Around The World – Tangier, Morocco
My goal on this leg of the trip is to make a geographic and cultural jump over to North Africa. Europe is lovely but things were beginning to blur together and continue to bust my budget.
I packed up my stuff in Algeciras and walk to the ferry terminal. Now this is where it gets complicated. There are two ferry points near Algeciras and two ferry points near Tangier. The fastest and easiest of the four combinations involves a bus ride from Algeciras to Tarifa and a jet-engine catamaran ferry to the Tangier-Ville port, right in the heart of Tangier. The combined price was a reasonable 37 euros. I stepped off the ferry in Tangier, my 43rd country (or HHGTTG++ as I call it) and officially land in my 6th continent. I only have Antarctica to go, but that will be a future adventure. I was actually in Sharm-el-Sheik in 2001, at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, which is now part of Egypt but I can’t bring myself to claim Africa based on that short and tangential visit. Granted, Morocco is a small country in the northwest part of Africa, but I’ll be here for 3 weeks so I think I can justify it until I come back again. I want to go to Kenya of course and I also have my sights set on South Africa with a little help from Kaylee Steyn.
When I walked out of the dock area my Airbnb hosts Monika, who is Swiss-German, and Mustafa were waiting for me. We rolled through some narrow, twisty and uphill, of course, streets to get to their home in the Medina, the old city. My room is great, but on the 4th and top floor, of course. There is a door out to a small patio with amazing views of the city. We have a good talk about our travels then I go upstairs and crash.
I wake up to my first morning in Tangier. Monika and Mustafa told me the city doesn’t get going until about 10 or 11 AM which suits me just fine so I had a leisurely morning and a breakfast of fruit and yogurt.
My first priority is to get some local cash, Dinar. The exchange rate is roughly 10:1 USD so it’s easy to work out in your head. Monika pointed me to the nearby Grand Socco with two ATMs and it worked the first time. Thank you to the gods of resilient networking! Just around the corner is the American Legation, the old name for an embassy. It’s a special bit of history, being the first American public property outside the United States and is also the only designated American National Historic Landmark in a foreign country. It was set up as a result of the Treaty of Friendship between the US and Morocco in 1786. It was used by the US Government, then the Peace Corps and now it’s a museum and cultural center.
I continue walking towards the main shops and as I strolled through an awning- covered sidewalk cafe it hits me – there is a scene from “The Bourne Ultimatum” movie that happened right here! Nicky is sitting at a table, talking with Jason on her phone. She hears the nearby explosion (I have to find that street!), she breaks the phone and walks away. In the back of my mind I knew the movie has some scenes here but I didn’t think I would hit on the exact spot. I’ll have to watch the movie again and take careful view of the Tangier scenes.
The second priority is to get a SIM card and data plan. I’ll be here for 3 weeks so a standard month will be fine. And of course this is where everything goes wrong. I went into an official-looking phone company shop, not a guy with a card table on the sidewalk piled with SIM cards… The clerk girl doesn’t speak English, but does speak Spanish as do most people here in the north of Morocco. While she’s working on my phone, she’s having an animated phone call with someone and also helping the next guy in line. Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves. It’s my turn, please focus on me as your paying customer. You can see where this is going. The phone boots up and she’s pounding away on the screen. She hands me the phone, scribbles 130 on a piece of paper and starts helping someone else. This is not my first foreign SIM card, so I test everything out and strangely after about a minute, the Internet stops working, everything is timing out. I turn data service off and on, and it works for a minute and locks up again. I try to show the girl and she says “Normal here.” Uh no, nobody here would accept this. She gets her phone and uses Google to transcribe a comment that says “Internet heavy heavy then erupt” and walked away. So. Maybe I’ll just give it some time to “warm up” before it erupts data all over me.
I walk down to the local cinema looking for Star Wars and it’s all locked up. Of course it’s only about noon, and there is no sign about opening times or movies showing today, just a big metal gate. I walk around a bit and have a small pizza. I’m trying every setting on the phone and I’m still getting this locking up thing. I go back to the shop and the girl is not happy to see me. I try to show her what’s happening and she keeps cutting me off and responding in Arabic. I get the idea she made her sale and it’s not her problem anymore. Luckily another customer at the counter lived in LA for a few years and spoke excellent English. He played man-in-the-middle for us and he finally got her to understand but she started yelling at him, waving her finger in his face. I felt sorry for the guy, he was just trying to help. He put my SIM card into his Samsung phone and it worked for 5 minutes so we decided it was an incompatibility with my phone. I asked for a SIM from one of the other two Moroccan phone companies to see if it would work properly and she lost her shit. Wow. I put the SIM back in my phone and we walked out. If it doesn’t start working better I’ll consider it $13 down the drain and go to another shop.
Now it was time to explore. I walked over to the Kasbah. And sadly, I discovered you can’t “rock it.” It’s a quiet residential area with no shops and you certainly can’t bring out the electric camel drum and the local guitar picker. Shareef don’t like it. The walls are painted white and blue, history says picking up the colors of the water in the Atlantic and the Med. It’s quite pretty. By now I had picked up a new friend who started walking with me, asking my name and my country and shortly he had become my uninvited walking tour guide. Some folks just can’t take no for an answer. My first Arabic – La Shugran – No thank you. I figure this is my first day, he’s a nice man and very knowledgeable so let’s go with it. He walks me around, pointing out historical buildings and houses. Tangier was a playground of the, hmmm, not rich and famous, but writers and intellectuals and well yes, rich expats. I saw the houses of Tennessee Williams and local legend Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Barbara Hutton. And I saw Antonio Banderas’ front door, but didn’t get invited in for tea. I was taken into a shop called 100,000 Spices where Doctor Spice showed me all of their spicy products for food, cosmetics and medicine. By this point I said goodbye to my first guide with a small tip and immediately was latched onto by a second.
I made it clear to him I wanted to walk alone but he just didn’t give up. I don’t know how far I can go on the go-away scale before I gravely insult someone to get them to leave me alone. I walked, and he followed chatting the whole time, into Cafe Hafa on the cliffs where the Beatles and the Stones hung out, with stunning views across the Mediterranean to Spain. Next to the cafe I saw the Phoenecian Tombs, ancient rectangular holes in chiseled into the solid rock at the top of the cliff. I walked back to the Airbnb and my new friend took great offense at my offered tip. I explained I didn’t hire him, I told him I wanted to walk by myself but he wouldn’t leave me. If he didn’t like the tip I would take it back and he could have nothing. He gave me a look and walked away. Sorry dude. I’ve learned my lesson, which goes against every Canadian cell in my body – just say no and ignore. If they won’t leave me, I tell them they can walk with me but I will give them nothing. Ah yes, I was looking for a new culture, right?
The next morning I wanted to explore the city but avoid the medina and kasbah area where everyone was trying to be my best friend. I walked quickly down to the waterfront by the ferry terminal and headed a couple of miles east towards Egypt. Don’t worry, not going to walk that far. I walked on the shops-side of the waterfront road to avoid a lot of construction. They have a multi-year, ton-of-money plan to make Tangier’s decaying port into an international destination for cruise ships and the rich and famous again. They’re certainly hard at work.
I strolled along and crossed over to the er, boardwalk, shall we say, made of concrete but does the job. I even stopped and made a sandcastle for Kimarla Kass. I continued on a very long way until I got to the end of the developed area, marked with sports courts and a bitchin skate park. It’s Saturday so there were thousands of locals out enjoying the day. Many football (soccer) games going on, families hanging out in parks, kids running around as kids do. I walked to a concrete pier out into the Med and watched the fishermen not catch anything.
I walked back into town, but along one major street inland where there were many shops and restaurants. Walking home I use Google Maps and the GPS to take me into the medina and my Airbnb but the walls are so tight and high that I lose GPS reception and just have to follow the map and take the correct turn after turn after turn. It’s like solving a real-life maze.
Had a nice chat with my hosts. When I told them about my cell phone problem, he looked at the card and said “Ah these guys are big cheaters!”. Maroc Telecomm is the former monopoly communications provider before competition was allowed. They still charge too much and have very bad service. Funny how AT&T sounds just the same.
The next day go for a trip to Chefchaouen. My hosts say it’s a lovely little town about 2 hours away by taxi. I walk a long way down to the bus station where the taxis all hang out. I find the ones going to Tetouan, the halfway point. On Mustafa’s advice, I pay double to have the front seat to myself, all of $6 for a hour’s drive. Normally they put two people in the front seat and four people across the back of the long-distance Mercedes taxis. Don’t get all excited. These taxis are all painted blue with housepaint and are on the wrong side of a million miles. The drive is fine, the drivers are pretty good. I make a quick connection in Tetouan to Chefchaouen for my double-seat at $7. We start going up into the mountains and I mean narrow and windy (wine-dee not win-dee). We got stuck a few times behind big trucks and the overtaking at blind corners was a little exciting.
The town of Chefchouen is actually very nice. It’s got a kasbah and ancient medina like all of the towns in this region. Also, most of the walls are painted various shades of blue, reminded me a lot of Santorini in Greece. The town is ringed by craggy mountain peaks, very striking. The little shops along the narrow twisting walkways were all set up for locals, this is not a place many tourists come to. I strolled through town where it opened up on a square at the original fort built back in 14-something, and there was the most beautiful grouping of little restaurants. I had to have lunch there just to soak in the wonderful little square.
Back home by taxi and I planned the rest of my Morocco trip, 4 days in each of Fes (with a day trip to Meknes), 4 days in Rabat and 4 days in Essouria, then back to Tangier to get the ferry to Italy on January 5.
The next morning I walked all the way to the train station and got my ticket for Fes. Direct first class, no change of trains needed.
I noticed a man walking down the street, dressed just like a Jawa from Star Wars. For those of you not skilled in the Star Wars canon, Jawa are small desert-dwelling scavengers who wear dark brown hooded robes. After I saw several more of these men, I began to wonder if they are part of a certain Islamic sect that requires this style of dress. I wonder, when George Lucas was filming the Tatooine scenes in nearby Tunisia, if he saw these people and decided to use their robe style for the Jawas. Star Wars geeks, ready, get set, go!
I walked back towards town, had chocolate and strachiatella gelato near the waterfront for afternoon snack then vegetarian couscous at the Grand Socco for dinner. I asked for no onions they make me sick, in Spanish, and he clearly understood what I wanted. The salad came out with onions, so back it went. Couscous comes out with beef skewers and 3 salted fish. I told them I didn’t want those so he gave them to a street urchin. The boy didn’t believe him at first, but he sat down. The boy then reached over and took my big thick pita bread off my plate, the owner yelled at him and gave me another piece. The boy opened up the pita, put all of the food inside and ran away. At the bottom of the couscous I found pieces of cooked onions. I showed him the onions, he said “I’m sorry” with a smile on his face. I walked home as fast as I could. Turns out I didn’t have an immediate reaction to the onions, weird! Maybe I’m being protected by the yogurt I’m eating every morning here. Hmmm. I may have to do some science on this.
I saw an email alert from Citibank about somebody trying to get gas on my credit card in Memphis. Ugh. Contacted them, confirmed it wasn’t me. They wanted to cancel the account and send me a new card but I told them it’s impossible to receive here. They agreed to put a hold on the account, every time I do a transaction I have to call and tell them to approve. I only use it for Airbnb bookings but still pain in the ass.
I stayed up until 2 AM to watch the SpaceX launch. It was completely successful, satellites deployed and the first stage landed back on the ground! Congrats to everyone at SpaceX!
Tomorrow, off to Fes, where I will spend Christmas. Everyone should be relieved now that I know where I’ll be. In a Muslim country, with no hint of Christmas commercialization anywhere, just like I like it.
I should clarify, the city is Fes, the hats are Fez. Will I wear a Fez in Fes? My view into the future is feszy.
