Morocco Part 1

It defiantly pays to pay a little more and fly with a proper airline. I am by no means expressing that I do not appreciate Ryan Air and all they do for the little money one spends. I am however saying that there is a reason why Ryan Air is so cheap.
On short flights there is not much of a discrepancy between airlines. In my opinion what makes one better than another is legroom.
On my flight from Aberdeen to Paris there was more than enough legroom. It was highly enjoyable not having my knees hit the back of the seat in front of me. On top of the legroom, there was no one sitting in my isle. Always a blessing when one is enable to spread out, and I did.
Upon landing everyone was shown down the stairs and into a big bus. When I got down to the concrete I saw a sign that read “Malaga,” so I went over and said, “I’m going to Malaga.” A man showed me to a small van. I got in and another guy got in. We then went speeding away to a designated place, we got out, and the driver got out. He said to follow him so we did at a vigorous pace. French people often get a bad rap but this guy was showing us the royal treatment, zooming through checkpoints and taking short cuts thought the airport. This was because we were only given 40 minutes of a layover. I got to the gate no problem. Something of mine did not make it on the flight however.
Got to Malaga, Spain just as planned, went to the baggage carousel that was assigned to my flight, many bags were spit to be collected, mine, nowhere. After visiting all the carousels with no luck I saw people form my flight head in the direction of a booth, which ended up being the booth to report lost luggage. This was the place for me. I was at the end of the line. Waiting in like while consulting my watch to slow down because my means of transportation form the airport to hostel where Jay (my friend who I was to meet and travel around Morocco with) was already, was conveniently a one Euro city bus and conveniently the city busses stop running at midnight. I arrived in Malaga at eleven. While standing in line pleading with my watch to slow down I knew I would not make it to the window before twelve. I finally got to the window at 12:30 and reported my lost bag. Then the challenge of getting to a hostel with directions suited for a city bus traveler. I gave the paper with directions to a cab driver and got in. He knew the place. We started driving and this guy started yelling at me and laughing. I saw in the passenger seat dumbfounded. He continued to yell in Spanish. By the fourth of fifth outburst with my adrenalin rapidly pumping through my body, thinking he was not dropping me off at my hostel but taking me to an unknown location to do who knows what, I asked surprisingly calmly (I think because I knew if push came to shove I could take this guy in a fist fight) “what are you saying?” He looked over at me and said, “I’m talking to my friend” gestured to the dash. At this point in time I felt stupid and could now hear a radio type voice speaking and stopping, then him responding. I could now relax a bit but was still wondering why the journey was taking so long. We finally got to the place where he said the place was with the meter reading 17.00. I was frustrated because I could have caught a 1euro bus and now I was paying this guy 17. I got out my wallet but the guy told me to wait a minute. He pressed a button and his meter went from 17 to 22. I thought this to be ridiculous. I laughed and exclaimed, “22?!” He, “this is Malaga.” me, “alright, you need to tell me exactly where to go then if I am paying you 22euros.” He pointed in a direction and I got out. This direction was exactly opposite of where I needed to go. After walking around for a good half hour I stumbled upon a place with the curtains pulled down but lights on inside. This was the place. No signs, nothing. I saw Jay sitting in the lounge, greeted him but told him Air France had lost my luggage, to show me to our room and that I needed to sleep.
We woke up the next day and had to wait for my luggage to arrive. We had planned on going to Morocco that day but could not without all my stuff. The day was now all together wasted and really was not torturous whatsoever. We spent the day on the beach in Malaga and the night watching Spain v. Italy football (soccer) match. We had decided that the following day we needed to leave for Morocco regardless or the situation with my luggage.
The next morning I woke up early and made a phone call to the airport. They had my bag and were going to bring it to the hostel but were not certain if it was late afternoon or evening drop off. Both were unacceptable. We collected our stuff, turned in our key to the room and left to the airport to get my bag back. Got there and things were pretty strait forward. It was a great success.
We went in search for the ferry port to catch the four-hour ferry from Malaga to Melilla. Melilla is a Spanish enclave on the continent of Africa. Just a little Spanish city surrounded by Morocco and water. We knew it departed at 2pm and had plenty of time to spare. We got on the ferry and this was no ordinary ferry I must tell you. This was basically an old cruise ship with decks and lounge chairs for relaxation pleasure in the sun. We were loving it. It departed at 2 so we anticipated getting into Melilla at roughly 6pm. 6pm came and went. We went outside and saw now coast in sight. I asked the bar tender how much longer we had expecting twenty to thirty minutes…”three more hours.” There must have been a mistake. The ferry was only be running on one engine apposed to the usual five or this was the wrong ferry. The web site said the ferry was 4 hours. Apparently it is and has always been seven grueling hours.
We got to Melilla at 9pm and had no change of making it across the boarder into Morocco tonight so had to get a hostel. We woke up the next morning early to get a full day in. We arrived at the boarder and were ready for what was ahead of us. We had read in the guidebook that we needed a stamp out of Spain and into Morocco. We saw the Spanish boarder booth and got a stamp no problem. We started walking toward Morocco clutching both pockets with my hands. My passport being in one pocket and my wallet in the other. People started to come to us my passport stamped. We saw cars being stopped by a guy with a big gun and another guy with a big gun on the sidewalk just letting people walk right through. We stopped near the gunned men looking for some direction or advice. Nothing. We had no other ideas of what to do so we walked past. We were in Morocco now? We saw a bank and headed towards it to get money out. Being closed and not wanting to waist time for it to open I took mon asking to buy things we needed for the boarder but we were not put off. He continued full steam ahead. My head was on swivel looking for anything that looked suspicious while scanning for a place to getey out of the wall. We found a bus that went to a slightly larger city named Nador so we could catch a bus to Fes, our first stop.
At this time I will tell you that there are four major ways of getting around in Morocco. There are train, big gray hound type busses without toilet facilities, grand taxi, which are old Mercedes where four people are crammed in the back with two in front, plus the driver, and Peti taxis to get around within cities. We used the later three missing out on train travel experience. I will talk more about these modes of transport when they come up during the trip.
We got to Nador and needed breakfast. This was our first introduction to mint tea. It is amazing. We never found out how to make it but basically looks like hot water with lots of mint leaves in the glass with sugar. After breakfast we found the bus station. We had read and were told that people who come up to you asking for business are usually not the ones who actually handle the business so its horrible to walk away from people who are asking you where you are going or what you want to do but it is just something that must be done. We found a big bus to Fes and chucked our stuff under the buss. This bus was a bus that Moroccans use. Once we started going I realized I was not in American, I was not in Scotland. This was for a number of reasons. First off the views were so beautiful. It did not even look like Africa. There was such lush greenery and mountain ranges and lakes. Breathtaking. Secondly, rules and common sense did not seem to apply to our bus driver. Roads in Morocco are quite bendy. Ok, fair enough. Loads of places have this same thing. In other places massive busses do not overtake on those exact bends. There was an attempt to overtake on a bend where the bus driver pulled the bus out into the oncoming lane of traffic but had to slow down and pull back into our lane because a car had come. It was shocking the amount of times he overtook on blind corners. Also instead of picking people up at stops, we just slowed down just enough for the person wanting a lift to start running and jump in the opened door. It reminded me of baton runners in the Olympics.
We made it off that bus without any major incident and were in Fes. We walked around the medina in Fes, which is the old part of the city with narrow walkways and shops covering all surfaces. It really was something to experience. It seemed a bit silly to be carrying our bags around with us so be got dinner at a nice Moroccan restaurant. At the restaurant we met and chatted with a girl from Boston, a guy from Vashon Island (very close to Seattle, WA) and a guy from New Castle, UK. After dinner we found a hotel. When we got to the hotel and checked in they asked us for our passports. We gave ours to them but told them we did not have a stamp. The guy looked at both of our passports, flipping through them four times astonished that we did not have a stamp. There was another guy who came over and started shouting in Arabic. Jay and I looked at each other not knowing what to do. The man who was not yelling told us that it is kind of a problem because the forms that we fill out are turned into the police. The man told us it should not be a problem and that he was not going to turn our sheets in. We ditched out stuff and found our hotel had two decks that overlook the medina so we hung out up there. It soon became dark and we went to sleep.
The next morning we had a delicious breakfast at the hotel with a crape type thing with honey on top and of course a mint tea. We had to check out because we were not spending another night in Fes but we put our stuff on one of the roofs as other folks had also done. During the day we walked around the medina a bit more but also went up on a hillside to a military museum. The museum was quite interesting. There were displays of everything from swards, guns, cannons and suits of armor. The only problem was that the info was in Arabic and French. It was enjoyable just to look anyways. While in Fes Jay purchases a traditional Moroccan outfit called a Jalabiyya with matching pants. It was really cool. After we felt done seeing the medina and looking in the shops we went to our hotels rooftop to catch some rays and read. We met a guy from California and a guy from Norway and played the card game hearts with them. That was good fun getting to know them and playing hearts. After a bit of that we decided we needed to get some food before we got on an over night bus to Rassani. Rassani is very far south and a bit east of Fes, very near Algeria. We took the overnight bus there to get a car ride into the dessert. At the bus station in Fes we met a guy who gave us information about a dessert excursion of sorts. He told us that from Rassani we could get a 10 dirham (1 U.S. dollar = 7.30999496 Moroccan dirham) ride into the dessert and get a room for 50 dirham or a tent for 25. We decided this was a good deal being that we had just paid 180 dirham for a double room in Fes. The guy called his boss who would pick us up and handed me the phone. I talked to the guy and he seemed like a nice guy, he asked me for my name because he warned me that when we get off the bus that people would try to solicit business and that he would come find me and ask me by name. That made sense so it was a deal. The man was correct. That is precisely what happened after our 10-hour bus ride we got out and people started hassling us. The guy found me saying, “are you Aaron” and we got into his land rover with two other people. We had a half hour ride into the desert and it was cool. Once we got into the dessert area it looked like what I would think the moon would look like or something. It was very windy and we could see the sand being blown in streams across the sand. We came to our safe haven from the wind in the form of an old looking estate with 4 buildings within a squared wall. We unloaded and were greeted by a man who asked if we anted “hospitality tea.” We found out through a couple of encounters that “hospitality tea” is not what it sounds like. It is more so “I want sell you lots of stuff and try to rip you off tea.”
We oblige to the offer and step in the room. Basically to make a very long story short we told the guy that we were not staying the night when he asked how many nights we were to say and his demeanor changed drastically. We wanted to go on a camel ride so he told us we could go on a day trip starting at 10 get into the dunes, eat lunch in a tent they have out there, come back and leave back to Rassani all for a low low price of 1,500 dirham. I had just gotten that same amount out of the bank for the whole rest of our trip. This guy was an absolute joker. We talked with him and decided we were not able to pay that or pay for any day trip with lunch. At one point we just asked if we could stay for the day and get a ride out to Rassani to catch a night bus but the guy said that it would cost 600 dirham for that. We had a slight concern that we might never get out of the dessert. We convinced him that we were students and did not have much money but wanted to have a camel ride. We got it down to 350 dirham for an hour camel ride which turned out to be so brilliant with our guide letting us down off the camels to walk in the sand and wear his traditional outfit and hat wrap thing. It was so cool and just the right amount of time. We left for Rassani when we got back. We were basically shoved into the SUV while the other people traveling with us were given handshakes and told how lovely it was to have them. We asked the people in the SUV how much their camel rides were. They had gone on over night tracks for 600 dirham. We could not wrap our minds around this guy’s initial offer after hearing what these other people go but it was still a great 4 hours in the dessert.