Day 57: Seeing Spain

Our plan was to spend all day in Assilah and then to take a 5:30 train to Tangier which is only 45 minutes to the north. When we woke up at 9, it was raining, so we changed our plans. In the morning, as it cleared up, we walked around the medina and looked at all the murals. We explored the medina even more than I had last time so I got to see some cool murals I hadn't seen yet. Afterwards, although it was sunny and clearer, we didn't trust the weather to hold so we caught a 1:40 pm train to Tangier. There was no one to buy tickets from at the station, but no one checked them on the train either, so our 16 dh ride was free! 

Assilah medina

One of the many murals in Assilah

When we got to Tangier at 2:30, it was beautiful. The sun was shining and you could see the ocean from the recently renovated train station. It is a huge city with a small medina, a large centrally located beach, and tons of big buildings and well-contained urban sprawl. I'm very happy we chose to visit it because it strikes a great balance between its traditional side and modernity and is a good example of how Morocco could be. We were barely heckled the whole time we were there and the city transitions very well between the medina and the Ville Nouvelle that surrounds it. It is all contiguously Tangier, unlike how Fes is two separate beasts. With all its hills, Tangier reminds me a lot of San Francisco. 

You can also see Spain 8 miles away across the Straits of Gibraltar, even on cloudy days. Seeing its proximity and the huge ferries that are constantly making the 35 minute run, I understand how Moroccans could get so jaded and eager to leave for Spain. Illegal immigration is a big problem for Morocco and Europe and many have lost their lives attempting the crossing. The land on the other side is exactly the same and everyone on both sides can speak Spanish, but when you throw an 11 to 1 exchange rate into the mix, it's hard to ignore the greener grass just across the Straits. Europe doesn't want Moroccans, and Morocco has lost a lot of its young talent to the allure of Europe. Moroccans have a terrible time legally leaving Morocco because to get a visa to Europe, you must prove you have over 15000 Euros in assets. Even if you have that much, you still have to deal with inefficient bureaucracies and a shortage of visas. It's not a very pretty side of Moroccan/European relations.

Our lunch spot with Spain in the distance

We spent the day walking around the medina and the Ville. We went up to the Kasbah to have the best view of Spain and had lunch on the terrace of a nice small restaurant. We tried to visit a bunch of museums but they were all closed. We went to the beach though and to the Gran Socco, a big fountain and central meeting point in Tangier. We also stopped by the Hotel Mensah to see its storied Caid Bar. It's a five star hotel built at the beginning of the 20th century that has housed the likes of Winston Churchill and other famous people. We had dinner in the medina at a fancy restaurant called El Jedad and the food was delicious. Afterwards, we were planning on going out so we went back to the hostel to drink and change.

At the beach in Tangier

All the clubs in Tangier are along the beach, including one called Miami Beach! It's a nice situation though because there is a bluff, so they are all below street level and you can still see the beach over them. We went to a club called Beach Club 555 that has a gorgeous pool and a good scene. Alice came up from Fes for the night, so we met up with her at 555 at 1 am and had a blast together. We danced a ton and the music was super loud. It wasn't the best music because Moroccan dance music features a lot of elements of Moombahton, a genre of electronic music that is percussion-heavy and features a lot of drums. There's not many words, but there's a lot of bongos; it's still fun to dance to but I would have preferred some American pop music. All in all, it was a lot of fun being out in Tangier and being right next to the beach. We could see a few twinkles from Spain. I went home at 3:30 am, but the others didn't walk home till the club closed at 5. It ended up being a packed, but fun, day with a lot of walking and a great ending.

Day 22: Waterfalls, Food Stalls, and the Jad Mahal

Another 7:30 morning today after our 3 hours of sleep. The whole canyoning crew, Meredith, Ariel, Marissa, Elle, and I, managed to rouse themselves and make it to breakfast at 8:30. More delicious pancakes and OJ before we left to meet the canyoning van at the same part of the square where we met the ATV'ing van yesterday. There we met our guide, a Scotsman named Andy Robertson. Too funny! Soon after, we left for the Ourika Valley in the Atlas Mountains two hours away. There were two other guides in our car, one from South Africa and the other from the UK. They had such cool stories and told us all about what we would be doing today. Unfortunately, we were dropping them off so they could lead a whitewater rafting trip, but Andy and his girlfriend took us to the canyon. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous and we could see snow-covered peaks the whole time. We got to our destination just before noon and stopped at a small restaurant to put our wetsuits on. We all had blue or black wetsuits, yellow helmets, and borrowed trainers. My borrowed shoes were a size and a half too small, so, by the end of the adventure, my toes had poked through. 

From the drive out

We spent about two and a half hours canyoning. It's a relatively new adventure sport that combines mountaineering and hiking. The critically-acclaimed movie "127 Hours", about the man who gets trapped in a canyon and has to cut his own arm off, is about a canyoning expedition gone awry. You basically hike through a river, rappel down waterfalls and climb up small rock faces. It's all about getting from point A to point B and doing some really cool stuff in between. It was fun, jumping from rock to rock in the river and being in the outdoors for once. The water was pretty cold and it was in the 70's all day. We got really wet and everyone had a good time except for Marissa who couldn't stand the cold water. We rappelled down a 15 foot waterfall at the end and then, 10 seconds later, down a 35 ft waterfall! Because of the rain on Thursday, the river/creek was very full so we got huge facefuls of water as we rappelled. It was crazy fun though. Afterwards, we went back to the restaurant, changed and warmed up, and had some tea. I didn't take my camera on the trip because it's not water proof but Andy took a bunch of pictures that he is going to put up on his website for us. We returned to Marrakech at 4, had a warm and delicious KFC lunch, and met up with Joe and Tash. They had slept in and gone shopping all day. Joe is by far our best haggler so he got them some good deals (knocked a carpet down from 1800 dh to 300 dh!). We walked through the medina to the grocery store to get some wine o'clock preparations and then went home to shower and nap before dinner.

For dinner, we went to a food stall that Andy recommended to us, #117, cause it "takes you to heaven." We had delicious mixed meat kabobs and fries. Afterwards, we went back to drink the 60 dh vodka we had bought (that's less than $7.50) that tasted and smelled like sharpies washed with moist towellettes. We made friends with three other young people in the hostel and drank with them on the roof top. Their group was a 19 year-old boy from the Netherlands, a 21 year-old girl from Rochester Institute of Technology, and another 21 year-old American girl. The two girls had just finished studying in London and had met the boy in the morning. I got some nerd talk in with the girl from Rochester which was fun because everyone else on this trip it seems is an anthro or humanities major. 

We convinced them to come out with us at 10:45 to a bar Andy had told us about called Jad Mahal. It ended up being a really fun night. Firstly, the cover was only 100 dh and included a drink, so it was much cheaper than the night before from the get-go. Secondly, the bar had a ton of tables and a live band that covered Michael Jackson and a bunch of other fun 80's music like that. We had fun dancing to it and Joe kept flirting with the female back-up singer. He tried his hardest to get invited on stage, but to no avail. The final reason why it was so fun was that it was also connected by a hallway to the fancy club next door called Silver, so we didn't have to pay the more expensive cover to get in there but could go between the two as we pleased. Silver was underground and not nearly as large as Teatro was, but had a couple hundred disco balls on the ceiling. We danced there to the DJ's beats till like 3:30 and then decided to go home. 

In Club Silver with one of our new friends

On the way back, we realized we could take the 5 am train home, so we woke Marissa up when we got back (she hadn't been feeling well) and packed up. Although we disturbed our roommates again, we were in too big of a hurry to care. Marissa, Elle, and I speed-walked and ran in order to make it to the train station on time but the rest of the group took cabs. The three of us made it with like 10 minutes to spare! The train was packed though, so the three of us just got in a cart with two guys and fell asleep. It ended up being a long and loud train ride home, but it was worth our early morning hustle to make it home a couple hours earlier.

Day 21: ATV's, Monkeys, and Clubbing

We woke up at 7:30 in the morning to get ready for our big excursion of the day: ATV'ing! We further angered our three roommates (quickly becoming a theme of the trip) by getting up so early and having to fuss around, but we figure it's part of the silent contract you agree to when you book a 10 person room in a youth hostel. We had some delicious moroccan pancakes with jam for breakfast and fresh-squeezed orange juice, this country's breakfast drink of choice. 

We arrived at the van in the square a couple minutes later than our 8:45 pick-up, but it was fine. We drove around the medina for like 15 minutes, picking up other people, and then 20 minutes outside the city to where it instantly becomes rural and very arid. The ground isn't nearly as fertile in Marrakesh as it is around Fes. 

The group for our excursion was Joe, Tash, Meredith, and I. We were part of a larger group that had about another 10 - 12 people in it, but we didn't mind. When we got to the place, we quickly paid and got suited up in attractive green body suits and mounted our ATV's. The ATV'ing part lasted about 3 hours. We got to go so fast and each had our own so it was pretty fun. We went like 40 km that morning. We drove through an oasis or two, some berber villages, and even up a big hill to look out over the countryside. It was gorgeous and a little breezy so we never got too hot. It had rained a lot the night before so it was muddy, which made it even more fun! The highlight of the morning was Tash fell off her ATV at halfway through the morning and later mistakenly retold the story as she had "wiped shit" ("wiped out" combined with "ate shit" haha). We also stopped in a berber village on the way back to the base camp to drink tea and relax for a couple minutes. It was a really fun morning and we got lots of good pictures in a goofy jump suits. 

We got back at like 1:30 and walked around the main square, Jma el Fna square. Lots of street entertainers and food stalls were open and there were at least a couple thousand people in the square. Tash and I got handed some monkeys against our will and took some silly pictures with them. We got lunch at a cafe nearby and then went home to nap and recover.

After napping and showering, Tash and I walked around the medina some and met up with Ariel, Marissa, and Elle, who had spent part of the afternoon hanging out at a children's shelter and practicing their Arabic with the kids. We walked around the medina and square and I bought a Moroccan soccer jersey. Didn't do the best job haggling, but getting more experience. I practiced the walk-away technique, and it's definitely a solid go-to move.

For dinner, we went to a vegetarian restaurant called the Earth Cafe. It was decent, but some people had some really crappy food. I enjoyed mine though and have decided when I come home, I want to start eating peppers more often. There are some great vegetables out there. At the end of dinner, the power went out! We started freaking out in the small room we were in about how we would never get home, how things were worse than ever, how we were going to be accosted by strange men, but none of that happened. Instead, after waiting 15 minutes and not getting any power back, we paid and left. It turned out, one block away, they still had power! It was just like 6 or 7 blocks without power, so we were actually fine the whole time.

At 10, we decided we wanted to see the famous Marrakesh night life so we walked 20 minutes to Hotel El Saadi, a luxurious resort that looks like a 5 star rainforest that had been transplanted to the dessert. I had seen an ad for a club there called Teatro in the inflight magazine, so that's why we chose it. We didn't have our passports though, so we had to go home to get them and come back. It turned out, it didn't open till 12 anyways, so we had time to kill. We had to pay a 300 dh cover (like $35) but that included your first drink too. 

The club was an eye-opening experience. Short dresses, high heels, and liters of Grey Goose were the norm, the complete opposite of our Moroccan experience thus far. There also were many more guys than girls in the club. The club was multi-storied. There was a ground floor in the middle where the bar was and lots of tables were. Then there was a second floor on the left side with the dj and dance floor. On the opposite side, there was a huge balcony with tables. Above the dance floor was another balcony with tables that served as the VIP area. Because Joe and I were with the five girls, we got into the VIP area with no problems, but he ended up being asked to leave after 5 minutes, presumably because the thought he was a Moroccan teen! We had a lot of fun all dancing together and definitely ran the dance floor, dancing on tables and bleachers and showing Moroccans how Americans break it down. Drinks were very expensive (100 dh each), so we didn't drink that much.

At 3 o'clock, we noticed that the American rapper Lil Jon was down on the ground floor, spraying champagne and giving girls drinks. We went and took some pictures with him. It turns out that he is performing on Saturday and Sunday night at Teatro. Elle, Marissa, and I left at 3:45 after a fun 4 hours, but the rest of the group stayed till like 4:30. They told us that the bartenders lit the whole bar on fire and crazy sequined people wearing fire danced on it. It sounded like quite the show!

Despite the late hour, both groups walked home and had no trouble on the walk. We disturbed our roommates again, coming back in two waves, but we needed to sleep before our canyoning adventure the next morning!