The trip across was interesting more so for observing the
family dynamic of the Moroccan’s in the cabin and starting to get a better
appreciation of the many ways that women dress.
Once we arrived at our terminal at Tanger Med, we
disembarked and went for the shuttle. However, when we got to the police check
he informed Adam and I that we were supposed to have had our passports stamped
on the boat before getting off! So we had to run back onto the boat and track
down the border guard who was already packing everything up and getting ready
to leave. All the employees had kept asking us where we had been and why we
hadn’t got our passports stamped and we just honestly hadn’t understood the
announcements on the boat overhead. Luckily it wasn’t too big of an issue, and
we hustled so as not to make the other guests wait too long for us on the
shuttle.
We had arrived in Morocco! Our first task was to find the
free bus that would get us from the Tanger Med port to Tangier city about 50 km
away. It was all a little confusing because there was so little signage, but
some nice men pointed us to a unmarked white bus and said that this was the bus
we had to take to the city. I confirmed with the driver and got on while Adam
loaded our bags. Within five minutes, Adam had not yet boarded the bus and I
heard a huge commotion coming from outside. A big black bearded man dressed all
in white was yelling in anger at some of the other people beside the bus. In my
mind I was convinced that Adam had already got into a fight and we had only
been in the country for five minutes. Luckily Adam was just ‘near’ the fight
and wasn’t exactly directly involved. It appears that one group of people had
been cramming the luggage space full with junk they had brought back from Spain.
Apparently loading was the job of the man in white, and he didn’t take too
kindly to other people preventing him from getting his Dirham, so a fight
ensued. The part I didn’t understand is that when Adam finally came on the bus
one of the men in the bout followed him and then came up to me and shook his
finger in my face while saying something in Arabic. Adam says that they
had been asking him if he was with someone and he thinks if I hadn’t of been
there they wouldn’t have let him on the bus since they kept trying to take our
luggage off.
Morocco is full of scammers – and mean ones too. I don’t
like being harsh with foreigners because I usually travel by myself I tend to
prefer to pay the extra for a scam and have someone ‘act’ nicely so that they
can get away with what they are trying to pull, then to call them out on it and
find myself in a bad situation. When we arrived in Tangier, we didn’t have any orientation
to the city, we didn’t have a hotel destination and we didn’t have anyone to
help us figure these things out other than a pack of scamming taxi drivers.
Really quickly (and I do take full responsibility for this) we were in a cab
with a non-English speaking driver and his English speaking ‘tourism approved’
guide. They were taking us to the train station. When we got to the train
station, Adam wanted us to take our stuff and end the ride, but apparently that
wasn’t cool with the driving pair since they had talked to me about driving us
to the train station and then on to our hotel for a rate. Luckily, in a
patriarch society it is pretty easy to defer to the man in any sticky
situation, so I just kept my mouth shut and when they tried to talk to me I deferred
them to Adam. The fight was tough, the insults were flying about and at the end
of it I had a little breakdown because I felt so horrible that I had had to
break my word even if it was to a scam artist. It was just the first of many
such situations in our time in Morocco, so I believe it was a good first hardening.
I said to Adam that the reason I have never been scammed so
easily before is because typically when I travel I am either being picked up by
a local or I know exactly where I am going. This is the first time where
neither of those two circumstances existed, and armed with zero information, it
was too easy to get sucked into the scam. I am happy he was understanding and
was able to take the brunt of the aggression.
Next we had to find a hotel. Finding a hotel was not a big
problem, but one with internet was a little harder. We finally settled on the
first hotel we found with wifi, which was the fifth hotel we visited, and
unfortunately also the most expensive. After hotel search, we ventured into the
streets of Morocco which had come alive with the night. Restaurants were busy,
the ocean’s boardwalk was littered with people (the women almost all covered in
typical muslim garments), and the shops too were all working. Our first Moroccan
dinner was a nice change from the bread, cheese and salami we had been eating
for the previous week. I had a chicken and beef couscous with roasted
vegetables topped with stewed prunes and toasted peanut. Adam had a beef tagine
and a freshly squeezed orange juice.
I was exhausted after visiting Gibraltar all day and then
the transit to Morocco, so I was happy to call it a night and unwind. Adam on
the other hand was eager to hit the streets and see what was going on. This
would become our routine for bulk of our time in Morocco where Adam drops me
off at home between 10-11 pm at night and then goes out adventuring until 1-2
am in the morning. (Luckily he always finds
his way home, and the stories he has to share are both entertaining and a
strong reminder that I am much happier being at home in bed.)
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