We arrived at the train station the next morning without any
memorable hassle and waited to be spirited away travelling again in first
class. Despite clear signs pointing out what carriage we needed to be on and
what seats we were in, we still became confused and needed to be told by a
helpful old man that the first train that arrived in front of us was NOT going
to Tangier and that we should probably not board it if that was where we wanted
to go. We took the man’s advice (an entirely new concept for us) and waited for
the second train. Once it arrived, we awkwardly heaved our luggage on board
before jumping on to accompany it. Neither Ian or I were particularly thrilled
about heading to Tangier but it was a means to an end. It was an escape from
Morocco.
Much later, I learned that Tangier was one of the most
dangerous cities in the world. I can’t say that I saw that while I was there,
but I certainly didn’t enjoy my time in the city. After a few pleasant hours by
train, we arrived in Tangier which is situated south of Spain but separated by
a channel some thirty odd kilometres wide. We’d booked the night before to take
a ferry across from Tangier to Algeciras and then take a bus to Gibraltar which
wasn’t far from there so our first priority when we disembarked from the train
was getting to the port. I was keen to just get to the port and wait out the
remaining time in the country there, hoping it would reduce the chance of us
getting hassled. We just had to GET there first.
The doors opened and a group of men nearby erupted into an
annoying chorus of
‘TAXI!
TAXI!’ which wasn’t entirely unexpected. By now we just sighed and went with
it. We made sure the taxi driver told us how far it was from the train station
to the port and then agreed on a price to get there prior to even getting in
the car, despite his overly-enthusiastic need to load our bags first. I made
absolutely clear that we wouldn’t be paying if the guy tried to rip us off in
any way. I wasn’t in any mood to ‘go with the flow’. We drove to the port via a
road that skirted the beach. From there, the city didn’t actually look that
bad. Appearances can be – and often are – misleading however. Littered along
the beach front were seedy looking staircases with shabby signs advertising the
discothèques they hid beneath. Nothing about their placement or advertisement particularly
drew me in. It took about half an hour of crawling through slow moving traffic
in the beat-up, beige Mercedes, but we arrived at the port. After paying the
man we made hasty tracks towards the departure building.
We were like beacons, drawing stares from all around. I
couldn’t help but notice a similarity we held to a bug-zapper as we drew in all
the pests. We pushed our way inside as quickly as possible and made our way
through security. We’d made it with an hour and a half to spare and began
looking around for our ferry. After about fifteen minutes of searching, not
only could we not find the ferry, we couldn’t even find any signs advertising
the company we’d booked them through. Anxieties on the rise again, I asked one
of the security guards nearby – the only available source of information nearby
– where we could find the ferry and was met with a dazzlingly simple answer
‘Not
here.’ My expression fell flat as I realized I was dealing with a genius.
‘Yes,
ok I realize that. But can you point me in the direct---‘ I stopped myself
mid-sentence to break the sentence down into bear essentials for the lady.
‘Where do I go?’
‘Not
here.’ She repeated. Then, out of some completely unexpected ray of
helpfulness, she offered up a nugget of information purely out of the kindness
of her heart. However, it was not the information that I wanted to hear at all.
‘You’re at wrong port.’
We stormed into a random nearby office for a ferry company
to see if they could be any more helpful than the lady, keeping in mind we had
around an hour left until our ferry departed. We were desperate to get on it
and get away from Morocco, but it seemed like Morocco had other ideas. We
talked to a man who spoke fairly good English, describing exactly what ferry we
needed to be on, what company would be taking us and where we needed to depart.
He directed us to a bank of taxis very apologetically after telling us that the
port we needed to be at was about half an hour’s drive away in the direction
we’d come. I had to bite my tongue at this point because up until then, I’d
been thinking it was a simple mistake on the taxi driver’s part. But now it was
increasingly apparent that he’d driven us here with the clear intention of
misdirecting us. Almost on cue, he appeared in the background, yelling and
waving his arms at us. I couldn’t understand what he was saying but the message
was clear:
‘HOW DARE
YOU USE ANOTHER TAXI DRIVER?!’ Not feeling bad in the least, we went through
the same checks with the new taxi driver as we did with the other, but this
time with less enthusiasm. We just wanted to LEAVE, to GET THERE.
En route, the man guessed ‘correctly’ that we were from
Britain, and told us that he’d been many times. We feigned interest in the
man’s story and made sure not to tell him where our true citizenship lay. In
fact, I took steps to ensure the man thought we were from the UK; doing the worst
British accent I’ve ever pulled off in my life whenever I had to talk to the
man. Time was ticking away and despite the incredible ocean views we were
treated to on the drive, I couldn’t help but focus on the ferry. The
‘half-hour’ journey the man had described prior to us getting into the taxi
dragged longer and longer and I’d almost given up hope that we were ever going
to see a port at all when we saw a few signs with a ship emblazoned on it. The
wheels squealed to a halt and we just about threw the taxi driver’s money in
his face as we dashed for the departure building. We raced up to the counter to
receive our tickets and were met with the blankest stare I’ve ever seen pulled
off on the fly ever. When he finally spoke, we were met with information that
we didn’t want to hear yet again.
‘You
are at wrong port.’ I was furious.
‘No…’ I
growled through gritted teeth. ‘We WERE at the wrong port and then came HERE.
The taxi driver took us from that port to THIS one so can we have our TICKETS
please?!’ It took a while for what I’d said to process with the man behind the
desk but he eventually responded.
‘There
is third port.’ My heart sunk in my chest. All of the rage in me petered out
and I visibly deflated. ‘There is third port. That is where you make board.’ I
checked my watch, hoping that time had magically reversed somehow. After all
our preparation the night before and our racing around during the day, we’d
still managed to miss our ferry.
After a bit of digging, we found that we could actually book
a ticket from the port to Algeciras, Spain. From there, we could take a bus to
Gibraltar. With another plan in mind, we booked the tickets and grabbed a bite
to eat. It really only hit me at that point that we hadn’t eaten since dinner
the night before and as such I just about inhaled my tray of food. It wasn’t
long after I’d finished before Ian and I had to collect our things and pass
through departures. With a full belly and a half-decent plan in our heads, we
were taken by shuttle to the awaiting ferry. Farewell, Morocco.
We made a few seating changes whilst on board the ferry,
eventually settling for a seat at the very rear-most point we could find, away
from the screaming children who were terrorizing the other passengers. I left
Ian to find a power point as my Gameboy’s battery had run flat and I was being
horribly deprived of Pokémon. Once I’d had my fix, I made my way back to Ian. Clearly,
the running around through the day had got the best of him – he was out for the
count. So I decided to do what I do best. I filmed him sleeping and annoyed the
absolute hell out of him as soon as he awoke. We’d barely been on the ship
forty minutes when an electronic voice rang out across the intercom telling us
we were about to dock in Spain. I stared from the back of the ferry out across
the water. Indeed, the Moroccan coastline we’d left in the churning wake of the
ship had been replaced by cargo ships and a new city to explore.
We made our way off the ship with the other passengers – of
which there were surprisingly few. We wandered a fairly direct route to
immigration where we waited behind three or four giggling, American girls on
holiday. After half an hour of waiting, I was called up to the immigration
window by the well-built, handsome officer with jet black hair and manicured
stubble who looked like he’d be more comfortable working a catwalk than border
patrol. I pulled my passport out of the leather wallet I’d bought to house it
in during our first stop over in Singapore. I made sure to be gentle as two and
a half weeks’ worth of travel hadn’t been kind to the identification booklet
despite the additional protection. I handed it to the immigration officer with
a guilty look – I can’t express just how shitty this book looked. Every time we
passed through immigration, I thought I’d be escorted off into a secret room to
be interrogated the passport and yet so far, so good.
The man looked at me then with no tact at all, picked the
passport up by the identification page. Painfully slowly, we both watched as
the page started to tear itself loose from the rest of the booklet. I felt my
face drop as I looked in despair at the only page of the passport that was
absolutely essential to my passage into and out of countries tear loose of its
binding. It didn’t completely tear free; rather it hung from the officers’
fingers, torn through about two thirds of the way. As calmly as possible, he
lowered the book back to the desk and I watched his eyes dart left and right
nervously to see if anyone besides myself had seen what had happened. Satisfied
no-one had, he quickly stamped the book and waved me past before I knew what to
say about what had happened. Sadly, I returned the passport to its wallet,
knowing at some point I’d have to buy sticky tape to hold that page in place.
Deciding that was a problem for future me to worry about that, Ian and I set
about filling our wallets with the local currency again and found directions to
the bus stop that would take us from Algeciras to our hotel in Gibraltar.
‘Do you
hear that?’ asked Ian tentatively as we walked past other tourists heading back
towards the port.
‘Uhh…
No?’ I replied, confused. ‘Hear what?’
‘Exactly.’
Said Ian with a small laugh, satisfied. ‘No-one’s hassling us. No “Hey give me
your money, I’ll take you here or do this for you!”’ Mind you, it had only been
an hour since we’d left Morocco, but I hadn’t noticed that until Ian pointed it
out and once I DID, I felt myself relax. My shoulders dropped as I walked and I
let myself stop guarding my pockets as we walked. We followed the directions
we’d received from a random shop-assistant at the port. We walked past some cop
cars with flashing lights guarding practically nothing and through a courtyard
where the local drunk was throwing a tantrum. I couldn’t help but feel like the
Police’s time could have been more appropriately used just 50 metres down the
road for the drunkard, but I wasn’t about to redistribute those resources. I
had, after all, only just entered the country.
After a few short minutes of walking, we made it to the bus
station. As it turned out, the bus we wanted wasn’t actually leaving for
another hour and a half so once we’d paid for our tickets we decided to go in
search of a lovely cold beverage of the alcoholic persuasion. Together we
wandered in the direction we’d come and settled in a bar not too far from where
we’d seen the police on the original journey. Just prior to settling into the
difficult task of forcing beer down our throats, we were approached by a local
entrepreneur.
‘You…
You like? You want… Hash?’ Said the man with a twinkle in his eye and a limp in
his step. Despite the man’s stellar approach to the situation and his expert
salesmanship, I had to decline. I felt the police men we’d just walked past
seconds earlier might not take too kindly to that kind of behaviour. Bidding
the man success in his future endeavors, we bought each other a few pints and
set about killing time in the Spanish sun. Feeling pleasantly pickled after
polishing off a few pints far too easily, we began the stumble back to the bus
station in our patented lightweight fashion.
By the time we’d
reached the station, sweat was escaping me like inmates from a prison with an
open door policy. I knew from experience that it isn’t the most pleasant
experience to sit next to a person profusely leaking their own fluids; I opted
for a swift costume change to make the journey slightly more bearable for Ian.
Unfortunately by this stage, nearly all the shirts I had were soaked through
with sweat from previous days. Choosing the least offensive one, I toweled
myself dry in the most saturated areas with the shirt I was discarding – I am
dedicated to giving you every detail of this trip, regardless of how intimate
or disgusting – and slipped into the musty ‘new’ one. I might has well have not
done any of that as I was pouring again within moments. By this stage, the bus
had arrived and I simply did not care. We threw some local currency at the
driver and took our seats. I wish I could tell you that we sat at the back like
the cool kids do, but alas, we are not that cool. We sat in the middle and
played Pokémon.
I was surprised with how quick the trip went, taking little
more than 40 minutes. You couldn’t miss Gibraltar; the giant mountain jutting
out of the ground with little subtlety. We hit the ground walking – there was
no reason to be any faster. Using our highly developed tracking skills (and the
GPS on Ian’s quickly dying phone) we managed to find our way to the hotel which
after much discussion and high levels of confusion on my part turned out to
reside in Spain, not Gibraltar as I’d originally thought. Ian patted my head to
console me as he shook his own. Heads held high, we accepted that our next few
days would be spent in La Linea de la Concepcion – a lot easier than I’ve made
it sound.
We walked along a sun-kissed road next to the sea with
Gibraltar at our backs dragging our packs.
Every now and then, we’d correct our
course using Ian’s phone, but we had to be quick. It seemed every time he
touched the thing, it drained the battery by another percent. Along the way, we
crossed paths with a man walking his dog. Ian and I called his masculinity into
question – he was walking a Chihuahua with what seemed to be great pride.
‘I
don’t like it.’ I grumbled.
‘Why
not?’ replied Ian, disinterestedly.
‘He’s
TOO comfortable with it!’ I said.
‘It’s
SPAIN!’ retorted Ian, as if that made it all OK. I disagreed.
‘No-one
should be that comfortable with a Chihuahua! Especially not a man!’
No man should walk a dog that small of his own free will. I
doubt it could even be classified as a dog; I think a large rat suited the
thing better.
We reached the hotel (I can’t remember its name!) a few
minutes later and were checked in by a supermodel. I called dibs. She was soon
forgotten as we headed up to our room. Now, we hadn’t done it particularly hard
on this trip thus far. With the exception of being given a room with virtually
no furniture in Fes, we’d always slept in relative luxury. This room in
particular really took the cake though. It was beautiful. Small, but brilliant.
The room sported a sleek, modern design. The bathroom was guarded by a frosted
glass door. It came with a complimentary ‘cool vibe’ and a view of the pool three
stories below and I fell in love with it instantly. To mark the occasion, I
took photos of my nipples.
We had decided prior to checking into the hotel that our
priority would be getting our clothes washed, so on our way towards the
restaurant I made sure to check with my future wife at reception. Disgusted, I
found that the lady I’d become vividly smitten with on our arrival had been
replaced with some other pleb. She was actually quite nice, was incredibly
helpful and spoke better English than the object of my affections, but I
remained annoyed nonetheless.
After we’d dropped our clothes in to be washed
(remember, that’s what I was checking before I went off on a tangent?) I joined
Ian for dinner which was rather lackluster in my opinion however it did give me
the opportunity to reflect on the day’s events. I couldn’t help but feel
overwhelmed at the sense of relief I felt to have escaped from Morocco’s
cities. The difference between Tangier and La Linea de la Concepcion was
incredible. Now that I was in Spain, I could nod my head at someone passing by
and offer a smile without feeling as though I’d just invited twenty con artists
to descend upon me. I didn’t feel consistently in danger of being robbed though
it would take at least a full week to really relax and let my guard down a
touch. We rounded out the day with a few episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender
and prepared ourselves mentally to do a whole lot of nothing the next day as we
drifted off to sleep.
We decided to explore the area the next day but with no real
agenda there, it was incredibly difficult to get motivated to get out of bed.
Somewhere along the line, the prospect of visiting Gibraltar was raised
considering it was within spitting distance. Unfortunately, this never happened
due to the fact that we had made the decision to be as lazy as possible during
our first few days in Spain.
It was lunchtime by the time we made our way into the
shopping district of La Linea, so we decided to ignore the fact that we’d
missed out on breakfast and start drinking. We found a cool little restaurant,
ordered a few beers and a light lunch and realized we were still confused as to
the prospect of tipping. We reached the decision that until we knew for sure,
we should just throw money at people. It seemed the polite thing to do.
We
finished our beers, polished off our meat skewers (they were the only thing we
could order that our waiter could understand us saying) and pushed on. Within
two minutes, we’d been drawn into another little eatery – this time it was a
little bakery. To my delight, it was a bakery with a bar attached, so as Ian
ordered his tasty morsels, I took it upon myself to purchase two more pints.
We’d just made the decision to stop drinking at one place so we could find
another place to drink. I really liked Spain.
We discussed the intricacies of the blockbuster ‘Marvel’s:
The Avengers’ whilst making our way through the baked goods and chilled pints.
Ian was particularly annoyed at Joss Whedons incorrect use of ‘anti-protons’ or
something. It hadn’t irritated me until he made the very good point that I
become annoyed at medical scenes in movies being portrayed inaccurately in the
same way that he gets annoyed with science being written the same way. After
we’d decided that ‘The Avengers’ may have not told the entire truth to its
audience, we left the bakery bar in search of new and interesting things. Our
priority from that point on (apart from exploring the lovely city, of COURSE)
was to find a liquor store to fill our alcohol quota for the day. Along the way, we came across some cool works
of art including some random graffiti of what I can only assume was the Three
Wise Men (pictured) and a statue that couldn’t quite decide what it was doing.
It was an abstract work and if it wasn’t then it was trying
REALLY hard to make you think it was. The statue was a man perched on one leg
with one arm stretched forward as if he were swimming. In the other hand, he
held a book.
‘That’s
odd.’ I decided. ‘He’s like… swimming… in air… on a rock… whilst reading.’
Perhaps the intricacies of the piece were lost on my mildly intoxicated mind. Pushing
on, we crossed a bridge and at its crescendo were faced with the towering
mountain of Gibraltar. Heading straight for it, we found ourselves in a small
market area filled with trashy paraphernalia for tourists and fast food. As we
exited the area, our eyes came to rest on what appeared to be border control
between Spain and Gibraltar. Ian began patting his pockets in preparation of
the inevitable passport checks as we crossed a road but began smacking himself
as if he was on fire the closer we came. I’ll admit, his odd choice of
behaviour piqued my interest and I inquired as to why he was abusing himself.
His response was slightly annoying.
‘Um…’
he began, but I already knew what was coming. ‘Yeah, so I’ve forgotten my
passport?’
So we made empty plans to come back when we had the correct
documentation – plans that never came to fruition. With our mission now over,
we searched for a new objective. I quickly filled the void by stating the
obvious; not only had we not yet had dinner, we were also yet to find and
procure more alcohol for consumption behind closed doors in our hotel. Luckily
for us, across the road in the direction we’d originally come lay the answer to
one of those problems.
On our journey into the district, neither of us had noticed
any obvious liquor stores to satiate our growing dependence. We wove our way
through the maze and before long, happened upon a supermarket. My booze sensors
were going crazy so I pulled Ian in with me to investigate. To my glee, there
were aisles and aisles of the stuff. Not wanting to be greedy, we settled on a
small selection of cheeky brews and some random things to nibble on and made
our way back to the hotel to deposit the haul before making our way out again
to solve the second part of our problem.
To reach the hotel we were staying at, we first had to make
our way through a residential area. The area held a certain charm – if you’re
into living in cramped, crumbling apartments near busy streets and a rusty
playground. Personally, that’s not exactly my idea of a good time. As we passed
between two apartment buildings, the hairs on the back of my neck began to
stand up as my alter ego ‘Paranoid Matt’ reared his ugly head. I’d spotted a
group of guys loitering – yes I just used that word, it’s not just reserved for
the police and geriatrics – nearby. Their hair and clothes were too similar for
it to be coincidental and I hadn’t exactly seen an abundance of the style the
guys were sporting which led Paranoid Matt to one conclusion – these guys were
gang members. I passed this revelation on to Ian who calmed my fragile little
mind by saying not only was I being paranoid, but also an idiot.
Satisfied with this, we pressed on to the hotel and
deposited our stash in the room’s bar fridge before stepping out again for some
nibbles at a restaurant we’d spied around the time we’d failed to cross the
border into Gibraltar. We opted to walk along the main road that ran by the
beach partly because the beach and bay looked incredible in the late afternoon
and partly because Paranoid Matt didn’t want to press his luck by walking
through potential gang territory.
We settled into two chairs that walked the thin line between
being indoors and out in a casual restaurant, sipping Heineken and watching the
sun slowly set over the mountain in the background. The realization that we
were incredibly lucky to be here was constantly floating above our heads
throughout each day, but it was only during these calm moments that it was
really driven home. Ian made his way through a hamburger as I emerged
triumphant against a plate of nachos feeling worse for wear after doing so.
With the meal paid for (and then some, we weren’t going to break the tradition
of tipping just yet) we pushed off once more into the town we’d explored
earlier only this time slightly wearier due to the food babies we were sporting
in our stomach/ wombs.
We navigated our way through the shopping precinct of La
Linea slightly slower than earlier in the day due to our recently ingested
meals. We aimed for home after leaving the restaurant. We’d barely rounded the
block from the place before we heard delightfully playful music filling the
air. With confused looks on our faces, we did our best to trace the sound and
found it originating from an unusual source. A man was slowly riding around on
a bright yellow bicycle complete with two rear wheels, a sun shade and a
boom-box. It was clear that I would never be as cool as this man.
Forgetting my paranoia from before, we found ourselves
stumbling through the same residential area where the shady-looking characters
had congregated earlier. To my amusement and Ian’s chagrin, two vans of police
officers were now attending the scene, likely having more than a momentary
chit-chat to the guys that had given me the heebie-jeebies before.
Upon our return, we were quite happy to find that our
clothes had been returned cleaner than they had ever been. I seriously doubted
that these clothes had been this clean straight off the production line or
after exiting whatever wizardry produced them. They’d been neatly folded and
placed in two wicker baskets in our room. It was a hefty dose of overkill but
appreciated nonetheless. After we’d packed our clothes away we noticed two
receipts sitting politely at the bottom of the baskets, patiently awaiting our
attention. I skimmed mine quickly and had nearly thrown it aside when my brain kicked
into gear. I pulled a hefty double-take and looked again.
‘Uh…
dude?’ I said. ‘How much is your washing?’
Ian cast the same casual glance across his receipt as I had
across mine. His eyes boggled just as mine did. Together, our washing came to
the lovely little sum of €240 which at today’s conversion rates comes to
approximately $344.31 AUD. Our washing had cost more (WAY more) than the actual
stay at the hotel. We could have BOUGHT new clothes for less. I was glad that
I’d saved up for so long for this trip – I certainly wouldn’t be in debt when I
returned home, but I really didn’t want to get into the habit of throwing away
large chunks of cash on activities of daily living. I swallowed the rising bile
in my throat and tried to look on the bright side of this situation. It really
was the best damn washing that I’d ever been privy to. Then again, at that
price, I wouldn’t expect anything less.
Later that night at the hotel, we packed our suitcases for
what we thought was going to be our last night in La Linea and settled down to
watch ‘The Incredibles’ whilst sampling the wares we’d procured from the
supermarket earlier. The following day was to hold at least one unexpected
surprise that we were not to know as we drifted off to sleep once again.
OH SNAP! THERE'S THE END OF PART 12!!!
So by now we've escaped Morocco and you're still reading... KUDOS TO YOU! I shall try my hardest to get cracking on with the writing. It shall be done!
Thanks again for reading guys, feel free to inbox me on Facebook if you find any glaring errors. You can be my editors that I never credit ever. Ha. But seriously...
So by now we've escaped Morocco and you're still reading... KUDOS TO YOU! I shall try my hardest to get cracking on with the writing. It shall be done!
Thanks again for reading guys, feel free to inbox me on Facebook if you find any glaring errors. You can be my editors that I never credit ever. Ha. But seriously...
