from the near freezing rain. A local trying to sell me drugs said I was walking like an old man. I was dying. I could barely stand, let alone walk, and my bones and spine were feeling the effects of dehydration. I even turned down free tea and crepes!
Bed/Toilet ridden, I pondered what could have caused this. Perhaps the pitch-in tajin had some garlic powder in it? The symptoms were similar, though I'd never felt them to THIS extent before. Maybe it was eating the disgusting salt block of goat cheese rotting the in the sun I bought off of some lady in the street the previous day? Maybe it was the strange tea I drank from a Swiss guy... was there something else in it? Maybe it was the recent influx of junk pastries into my body? Maybe it was an intestinal fecal born parasite gotten from walking barefoot through donkey poop while climbing the mountain. Maybe it's because a couple days prior I ate over 2 pounds of dried figs? Maybe, just maybe, it was a culmination of all these good decisions working together. Whatever the case, I was paying the price.
Deri and I had been in Chefchauan for 7 days and decided we had to move on. It had been a day and a half since I got hit with my mystery colon blow, and I was now strong enough to attempt the journey. I was still having odd convulsions in my organs though, and they were causing me great concern. I could feel the contents of my colon traveling in directions they were never intending to go. I contemplated the horrors of going to a Moroccan hospital: “you're having diarrhea? We're going to have to cut that foot off.” What!?
Deri had gone out the day prior, during the worst part of my condition, and bought each of us bust tickets to Tangier. Now it was time to actually go, and cold steady rain accompanied us on our walk to the station. In order to not be late, we decided to get a taxi to the bus station, though I’m not sure what we were worried about, because as per the Moroccan usual, the bus left over half an hour late. I also had to pay 5 dirham for my bag which I then had to stand in the rain for 10 minutes and load myself. Morocco... The bus itself was full of loud Brazilian girls, and a leak in the roof caused Deri to get periodically rained on. As for me, I spent the 3 hour ride trying not to poop my pants. I succeeded, just.
When we arrived in Tangier I took a minute to go destroy the local toilet, then we set about finding a way to the medina where we were planning to stay. The taxi drivers wanted to charge us a whopping 100 dirhams, and nobody wanted to share a cab with us, so I told the drivers we wouldn’t be using their services. They bargained themselves down to 40 dirham, which I said was too much and would rather walk. “It's too far! It's over an hour's walk, and it's the middle of the night! It's dangerous!” Whatever. We walked. It was only 6 kilometers, and for once in the history of Morocco and me, no one bothered me. Deri and I made camp in an old cheap hotel in the medina.
Tangier is an exceptionally interesting place. It's the major port to Europe, and it's proximity to Spain makes it a uniquely cosmopolitan area. There's bars and people from all over the world. It was a huge destination for the beat writers like Paul Bowles, Allen Ginsburg, and Jack Kerouac, and profoundly influenced their artistic output. I felt I owed it to myself to see the places that influenced some of their most famous works. The first place I went was the American Litigation museum, which has the distinction of being the only US national landmark NOT on United States soil. It houses a collection of interesting doodads. Of course I was really just filling time until 10:30pm when the “El Madre” hotel and “Tangier Inn Pub” opened up. The hotel is where “The Naked Lunch” was written, and the pub was an informal hang out of the beats. It was a nice place to go as a writer's pilgrimage, and also nice because Deri was heading back to Wales the following day and this was his farewell. The pub itself was in a state most likely not favored by the 60's writers who'd made it famous. It was now a posh lounge with blaring techno music, but at least they'd kept the writer's pictures up. While there Deri and I met 3 American from Portland, which really made Deri's day because he's always wanted to visit the place. We all chatted until about 2am when the staff seemed to be kicking us out. I drank 3 beers and paid for none of them, courtesy of Deri and our new American conversation buddies. We walked back to our place in the medina to take an extended siesta.
Deri's final morning in Morocco e went out for our final cafe cup of tea and people watching. While we were relaxing some old beggar came up, like usual, and went to shake hands. I didn't shake his hand. I politely declined, and was met with unending rage. He immediately declared I was a bad person and walked backwards away from me shouting that I would soon die, and that he would find me in hell, so that he could fuck me, because I am a mother fucker, and a bad man. His shouting went on for a good 5 solid minutes. This was not the first time I'd witnessed some Arab strike a lifetime feud over nothing. It's shit like this that ingratiates them to no-one in the western world! They make a terrible case for themselves. For every good person you meet as a foreigner you're assaulted by three crazy shit heads. It's exhausting. From then on I never shook anyone's hand in Morocco, I just said I was sick and wished them well, in order to avoid whatever minor slight might lead to another world war. On that comical note Deri and I parted ways. I moved into a cheap single room, and planned to stay in Tangier, really focusing on my writing.
That was the plan anyway. The next day I was sitting on a park bench, intently writing, when I was hit up by two sub-Saharan Africans with an infuriatingly long story that was just to ask me for money. Then I was hit up for money by some Moroccans. Then some guys “selling” things. All WHILE I'm obviously writing. I couldn’t' get anything done. I couldn't walk around town without getting assaulted by a sob story for money every couple of steps. I couldn't go from the hotel to the street for food or supplies. I couldn’t' do anything without it turning into a huge pain in my ass, including trying to barricade myself in my hotel room which was giving me cabin fever. That's not to say I didn't catch the occasional break; Once I went out for an omelet and I got free fries ( which I don't actually like) because the cook told me he got the impression I didn't have a lot of money so he gave me on the house fries. I really appreciated it, but I just wished everyone else in Tangier would get the hint I'm broke and leave me alone. No such luck though. I couldn't rationalize staying there any longer, especially when I had to be back in Casablanca to fly out of Morocco, and the hostel in Casablanca has free breakfast. I wanted to stay in Tangier longer, but the people are so unrelentingly in-your-face they drove me away.
I have never seen a culture be diametrically apposed to another before, but I think Morocco and Japan might e opposites in almost every way. I much prefer the latter.
I hiked out to the Tangier train station “just barely” making it in time, the ticket clerk informed me. The train was to leave at 11:30, and I arrived at 11:28. Great, except it didn't even show up until 11:50, and didn’t leave until noon. I was psyched I had a seat for the ride back to Casablanca, but it turned out to be terrible. I was rammed in an “8 person cabin” that would have been cramped by 6 people, except that not only was it completely full of the 8 regular people, someone also brought 3 babies in. The babies were crying, of course, and my legs were cramping. I voluntarily rode the last one and a half hours standing in the entryway to the car junction. Worth it!
I never thought I'd be glad to go back to Casablanca, but compared to some other parts of Morocco, it's a relaxing getaway. I of course went back to the hostel with free breakfasts across from the Kyokushin Dojo. Outside of focusing on my writing and waiting for my flight out, I was still on a quest for souvenirs. The souvenirs weren't for me, they were for a friend's wedding in the states. Once again, I was returning to the USA for a wedding, and the bride is a big fan of Casablanca, so I couldn’t go empty handed. The problem was finding appropriate non-junky souvenirs. The first place I tried was the “Disney-ified” novella medina, or “new medina”, which is an oxymoron. It was built by the french in the 1930s as part of an experiment to try and make a traditional Moroccan structure, but have it be modernly functional. It turned out to be just as big a pain as everywhere else. No good. Next I tried the Dubai-like grandiose shopping mall. 3-4 stories of up scale madness; It's got an Imax theater, a children's adventure park, and even it's own rich-people faux medina lined with gold, all inside the mall! The only things it seemed not to have where exactly what I was looking for.
My days in Casablanca were consumed by looking for these dammed wedding gifts. Somedays I would spend upwards of 10 hours a day questing for them, which would leave me fairly exhausted, so when it was time to rest, it was time to rest. Which is why I was extra angry when some dullard came smashing into the hostel room at 2am, flipped on the light, STILL bashed into everything, and once he got settled in bed and the light was back off, proceeded to watch a movie on his bright ass tablet. Once the sloth fell asleep he proceeded to snore with a power I had never seen. He's the first person I've ever seen roll over completely and not break snore stride. I felt me and this guy might have a chat, and chat we did, though it wasn't what I was expecting. He out of the blue invited me to go to a hammam with him. What!? I don't know you like that, guy! Plus, that costs money. I would normally be staying at campgrounds or something, but all through Morocco, the hostels were for some reason cheaper than camping. Morocco is odd like that since the whole country operates on NFP, or “no fixed prices”. Everything costs however much you agree it costs. I had to watch my money, as it was all but gone, and devoted to a specific cause.
My money was now devoted to these wedding gifts, some of which were alcohol related; not easy things to come by when you're in an Islamic country, but after many days, I was victorious. Next I had to build a contraption to secure my breakable items through the bumbling airport process. This, I did. Now that I had accomplished everything I set out to do, I had only to wait a couple more days until my flight out. During this time a children's fencing team invaded the hostel. I met the spriteliest-most-likely-gay guy from Taiwan. The only way to describe him would be “fairy”, but he seemed to be fluent in every language I could think of. I also met Thiago, a surfing instructor/ tour guide from Portugal, and Daniel, a student from New York. We had story time with Nash, and he told me I sounded like Seth McFarland. Fantastic.
Finally it was time for me to go, so I packed up, said goodbye to everyone, and set off for the airport. I stopped at the reception of the hostel to actually pay my bill, and couldn't find anyone. Not there, or around. I actually TRIED to pay! I wasn't going to wait around all day for someone to take my money though, so I left. The hostel was good to me though, and I ate all their complimentary breakfasts. It had been 3 days since I paid. Like I said, I would have, but I wasn't going to wait around. I could make use of the money else wear.
I took the tram to the train station, ten a train to the airport. The train was late, then got it's platform switched 3 different times before finally setting off. I felt bad for the people on board who might be cutting their flights close or missing them, but that’s a rookie move anyway; I was getting to the airport the afternoon before my flight. My flight wasn't until extremely early the following morning, so I had all afternoon and night to stay in the airport. For all the bad there is in airports at lease people leave you alone once you're in... For the most part. There were only a few seats in the airport and people were just claiming them by putting luggage on them and leaving for huge stretches of time. I guess they thought the very few police would stop thieves?
I spent my time at the airport writing most of this journal. Five hours in I decided I was thirsty, so I set off for a drinking fountain to use to fill my water bottle. There where none. I asked a guard about it, and he said he would take my bottle to a secure area to fill it up and bring it back for me. I let him do it, but it took a concerningly long time. If there where no drinking fountains, where did he go? Did he fill it up with water from the toilet? It smelled alright, but it did concern me. As long as I didn't get organ-destroying poops again, I decided I'd call it a win.
I did like how the airport was full of stray dogs and cats, and no one seemed to care. They were fun to watch, and playing with them helped pass the time. For bed, I just camped out on the super uncomfortable marble floor of the airport, unrolling my sleeping bag and holing up in a corner. I woke up and got ready for boarding, but less than two hours to go before boarding and my check-in gate STILL wasn't open. Finally it opened and I got to my plane, After giving the customs officer my exit forms. He was pissed they were all wrinkly. Why'd you give them to me so early and why are they such an inconvenient size then!? Of course I'm going to put a crease in it! As for the ride, I nicknamed it the “Tuberculosis Express” because everyone on it was coughing, hacking, and wheezing like they had some serious diseases. They probably did. Thankfully no one tried to talk to me, probably thanks in part to the fact that I had been wearing the same jeans for over a month and they hadn't been washed. They had been on the camels, to the tanneries, up the mountains, and everywhere else on my Moroccan journey, and did not smell great. They worked like a charm for keeping the TB sufferers away!
I managed to make it back to the States, and smuggle in my wedding gifts. I had spent over a month in Morocco expanding my mind and having new experiences to reflect on.
I had accomplished absolutely everything I'd set out to due while there, and did it using less than 500 US dollars! ...because that's all I had. Even though I had to go all “Aladdin”-ey at the end, I felt quite content. I knew it wouldn't be long before I was off on some ridiculous adventure again though, as Deri so eloquently and accurately put it when describing me:
“ Lost is where the heart is.”
I couldn't argue. It does seem to be my natural state, and I DO have some things in the works...
Lost is where the heart is,
-Nash
Click below for the pictures from Morocco!
I was actually on my way back to Japan, in the midst of being driven mad by sedentary stagnation. Finally something had seemingly worked out. The World Kudo Championships were being held in Tokyo Japan, and I was planning to go liaise for the U.S. National team which was slip-shod cobbled together at the last moment. After the tournament I thought I would hang around for the last month or two of the year and get some good training and adventuring in. Perfect plan! No plan survives contact with the enemy though, and the enemy in this case happens to be the world I live in.
The usual way I would go about staying in Japan would be to just rock up and stay with some friends. The problem with that however is a lot of my friends have moved away and those that haven't have now got legitimate big-boy things to worry about such as kids, careers, wives, etc, and so can't really afford to have me hanging around for an indeterminate amount of time getting into shenanigans like I do. So, that method seemed to be out. I turned to couch surfing. No luck. Then it looked like I was getting a break when a usually busy friend said I could crash with him. About a week later I thought I should double check to make sure it was OK, and I was still good. Now I needed to find a cheep way to get to Japan, and the clock was ticking! It just so happened I knew a guy who was getting ready to leave the mid-west USA and drive to LA via Las Vegas. Great! He said I could ride along, no charge! That means I could fly out of LA to Tokyo fairly cheap. The plan was to drive to Denver Colorado and adventure a few days, then spend Halloween weekend in Las Vegas, then the guy would drop me off in Death Valley California where I was to rendezvous with my buddy Mr. Gibbs. I would camp with him and his friends in Death Valley for a week then ride back with them to LA and fly out. Things were finally looking up. I hopped on a computer and got ready to buy my airline ticket, and as I did so I had this feeling that I better triple check with my friend that it was OK if I stayed with him in Tokyo. I'm glad I did, because it turned out to be very not OK! “Oh yeah, I just moved and got a new job, and I live with a roommate now who's very OCD; there's no way you could stay for more than a couple days.” Crap. At least I had my free ride to LA, which meant a cheep flight, so I could wing a place to stay. Then my ride hurt his back, so the trip was postponed a week. Fine. I used the time to try and arrange some accommodations. Work-stay at a hostel? Nope. Then a long-shot of mine came through; an acquaintance knew someone in the real estate business who could get me a Tokyo apartment for a couple months for 300$US a month! Talk about connections! It was nice to have something go right for a change, I felt. It was a feeling I quickly forgot when the day came to leave and my ride told me he'd been hospitalized for kidney stones and was now bed-ridden. Ride to Los Angeles canceled, cheap flight null, awesome road trip shredded and travel postponed.
With the LA part a no-go the flight was insanely more expensive, and the constant delays had been gnawing at my finances, so by this time I couldn't even afford my ridiculously low-rent Tokyo apartment. I tried to get the Kudo fighters to go in with me, but they all had other plans. I tried to get anyone I knew to go in with me, but to no avail. Time had run out. The tournament had come and gone, taking with it half my purpose for going to Japan, and the year was winding down which meant dojo would be closed and friends would be gone and busy doing holiday things, negating the other half of my purpose for going. “The best laid plans of mine and men...”.
So now I wasn't going to Japan, but I had already allotted a certain amount of time and money to the venture, so I turned my attention to other places. Where could I go that would cost exactly the same, take just as long (or not long), that I had never been to, and that would expand my world view and offer me new experiences? I narrowed it down to Santiago-Chile, or Morocco in Northwest Africa. I had bigger plans for Chile, plus I'd never been to an Arab country before, so Morocco won out. After a shitty two-week stint as a grunt at an “Amazon” warehouse to raise my funds back up, I was off. More or less.
I'd been packed ready to leave now for a couple months, thanks to delays, and now I didn't even remember what all was in my bag. I swapped some Japanese specific items with some Moroccan specific ones and was content. Then I had four workouts the day before I left because I was sure there would be a shortage of opportunities in Morocco. Once I'd squared myself away I set off for the airport, arriving four hours early. I'd hitched a free ride so I was happy to take what I could get. In fact, I had been faced with so many delays and so many plans falling through, it didn't even feel real that I was finally actually leaving!
It started to feel more real after I received the most thorough airport security pat-down of my life though, exacerbated by my passport no longer scanning, courtesy of china. It seemed the TSA's oppressive regime was worse then ever, but at least the employees seemed to be in good spirits for a change. I had bought the cheapest ticket, which meant I would be living in airports for a couple days, so I brought rations. If I'd have relied on buying food in an airport I would have spent my entire meager budget before I even arrived!
I had plenty of time in various airports which meant lots of time to people watch, and read. One thing I noticed overwhelmingly was everyone passing exceedingly long time (or all their time) on their phones and tablets. I go out of my way to avoid those things while traveling, because I don't travel to be surrounded by the familiar and comfortable. The solitary time forces my mind to get where it needs to be, clear and creative. Eu-stress is important. No distractions! My traveling is not an escape from “real” life, but rather a condensed and concentrated version of it where everything is heightened and exaggerated; a kind of “super life”.
The people watching at the airport was sub-par, what with the techno-zombie-ism and all, but the reading was a bit more interesting. According to the CNN report another Asian airplane had just crashed en-route to Singapore that morning, making me even more hesitant than usual to go rocketing through the sky in a tube. I strayed from the news to the news stand. There I saw a popular adventure magazine with a list of the “100 things to do as an adventurer before you die!”. I enthusiastically looked it over, and anti-climatically discovered I had completed around 90% of the list... I guess it's time to take it to the max!
Out of the airport and onto my first of many flights, it was business as usual. It was a Delta airlines flight. I had kids wailing at me in stereo, only made worse by the fact that the plane was blasting Christmas music during the ride. A country-music version of “Frosty the Snowman” to be exact. Dinner was a choice between Mexican and Italian... I hate them both, so, so much. Also , there were no leg rests. What Delta lacks in everything, it makes up for with a needlessly hilarious and entertaining safety video, though I would rather have basic amenities instead.
My second flight was out of Detroit, my third out of Amsterdam. While there I met a guy with the craziest dreadlocks I have ever seen; they were down to the floor and he wrapped them around his body like a scarf. He looked like a Dervish! The Amsterdam airport staff directed me to a help desk so I could deal with connecting flight stuff. “Show me your ticket.” said the staff. I did. “This isn't a flight. This is a ticket for a flight that doesn't exist.” Of course it doesn't exist... “There's no flight from that airline, or a flight with that number, in our system.” So I got to play the “How do I get to where I'm going and where is my checked bag” game. Thankfully I was in the Netherlands; phantom plane? The Dutch don't suffer that shit. The clerk immediately put me on a new, very real flight. I had 6 hours in Amsterdam to fill, and decided against leaving he airport. I'm fully aware of how the place has the uncanny ability to make one lose track of time, having experienced it first hand. The people at the Amsterdam airport were actually doing things, so I just spent my time people watching.
Once I'd arrived in Morocco I still had to get to Casablanca, my first destination. I knew there was a train station somewhere, but my lack of skill in both French and Arabic made it incredibly hard to find. I got lost, and wandered out of the airport looking for it, were I was pretty sure it must be. Nope! The train is inside the airport. Now, in order to get back in the airport I had to re-do my security scan and take off all my metal, jacket, belt, shoes, etc., and send my gear through the scanner. Then re-cloth myself. What a hassle. All the kerfuffle had taken enough time for me to miss my train, and I had to wait for about an hour for the next one. By the time I arrived in Casablanca proper, it was the throws of nighttime. The first thing I witnessed was a street fight between two guys over some kind of traffic incident. Cops were watching, forming a pit-fight ring even, but didn't seem to care. I continued wandering around, looking for the first nights hostel. I passed it, orbited it, met a Casablancan who tried to help me find it who also got lost, the whole thing was made all the more complicated by the fact that all the streets have multiple names! Original French names, new Moroccan names, and sometimes mysterious unrelated names. Maps can't agree on which should be used, and many people only know them by one name, so you must be very specific when asking for directions, and even then you're probably not going to get much help. We did eventually make it to the hostel though.
My roommates were a motley crew: a Dutchman who I recognized from the plane ride over whose name was Twan, an Irishman named Declan who bore a striking resemblance to Harry Potter, and Mustafa, the guy from Casa who helped me find the hostel was staying there even though he had his own apartment down the street. That night we all got to know each other, and we went out walking... which was really just me on a quest for a sandwich. During the quest we met a talkative ex-pat American who looked so much like my friend Gibbs I thought it might really be him somehow. After my hunger was sated we all went back to the hostel and went to sleep.
In the morning we were given free Moroccan breakfast! Breakfast in Morocco consists of cakes and pastries, served with a sugary tea. In fact, almost everything in Morocco is cake or pastry and loaded with sugar. Did you know Morocco is towards the top of the list of countries with the most diabetes? I am not surprised. The Dutchman, Twan, opted for coffee instead of tea. He said it was terrible and dumped it out. As I said, the Dutch don't suffer that kind of shit... or any shit really.
Twan and Declan decided they were going to travel to Marrakech that day, and wondered if I'd heard of any good places to stay. I told them I had preemptively booked a place there for New Year's eve, thinking things would get crazy, so they should stay there. They called and it was full. Declan found a new place for the night, and said I should stop by when I got to Marrakesh. I told him I would. They left, and I spent the day exploring Casablanca.
Everything in Casablanca seems broken and full of trash, but you can explore the giant rotting corpse of a once beautiful, port town. Disgusting, Derelict, Dilapidated, Dissolving.... any other condescending D word. In fact, most of Morocco looks like it's recovering from a fairly serious war, and then you find out there never was one and you're left with a great feeling of uneasiness. Casablanca as a whole has no specific tourist attractions per se, save for one: The Hassan II mosque. So, obviously that's where I was headed.
The Hassan II mosque is the third largest mosque in the world, and the largest outside Saudi Arabia. It's also, as far as I know, the only one that non-Muslims may enter. To say it's big and fancy is an understatement, I’ve seen castles with less! It sits on a rock platform overlooking the sea, and is made of only the finest gold and titanium to protect it from the sea salt. It's 210 meter high minaret is the largest in the world and features a laser beam that blasts the way to mecca. It's got a giant retractable ceiling, for those days when the sun is nice to bask in. If it's cold, the place has heated marble floors to pray on, and can hold 25,000 people inside. The main hall could hold Notre Dame Cathedral or St. Peter's in Rome it's so big! Outside it can hold another 80,000 people in the courtyard. It's got some see through parts of the floor were a Muslim can watch the sea below as he prays and some gigantic doors and an inside stream that come into use when the king stops by. The place is truly amazing, having cost a huge fortune to make and utilizing over 6,000 workers to build. That being said, in the basement is their Hammam, or Turkish style bath, which when considering all the money and time and craftsmen involved, features very inadequate looking bathroom tiling. I felt great about the whole hour long tour though, because I used my international student ID card to get in at half price, and it was about to expire in two days! Brilliant.
Once I'd had enough of Casablanca I decided I would head to Marrakesh and stay at the the same place as Declan and Twan, which was a Riad. I boarded a train, since the bus was supposedly terrible and the train ticket only cost 45cents more. The scenery on the train was great, but I didn't realize that he seating situation was similar to other countries in that you have to fight for your seat. Before I knew it all the seats were gone, and I wound up in a derelict seat-less human cattle car, sitting on some kind of radiator-like thing. The train also broke down, pushing my initial departure back over half an hour behind schedule, and not filling me with confidence in it's ability to get me to Marrakesh. Halfway there, the staff found someone who had snuck aboard without paying, and they stopped and booted him out. They left him in like 300km of nothingness! Oh, how many times that could have been me...
I arrived in Marrakesh in the typical style: Under cover of darkness and disoriented. I hitched a ride with a Spanish guy and his girlfriend in their cab towards Djamaa-el-fna, the circus of a center in Marrakesh. They paid for the cab! I navigated the center trying to find the riad. Djamaa-el-fna truly is a circus posing as a town center. There's snake charmers (which, knowing Morocco, probably have fully dangerous snakes), story tellers, dancers, bands, magicians, children boxing, henna tattoo artists, dentists pulling teeth and all manner of stalls selling food and tourist junk. I had to navigate all this, plus the normal winding mess of the medina. A medina is the old walled, winding alley city with a fortress, or kasbah. I was finally almost there when an old guy convinced me he would lead me there and wound up becoming more lost that I was. Finally arriving he demanded I pay him. I begrudgingly gave him 20dirham because I thought he could use it. Then he demanded 50MD, so I took my 20 back. We exchanged words before he agreed to piss off with my 20. Finally I'd arrived at Twan and Declan's Riad.
A riad is an old courtyard mansion, and many have been converted to guesthouses and hostels. They area very Moroccan thing, and are quite nice with an open courtyard in the middle and rooms surrounding it. Most of my stay in Morocco was in riads. I found Twan and Declan were out when I checked in, so I decided I would go explore. I headed back to the square.
At the square I was “befriended” by a man named Hassan. He came up speaking good English, showing me his “guide license” which for all intents and purposes is a tourist molestation license. He told me he just wanted to talk. I didn't believe him, but listened to him as I went about my meanderings. Soon he said “I want to show you a place I know for tea.” I know that it's considered quite rude in Morocco to turn down tea, and I love tea, so I said “No thanks. I don't want any tea, and I don't want to go there.” For a Moroccan that means maybe. He wouldn't let it go. I finally said I would go see the place, but that I didn't have any money and I would absolutely not be buying anything. He lead me down a series of alleys to his preferred tea shop. “Great, well I'll be going now.” I said. He implored me to have tea. “I'm not buying tea.” “No, No, it’s my treat” came his response, and he ordered a pot of tea. “I'm not paying for this.” “It's my treat, I just like talking with travelers”> and talk he did. He went on and on about how he was an emmam, or Islamic cleric, and did Arabic calligraphy. He produced a piece of paper and began to scribble Arab words and phrases such as “hello” and my name in Arabic. This went on for an hour or so. My guard started to loosen, but then he grabbed my hand and started talking about religion, which immediately reignited my suspicions. He said he was going to clean my spirit and started rubbing my hand and chanting, he then put my hand on his thigh under the table, which didn't have a “clean spirit” kind of vibe to it. His chanting continued, and I was sure something was up. In case he was trying to hypnotize me or distract me with the chanting I was vigilant to block it out and pay attention to my surroundings to make sure a partner wasn't about to pick – pocket me or anything. Once he finished I said “well, I'll be going now, thanks for this paper with things written on it that I didn't ask for”. At which point he demanded 40 dirham for the tea, and 200 dirham for his time, for tutoring me in Arabic. I reminded him I said on multiple occasions I wouldn't be buying tea. He did not seem to recall. We went back an forth for ages, before I said “FINE” and gave him the 45 dirham in my wallet, as an appreciation for the fine con he was running. “Great, that covers tea, but what about my time?” he said. I told him I didn't care how he allocated the money but that's all he was getting, and it was all I had. I showed him my empty wallet. He told me of his sick old dad he needed to take care of (of course) and offered to walk me to the ATM so I could pay him what I owed him. What!? No! That's not how ATMs work, they don't just create money you don't have. If that’s the case HE could just go to the magic money box and leave me out of it, when I say that was my money for the day, I mean it! I didn't eat that night! He made me promise to meet him the next day at 1pm in front of the post office and bring him the rest of the money. If I didn't show, he said he would think “maybe this Nash is a bad man, I don't know...” Of course I didn't show. It's sad, but the overwhelming majority of interactions by foreigners to Moroccans in Morocco is with thieves, conmen, and beggars. They're aggressive and abrasive, and in the worst cases you can't make eye-contact with anyone, touch anyone, talk to anyone, or glance at an item without getting into a long-con. Sad.
Returning to the riad I found Twan and Declan, and met Blake from London, Deri from Wales, and Johanna from Germany. Johanna was a student in Germany, getting ready to go to University in Finland and spend some time in Nepal. While I was telling them about my getting got by the conman Hassan, Blake chimed in. Turns out Blake had also been got by Hassan, and had the same dumb bit of paper to show for it. Deri was a barefoot runner and barefoot enthusiast. That night the six of us hung out and had “Story Time With Nash”. I was told by multiple people passing by through the course of the night that I sound like “Brian from Family Guy”. Fantastic.
Soon it was New Year's eve. I spent it my usual way, e.g. working out. “Barefoot Buddies” Deri and Nash went to a dilapidated broken glass-filled “park” were we found a tree to do pullups on, and then back up to the roof terrace of the riad for more exercise and my martial arts. Afterwords I went on a quest to go find the hostel I had booked for New Year's before I'd even left for Africa. I found it, decided it had bad vibes, didn't go, and stayed at the riad. This was great because there was a huge party that night! The riad went all out with decorations, had a big cake with fire crackers on it, and a giant free dinner! Everyone went to the super market and got beer and wine, both were terrible, and had a blast. I also bought a pound of figs and passed them out to everyone evangelically. Everyone in the riad wanted to go out and party for the midnight changeover so a group of about 30 people marched over to some club/bar. Twan, Declan, Blake, Johanna, and myself decided it sucked so we left. I'm glad we did, since New Year's isn't really celebrated in Morocco, the club wound up closing before midnight and throwing everyone out. Meanwhile my party of five had found a nice cafe to enjoy the year-change in. It was nice. Declan wound up stuck in the toilet for the midnight change, which was funny. After our lovely New Year's tea we all walked around the square and relaxed. Johanna invited me to stay with her in Nepal, which I was fully interested in, and some drunk Moroccan ex-kickboxing champ tried to fight Blake because the Moroccan was sad his dad cut his hair... but then he apologized and wandered off talking about being a street sweeper. The whole thing was confusing. We all went back to the riad and hung out till around 2 until the staff forced us to go to sleep like children. Turns out it was just so they could have their own private drug-fueled party, making us feel even more like children. I didn't mind though, because they forgot I wasn't supposed to be there that night, and so stayed for free!
The next day Declan, Twan, and I decided to travel together and went to leave Marrakech and go to Essoeria by bus... but missed it by 20 minutes. In desperation to leave we just took a bus to Agadir. On the bus one of the passengers was an old lady that could have been about 1,000 years old. She looked like Brendan Frasier had accidentally released her from her tomb. Super old. I felt bad that she was so old, but she was holding up the bus ride at every opportunity. If she had moved faster though she would have burst into dust. After over 4 hours with the mummy we were dropped off in Agadir, in the night. We were starting to wonder if we'd made the best decision....
Agadir appeared to be a smoldering crater, Mad Max like dystopian landscape. It looked like a derelict war zone, not the Atlantic beach hub town we thought it was going to be. All we knew was which direction to walk to get to downtown, so that's were we went off to. The walk was a long one, and the scenery wasn't improving. We did see a guy selling live goldfish on the side of the road though... the fish were dangerously close to being hit by cars... Then we arrived downtown and everything changed. It WAS the Atlantic beach town we though it was going to be. It had a beautiful beach and board walk complete with bowling alleys, bars, and even strip clubs. We decided we would celebrate our victorious arrival with a cold pint, but it WAS still Morocco, so all the bars were closed by 11:30 at night. We celebrated instead by going to bed.
We all spent the next day at the beach, where some guy tried to sell me a rock for 2 U.S. Dollars. He specified dollars, which was extra odd. We couldn't even enjoy our freezing cold swim because people kept trying to sell us crap. They tried to sell us fruit, sunglasses, jet-ski rides, henna tattoos, four wheeler rides, camel rides, the aforementioned rock, and some rugs. Sometimes they would get down on one knee like they were proposing which was extra fun to deal with; they would go through there English speech they'd memorized, but they had no actual grasp of the English language. They would have a comically one-sided conversation at me trying to sell some junk, and I would have a comically one-sided conversation at them telling them that their junk was junk. Good times. For lunch we had an amazing 3 course meal for 48 dirham (5$), and to prove once again why the Moroccans are king of diabetes, my fruit dessert was sugared. Bits of fruit, such as orange slices, had sugar poured on it. It's already MADE of sugar! Then we went to an Irish bar that wasn't Irish at all and finally had our victory pint. We drank it in the sun and people watched.
The next morning I thought we may be able to sneak out of our riad early and not pay, but the Islamic prayer horn that went off at 5:30am alerted everyone to everything, so the jig was up. The damn thing was right next to where we were staying, and projected a very loud, but very low quality, “call to prayer”; It sounded like an old record recording of a bunch of cats fighting with the speaker it was playing out of put up to a microphone and then that was blasted across the town. Unenjoyable.
Unenjoyable like the hour-long ruck back to the bus station in the blazing Moroccan sun, where we were again given bad directions by a Moroccan guy but somehow still got where we were going. Not before one of the pockets on my NEW bag blew out though. That's what happens when you get Hong Kong bootlegs. On the bus I sat directly behind crying babies.
Once the ride was over, we arrived in our next city: Sunny surf spot Essoaira! We checked a guide book for the supposedly best spot to eat. It failed us again. The place was WAY too expensive for what was included, and featured a dueling band trying to get money by playing over music that was already playing. Not to be outdone, there was a baby that was WAILING, and my favorite: BEES! We couldn't leave the place fast enough. We left and meandered along the medina, kasbah, the port, and the beach. As we did we found that dealing with all the Moroccan harassment in such quantities had callused us to the point where we were blowing off and walking away from everyone we met, including fellow travelers who may have actually needed our help.
Our time in Essoueria was spent well, including a long hike to a grocery store we weren’t even sure existed. This resulted in me being so hungry by the time I arrived I wound up eating a full kilo of yogurt mixed with a bag of granola. Classic Nash. Also, a bird pooped on my shirt. Although I reminded everyone that some cultures consider it a sign of good luck, it didn't feel very lucky. I still wore the shirt for a few days after that though. Declan, Twan, and I naturally spent some days lounging around the beach soaking up rays, but it was the first day we did so in Essouria that really stuck out. We were all walking around when Declan declared he could go no longer without sunbathing. He found a spot, right then and there, and we stripped down to our undies and layed out. It looked like a scene from an 80's buddy action style movie. A couple minutes later we realized the spot he had chosen was right in front of a child's playground! We did not move. Parents came and got their children though. Accidental pedophile! Classic Nash? We were breaking both religious and social law, so I felt pretty good about myself until a mounted policeman rode up. I was pretty sure we were going to Moroccan jail... but he said nothing to us and instead stopped some children from playing sports on the beach. Good job, cop. Once we had our fill of being creepy we went back to Marrakech. I would also be remiss if I didn't mention, on more than one occasion, people touching all the bread for sale, knocking it into the dirty road, then putting it back like nothing happened. Classic Morocco!
After an uneventful bus ride back to Marrakech we showered, I changed my poop shirt, and we sorted ourselves out for our early start the next morning; we were headed on a desert excursion to the edge of the Sahara Desert. Declan and I spent the rest of the evening walking around with Johanna who still enthusiastically welcomed me to Germany, Finland, and Nepal. Money willing, I planned to take her up on the offers. While the three of us walked around she told the story of a Moroccan guy who tried to giver her a massage in a tea cafe and undid her bra strap. Creepy! I’d heard many similar stories in Morocco.
The next morning Declan, Twan, and I were up at 6 to have breakfast and take our 6-plus hour bus ride southeast into the desert. The driving was terrifying through mountain passes, and as we teetered on the edge of cliffs I was reminded that Morocco is 6th in the world for traffic collisions. Great. It also struck me impressively how much the landscape reminded me of Arizona. On the way we stopped of at the village/site of Ksar Ait Ben Haddou which was a filming location for all kinds of Nash-tastic films. Films such as: Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Jewel of the Nile, Legionnaire, Gladiator, The Mummy, Prince of Persia, and Sahara! I was happy to go there to say the least, and exploring the area was a treat. After the tour the group was sat down at a posh tent-restaurant. Of course, food was not included in our tour. I didn't mind because I had anticipated this and brought my own food. Yeah, I'm THAT guy...the smart guy. I ate my food, then finished everyone's leftovers, then took some complimentary oranges to go. Well played, me.
We continued our bus journey through the cities of Agdz and Zagorou, passing rugged mountains moving to mud-brick villages, and rising stretches of emptiness broken up by the occasional desert oasis with it's water and palms. The natives had built a beautiful system of aqueducts through them to make the most of scarce water. Finally the paved road just stopped, giving way to the desert. Here we met up with some Berbers, the desert nomads of Morocco, mounted camels and took an hour or so ride across the desert to their permanent camp of sprawling desert tents. We were given tents to sleep in, in groups of 4, with Dom the Englishman joining our group of 3 to round us out. After we'd gotten situated we were scuttled off for “Berber Whiskey” i.e. tea in the desert. It tasted of mint, sugar, and cigar ashes. Tea was followed by dinner in the Giant dining tent. Dinner was a comparatively lavish version of the standard Moroccan fare consisting of harira soup, bread, tajin, and fruit. During dinner I managed to pocket a considerable quantity of bread for the following day.
After dinner a bonfire was constructed, rather unskillfully, by our Berber hosts, around which we sang songs, talked, warmed ourselves, and generally huddled up and did normal bonfire things. I did hear that one girl was pressured by the Berbers to have a 3 or 4 way in the dunes, but I wasn't a part of that, and sure wasn't into it, so thankfully she got away. Around midnight we all went to bed, since we had to be up at 6:30 … though we didn't know that at the time because as per the usual in Morocco, things were disorganized and communication was at a minimum
Our sleeping tent was about what you would imagine, if you're imagining a tent with a floor made of sandy desert. The sleeping gear we were given had most definitely never been washed, and felt like an expert combination of paper mache and burlap potato sack. I'm fairly certain my blanket was a camel saddle and my pillow was used BY the camels. All that being said, I slept as well as I ever do, not being cold or wearing pants. The starts were expectedly beautiful and the moon full and bright.
I was a few minutes into my morning exercises when the Berbers began banging around pots and pans corralling everyone for breakfast. Again, typically Moroccan fare, though this time there was nothing lavish about it: Bread with butter and jam, with a small cup of tea tasting vaguely of ash, all served in the dark. Immediately after breakfast and before I could go to the toilet, my group of 4 was immediately grabbed and put on camels for the long bowel and bladder jostling ride back to our drop zone. We got picked up, found the road, found the toilet, and began our turnaround to Marrakech. On the way back we stopped at a textile Arabian Gallery, which of course tried to sell us Berber carpets. I'm sure I would have gotten one, but I couldn’t' afford food or shelter and was taking bread from restaurant to stay alive, so a rug was out of the question. They're pushy though, and refuse to relent, so it's a good thing this guy called Mike, a Vietnamese-american, said he wanted one. I tossed him to the sharks and escaped. He wound up not getting one, but had a fantastic learning experience: He'd only been in Morocco a couple days and had never been to a similar country. The clueless guy had a hard time with everything. He was sick, allergic to cats, didn't like dates, and was extremely naïve; Morocco may have been the worst place for him to go!
Continuing our trip BACK to Marrakech, we were taken to a film museum. If had sets and props from movies filmed in Morocco, which sounded super cool. It was not. On the flip side through it had signed pictures of the stars who had visited, and Jean-Claude Van Damme had by far the comicaly gayest portrait I'd ever seen. Oh, we also left that guy Mike there, waiting on the steps for some transition bus that likely never came. He's probably dead now. Our final stop before getting back to Marrakech was at a restaurant on the side of the mountain we happened to be on. The floor looked like it had a gravel floor, but actually the “gravel” was olive seeds. Other than that it was completely unremarkable. Some Moroccans tried to rip us off, and I ordered nothing and ate bread I'd pocketed the night before.
Walking back into the riad in Marrakech the staff said “Nash, You've changed Color!”, I said I was just attempting to blend in. Declan still looked like Harry Potter, and Twan still looked like a Dutch guy. We went to the store to get provisions to celebrate our success and to party in honor of Declan returning to Europe the following morning. On return we met 8 English travelers who where on their way to the place we'd just come from. One of them was a dead-on ringer for Russel Brand. We bonded quickly. We all partied well into the night. I got up early to see everyone off, especially Declan. Unfortunately for me the staff realized I hadn't paid in awhile and asked me about it, fortunately for me they thought I only hadn't paid for 2 days, so I gladly paid that and mentioned nothing of the others.
Our first day without Declan, Twan and I wandered about Marrakech eventually coming upon some fat douche claiming to be an emmam/ prayer caller who said he was with Oxfam. He was clearly running a scam. He made the unfortunate choice of picking me, a person who truly has no money and didn't give a shit about his story, and Twan, who was Dutch and so wouldn’t suffer such scams. “I know you money, I can smell it!” said the creepy guy who was not doing a good job of not coming off as a scam artist. “I really don't”, I replied, really not having any. “I do, I just won't give it to you.” said Twan brilliantly. The guy then started screaming and shouting at us to get out of his shop, which he originally very literally pulled us into against our wills anyway. The guy was a dick.
That night Twan and I went to a hammam. A hammam is a Turkish style public bath. Everyone's descriptions of them made them sound lovely, and a quintessential Moroccan experience. It was definitely a Moroccan experience all right. I was expecting something akin to a Japanese onsen, but that was not the case. First there are 3 bathing rooms: cold, warm, and steamy hot. You pick which one you want to bath in, then get down to business. You could wash yourself like a normal person, or you could have someone do it for an incredible bee, which also comes with a massage. The person administering the rub down looked like some homeless old guy fresh out of the gutter, so I elected to have him NOT touch me as much as possible. Once in bath mode, like an onsen you use buckets of water, plus your cleaning product of choice to clean yourself off. Not like an onsen, there's nowhere to sit. However, the first problem you encounter is the Moroccan's rampant homophobia, so you must publicly bath with your underwear on. Not only is that super weird and uncomfortable, it's also massively impractical. Plus I hate the feeling of wet underwear. I was told that people go to these places to relax by sitting in the steam room and having a soak, which is what put the image of an onsen in my mind, but the “steam room” turned out to be the room that you bath in that’s hot. “The soak” was not a hot pool of water like I’d imagined, but was just sitting on the floor of the poorly drained bathing room, in inches of other people's stagnant filthy bathing scrub water. I felt like I was getting a fungus just looking at this, I certainly didn't want to sit and stay awhile. Twan and I washed up, looked at each other decidedly un-relaxed and decided to leave. I brought extra undies, Twan left commando.
Twan left Morocco the next morning. I set off for the Sadian Tombs against everyone's recommendations. I'm glad I went, I had a blast; I like tombs! I'd noticed Morocco becoming slightly more unruly than normal that day, which I later found out was the result of Muslim extremists blowing up a newspaper building in Paris and killing some 17 people. This was not making my life easier, or it easier to appreciate the more eccentric parts of Islamic culture. I decided it was time to get on getting' on, and bought a bus ticket for Meknes leaving at 1:30 that morning. I went back to the riad and reunited with Russel Brand-man and his crew, as well as none other than Deri, my barefoot Welsh friend! I told him my plan to take off for Meknes, and on a whim he decided to join. To Adventure! I snuck out of the riad without paying, and Deri and I rucked to the bus station where he bought a ticket for my bus. Soon we were off to Meknes, and according to a guy from Casablanca we couldn't leave Meknes without trying their wines for which they were famous: Their red, white, rose, and the rarest of all: gray. Not even the wine dealer in Meknes knew what the hell gray wine was, so that one was out. The rest were a go.
Oh, the bus to Meknes: 8 hours of wailing babies, while literally everyone on the bus had their seat reclined, except me because the guy behind me didn't want it. Also, I'm pretty sure our bus had a minor collision with another vehicle. I'm not sure, but the driver and a bunch of people from both vehicles got out and started yelling at each other.
Once we got off at the bus station we checked our Map and my compass and set off in the direction of our next stay. Turns out, there's more than one bus station and we weren't at the one I thought. We walked an hour in the wrong direction, then an hour to retrace our steps, then an hour to actually get where we were going. These things happen. We found the hotel we were to stay at which let us sleep on the roof for cheaper than staying at a campground. “But it's cold” said the receptionist, trying to get us to pay double for an actual room. Yeah, maybe for YOU, I thought. “we'll be fine” we replied smugly. And we were. Though there was what appeared to be a casino close by and the music it blasted made sleeping on the roof feel like trying to sleep on the floor of a night club. Other than that, it was great.. We had a roof on the roof, meaning we wouldn’t' get rained on, and warm blankets; It was great. The shop-keep was right though, being much further north, Meknes was considerably colder that it's southern counterparts, but nothing too off putting. The place was definitely designed with help from it's colonial overlords (the french), and was very western in it's construction There was even an exercise park! Deri and I made ample use for the several days were were there.
There really wasn't much to Meknes, tourist-wise, but that's what made it such a great place. It does have the biggest palace gate in Morocco, but outside of that, it's just a relaxing well built town. Their meat market featured such things as an automated chicken plucking machine, and copious cow heads, plus every part of fa camel: feet, brains, liver, heart, stomach, and ball sacks. They also had amazing sausage sandwiches that we became mildly addicted to, and I had Sharon fruit for the first time. It blew my mind, and was love at first taste.
During our stay in Meknes we took a bus to Moulay Idriss, the number 1 Islamic pilgrimage site in Morocco. Supposedly the locals say that 5 visits to Moulay Idriss equals one haj to Mecca, but I'm pretty sure that’s just to drum up tourism. From the city we hiked to Volubilis, an amazing Roman Ruins. Outside of a few roped off tile mosaics you're free to go anywhere and do anything you wish, with no supervision. I spent several hours exploring and having an archeologicaly anthropologic good time. Deri found a sunny spot and took a nap for almost the entire time I was there. Once I'd had my fill we hiked back to town, where I went to go get some pastries that turned out to be full of bees! Go figure. Deri and I got an excessive amount of nougat and then probably diabetes, like the rest of Morocco, trying to eat it all.
Our final day in Meknes was spent drinking tea in cafes and trying to find some of their legendary wine, which we did. Then we went and got steak and supplies for a glorious home cooked dinner, which Deri expertly prepared since he's a chef back in Wales. As he prepared dinner I did my own things like sow up my ripped gear, and go buy badly spoiled milk. Our steak dinner with quality wine was amazing. Afterward we went out for more tea and dessert to celebrate our successful celebration.
Our final morning in Meknes we left the hotel, I didn't pay for all my time there, which I let Deri rationalize as bargaining for a lower rate, and we took a train to Fez. The train ride was fine, but we were planning to stay at an “official” youth hostel, which meant that they were extremely authoritarian and locked all the time. Extremely inconvenient was what it was. We spent our time in Fez doing what most people do in Fez, getting lost in the largest medina in all of Morocco. We went to the tanneries, then watched them from the roof, and then people watched at various cafes. Deri hated the medinas, but he loved coffee, so he would suffer through to get his fix. I couldn't blame him for hating the medina. Everything that makes Morocco a grating place to be is amplified and condensed in the medina: more beggars, more thieves, and really really aggressive touts.
On our wanderings we also found an elaborate (for Morocco) martial arts school. They taught a variety of arts: several Chinese styles, but focus on Taekwondo. The place even had a live peacock! It was sitting at the snack bar they had, across from where they also trained ping pong. Talk about a mix of styles! They were only doing self defense training while I was there, so I didn't join in. Next time.
Also in Fez, one of the times Deri and I were people watching having tea, a child beggar came up to me to beg for some money. I was using my normal technique of ignoring the boy, but the cafe garcon was having none of it and came up and beat the shit out of the kid with his waiting tray. I guess that’s one way to take care of the situation.
Our final day in Fez we crammed as much in as possible. We went to beautiful Jnana Shil gardens, which even had a huge bamboo forest somehow. Of course I carved my name on the bamboo. We then went on the first mall in Morocco, feeling quit under dressed all of a sudden, and rode the first escalator in Morocco. We then went to the supermarket, where Deri got back on his medina hate-train stating “If I lived here, I would exclusively shop here. I would never go to the fucking hell-hole medina.” I retorted the medina is cheaper, to which he replied “yeah, but here there's no horses stopping to take a shit on you, no cats fucking in the aisles, no one about to stab you or rip you off, you can actually fine what you're after, and it's air conditioned!” … Touche.
Deri seemed to be reaching his limit for tolerating all the thieves and humbugs and everyone trying to sell us hashish, and I knew I was reaching my limit for the whole damn country being covered in broken glass, so we decided to head up into the mountains, to a town called Chefchauan. It was probably for the best, especially considering I just figured out that what I had been pissing on in the bath room up until then, which I though was some kind of urinal wall, turned out to be an Islamic washing station. OOPS. I was pissing on their religious thing, and they were washing with it. Time to go!
Chefchauan is a beautiful mountain village famous for it being painted a very specific blue color. It's also known for being very laid back, and for producing the majority of the world's hashish. Too bad I don't smoke, because the locals get pissed when they find out your there NOT to buy hash. Every time the conversation would turn ugly the Arabic sounded like someone having a VERY heated argument while at the same time their throat was being forced full of equally angry bees.
At the bus station Deri met some guys from the U.K. Who were frequent visitors of Chefchauan, and took us to their super-cheap hostel, where we once again made our home on the roof top. We liked the town so much we stayed for a full week. Though the town itself was nice, and the roof was comfortable, most nights we would be awoken by a series of unpleasant sounds: cats fighting, dogs barking, crying babies, and a 20 minute long prayer siren war beginning at 5:20 in the morning.
One of the big to-dos in Chefchauan, outside of drugs, is to climb the mountain Jebal El Kalaa, so of course I set out to do so. I wasn't just going to climb it the regular way, of course, but barefoot. Nash-style! Nature had other plans though. The day I was to attempt the climb a torrential mountain monsoon blew in, pouring rain for 6 hours, hard, delaying me a day. During our downtime, Deri and I found the workout park in town and made use of it during all available time in the city. Once, during one of our many workouts, a stall owner challenged me to a pushup competition. I won, 54 to 53, doing one more than he so I could secure the win. The children watching still said I lost, not being able to accept a loss to a foreigner. I won!
The next day was clear, so I decided I would climb. Deri was to also attempt the climb barefoot, as training for his barefoot London Marathon run in 4 months. As we approached the start of the climb we met another climber named Mike, also from Wales. The three of us decided to attempt it together. We got to the official start of the climb, and Deri and I ceremoniously removed our shoes. 10 minutes in, Deri decided it was too excruciating and put his shoes back on. This left the group with two fast walkers with shoes, and one excruciatingly slow walker without. Soon, we were two groups. I was OK with that though, as it gave me the contemplation time these Shugyo afford me. Overcoming the discomfort and donkey poop I pressed on. I passed the only “village” on the trail which consists of a couple shacks, livestock, and a broken car, and kept going. Hours later I was walking through snow. Te cold wasn't as bad as the slippery ground. Eventually I rejoined Deri and Mike, at a peak they were gazing out from. I quickly joined them and found what we were looking at was the Mediterranean sea, and across from it: Spain! It was an impressive site to behold. Though we were at “a” top, it wasn't “THE” top we set out to find. It turned out we had gone hours out of our way because a landslide-like event had caused the trail we wanted to to become completely covered up. It was no wonder we missed it. We looked out into the distance and saw terrible weather was coming in, and the mountains are no pace to get hit with that unprepared. We were now in a race against time to get the hell off the mountain, as both the setting winter sun, and the horrific clouds blowing in exponentially lessened our chances for survival if we became stranded. The temperature rapidly dropped and I became aware of the fact I had no shoes, jacket, gloves, or hat. I had at least put on my “emergency shoes” which were of course just flip-flops, s o I could keep up with the pace of the rest of the group. We vigorously hurried back, just barely making it before the night time storm, and my body was wrecked, but we called it a success. To celebrate Deri prepared another another victory meal, and the 3 of us ate and shot the breeze well into the night. As we were eating, one of the other hostel residents walked by the dining area and told us he went to go climb the mountain. He said, speaking to Deri “ I saw your footprints at the top of the mountain! I saw your 5-toed shoe print, then I saw Nash's BARE foot print! I can't believe you really did it, that’s awesome!”. Awesome indeed; just leaving my mark. We all parted ways for the night, and I took a much deserved shower.
It's a good thing I seized the opportunity to climb the mountain when I did, because from the following day onward the once mild Chefchauen was besieged by a torrential mountain monsoon. The weather forced most of us to gather inside the hostel, though this wasn't really a bad thing. The first night of this we all threw in a few dirham and had a giant home cooked tajin, over which we all shared stories. During this exchange of tales I met an Australian named Leo. During conversation he had an odd look on his face for a bit, before finally asking “ … wait. You're a martial arts cage fighter?” Yes. “ AND and adventurer?” Yes. “And you backpacked around Australia?” Yes. He looked like he didn't know how to phrase his next question before finally saying “ … do you know Fin and Pia?” What!? Yes. They lead the hippy convoy I hooked up with in West Australia! “Fin's my best friend, we grew up in the same town, he told me about you! I've seen your Ice bucket challenge video! I knew there COULD NOT be two people who fit your description. This is crazy serendipity!” Indeed. I was just as shocked as he to be running into the best friend of the Australian “King of the hippies” I'd met in Australia, in North-West Africa. What are the odd, I wonder? We talked all night and exchanged stories before going to bed.
I didn't have long to be blown away by fate though, because at 2:30 in the morning I was blown away by something far more sinister: the most concerning diarrhea of my life. The diarrhea was accompanied by stomach cramps and nausea, prompting me to immediately take an anti-diarrheal drug. That's how you know it's serious, because I don't even take aspirin. I'm really not keen to die of diarrhea though, so I was not messing around. The diarrhea and convulsions continued until noon, at which point I took another pill. It didn't seem to help much though; I suppose I should keep a sharper eye on my kit, because as I went to go take the second pill I saw on the package that they had expired 5 and a half years ago! I shambled into the medina to get some water and some green bananas, shivering from the near freezing rain. A local trying to sell me drugs said I was walking like an old man. I was dying. I could barely stand, let alone walk, and my bones and spine were feeling the effects of dehydration. I even turned down free tea and crepes!
Bed/Toilet ridden, I pondered what could have caused this. Perhaps the pitch-in tajin had some garlic powder in it? The symptoms were similar, though I'd never felt them to THIS extent before. Maybe it was eating the disgusting salt block of goat cheese rotting the in the sun I bought off of some lady in the street the previous day? Maybe it was the strange tea I drank from a Swiss guy... was there something else in it? Maybe it was the recent influx of junk pastries into my body? Maybe it was an intestinal fecal born parasite gotten from walking barefoot through donkey poop while climbing the mountain. Maybe it's because a couple days prior I ate over 2 pounds of dried figs? Maybe, just maybe, it was a culmination of all these good decisions working together. Whatever the case, I was paying the price.
Deri and I had been in Chefchauan for 7 days and decided we had to move on. It had been a day and a half since I got hit with my mystery colon blow, and I was now strong enough to attempt the journey. I was still having odd convulsions in my organs though, and they were causing me great concern. I could feel the contents of my colon traveling in directions they were never intending to go. I contemplated the horrors of going to a Moroccan hospital: “you're having diarrhea? We're going to have to cut that foot off.” What!?
Deri had gone out the day prior, during the worst part of my condition, and bought each of us bust tickets to Tangier. Now it was time to actually go, and cold steady rain accompanied us on our walk to the station. In order to not be late, we decided to get a taxi to the bus station, though I’m not sure what we were worried about, because as per the Moroccan usual, the bus left over half an hour late. I also had to pay 5 dirham for my bag which I then had to stand in the rain for 10 minutes and load myself. Morocco... The bus itself was full of loud Brazilian girls, and a leak in the roof caused Deri to get periodically rained on. As for me, I spent the 3 hour ride trying not to poop my pants. I succeeded, just.
When we arrived in Tangier I took a minute to go destroy the local toilet, then we set about finding a way to the medina where we were planning to stay. The taxi drivers wanted to charge us a whopping 100 dirhams, and nobody wanted to share a cab with us, so I told the drivers we wouldn’t be using their services. They bargained themselves down to 40 dirham, which I said was too much and would rather walk. “It's too far! It's over an hour's walk, and it's the middle of the night! It's dangerous!” Whatever. We walked. It was only 6 kilometers, and for once in the history of Morocco and me, no one bothered me. Deri and I made camp in an old cheap hotel in the medina.
Tangier is an exceptionally interesting place. It's the major port to Europe, and it's proximity to Spain makes it a uniquely cosmopolitan area. There's bars and people from all over the world. It was a huge destination for the beat writers like Paul Bowles, Allen Ginsburg, and Jack Kerouac, and profoundly influenced their artistic output. I felt I owed it to myself to see the places that influenced some of their most famous works. The first place I went was the American Litigation museum, which has the distinction of being the only US national landmark NOT on United States soil. It houses a collection of interesting doodads. Of course I was really just filling time until 10:30pm when the “El Madre” hotel and “Tangier Inn Pub” opened up. The hotel is where “The Naked Lunch” was written, and the pub was an informal hang out of the beats. It was a nice place to go as a writer's pilgrimage, and also nice because Deri was heading back to Wales the following day and this was his farewell. The pub itself was in a state most likely not favored by the 60's writers who'd made it famous. It was now a posh lounge with blaring techno music, but at least they'd kept the writer's pictures up. While there Deri and I met 3 American from Portland, which really made Deri's day because he's always wanted to visit the place. We all chatted until about 2am when the staff seemed to be kicking us out. I drank 3 beers and paid for none of them, courtesy of Deri and our new American conversation buddies. We walked back to our place in the medina to take an extended siesta.
Deri's final morning in Morocco e went out for our final cafe cup of tea and people watching. While we were relaxing some old beggar came up, like usual, and went to shake hands. I didn't shake his hand. I politely declined, and was met with unending rage. He immediately declared I was a bad person and walked backwards away from me shouting that I would soon die, and that he would find me in hell, so that he could fuck me, because I am a mother fucker, and a bad man. His shouting went on for a good 5 solid minutes. This was not the first time I'd witnessed some Arab strike a lifetime feud over nothing. It's shit like this that ingratiates them to no-one in the western world! They make a terrible case for themselves. For every good person you meet as a foreigner you're assaulted by three crazy shit heads. It's exhausting. From then on I never shook anyone's hand in Morocco, I just said I was sick and wished them well, in order to avoid whatever minor slight might lead to another world war. On that comical note Deri and I parted ways. I moved into a cheap single room, and planned to stay in Tangier, really focusing on my writing.
That was the plan anyway. The next day I was sitting on a park bench, intently writing, when I was hit up by two sub-Saharan Africans with an infuriatingly long story that was just to ask me for money. Then I was hit up for money by some Moroccans. Then some guys “selling” things. All WHILE I'm obviously writing. I couldn’t' get anything done. I couldn't walk around town without getting assaulted by a sob story for money every couple of steps. I couldn't go from the hotel to the street for food or supplies. I couldn’t' do anything without it turning into a huge pain in my ass, including trying to barricade myself in my hotel room which was giving me cabin fever. That's not to say I didn't catch the occasional break; Once I went out for an omelet and I got free fries ( which I don't actually like) because the cook told me he got the impression I didn't have a lot of money so he gave me on the house fries. I really appreciated it, but I just wished everyone else in Tangier would get the hint I'm broke and leave me alone. No such luck though. I couldn't rationalize staying there any longer, especially when I had to be back in Casablanca to fly out of Morocco, and the hostel in Casablanca has free breakfast. I wanted to stay in Tangier longer, but the people are so unrelentingly in-your-face they drove me away.
I have never seen a culture be diametrically apposed to another before, but I think Morocco and Japan might e opposites in almost every way. I much prefer the latter.
I hiked out to the Tangier train station “just barely” making it in time, the ticket clerk informed me. The train was to leave at 11:30, and I arrived at 11:28. Great, except it didn't even show up until 11:50, and didn’t leave until noon. I was psyched I had a seat for the ride back to Casablanca, but it turned out to be terrible. I was rammed in an “8 person cabin” that would have been cramped by 6 people, except that not only was it completely full of the 8 regular people, someone also brought 3 babies in. The babies were crying, of course, and my legs were cramping. I voluntarily rode the last one and a half hours standing in the entryway to the car junction. Worth it!
I never thought I'd be glad to go back to Casablanca, but compared to some other parts of Morocco, it's a relaxing getaway. I of course went back to the hostel with free breakfasts across from the Kyokushin Dojo. Outside of focusing on my writing and waiting for my flight out, I was still on a quest for souvenirs. The souvenirs weren't for me, they were for a friend's wedding in the states. Once again, I was returning to the USA for a wedding, and the bride is a big fan of Casablanca, so I couldn’t go empty handed. The problem was finding appropriate non-junky souvenirs. The first place I tried was the “Disney-ified” novella medina, or “new medina”, which is an oxymoron. It was built by the french in the 1930s as part of an experiment to try and make a traditional Moroccan structure, but have it be modernly functional. It turned out to be just as big a pain as everywhere else. No good. Next I tried the Dubai-like grandiose shopping mall. 3-4 stories of up scale madness; It's got an Imax theater, a children's adventure park, and even it's own rich-people faux medina lined with gold, all inside the mall! The only things it seemed not to have where exactly what I was looking for.
My days in Casablanca were consumed by looking for these dammed wedding gifts. Somedays I would spend upwards of 10 hours a day questing for them, which would leave me fairly exhausted, so when it was time to rest, it was time to rest. Which is why I was extra angry when some dullard came smashing into the hostel room at 2am, flipped on the light, STILL bashed into everything, and once he got settled in bed and the light was back off, proceeded to watch a movie on his bright ass tablet. Once the sloth fell asleep he proceeded to snore with a power I had never seen. He's the first person I've ever seen roll over completely and not break snore stride. I felt me and this guy might have a chat, and chat we did, though it wasn't what I was expecting. He out of the blue invited me to go to a hammam with him. What!? I don't know you like that, guy! Plus, that costs money. I would normally be staying at campgrounds or something, but all through Morocco, the hostels were for some reason cheaper than camping. Morocco is odd like that since the whole country operates on NFP, or “no fixed prices”. Everything costs however much you agree it costs. I had to watch my money, as it was all but gone, and devoted to a specific cause.
My money was now devoted to these wedding gifts, some of which were alcohol related; not easy things to come by when you're in an Islamic country, but after many days, I was victorious. Next I had to build a contraption to secure my breakable items through the bumbling airport process. This, I did. Now that I had accomplished everything I set out to do, I had only to wait a couple more days until my flight out. During this time a children's fencing team invaded the hostel. I met the spriteliest-most-likely-gay guy from Taiwan. The only way to describe him would be “fairy”, but he seemed to be fluent in every language I could think of. I also met Thiago, a surfing instructor/ tour guide from Portugal, and Daniel, a student from New York. We had story time with Nash, and he told me I sounded like Seth McFarland. Fantastic.
Finally it was time for me to go, so I packed up, said goodbye to everyone, and set off for the airport. I stopped at the reception of the hostel to actually pay my bill, and couldn't find anyone. Not there, or around. I actually TRIED to pay! I wasn't going to wait around all day for someone to take my money though, so I left. The hostel was good to me though, and I ate all their complimentary breakfasts. It had been 3 days since I paid. Like I said, I would have, but I wasn't going to wait around. I could make use of the money else wear.
I took the tram to the train station, ten a train to the airport. The train was late, then got it's platform switched 3 different times before finally setting off. I felt bad for the people on board who might be cutting their flights close or missing them, but that’s a rookie move anyway; I was getting to the airport the afternoon before my flight. My flight wasn't until extremely early the following morning, so I had all afternoon and night to stay in the airport. For all the bad there is in airports at lease people leave you alone once you're in... For the most part. There were only a few seats in the airport and people were just claiming them by putting luggage on them and leaving for huge stretches of time. I guess they thought the very few police would stop thieves?
I spent my time at the airport writing most of this journal. Five hours in I decided I was thirsty, so I set off for a drinking fountain to use to fill my water bottle. There where none. I asked a guard about it, and he said he would take my bottle to a secure area to fill it up and bring it back for me. I let him do it, but it took a concerningly long time. If there where no drinking fountains, where did he go? Did he fill it up with water from the toilet? It smelled alright, but it did concern me. As long as I didn't get organ-destroying poops again, I decided I'd call it a win.
I did like how the airport was full of stray dogs and cats, and no one seemed to care. They were fun to watch, and playing with them helped pass the time. For bed, I just camped out on the super uncomfortable marble floor of the airport, unrolling my sleeping bag and holing up in a corner. I woke up and got ready for boarding, but less than two hours to go before boarding and my check-in gate STILL wasn't open. Finally it opened and I got to my plane, After giving the customs officer my exit forms. He was pissed they were all wrinkly. Why'd you give them to me so early and why are they such an inconvenient size then!? Of course I'm going to put a crease in it! As for the ride, I nicknamed it the “Tuberculosis Express” because everyone on it was coughing, hacking, and wheezing like they had some serious diseases. They probably did. Thankfully no one tried to talk to me, probably thanks in part to the fact that I had been wearing the same jeans for over a month and they hadn't been washed. They had been on the camels, to the tanneries, up the mountains, and everywhere else on my Moroccan journey, and did not smell great. They worked like a charm for keeping the TB sufferers away!
I managed to make it back to the States, and smuggle in my wedding gifts. I had spent over a month in Morocco expanding my mind and having new experiences to reflect on.
I had accomplished absolutely everything I'd set out to due while there, and did it using less than 500 US dollars! ...because that's all I had. Even though I had to go all “Aladdin”-ey at the end, I felt quite content. I knew it wouldn't be long before I was off on some ridiculous adventure again though, as Deri so eloquently and accurately put it when describing me:
“ Lost is where the heart is.”
I couldn't argue. It does seem to be my natural state, and I DO have some things in the works...
Lost is where the heart is,
-Nash
Click below for the pictures from Morocco!