December 12th-13th--I wasn't exactly sure how I was getting to Casablanca and then Marrakech, but I knew I was getting there.
I went to a web cafe in the morning and then wrote down all the applicable times for buses, trains, and ferries, then said goodbye to Jaris and headed out.
I headed to the bus station and got a ticket for a bus leaving at 1:30 to the port city of Algeciras. While I waited, I played guitar outside, and a random Spanish guy came up and borrowed it to play some flamenco.
I hate bus travel. The ride lasted four hours, and I was pretty sick of it by then. I tried to sleep as much as possible. At Algeciras, I had to transfer to another bus to get to Tarifa, where I would hopefully catch the 7:00 ferry to Tangiers, Morocco. As I was boarding the bus I met a nice Irish guy in his 40s who was planning on a trip into Mauritania and the Sahara and Senegal. His name was, no joke, Paul Newman.
Sunset over Tarifa through a grimy bus window.
The bus was late leaving, and as Paul and I talked, we looked worriedly at our watches, hoping that we wouldn't have to wait for the 9:00 ferry. The bus arrived in Tarifa at 6:45, and we assumed it would be a short walk to the terminal. We were wrong.
As it became clearer how far the ferry was, we sped up, first a kind of trotting walk, then a jog, then a full out sprint. So there I was, sprinting down the streets of Tarifa with my backpack and guitar next to Paul Newman...
We made the ferry. And since it's only a 45 minute trip into Morocco, which is another time zone, we got there 15 minutes before we left. A short mix-up with passport control later, we were free in Morocco.
We had discussed our options on the ferry--Paul was going to Rabat, I was going to Casablanca, and we could either stay the night in Tangiers or get the night train that serviced both cities. We opted for the latter.
This meant getting a cab to the train station, and fending off numerous offers from Moroccans at the ferry landing offering places to stay, as well as one guy who tried to convince us he was with the Ministry of Tourism. Paul had some pretty crazy stories about traveling in Morocco in the 80's and 90's, so I was wary of everyone who approached us. But we got a nice cabdriver who took us to surprisingly glamorous, if small, train station. There we bought our tickets and had some mint tea while we waited for the departure at 9:00.
On the train, soon after we left, an man sat down in our cabin. After making small talk for a while and talking about his kids, he described his town, Asilah, and how good it was for tourists, especially at this time of year. Soon after we made it clear that our plans wouldn't accommodate a detour, he left to "have a smoke". He never came back.
I got maybe four hours of sleep on the train, woken up by Paul as he left at 3:30 when we stopped at Rabat. Good luck in the Sahara, Paul.
The train arrived in Casablanca at 4:30 AM. While my true destination was Marrakech, I wanted to see a little of Casablanca on the way. However, I didn't want to be wandering the darkened streets at 4:30, so I bought a ticket to Marrakech for 8:50 and hung out and read a book until 6:30, when some light started showing itself. I had heard of a huge mosque, the Hassan II Mosque, the third-largest in the world, located on the seaside in Casablanca. I took a cab out there and watched the sunrise at the mosque, an inspiring experience. Also, however, a surprisingly cold experience--it was 0 degrees Celsius when I left the train station at 6:30.
When I caught a cab to get back to the station, I paid him a little extra to go to a breakfast place. He was hungry too, so we sat in a cafe eating Moroccan pastries while drinking mint tea and spoke French while watching Al-Jazeera on TV. Pretty surreal.
Claude Raines in 2007
However, one thing to note is that Casablanca has the worst smog cloud I've ever seen. It's a city of 6 million people and the economic center of Morocco, but the cloud is worse than New York or Los Angeles. I looked out over the ocean and wondered where the weird dark cloud was coming from before I realized that it was smog, that the smog stretched out into the ocean. It's a long way from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman these days.
On the train to Marrakech, the weather got warmer and warmer and I started to shed the layers I had put on in Casablanca. The ride took only about 3 hours, and on the way I met an aspiring Moroccan film director named Magid. He was, in fact, blond haired and blue eyed, but fully Moroccan and Muslim. He told me that there was a huge international film festival happening in Marrakech, with several big Hollywood stars. I had no idea about this before hand.
And then suddenly the insane bustle and undeniable life of Marrakech was upon me.
I went to a web cafe in the morning and then wrote down all the applicable times for buses, trains, and ferries, then said goodbye to Jaris and headed out.
I headed to the bus station and got a ticket for a bus leaving at 1:30 to the port city of Algeciras. While I waited, I played guitar outside, and a random Spanish guy came up and borrowed it to play some flamenco.
I hate bus travel. The ride lasted four hours, and I was pretty sick of it by then. I tried to sleep as much as possible. At Algeciras, I had to transfer to another bus to get to Tarifa, where I would hopefully catch the 7:00 ferry to Tangiers, Morocco. As I was boarding the bus I met a nice Irish guy in his 40s who was planning on a trip into Mauritania and the Sahara and Senegal. His name was, no joke, Paul Newman.
Sunset over Tarifa through a grimy bus window.The bus was late leaving, and as Paul and I talked, we looked worriedly at our watches, hoping that we wouldn't have to wait for the 9:00 ferry. The bus arrived in Tarifa at 6:45, and we assumed it would be a short walk to the terminal. We were wrong.
As it became clearer how far the ferry was, we sped up, first a kind of trotting walk, then a jog, then a full out sprint. So there I was, sprinting down the streets of Tarifa with my backpack and guitar next to Paul Newman...
We made the ferry. And since it's only a 45 minute trip into Morocco, which is another time zone, we got there 15 minutes before we left. A short mix-up with passport control later, we were free in Morocco.
We had discussed our options on the ferry--Paul was going to Rabat, I was going to Casablanca, and we could either stay the night in Tangiers or get the night train that serviced both cities. We opted for the latter.
This meant getting a cab to the train station, and fending off numerous offers from Moroccans at the ferry landing offering places to stay, as well as one guy who tried to convince us he was with the Ministry of Tourism. Paul had some pretty crazy stories about traveling in Morocco in the 80's and 90's, so I was wary of everyone who approached us. But we got a nice cabdriver who took us to surprisingly glamorous, if small, train station. There we bought our tickets and had some mint tea while we waited for the departure at 9:00.
On the train, soon after we left, an man sat down in our cabin. After making small talk for a while and talking about his kids, he described his town, Asilah, and how good it was for tourists, especially at this time of year. Soon after we made it clear that our plans wouldn't accommodate a detour, he left to "have a smoke". He never came back.
I got maybe four hours of sleep on the train, woken up by Paul as he left at 3:30 when we stopped at Rabat. Good luck in the Sahara, Paul.
The train arrived in Casablanca at 4:30 AM. While my true destination was Marrakech, I wanted to see a little of Casablanca on the way. However, I didn't want to be wandering the darkened streets at 4:30, so I bought a ticket to Marrakech for 8:50 and hung out and read a book until 6:30, when some light started showing itself. I had heard of a huge mosque, the Hassan II Mosque, the third-largest in the world, located on the seaside in Casablanca. I took a cab out there and watched the sunrise at the mosque, an inspiring experience. Also, however, a surprisingly cold experience--it was 0 degrees Celsius when I left the train station at 6:30.
When I caught a cab to get back to the station, I paid him a little extra to go to a breakfast place. He was hungry too, so we sat in a cafe eating Moroccan pastries while drinking mint tea and spoke French while watching Al-Jazeera on TV. Pretty surreal.
Claude Raines in 2007
However, one thing to note is that Casablanca has the worst smog cloud I've ever seen. It's a city of 6 million people and the economic center of Morocco, but the cloud is worse than New York or Los Angeles. I looked out over the ocean and wondered where the weird dark cloud was coming from before I realized that it was smog, that the smog stretched out into the ocean. It's a long way from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman these days.
On the train to Marrakech, the weather got warmer and warmer and I started to shed the layers I had put on in Casablanca. The ride took only about 3 hours, and on the way I met an aspiring Moroccan film director named Magid. He was, in fact, blond haired and blue eyed, but fully Moroccan and Muslim. He told me that there was a huge international film festival happening in Marrakech, with several big Hollywood stars. I had no idea about this before hand.
And then suddenly the insane bustle and undeniable life of Marrakech was upon me.
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