Around The World – Tangier, Morocco: Part Deux
My goal on this leg of the trip is to get back to Tangier and prepare for the ferry ride to Italy.
Up in Essaouira at 5:45 AM, quick get ready, pack, grab my Wifi booster, drop off the key and bounce my way 10 minutes through the medina to the bus stop. Here, they extort me out of D5 for my “baggage fee” that I didn’t pay on the identical bus route from Marrakech to here. Must be good to be the only guy at a remote bus station at 6:30 in the morning.
The bus was as good as the one coming down, a modern coach but damn it was cold. About an hour into the ride the driver found the heater knob and it got pleasantly warm and I fell asleep for about 2 hours. I walked from the Marrakech bus station to the train station next door, hot chocolate in the cafe and then onto the train. It’s the same old 6-people-in-the-cabin-3-aren’t-suppoesd-to-be-here thing. After some shuffling I got my seat. We left right on time and I settled down for the run to Casablanca. I had an hour layover in Casa so had a cheese pannini and boarded the train to Tangier. This one had the 2-1 seating, with nobody in the seat next to me so I spread my stuff out. I fiddled with the sound settings on the laptop to no effect. I had a flash of insight and copied a bunch of videos from a USB drive through the laptop to my phone and watched them on the wee 5″ screen. I think I had every cable in my backpack plugged in, my compartment mates were looking at me a little weird. We arrived in Tangier at 8:30 PM, 14 hours on the road but I feel OK. I rejected four taxi drivers who tried to rip me off for a ride to the Grand Socco, my second time here guys I know what I’m doing. I walked through the medina back to the same Airbnb I stayed at when I first arrived, happy to see Monica and Mustafa again. This time I booked their ground-floor room… I had a glass of OJ and climbed into bed.
I powered up the laptop to turn on the Wifi and viola! Sound coming out the speakers but not through the headphones. One setting tweak and the sound is all back to normal. WTF? The sound device drivers only like to work properly when they’re not moving? I’m not going to question it, just move on with my life and pretend that never happened.
I woke up to a cold and drizzly day in Tangier. I walked to the Petit Socco and had a hot chocolate. I found a review of the ferry I’m taking tomorrow, the guy has not much good to say about it. Built in 1997, run down a bit but clean. Can handle 1200 people and 200 vehicles and runs at about 26 knots. Bad and expensive food. And big signs, at least on the Livorno port side, saying you can’t bring your own food on the ship. Well that scraps that plan to bring some food and snacks to get me through the 50 hours on the trip.
On the way back to the Airbnb, I walked through a street of craftsmen, working in wood, tile and steel. The man in the picture is building a geometric pattern on a plywood base. The sharpness of his chisel was impressive!
I came back to the Airbnb, watched videos, prepped for the long voyage by downloading more movies and podcasts and went to sleep.
