Day 51: MISERABLE

Day 9 of our 9-day trip

Plan: Essaouira to Casablanca to Rabat to Fes

Have you ever spent 11 hours traveling by bus and 3 hours sitting on the side of the road in the desert waiting for said bus to be fixed in the same day? I HAVE.

We left paradise at 10 am. Essaouira was definitely the best city on the trip, and probably Morocco. As we re-entered the endless arid terrain and left my future retirement home in the rearview mirror, I finished up Leaving Tangier. We knew the drive was going to be a long haul (8-9 hours) so I was also planning to look out the windows for a while, catch up on blogging, and hang out with the rest of the group for the next six hours.

We stopped for lunch at 1:30 at a rest stop. It was pretty good rest stop food. Then, disaster struck. We were trying to force the windows open as w started moving again because the AC was like a sauna. When we pulled over so the driver, Said (pronounced sigh-eed) could help us get them open, he quickly ran to the hood rather than to our assistance. Our shock at the lack of help was soon replaced by grief when he told us that one of the main belts in the engine that basically connects everything together had broken in the heat. We had a new one but it would be hard for him to put it on himself. Road side assistance showed up within 15 minutes but was of little to no help. They left 15 minutes later. Two police officers showed up 45 minutes into our despair but didn't do much for us other than set up flares and cones to help keep traffic from hitting us. It's important to remember at this point that it is 2:30 in the afternoon and the police's thermometer says it is 42 degrees Celsius out or 105 miserable degrees Fahrenheit. We had a limited amount of water and I had a box of ritz crackers hidden above my seat that I was planning on sharing with no one. We had discussed before about how a "FSP Hunger Games" could work and who would be killed first, etc. Meredith and I always ended up in the top two of every poll but the winner varied. Unfortunately, given the temperature, supplies, and mirages, it didn't seem that unlikely that people would soon be throwing spears at each other, and I planned to save my crackers and Sidi Ali water for when the inevitable fall-out would occur. I tried to do some scouting up the hillside but Lla MJ wouldn't let me crest it, claiming there were "snakes and scorpions." I think she had already planned out where she would make shelter and didn't want me to get any advantages in the Hunger Games. Suspicions only grew over the course of our three hours. If no one else was thinking it, I was at least sitting there, twiddling my thumbs, and considering who would be the most valuable, and later disposable, ally. 

Dying out here

A tow truck showed up two hours and 15 minutes into our road-side sun burn. They spent a while trying to help the police officers, roadside assistance, and Said fix the engine. However, the whole situation can be described by a scene I saw when five of them were on their cell phones and Said has his head in the engine compartment aka Moroccan bureaucracy at its finest. At 5:30, they gave up and the tow truck pulled us 20 km to a Shell station. We got to sit inside and have snacks and drinks while they tried to fix the car. They couldn't fix it though, so they had to call a new van to pick us up from Casablanca. It got us at 6:45 and we resumed our trek again.

We played a fun game Meredith created where you had to wear a pair of noise canceling headphones and the iPod connected to them was on shuffle. You had to sing and dane the song until the rest of the people could guess it. It was pretty silly but tons of fun.

We had to switch buses just north of Casablanca's outskirts so that the second bus could go back to Casablanca. The bus that got us came all the way from Fes. We drove for a while but then it was dinner time. Said (sigh-eed), being a pro like usual, took us to a mall in Rabat where we got Pizza Hut! It was so tasty and even had pepperonis. I had a half pepperoni and half barbecue chicken pizza that was like heaven on a plate. We were all the happiest we had been all day.

Never been so happy!

We left dinner at 10:45 and were still over two hour from Fes. We didn't get home until 1:15 and my family didn't seem to be too happy that they had to stay up so late and wait for me. It was not a very good day.