Friday 20 January 2012

Ifrane and AUI January 18, 2012 – Wednesday


   Got ready for the day around 9 am or so, showered and got all our things packed together and were headed off in search of breakfast by around 10 am.  We stopped at the same little café place where we had had tea the night before and had a bite to eat for breakfast, some croissants and some other small sugary pastry along with the usual small teapot of hot super sweet green tea. 

   Done with our breakfast, we headed off with a taxi to the bus stop.  Was a newer taxi and turned out to be our first that actually had a working meter in it.  I guess we just ignored what it said in the lonely planet book about not taking any taxis that didn’t have meters. We might have been a while in looking for those kind of taxis anyways. Cost what we were expecting to pay too, so worked out perfectly. 

   We got a bus right away for 20 Dh each down to Fes, but the bus didn’t end up leaving for another almost an hour.  Guess it couldn’t have worked out that perfectly in the end.  We finally got to Fes after a rather long bus ride at around 1 and walked back the kilometer or so to where we had passed the gates to Al Akhawayn University.  Was pretty straight forward in getting my room key and info from the International Programs office and we were able to get in to my room on the fourth floor of building 20. 
So far, from what I’ve seen Ifrane is a really sweet little town, not too big about 15 to 20 thousand people or so, and really clean, with red tiled roofs on almost all the buildings. I think lonely planet was pretty accurate in calling Ifrane a “little Switzerland” in Morocco.  AUI is also super nice, with all the buildings having peaks in their roofs and red tiled as well. As you walk up, they look more like chalets somewhere in Europe than school dorms and university buildings in Morocco.  And my room isn’t too bad either, nice and clean and bright. Top floor of the building, so I have one of the roof beams sticking out over my bed, but it just adds to the ambience of the room.
 (My side of the dorm room that I share with another Moroccan)
(My desk area and door to the bathroom/shower)
 (First site or the buildings on campus when you enter the main gates off the road)

 (I'm in building number 20, fourth floor, room 303 up to the left)
( the road that runs between some of the residence buildings)
 (Some building that I don't know exactly what it is, but it's colourful)
 (A small cafe on the left side and the long building at the far end is the main cafeteria on campus)
 (Some of the administration buildings and some other offices)
 (The mosque that sits at the centre of campus)
 (Everything is kept really neat with walkways everywhere, and we were told today, we're not allowed to walk on the grass -- use the walk ways)
 (Gym on the right side of the building and full size swimming pool on the left part of the building on the inside)

(Welcome sign near the mosque in the middle of campus)

   Turned out I had some kind of orientation that I had to go to that afternoon, so that kind of messed up the plans me and Stephen had about hanging out for the afternoon in Ifrane, but he hung around with me until that was done, and then we walked into town with a group of the other exchange students, where I said goodbye to Stephen at the grand taxi stand where we started his trip back down to Marakech.  It was a good trip all around with no mishaps really and nothing that went wrong that I could tell. Fourth trip with Stephen on our fourth continent complete. 

   I had some supper on the way back with some of the other exchange students, who I started to get to know, and learn al their names, etc.  They seem like a pretty decent bunch of people, and shouldn’t be too hard to get along with over the next couple of months. 

Thursday 19 January 2012

Fes January 17, 2012 Tuesday


   *** I guess I never really explained in my earlier blog posts what exactly a medina or a souk is, or what the socco was that I talked about, so anyways, a medina is the old original part of the city and still is to some extent the cultural center of the city usually with a big wall around the whole thing. It usually has two parts, the bazaar part with all the market stalls are, and then the living quarters section, which is referred to as the Kasbah which doesn’t have any markets in it at all.  And a souk is just the name of a covered market, which you would find in the medina.  And the socco that I mentioned is the name for the entrance to the medina I believe, if I’m right.  ***

   Didn’t make too much effort to get up very early, so ended up staying in bed until nearly 10 before going out for breakfast.  We went to a more upscale café and had a traditional Moroccan breakfast, which included eggs, some kind of meat that was both sweet and salty at the same time, was actually pretty good, bread, tea and freshly squeezed orange juice. It was quite the good breakfast, even though it cost us more than we had been paying for breakfast over the past couple of days.  Once we were done with breakfast and using the Wifi at the café, we walked into the maze of the medina and spent the next three to four hours allowing ourselves to get lost in its embrace of crooked alleys and little windings streets.

   The Fes Medina is huge, with around 150,000 people living within it walls, and it definitely felt that crowded as we were walking around poking into the shops and getting shown hand-made woven blankets and jelabas which we kind said no too.  We did give in to one of the many people offering tours of parts of the medina, just because we wanted to see inside some of the tannery areas. Was super cool and interesting to see how the sheep skins go from being freshly skinned pelts all they way to fine supple leather, and to see all the different steps along the way, and what they use for the different dyes and things. In the end, we had to pay too different people for their “generous” service as they called it, and left one of them in particular quite unsatisfied with what we paid him who claimed we were no better than the medina taxis, referring to the donkeys that some use to get around. I enjoyed the tour while it lasted and got quite a few pictures so I was happy.  Back near the entrance to the medina we found a place to have a late lunch – at 3:30 – and had quite the filling meal of first soup, then couscous with chicken and vegetables followed by a couple cups of tea to top it off. There were a ton of restaurants in that general area, who all wanted us to come into their particular restaurant, but in the end we had to pick one and decided to go to one where we got a pretty good deal we thought.  One guy who we walked away from actually fingered us as we left he was so angry at us.  We wandered around a bit more when we were done our meal before finally making our way back to our hotel, where we both didn’t really want to do anything for a bit, still being full and pretty tired, so we watched the third Bourne movie on my laptop.  We went out again around 8:30 or so and found a small café to sit at for a while, have some more tea and pastries and just talk for a while. We stayed until the café owner hinted that he wanted to close by starting to stack the other chairs around us, so we made our way back to our room where we watched the third Rambo movie that Stephen had never seen.  Got some good Rambo action in Afghanistan in before turning in for the night, quite tired after a pretty full day.   

Tangiers to Fes January 16, 2012 – Monday


   Monday started out all wet. It had rained a good chunk of the night and was still coming down pretty good when we got up around 9:30 and slowly packed all our things back into our bags.  It’s crazy how easy it is to unpack everything out of a bag, but always takes you at least twice as long to get it back in the way it was before you took it out, especially if your bag is packed about as full as it can get to start out with.

   We checked out of the hotel, getting another signature from the hotel manager on, this time a 3 of clubs, as we went out. I decided in Casablanca to start a collection of signatures (along with the date and location of hotel) of the hotel managers of all the hotels that we’ve stayed in on our trip on cards, and hopefully one day with enough adventures and traveling around I will have all 52 cards in my deck of authentic Australian flag cards filled up with signatures from exotic places all over the world.  It will be quite the accomplishment, and will have to be celebrated somehow when the time comes.  As we stand now, I think we only have 3 cards signed, because we didn’t think of the idea until after we had left our first hotel in Casablanca, which cut out one hotel there. I’ll just have to make up for it, by traveling to a couple of extra places over the next four months while I’m here.

   We grabbed some tea, juice and a bit more substantial food in the form of some kind of cake and apple cuchen or something at the Cinema Rif, while using their wireless internet. After checking all the necessities on facebook, and writing a couple of small e-mails off letting families know we were still alive and able to type, we discovered that we wouldn’t be able to catch a train out of Tangiers until 1:35, so we just stayed put at the café where we were and whiled the time away, watching it rain even harder outside. 

   The rain let up a little bit and when we finally left, it wasn’t coming down that hard, just enough to get you wet, but thankfully we both had rain covers for our bags and decent rain covers for ourselves, so weren’t hindered too much by the rain.  Before grabbing a taxi out to the train station we stopped at a small snack shop and got a couple of sandwiches similar to what we had had for supper the day before with some kind of curried chicken and french-fries all in a long bun along with some vegetables.  It might have been the wrong thing to do at that exact moment, or we should have left slightly earlier from Cinema Rif, because we arrived at the train station just as the train was pulling out of the station.  We bought our tickets then anyways for the next one later that afternoon and decided to eat our sandwiches.  Turns out when we went to board the train at 3:35 that that wasn’t the one we had to take either to get to Fes, and neither was the one that we barely had missed at 1:35, so it was a good thing that we hadn’t gotten onto it in the end. 

   We found ways to entertain ourselves by counting people, writing a couple of postcards, going through some pictures and deleting a couple of the 500 odd pictures that we deemed unworthy of keeping, and finally grabbed our bags and walked down to the beach that a couple hundred meters down the street.  It was super windy and started to rain again, so we didn’t stay out too long, but long enough to have an interesting conversation with a guy who offered to take our picture together who turned out to be a gay who was trying to get out of Morocco, because he wasn’t accepted as who he wanted to be by his friends and family here and was trying to get to another country where being gay isn’t such a problem.  Canada turned out to be his dream country, to be able to live in any way he wanted to, and sadly enough he’s kind of right, so when he found out I was Canadian he asked me how hard it would be for him to get some kind of work permit to come to Canada. It was kind of weird, because the whole time I was wondering if he had decided to start talking to us about his issues because he thought Stephen and I were gay. I sure hope not. Ha, definitely time for Stephen to get his hair cut.  Other than that little episode down by the beach, nothing else really happened until we were finally able to board our train to head down to Fes.  The trip down was pretty uneventful, later than we had hoped it would go, as our train was a bit late in getting out of the station, but we made it to Mechra bel Ksiri, where we had to switch trains in time to catch our connecting train, so that was good. Ate the rest of the food that we had left with us, along with a bunch of Spitz that I still had in my bag and did a couple sudoko races, which Stephen sadly won. It was awesome though, because on our second train, we managed to get into one of the cars that had small compartments that seated around 8 people or so, and had one whole compartment to ourselves, which was a lot nicer than the open cars, where we were subjected to listening to Arabic music randomly playing out of people’s cell phones or groups of Berber women discussing the latest trends in dessert dress codes or the health of their camels in high pitched voices. 

   We ended up arriving in Fes almost on time despite all the delays we had had at around 10 oclock.  At first we were planning on just walking to the hotel that we had in mind of staying at, which was only around half a kilometer or so away from the train station, but as soon as we had come out of the train station, we were pretty much mobbed by a bunch of taxi drivers who insisted that their livelihood depended on us taking their taxi to wherever we were going, so in the end, we did take a taxi with these two crazy guys, one of whom I’m pretty sure was high on something illegal, who also claimed he was some kind of singer who had been popular in Amsterdam back in his day; which I’m sure was before he had lost most of his teeth, probably only had one or two left in his mouth, at least from what I could see.  Both him and the driver talked constantly as we drove to our hotel, rarely even looking at the road, drifting from one side to the other, and straightening out with a quick jerk on the wheel when we threatened to either hit the parked cars on the one side or oncoming traffic on the other. But in the end we made it safely to Hotel Royal and were able to book a room for two nights at a pretty reasonable price, which also included a bathroom and hot showers between 7 and 11 in the morning. 

   After stowing our stuff in the room we headed off to where the hotel manager had told us were a couple of small restaurants and cafes to find something to eat and found a little snack shop that was still open, serving sandwiches and burgers, etc. so we had a bite to eat there before heading back to the hotel and bed for the night.  

Monday 16 January 2012

Tangiers January 14, 2012 - Saturday


(The new Train Station in Tangiers)
   Woke up at 5:50 to an annoying alarm clock, and made our way to the train station, grabbing some warm chocolate filled croissants on the way from a small road side stand.  Managed to check some e-mails using the free Wifi at a small café in the train station before the train arrived, but didn’t get much time, as it was pretty punctual. 

   We met up with some pretty interesting people on the train during the 3.75 hours that we had before reaching Tangiers.  For a good chunk of the time we chatted with this Idriss, who ran a small print business in Rabat and was on his way north to visit his family in a small town just south of Tangiers.  The others were a group of guys, some of who were in a band who were headed to Tangiers to buy guitar strings or something. With their bit of English mostly Stephen’s French and my universal hand signals and lots of smiling, we entertained ourselves for the rest of the trip. A couple of the guys even offered to share their weed with us when they hopped outside quickly at a stop to smoke.  We kindly declined after watching him crush it up and roll it with hands that looked like they hadn’t been washed his entire life. Arriving in Tangiers we started walking towards the city center but ended up taking a taxi about half way cause my bags got to heavy to carry anymore. 

   We had a bit of difficulty finding a place at first in the medina of Tangiers, but with the help of one of the guys we had met on the train who randomly showed up we finally managed to find a room for the night.  I think he was hinting at us letting him sleep in the room with him for the night, but we feigned ignorance of what he was saying in his Arabic and very limited French, smiled and thanked him and left him at reception before heading up to the room to drop off our bags. 
(Fully packed fruit markets in the medina of Tangiers)
(More different types of olives than I've ever seen)
(One of many alley ways and small streets we wandered around in for hours in the Tangiers Medina)

   We then headed into the maze of small alley ways and little streets that wound every which way through the medina, driving you in circles and bringing you to random little cafés in the most unexpected places for a couple of hours.  I had one slightly awkward encounter when I was taking a picture of one of the entries into the medina and an old lady with thick glasses who happened to be in the general direction of where I was aiming my camera starting waving her skinny little arms and screeching, probably bringing curses down on my head and my children and grand children’s heads to come, telling me she didn’t want her picture taken. (I assumed that part, but I think that’s what she was saying) I got the hint and decided it wasn’t worth it and moved on to one of the other numerous entrances into the medina to take my picture. 

   Got a number of unintentional tours and from a couple of old guys who made it their business to inculturate us in the ways of the medina.  Rashid turned out to be a painter who was slightly senile I’m sure told us all about the his paintings and brought us to all his favorite restaurants and cafés around the medina while telling us about his trip to Canada and how awesome Canadians and Dutch were, sometimes repeating himself over and over again.  I think he was slightly put off when we didn’t end up staying at the place he had chosen for us to have lunch at, but we finally managed to say good bye and be rid of him.  We found our own little cook house to eat in and had some delicious soup, with some kind of lentils and little noodle things in it that was really good, and chicken kebabs with a tomato sauce all served with bread along with water with lemon juice in it.  Slightly better alternative for 30 Dh than the 180 we would have been charged at the last suggested place.
(Stephen and our painting tour guide guy Rashid)

   Our next tour was from Coca-Cola this old guy with a slight hump back and hook-nose, who wore a purple took on the top of his head pulled down low over his eyes, and walked with both arms clasped behind his back bouncing slightly with each step.  Knew excellent English and explained that he had gotten his nickname because everybody knew who he was, which we learned was not an exaggeration over the next hour or so. 

   Coca-Cola showed us all over the medina, parts of which we had already been over, but also explained a lot of the history, which parts were older than others and which had more significance to the majority of the people. He took us to a small café near the entrance to the Kasbah, where the Rolling Stones had once enjoyed a few full pipes of kif, (hashish) along with a bunch of other supposedly famous people from years ago that I had no idea who they were.  We ended our tour down on a terasse near the gate to the port where we parted and I paid him a couple of Dh for his services.  He wasn’t exactly happy with the amount I gave him, but took it in the end when I threatened to take it back again. 

   We checked out the port area a bit, but then headed down towards the beach to find some ice cream. Got a couple more offers to buy some hashish along with some help from another person on the street who claimed to know where he could find us ice cream, but when he started taking us somewhere into town away from the beach we decided to abandon the ice cream, not wanting to walk too much further.  Almost as soon as we had left him, a van marked with “National Security” on it pulled up and one of the guards pulled him inside before driving off again.  As they pulled him into the van, we heard him shouting that he was only showing us where to buy ice cream, and guessed they were taking him away for trying to sell us hashish or something.  No idea what happened to him, but thankfully they just ignored us and we went and sat on the beach for a bit like we had planned, sadly without our ice cream though. Maybe we will be more lucky tomorrow in the ice cream hunt.

   Back at the hotel we both passed out for a couple of hours on our beds, only waking up when we got cold to get a couple of blankets, but we did end up going out again after sleeping a bit more to find something to eat for supper around seven or so.  We found a snack shop selling chicken shwarma, burgers and fries. Stephen’s words ”it was nothing out of the ordinary” but I was quite content with it.  We then headed to the Grand Socco, where the entrance to the medina was and found a small café with wireless Internet that we could use and checked up on the rest of the world while drinking sweet green tea with mint leaves.  Stephen commented that his tasted kind of funny, but we attributed it to the cup not looking like it had been washed in a while, or that the leaves had already been used in someone else’s cup and he drank it anyways.

   Got a couple more offers of hashish on the way back to our hotel, bringing the days count up to eleven, which took longer than it should have, because we got lost, but we eventually found it with a little help, and made it safely into our beds.  

Ceuta, January 15, 2012 – Sunday


   We didn’t want to have to rush off in the morning, so we took it a bit slower than we had the day before, only setting our alarms for 8:30.  We decided to stay another night at the same hotel for the next night, so we didn’t have to pack up all our things and take all our bags with us, which was nice. Grabbed whatever we needed for the day and headed down towards the bus station, which was a short taxi ride away, finding a breakfast of chocolate croissants along the way.

   We had thought that the bus ride to Ceuta would only be an hour or so, but it turned out it was almost 2 hours, so we didn’t arrive in Ceuta (or Sebta as they call it in Arabic.  We found out that a lot of Moroccans don’t consider Ceuta part of Spain, but as a part of Morocco that is only un-rightly occupied by the Spanish) until nearly noon.  The border crossing was fine, and the Spanish passport control officer called both of our passport countries, (Swiss and Dutch) “safe good countries” and waved us through without and stamp or hardly even looking at the passports.  For the next four hours or so, we just wandered around the small peninsula and island of Ceuta, taking pictures and at one point getting a ride from this one guy who was teaching his girlfriend how to drive a standard in their BMW.  He figured we were probably lost or something and asked if we needed a ride up to the lookout point where we were headed to, which we didn’t refuse.  
   
   Ceuta is a pretty sweet place: really clean, but definitely quite the tourist place with a big harbour and cruise ships in it, dumping huge amounts of groups to go touring around.  We headed back to the border at around 4:30pm and got across again without too much hassle, only having to brush off a couple of hustlers who tried to sell us entrance forms that were provided to us once we had reached customs.  Turned out we had missed the 4:30 bus, so ended up having to wait until 7 to catch the last bus back to Tangiers, but it wasn’t too bad.  We found a little snack shop and bought some awesome sub-like sandwiches that had fries and everything in them, so that kept us entertained for a little while, otherwise we just sat around and ate spits, talking to pass the time, and trying to figure out what the Arabic signs said around the bus station.  

   The bus ride back took longer than it took going to Ceuta so we didn’t get into Tangiers until nearly 9:30, by which time a lot of the cafés were already closed, so we just decided to head back to the hotel and call it a day, but along the way we came across a café that was still open where a bunch of Moroccans were watching a football match, Barcelona versus Real Sebet. Quite the entertaining crowd, so we joined them for the remainder of the game and actually got 2 goals in that Barcelona scored, while drinking cups of sweet green tea, bringing the end score up to 4-2 in favor of the favorite team for the majority of the room, definitely Barcelona as could be seen from the pounding on tables and yelling whenever they got close to scoring or did manage to get one in.  The rest of the trip home wasn’t too eventful, walking through the alleys of the medina back to our hotel and we were only offered hashish twice before we got to our room. A good day all around.  

Saturday 14 January 2012

Rabat January 13, 2012 – Friday

   Caught the 8am train out of Casablanca port train station and arrived in Rabat shortly after 9am.  We tried using the wifi that was floating around the train station but a security guard who obviously had nothing better to do with himself and his position of power told us we were able to sit where we were, so we decided to just head and try again when we leave Rabat. Lugging all of our bags with us, we made our way from the train station towards the Medina, where we hoped to find a place to be able to stash most of our bags, so we wouldn’t have to haul them around with us the whole day.  
   
   We happened upon patisserie Majestic that we recognized from the lonely planet guide and stopped there for a bite of something fro breakfast.  Café o les, and some different types of pastries were quite enough to satisfy us both for the time being. We then proceeded on into the medina and eventually found a place where we could dump our bags in a cheap room and headed off through the medina to explore and find our way to the ocean.  
   Spent a good couple of hours walking along the coast and taking plenty of pictures out on various points and interesting rocks that we deemed to be epic picture taking spots.  Made our way around the end of the point and went and checked out the Tour de Hassan II, yet another tribute to a Hassan, and we also saw the mausoleum where Mohamed V and Hassan II are laid, all encased in marble and displayed for the public.  Spent a good chunk of time taking random pictures around the Tour Hassan where all the pillars from the old mosque still stand after the rest of the structure was destroyed in an earthquake years ago.  Got a couple of good jumping pictures with the tower in the background and even ventured some planking and hand stand ones on/against some of the pillars when we got over the fact that the security guards might kick us out for doing it.  Turned out it wasn’t that sacrilegious and we were fine.  We made our way back to our hotel room for a little bit before venturing out again to find something to eat in the later afternoon. 
  
   We found a little stand where they were selling different types of sandwich kind of things.  I still don’t know what I didn’t just take the chicken one that looked like dörner kebab, but anyways, now I know for next time.  I got the plain meat one that I thought was just beef, and Stephen got the mixed one that was the beef looking meet and this other really red sausage that we had no idea what kind of animal it had come from.  We made our way back down to the ocean through the medina to eat our food and discovered that the “beef” was actually just a lot of liver cooked up with onions and peppers and stuff, and still after eating most of his sandwich, Stephen still doesn’t know what the red sausage was.  I don’t think I have to say that we didn’t finish it all up. I had had quite enough after about half of mine, though Stephen did manage to make it almost the whole way through his.  All part of traveling, trying new things, and then knowing what to avoid when looking for the next meal.  
   We sat around the rocky beach a little bit, eating spits and just watching the waves crash into the rocks and fisherman casting their lures into the water, but never catching anything before heading back to our hotel room.  We stopped at a small hole-in-the-wall internet café on the way and checked a couple e-mails and facebook and things after we figured out how to use the keyboard that was totally set up differently. We definitely take immediate internet access for granted back home. Ha but it finally worked in the end, and we were able to let our parents know that we were still alive and rough travel plans for what we were going to be doing in the next couple of days.  Back at the hotel I had my first encounter with a squat toilet again after many years now, but it went relatively well although it was kind of wet in the bathroom. I attributed that fact to the last guy who had been in there, who by the sounds of it had had a kind of a rough time and seemed to splash around a lot and came wheezing out of the bathroom when he was done, visibly exerted over his latest antics that clearly accompanied his trips to the toilet.  Thankfully I noticed that there was no toilet paper before I went in, and was able to get some tissues from Stephen that did the job just fine.  Got to keep my eyes out tomorrow for some toilet paper somewhere, definitely should be considered a necessity when traveling around here.  

Casablanca January 12, 2012 - Thursday

   Slept in super late, didn’t get up until nearly noon, but then we packed up our things without bothering with breakfast and checked out of the hotel cause we wanted to try to find a cheaper place to stay for the next night.  Along the way on our hunt for another hotel to stay at, we stopped at a little snack shop type restaurant, and had these chicken sandwiches and French fries. They were pretty good, although dripping with grease from all the meat that was inside them, and the sandwiches were more like döner kebabs.  We found a hotel to stay at, the same one we tried the night before that had been full, with a bathroom door that didn’t close or lock, a window that didn’t close until we forced it to and toilet paper that wasn’t perforated, but I figured that was the least of our problems, so we took it anyways. I hoped that the proprietor wouldn’t recognize us as the ones who had woken him up the night before at 2 in the morning, but he either didn’t recognize us or just didn’t say anything hoping for our money. Thankfully they had room for us this time, so we a room for the night and dropped some of our stuff off, before heading out again to go explore the medina.  
   Ended up walking all the way through and came out at the other end where the Hassan II Mosque was, so we spent an hour or two looking around there, taking pictures, especially trying to replicate the one that’s on the cover of the lonely planet book. Didn’t turn out exactly, but we attributed that to there being no sun. We then just walked along the edge of the ocean down to where a light house stood out on this kind of point and took at few more pictures around there. We then took a taxi back to the Port train station where we hope to catch a train up to Rabat tomorrow morning. After checking out the train station and when they trains ran, we decided to try some snails at a little stand that was by the road. Got a little bowl full of them for 10dh and we both had our fill after eating only like half the bowl. We gave the rest to the seller, who promptly began sucking them out one by one with little satisfied sucking noises. Definitely enjoyed them a lot more than we did.  They didn’t taste bad really, mostly just like the sauce they had been stewed in, but seeing their little boiled off antenna stubs, and pulling them out with a tooth pick, making them look like extra large boogies didn’t really go over to well with my stomach. I managed to get two in, more because they guy kept telling me to eat them, and Stephen ate like 5 or 6 before he’d had enough.  We can now honestly say we’ve eaten snails.  

   Walking around the medina area again after that, I noticed they seem to be quite popular with a number of stands at street corners selling boiled/stewed snails.  Stephen found a Jelabi (traditional Moroccan clock thing with a big pointed hood) for which he had to barter down to 220 from 250.  The shopkeeper commented on his haggling skills and called him a cheap Berber, saying they always barter for way to low of prices when buying things. 

   After dropping some things off at the hotel again, we went out to find some place to eat for supper. We went off in search of a place called Ifrane restaurant that we read about in the lonely planet guide, found it, but ended up eating at somewhere else instead because nobody seemed to be eating at Ifrane, and that didn’t do too much to inspire confidence in their cooking, or at least the quality of their cooking, so we went else where to find food. The place we finally ate at was pretty nice, though not too many people were here either. It looked clean enough though, so we decided to stay anyways. It was actually really nice, and when we ordered tea they even got it or us, though they had to send someone to some other little restaurant nearby to get it for us, as they didn’t serve tea themselves. It came in little individual silver teapots with a small shot glass type cup to drink it with. It was some kind of green tea with some mint leaves in it, giving it a minty taste, and at least 40% sugar. It was really sweet, but really good too. And hot, burned myself pouring it. I don’t know why, but the entire little pot was super hot.  I ordered chicken kebab things, and Stephen did beef, and they both came with rice, fried potatoes and mixed vegetables, composed of green beans, carrots, what we were pretty sure was zucchini, and some kind of white vegetable that we were sure about, but guessed might be turnip. It had been cooked quite a bit, so was kind of soft and didn’t have much texture to it anymore, but we ate it anyways.    

BA Flight 801 January 11, 2012 - Wednesday

   About three quarters of the way through the flight or so, a stewardess moved this girl into the empty seat in our row, because her TV wasn’t working wherever else she had been sitting.  My first impression was that she was a spoiled 17 or 18 year old, who just couldn’t last the rest of the flight with out having a TV to watch.  Turns out I was only partly wrong, she still seemed like she was spoiled, but she was actually 22, which she told me, along with random facts about her life, like she’d been to some rehab place in Canada and now didn’t like Canadians (I didn’t ask her what she was in rehab for), how she was a huge klutz and had hit her head on her dresser that morning after which she fell down some stairs giving her a huge bruise on her elbow.  After about 5 minutes of her blabbing I tried to give her hints that I didn’t really want to talk to her, but on top of all that she’d already told me about herself, I found out she wasn’t the brightest in the world either. Putting in ear phones and listening to music didn’t even get her to stop talking, so I finally just pretended to be asleep and tried to ignore her after that. She eventually did stop talking after a while, though I’ll have to say I enjoyed the first part of the flight better than after she got there.  

   The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful, so I wont bore you with minute details of me trying to sleep or entertain myself through watching highlights of the 2011 Rugby world cup, or of the only half edible breakfast that was served about an hour before we landed. I did learn a new way of trying to sleep from the East Indian guy who was sitting across the isle from me, the one who was picking his ear with the little stick earlier. He had his table down and had proceeded to put both his feet on top of it, forcing his body into what looked like a pretty uncomfortable position, but he managed to get to sleep it seemed, so maybe it works.  Might have to try it on my next flight if I’m tired and agile enough. But soon enough it was over and I made my way through British customs, made my way down to baggage claim area, where I thankfully found my bag and proceeded to terminal 4 across the airport to recheck my bag and wait for my finally flight to Morocco. 

   Heathrow turned out to be a bit more exciting than I thought it would be, at least for a little while, when a car somehow caught on fire in the parking lot just outside the building that I was waiting in, so we got to watch that burn for a while, pollute the air with black smoke and destroy the ozone layer a little bit more, but then some fire fighters came and put it out, and Heathrow went back to being boring again. 
Finally got to check my bag in and head through security to go find my gate for the flight to Morocco. It was all I could do to not fall asleep, and thankfully they started boarding almost right away, so I was able to get on the plane, stow my bag and fell asleep almost immediately.  I slept for most of the flight, except for when they brought the meal, which was pretty good seeing as I was quite hungry, haven’t eaten for almost 8 hours.  The flight seemed to go by pretty fast, and we landed at a pretty dark Casablanca airport right on time at 8:10pm.  Took me longer than I thought it was going to to get through customs, because I forgot to fill out some kind of entry form that I was supposed to have, so was pushed to the back of the line to get that done, but finally got through and picked up my bag down stairs.  It always amazes me that your bag makes it through all the mazes of conveyor belts at airports and somehow makes it on to your flight and comes out on the other side.  One more trip to add to my list with never having lost any bags. Lets hope that that list keeps growing.  Made it onto the 10pm train out of the airport that runs into town to Casa Voyageur, where I was to meet Stephen at 10:30 if he had made the early train, or 12:15 am if he didn’t make the early train.  He not only didn’t make the early train, but the later train was half an hour early, so I ended up sitting there, trying to converse with a couple people of taxi drivers who were all trying their hardest to get me into their taxis, but I finally got across that I was waiting for a friend to arrive, and finally promised Hassan that I would take his taxi if he was still there when my friends arrived.  Not going to lie, I was getting kind of anxious I guess when Stephens train wasn’t showing up, but he finally made it and true to his word, Hassan was there to take us into Casablanca to find a place for what remained of the night. First hotel we stopped at turned out to be full, so we gave in and went with Hassan’s suggestion, although slightly more expensive. Right then I just wanted a place to where we could stay for the night.  Turned out to be pretty nice, and despite both of us being quite tired we talked until nearly 3:30am before finally going to sleep. It was good times, catching up with each other on what we had both been up to the last year. 

Seattle January 10, 2012 - Tuesday

   Kate met me at Johns place around 8:30am and, after dropping my stuff off at her apartment, we walked down across the river to the old Gas Works Park, where Seattle’s old gas works plant operated from 1906 to 1956 before being shut down and later being turned into a park for the public in 1975. We followed up the adventure at the Gas Works by going to Starbucks for a bit before heading back to Kate’s apartment for a bit of lunch: multi-grain bread grilled cheese and tomato soup.  
   Around 3pm I got my things together and Allison was kind enough to drive me out to the Sea-Tac airport and saved me the hassle of having to take public transit through town with both my backpacks. After saying good bye to Kate, I found my way to the correct check-in location and got my bag ready for check-in, putting it into the travel bag I bought for it and tying it around with straps so that baggage handlers wouldn’t have to haul on the thin, ready-to-break-looking strap that was attached to the travel bag itself.  True to Murphy’s Law, as soon as my bag was weighed and stickered for the flight the baggage handler hauled it off by the only strap I didn’t want to be used and thrown onto the conveyor belt for its journey into the inner recesses of the airport before being loaded into the belly of the plane, hopefully headed to Heathrow airport in London.  Oh well, we’ll see if it’s still there when I pick it up, Lord willing in Heathrow.  
   The rest of the process of going through security went well, belt, shoes, coat off, through the metal detectors and full body scanners and then belt, shoes, coat back on. You’d think they’d be able to come up with another method of trying to liven the trip up.  Once through security I had to find my way to gate S10, only a short little train ride away at a different terminal which didn’t prove too hard to find in the end, and I arrived with still a good hour before my flight was scheduled to take off.  I found enough stuff to keep me occupied with the complementary free wireless internet that I discovered Sea-Tac provided to all outgoing passengers and spent my time on facebook and starting this blog post. 

   Boarding took place about 15 minutes before scheduled take off with the usual first class people getting to board first, and looking all smug in their luxury seats sipping drinks already when the rest of us finally get on board and start settling into our seats.  I was lucky enough to get into a section of three seats next to the windows, and only one of the seats was taken so; we’ve got a seat between us, me and the other guy, which is nice. 

   Ever since watching LOST, whenever I get settled into my seat on the plane, I check out all the people around me and wonder what kind of character they would end up being on a show like that, who would survive and who would be the weird ones that would make the show interesting, etc. should we crash on some deserted island and have to try to survive there for a while together. I definitely think I would be one of the survivors for no reason really. I just assume in anybody’s fantasy of crashing on a desert island somewhere, they’re not the ones who die otherwise it would be a lame story to begin with, unless you had quite a limited imagination, in which case you dying might be the only scenario which you can come up with. 
   Anyways, I would be one of the survivors, slightly injured perhaps during the crash, but nothing too serious, and there’s this one black steward on board who I think would make a good survivor and take charge of things a bit trying to get people organized.  He did a good job of getting this one older guy to get back into his seat after he tried to go to the washroom after the seatbelt sign had come on. There’s this other east Indian guy though who I’m pretty sure would probably die, or not last very long if he did survive the crash, might be the type to go kind of weird in the head and run off into the jungle or something after a couple of hours for no apparent reason. Proceeded to start cleaning his ears with a little bit of wood or something once he was satisfactorily seated in his chair.  There’s one other young lady, a mom with a little boy, who would have to survive too; you always need the one young mom with the little child who she worries over on the desert island. There was another lady a couple rows up from me all decked out in mountain hardware clothes, that I’m pretty sure would have a decent shot at surviving on a deserted island if she didn’t die in the initial plane crash.

   The meal that was served about an hour into the flight was actually pretty decent. The stewardess called it curry chicken, and I think she was pretty right about it, definitely tasted like chicken and the consistency of it helped prove that fact, though I don’t know how curry-like it was. It wasn’t too bad though, as airplane food goes.  Helped to have some ginger ale to wash it down with afterwards. Then it was time to buckle down for the long haul and the rest of the flight. I watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which wasn’t as entertaining as I thought it was going to be, definitely not enough action in it, and nearly fell asleep, but managed to finish it before dozing off for a couple of hours.  I guess I thought it was going to be more like a Bourne movie or something like that. 

And So It Begins,,,


January 9, 2012 - Monday

   Greyhound once again drove me to boredom within a short hour or so into my drive down to Vancouver, only helping by stopping along the way in Hope, Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Langley, and Port Coquitlam before finally arriving in Vancouver.  I tried to sleep as much as I could during the drive, but even the bits of sleep that I got were fitful at best.  
   Once in Vancouver, already slightly drained, I decided to replenish my energy levels by eating a chicken burger at McDonalds. I’m pretty sure the only real food in that whole meal were the bits of lettuce, and I’m guaranteed, after thoroughly analyzing the burger, that it wasn’t even chicken. Looked like a chicken burger version of particleboard, with bits of who knows what all squished together with an appealing outer coating stuck on it. It filled the gnawing hunger in y stomach, though I vow never to eat another chicken burger at McDonalds ever again.

   The bus going onwards down to Seattle was right on time, and only had 8 passengers on it including myself, so only took a couple of minutes at the US border to clear customs.  Pretty much right on schedule, we pulled into the Station in Seattle, and thankfully Kate and her room mate, Allison, came and picked me up instead of trying to find my own way around Seattle, as I had thought that the bus station was located in a totally different part of town, and would have been totally clueless using the Google maps that I had printed out as to what bus route to take to get to SPU and would have gotten lost for sure; at least taken a longer time to get myself to SPU.  

   Finally found our way to John’s house, the guy who had agreed to host me for the night, after only one mishap of knocking at someone else’s door, and soon was bedded down for the night on the couch. Couldn’t get to sleep for a while, so just lay there trying to figure out if I’d forgotten anything that was of utmost importance or just thought up worst-case scenarios like arriving in London and not being able to find my bag in time for my ongoing flight to Morocco. Nothing but peaceful stuff to help you fall asleep, but I did in the end, and slept on and off until just after 7am when I started to get my things together to move on.