Mauritania is, by all accounts, a pretty sweet place. Sweet in the colloquial sense, with tons of amazing desert vistas and crazy ancient towns to take in. Sweet in the personal sense, with people going to the ends of the earth to make you feel welcome. Sweet also in the literal sense - the amount of sugar consumption in this country is madness! I've heard all sorts of reasons behind it - that the desert heat makes it important to stay hydrated being the most sensible - but in any case, it is impossible to pass a day here without umpteen little shot glasses of sugar-laden tea. A friend of mine, heading out into the desert with some nomads, was shocked when they packed 10 kgs of sugar per person for the 20 days, but they finished it to the last grain. A good travel narrative title for this country might be "how to get diabetes in 10 days", and I'm assured that that ailment is indeed a huge problem, once hardy desert dwellers become city folk.
Perhaps because all this sugar has my brain running at hummingbird pace half the time, it seems like I've been here far longer than the - goodness me! - only 12 days it has been. I certainly haven't been rushed; I've been going about my travels at the natural pace that infrequent shared taxis dictate to me. For all the beauty here, it's fairly concentrated in a few spots, so the country is easily seen quickly.
Before I launch into a narrative, though, I think this might be a time for a bit of background. Mauritania is a bit of an unknown quantity in the West, or at least within the Anglophone world. It's amazing, actually, how much influence the linguistic heritage of colonialism has on the cultural awareness of a place. It's quite rare to see anglophones here, with the vast majority of travellers being French. There are even direct flights from Paris and Marseilles right to the tiny desert towns that are the centre of the nascent local tourist industry. This isn't just a Mauritanian thing, of course. Say "Africa" to an English speaker and they'll likely first think of Kenyan Safaris or some such. Say it to a French speaker, and it's West African colour that comes to mind first. Indeed, there are plenty of Canadians that make it to this end of the world, but most of them are Quebecois. To be fair, it would be difficult here to get along without a bit of French, and without the ability to converse you do lose quite a bit of the ability to connect with local people that is so essential for solo travel. My French, while still not great, is happily improving fast. I'm at the stage where I can generally discuss reasonably complex concepts with atrocious grammar, but quickly and properly pronounced - which serves just fine. I'm starting to catch myself thinking in French from time to time, and once I've got a good head of steam, I'm finding it an excellent language for a good rant.
But I digress. Mauritania. A name that, in and of itself, means very little. Before the French came, there was no such place. There was a vast swathe of desert that was a major intersection of trade heading from the Mediterranean south to Subsaharan Africa, East to Timbuktu, and West to the sea. The Empire of Chinguetti (the town of which I was in not 5 days ago) was a major power, as were several other of the big West African Empires. The population has long been divided on caste lines, with the "Moors" (Arabs who settled here as Islam spread) on top of the Haratin (black Africans who have adopted Moorish culture) and black Africans who retained their own traditions and ended up enslaved or otherwise at the bottom of the social pyramid. Indeed, it's not a proud mark on Mauritania's history that it was the last country to outlaw slavery (in 1982!) and it's an open secret here that it still persists. Certainly, I see every day examples of the casual racism with which blacks are treated by the Moors. A Senegalese/Mauritanian fellow with whom I spent a long day talking told me many stories. His way of resistance? He would work for the Moors, but he refused to learn Hassaniya, their dialect of Arabic. I understand the sentiment. Between that and the (much, much exaggerated) presence of a fundamentalist movement here, Mauritania doesn't get great press.
This is a shame. While I won't write off the racial tensions that exist, it would be unwise to exaggerate them. Mauritanian society is defined by an extremely dignified friendliness and hospitality, especially towards foreign visitors such as myself. The combination of desert culture (and 75% of the place is desert) and Islam's duty to guests combines to capture you up in a great swirl of hospitality and care. It's also incredibly safe. Not everywhere would I happily toss my pack into the back of a pickup truck to head out of town, then wander the market for an hour knowing that it would be there when I come back. Most rooms here don't have locks, and indeed, I've been sleeping outside most nights, and never need I worry about theft. It is a million times less likely here than in, say, Rome. The people are certainly in the top 5 of "nicest in the world" for me, and while I don't think it's humanly possible to displace the incredible Sudanese, the Mauritanians (who are culturally quite similar), are definite contenders for second or third.
The country itself is a bit oddly divided. Along the coast are Nouadhibou (where I first stopped) and Nouakchott (the capital). Both of these cities were thrown together essentially from nothing at independance in the 60s, when Mauritania was bustled out the French door to prevent its absorption by Morocco. As such, they don't benefit from their era. Both are vast, disorganized sprawls of concrete block buildings, empty lots, dusty streets, and no sidewalks. Both are shockingly unfriendly for pedestrians, I think maybe a casualty of the 1960s mentality that thought that even in the Developing World, everyone would soon be driving. Brasilia and Chandigarh are casualties of the same thing - but Mauritania doesn't have their architecture. In any case, the cities themselves are still fairly pleasant, being filled with Mauritanians.
The real emotional heart of the place, though, is the high desert plateau of the Adrar, where ancient stone trading towns and date oases still pop up from the sands, and where the cultural identity of the dominant Moorish nationalism is deeply rooted. It is there that the tourism industry, such as it is, is centred. In good years, Mauritania used to get 700,000 people. This last year, they got 13,000, casualty of a bunch of scares in the West that makes people think the place infested with Al Qaeda. It isn't. In any case, tourists come in the winter, when temperatures are more sensible. Now, in the summertime, I often had places to myself.
I arrived first in Nouadhibou, where it was my intention to catch my breath a day, and then hitch a ride on the empty train heading back to the iron ore mines in the desert. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, circumstances didn't co-operate. I went to the train "station", a dusty box buried in a sand dune, and waited with a pile of locals until someone somehow got word that there would be no train today. Try tomorrow (if God wills it). So, tomorrow I tried - same thing. Although I was having a pleasant enough time in Nouadhibou, there wasn't much to do there. I spent most of my days wandering the town or hanging out with a gang of Gambian friends I accumulated at a local cheapo restaurant. Rumours had it that the train wouldn't be back online anytime soon, so I made an executive decision to cut my losses and head to the Adrar the long way, via Nouadhibou.
The taxi driver taking me back from the station saved me time (and money, and discomfort), by showing me where to catch a bus instead of share taxi down to Nouakchott. I killed the afternoon at the bus offices chatting with the workers, who fed me a massive lunch of camel and couscous - it is essentially impossible to go anywhere here without being fed. Finally, it was on the bus and across the desert, stopping every so often so everyone could pile off and pray. By 11:30 at night we arrived in Nouakchott, where I spent an unwise night inside, getting eaten by umpteen mosquitos, instead of out under the comfy tents and mosquito nets out in the yard (where I am staying now).
The next day, it was up early and out to the outskirts of town to track down a shared taxi to Atar, the major town of the Adrar. These taxis are always a gamble - they leave when full, which may take forever, and your level of comfort is highly variable. This time, I got luck on departure - we left within 30 minutes of my arrival at the yard - but I lost out a bit on comfort. It was an old 80s station wagon, on top of which we piled about 1000 pounds of luggage and trading, and into which (counting children), we piled 14 people. This car not being made for tall folk, I could only sit hunched over, with my chest approaching my legs rather too closely for my liking. Although the little ones didn't take up adult space, they made up for it with a good shift system that made sure at least one was crying at all times. In such a way, we put-putted out onto the road. Having said all this, and even though the trip took 8 hours in the heat of the day, it was actually kind of fun. Once again, we stopped and some fellows fed me a pile of camel for lunch, and by the end of the day, I reached Atar.
Dusty and exhausted, I went to the hotel listed as cheapest - and had to spend 15 minutes wandering the streets looking for someone to open the place! It wasn't a bad deal, though, as for the normal price of a hut they gave me a proper room... with air conditioning! Such things are to good to be true, and indeed the power promptly cut. Nonetheless, a good cool shower and a cool drink make a world of difference after a dusty trip, and I spent the evening wandering town, strolling along the river (this being the wet season, even desert towns have them) and chowing down on some cheap grub. When I got back to the hotel, the power even came back on! Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that I've by now kicked my caffeine habit, and the big coke I drank for thirst at 9 pm kept me up for hours... That'll learn me!
The next morning, the hotel fellow showed me where to find the banged-up pickups to Chinguetti. After killing the morning sitting about, then filling the back with everything the market had to offer, by noonish we roared out of town towards Chinguetti along a beautiful road climbing up a pass to the top of the plateau. The road, like much in the area, is being rebuilt by Total, as oil has recently been found. A couple hours later, we rolled into town.
Now, 2 pm in a Saharan town is about as close to post-apocalyptic as you get. Everyone sensible is sleeping through the hottest part of the day, and after being dropped at my auberge, it took me 25 minutes to track down the fellow who ran it (I felt a bit bad). The fellow, Yahya by name, turned out to be a genial sort who happily cut the rate in half for me (I was the only guest), then brought me home to his family for tea. They invited me back for dinner, after which, it turned out, there was a wedding! And not just any wedding. An Italian man who ran a guesthouse there was wedding a local girl, and causing quite a stir. Of course I was invited!
After a quick nap, Yahya picked me up in his donkey cart and we went cruising the town, visiting the dancing and drumming that the women of the wedding party were getting up to, then grabbing eats for dinner. It's experiences like this that a solo traveller lives for - sitting out in a yard in the middle of the desert, sharing a meal of camel as you watch the stars pop into view. The wedding itself was a gas - my foreign status got me into the family section, where I met another foreigner, a Quebecois fellow who had been there for 3 months learning to ride a camel, which he had bought, to keep for trips! It takes all sorts. After a great night of music and fending off local ladies, it was still too hot to crash inside, so I slept out on the roof, with the milky way to keep me company.
The next day I spent exploring Chinguetti, which is one of the ancient universities of the Islamic world, home to thousands of priceless manuscripts in private libraries, all ringed by amazing sand dunes. Out of this world. I toured one of the libraries with the local imam, had some poetry read, and drank tons of tea with all and sundry. Not a bad life.
The next day, it was off to Ouadane, the other ancient town of the Adrar. To get there involved going down the same road back to Atar, and then up the same road most of the way to Chinguetti, but not much I could do about that. Freakishly, my shared taxi left a) exactly on time b) not full and c) travelled exceedingly fast. Freaked out as I was, I didn't mind, as this let me find a jeep to Oudane the same day. We rolled out of town about noon, then stopped for an hour under a culvert where my fellow passengers made a fire and cooked up a huge lunch of spaghetti and camel which they plied me with until I could eat no longer. Joyous.
Arriving in Ouadane is an amazing thing. The half-ghost town sort of ... falls down the side of an escarpment in a pile of half-inhabited ruins and fortifications. There I stayed at the auberge of the amazing Zaida, one of the fiestiest businesswomen I have ever met. Over my couple days there we talked a ton of politics and development and women's issues, all of which were utterly fascinating. It was supposed to have been election time here June 4th, but the elections were postponed due to an opposition boycott. Zaida, like many, recognizes the whole thing as a sham, but sees some tiny shred of hope in the intentions of Gen. Aziz, who led last year's coup and is looking to legitimate it. By and large, people here see the election clearly as an attempt to preserve access to aid money now dependant on Western measures of democratization - an issue which itself demands another post. Zaida herself was content working locally, setting up a co-operative for single women (most of whom had divorced their husbands) and building her tourism business. She had been to France, which she thought a silly place, and we came to a general agreement that while it's silly to romanticize the poverty of a place like this, there must be some median between that and the insane consumption that so bothered her (and me!) about the West. Needless to say, this was all good French practice.
My time in Ouadane was passed in the usual way - exploring and drinking tea. The first night I was there, though, I was lucky enough to be woken in the middle of the night and chased inside (I was again sleeping in the yard), by one of the most incredible thunderstorms I have ever seen. I stayed up most of the night watching the lightning from inside my little hut doorway. After a couple days, though, it was time to head off again to my last stop in the Adrar, the oasis of Terjit.
Once again, shared taxis treated me well, and I arrived there by mid-afternoon. What a place it is. In the middle of flat-topped desert mountains, the road heads up a canyon that narrows until the village pops up in a sea of green date palms. At the very head of the canyon is the spring itself, which burbles out from the rock and makes a stream with a series of pools for swimming. Although only about 100 feet wide, you're surrounded by 300 foot cliffs and crazy dripping limestone stalactites, while the ground is shaded by date palms and lush greenery. There are birds chirping, frogs hopping, and the air is rich and moist. It looks rather like you'd imagine paradise - and coming in dusty and hot, it seems even more so. I dropped by bag under my bedouin tent, tossed on my swimwear, and dove in. That's about as active as I got for a couple days, although it being date harvest season, I did wander around the oasis picking and eating the groundfalls until I could stomach no more. At night, the people who ran the place left and I had it to my self, swimming in the pools surrounded by glow-worms and stars. Amazing.
Even more amazing, when it finally came time to tear away and leave for Nouakchott, on getting out to the road, the very first car going by (within 5 minutes) offered to take me directly there for a very good fare! This saved me hours of rides and waiting, so we cruised off in comfort into the big city. Arriving here on a Friday afternoon sees this already sleepy place an utter ghost town for afternoon prayers, but it was a good excuse to get some laundry and other puttering done. As you can see, there's not much else to do here - I've had a chance to catch up on internetting quite a bit. There are, though, nice people, coffee (for the first time since I got here!) and hookah pipes to be found, which is a lovely thing. About the only "tourist attraction" is the fishing port, from whence I just returned - and it is indeed something to behold. Although the city is theoretically on the ocean, you wouldn't know it - the coast is 5 kilometres from the centre. Hop a quick taxi, though, and you are brought to amazingness. The port is not a harbour, but merely several kilometres of beach lined with thousands (literally, at least 10,000) traditional fishing boats. Fishers go out in them, sometimes for just a day, sometimes for up to 5 ( a scary thing in the open sea in a glorified canoe). Come out to the port at the end of the day for sensory overload as the boats come in, beach themselves, and are heaved up onto blocks by hand by their crews, chanting all the way. The smell is intense - a mix of fish guts and fuel and ocean and sweat, and the sight is amazing... an endless line of colourfully painted boats as far as you can sea. You grab a cup of hot spicy coffee and wander down the beach, dodging donkey carts full of fish, trying not to get a boat dropped on your head, and checking out the produce (I saw at least one Hammerhead shark, sadly). Everywhere, the scene is the same. Teams of gruff, burly men man the boats, while between the boats on upturned buckets sit big, fat, beautiful African ladies in regal-looking robes and jewels, directing the sales with an iron fist. It's pretty epic.
With all that fishiness behind me, Mauritania is now a done deal. It's up early tomorrow to scoot for the Senegalese border - tomorrow night should find me propping up the bar at a fine jazz club. Should be quite the change.
Peace
Josh
Showing posts with label Mauritania. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mauritania. Show all posts
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
One fine day
I wrote this 10 days ago, but the internet ate it - I like the idea, though, so I decided to finish it up. I'm catching up on messages and news in Nouakchott now, so look here for a couple posts soonish. And now, onward!
My life on the road is dense with experiences. There are far, far too many to adequately write up, even when cybercafes are common. One of my worries, then, is that posts will more often be broad than deep. Posts like the last one serve a purpose, to be sure, but they have obvious limits.
With that in mind, then, I think I'll confine this post to describing, in more detail, June 15th, 2009. This wasn't a particularly "typical" day, as it involved a border crossing. It was simply a day that brought a smile to my face, and perhaps a day that can give a sense of the rhythm of life as a solo traveller.
8 AM - I wake up in a little hotel room in Dakhla, Morocco, the last town before the Mauritanian border. For a city 1000 kms from anywhere, it's a surprisingly developed place. There is lots of governnment money here, and a few foreigners either passing through en route to West Africa, or staying to Windsurf. There's even a Best Western. In my little 7 dollar hotel room there is just two twin beds and a closet, with a wood-shuttered window through which I can get a glimpse of the ocean from between the buildings. I'm a little bit bleary-eyed this morning, my neighbour's Rihanna obsession having kept me up later than I would have liked. I roll out of bed, dress, and scoot down the hall to wash up. This done, I head out into the streets to get breakfast.
Morocco is not an early-rising sort of place, and the streets around me are still largely shuttered at 8 30 AM. As in any Moroccan town, though, I can smell that the patisseries are up and running. I stop in at one and pick up a couple pains au chocolat for 30 cents each. Chucked into a paper bag, they accompany me around the corner to one of the many local cafes, where the usual rank of men with newspapers is sitting starting their days. I grab a seat outside, exchange some mumbled greetings with the fellows, and order a cafe au lait. After 30 minutes of munching and sipping and watching the world go by, it's time to hit the road.
(Luck treated me well 2 days previous. Rolling into Dakhla after 27 hours on the bus, I decided to have a look round for rides into Mauritania before committing myself to paying an extortionate 50 dollars for a seat in a shared taxi. It being low season, I hadn't been optimistic, but lo and behold, on walking in to the only place in Dakhla with beer, I had found the only 2 customers, a couple of French fellows headed my way who happily offered me a place. They were staying at a campground outside of town, so it was to this campground that I had to find my way the morning of the 15th.)
With this in mind, I grab my pack from the hotel and flag down a taxi with a free seat (essentially all taxis are shared here). Ten minutes and a dollar later, I find myself sitting in a cracked plastic chair at the campsite. The French folk are nowhere in sight, but the manager tells me they're expecting me. Eventually, one pops up on his way to the shower and says hello. I wait around for a while, petting what must be the world's most lackadaisical cat, until the French fellow appears again, this time driving what must have once been a fish delivery van in its French past life. He takes off into town to get gas. Soon after that, Frenchman 2 - Jacqui! - appears in a beat up Renault wagon and stops to chat. The Renault is crammed with garage sale bric-a-brac: air conditioners, bikes, radios, food processors and such. Jacqui tells me that his friend and he plan to drive it all across to Senegal, where they will sell everything - including the cars, the bikes, even their suitcases - before flying home. There is a small group of French traders who regularly do such trips, as you can actually make a solid profit on an old used car if you're willing to drag it that far.
Although shooting the breeze in the sun is nice, it is now getting towards noon, and with a long drive ahead, it's past time to go - but Frenchman 1 has disappeared! To my rescue come Helodie and Antoine, a French couple about my age, also staying at the campground. They're off to Niger in their 1986 Peugot hatchback, and they gladly clear a space for me in the back seat. By 12 30, we bid goodbye to Jacqui and hit the road. After a quick stop at the police checkpoint outside of town (this being disputed territory), we hit the open road - a smoothly paved 2 lane highway that shoots 365 kms through the desert to the border.
Antoine and Helodie are very French. We make the border quickly, barrelling down the empty road at 130 kph, windows down, Edith Piaf blasting from the stereo as my hosts chain-smoke stinky roll-your-owns and we all stare out at huge white sand dunes to our left and the Atlantic to our right. We stop once to spend our last Moroccan change on chocolate and coffee at a gas station, where some travellers coming the other way sell me a bit of Mauritanian cash; enough, I think, to get me from the border to town.
Arriving at the border, it's bureaucracy time! The police first must radio our port of entry to confirm our identities. This takes about 30 mins, as we sit in the shade and shoot the shit with jolly and bored border guards. As it turns out, they have no doctor on base, so when they discover Helodie is one, she is drafted into making a quick diagnosis of one man's stomach troubles, which involves him engaging us all in a long narrative about his gastrointestinal history.
Approval having come through from the police, it's customs' turn. The customs fellow is much more interested in flirting with Helodie than inspecting her car, so that goes quickly. Finally, we hand over our passports to the Gendarmerie (the RCMP equivalent) and are motioned on our way. This gives us the privelege of driving 200 metres to another Gendarmerie post, where we wait for 30 more minutes. Finally, we are ushered out of Morocco.
Leaving Morocco also means leaving the paved road. Although the highways on both sides of the border are in good shape, the 4 kms of no-man's-land between them has no road at all, only a rough track surrounded by car carcasses. Our trusty Peugot bottoms out hard a couple times in the 20 minutes it takes us to cross this. On the other side, we are met with another series of offices to scurry between. First is the customs shack, where the fellows are far more interested in buying the car than inspecting it. Next comes passport control, passed with a smile. Finally, we buy some mandatory insurance for the car and are on our way. I had bought my visa in Morocco, which was good, as Helodie and Antione are a shade to honest with their plans and are only granted a transit visa that they must extend.
We roar out from the border back onto paved road. About 5 kms on, we come to the intersection where a gendarmerie post marks the branch of the road that heads to Nouakchott (where the French folk are headed) and Nouadhibou, where I am going, 30 kms the other way. I say a quick goodbye and good luck, grab my pack from the car, wave my arm in the air, and within 30 seconds a banged up old Mercedes shared taxi stops for me. I begin to feel properly African as I see the live goat lashed dubiously to the trunk. They have a free seat, so I hop in the front - that makes it the driver, myself, another fellow, and my pack in the front, and another 4 in the back. We roar off down the road, chatting amiably in French as the folk in the cab welcome me to Mauritania.
After a couple police checkpoints, we pull into a dusty lot that is the Nouadhibou "station". After a day of sitting, I decide to stretch my legs and walk to my auberge - I see a sign pointing to the centre ville, ask to confirm it, and head off down the main drag. The walk is pleasant, in the fading sun at 6:30 PM. The town is noticeably poorer than Morocco, with its main components being low, concrete buildings, drifting sand, and lots of goats. It's also loads friendlier, with everyone smiling, waving, or shaking my hand as I go by. I walk on. And on. And on. By the time I've walked for 45 minutes, I begin to think it wasn't the greatest idea, but by now, I'm stubbourn about finishing, and I walk on. Finally, in the last light of the day I reach the central town, ask some friendly folk, and find my way to the illustrious Camping Abba.
The auberge is largely set up for overland drivers, with a large lot for parking and camping that sits empty, surrounded by whitewashed walls and some few rooms and shared spaces. There aren't many guests, so they give me a 3-bed room to myself for the price of a dorm. I think it helps when I tell them I walked - turns out I had just schlepped about 8.5 kms with my pack on my back! The hotel staff are amused. My room isn't much, just a few beds, a tiny window, and paint peeling off the walls, but it suits me just fine. I drop my backpack, wash up, and shoot the breeze with the folks there for a while, until I notice that I'm utterly starving.
I promptly set off back into the centre looking for an open restaurant. The streetlights are broken, and it is not in every African city that I would happily trundle in darkness, but this is Mauritania, one of the safest places on earth, and I don't have a worry. As I'm starving, I decide to stop at the first place I see, which is a 24 hour restaurant on the main drag. The lady running the place laughs when I ask whether they're serving food, says "of course!" and tells me the menu. It's pricey, for the area - a meal is 2000 oughiyas, or about $6, but I'm too tired to go hunting around for cheaper. I settle on the fish (this is a port), and the lady asks me whether I want fish eggs? Of course, I say, being a fan of the things in sushi form. It's good that I do - when I get my meal, it emerges as an enourmous plate of fried fish, with a sort of hockey-puck cake of eggs that was utterly lovely. With salad (fresh veggies are a rare thing in my life these days), bread, and fries, I was laughing. I pass my meal chatting amiably about Islam with some folks in the restaurant as we watch inane Moroccan soap operas.
With a full belly, I wander out onto the street again and over to the fruit stalls, which are lit by bulbs on strings hanging over their wares. I see with joy that I've come far enough south to be in cheap mango territory, and spend $1.50 on 2 kilos of deliciousness. After a long trundle back in the darkness, I tuck into a huge mango and read a chapter or two of "Wuthering Heights" (classics are all I can afford to buy!) until, at about 10:30, my head gets droopy and I hit the pillow.
Such was a day.
Peace
Josh
My life on the road is dense with experiences. There are far, far too many to adequately write up, even when cybercafes are common. One of my worries, then, is that posts will more often be broad than deep. Posts like the last one serve a purpose, to be sure, but they have obvious limits.
With that in mind, then, I think I'll confine this post to describing, in more detail, June 15th, 2009. This wasn't a particularly "typical" day, as it involved a border crossing. It was simply a day that brought a smile to my face, and perhaps a day that can give a sense of the rhythm of life as a solo traveller.
8 AM - I wake up in a little hotel room in Dakhla, Morocco, the last town before the Mauritanian border. For a city 1000 kms from anywhere, it's a surprisingly developed place. There is lots of governnment money here, and a few foreigners either passing through en route to West Africa, or staying to Windsurf. There's even a Best Western. In my little 7 dollar hotel room there is just two twin beds and a closet, with a wood-shuttered window through which I can get a glimpse of the ocean from between the buildings. I'm a little bit bleary-eyed this morning, my neighbour's Rihanna obsession having kept me up later than I would have liked. I roll out of bed, dress, and scoot down the hall to wash up. This done, I head out into the streets to get breakfast.
Morocco is not an early-rising sort of place, and the streets around me are still largely shuttered at 8 30 AM. As in any Moroccan town, though, I can smell that the patisseries are up and running. I stop in at one and pick up a couple pains au chocolat for 30 cents each. Chucked into a paper bag, they accompany me around the corner to one of the many local cafes, where the usual rank of men with newspapers is sitting starting their days. I grab a seat outside, exchange some mumbled greetings with the fellows, and order a cafe au lait. After 30 minutes of munching and sipping and watching the world go by, it's time to hit the road.
(Luck treated me well 2 days previous. Rolling into Dakhla after 27 hours on the bus, I decided to have a look round for rides into Mauritania before committing myself to paying an extortionate 50 dollars for a seat in a shared taxi. It being low season, I hadn't been optimistic, but lo and behold, on walking in to the only place in Dakhla with beer, I had found the only 2 customers, a couple of French fellows headed my way who happily offered me a place. They were staying at a campground outside of town, so it was to this campground that I had to find my way the morning of the 15th.)
With this in mind, I grab my pack from the hotel and flag down a taxi with a free seat (essentially all taxis are shared here). Ten minutes and a dollar later, I find myself sitting in a cracked plastic chair at the campsite. The French folk are nowhere in sight, but the manager tells me they're expecting me. Eventually, one pops up on his way to the shower and says hello. I wait around for a while, petting what must be the world's most lackadaisical cat, until the French fellow appears again, this time driving what must have once been a fish delivery van in its French past life. He takes off into town to get gas. Soon after that, Frenchman 2 - Jacqui! - appears in a beat up Renault wagon and stops to chat. The Renault is crammed with garage sale bric-a-brac: air conditioners, bikes, radios, food processors and such. Jacqui tells me that his friend and he plan to drive it all across to Senegal, where they will sell everything - including the cars, the bikes, even their suitcases - before flying home. There is a small group of French traders who regularly do such trips, as you can actually make a solid profit on an old used car if you're willing to drag it that far.
Although shooting the breeze in the sun is nice, it is now getting towards noon, and with a long drive ahead, it's past time to go - but Frenchman 1 has disappeared! To my rescue come Helodie and Antoine, a French couple about my age, also staying at the campground. They're off to Niger in their 1986 Peugot hatchback, and they gladly clear a space for me in the back seat. By 12 30, we bid goodbye to Jacqui and hit the road. After a quick stop at the police checkpoint outside of town (this being disputed territory), we hit the open road - a smoothly paved 2 lane highway that shoots 365 kms through the desert to the border.
Antoine and Helodie are very French. We make the border quickly, barrelling down the empty road at 130 kph, windows down, Edith Piaf blasting from the stereo as my hosts chain-smoke stinky roll-your-owns and we all stare out at huge white sand dunes to our left and the Atlantic to our right. We stop once to spend our last Moroccan change on chocolate and coffee at a gas station, where some travellers coming the other way sell me a bit of Mauritanian cash; enough, I think, to get me from the border to town.
Arriving at the border, it's bureaucracy time! The police first must radio our port of entry to confirm our identities. This takes about 30 mins, as we sit in the shade and shoot the shit with jolly and bored border guards. As it turns out, they have no doctor on base, so when they discover Helodie is one, she is drafted into making a quick diagnosis of one man's stomach troubles, which involves him engaging us all in a long narrative about his gastrointestinal history.
Approval having come through from the police, it's customs' turn. The customs fellow is much more interested in flirting with Helodie than inspecting her car, so that goes quickly. Finally, we hand over our passports to the Gendarmerie (the RCMP equivalent) and are motioned on our way. This gives us the privelege of driving 200 metres to another Gendarmerie post, where we wait for 30 more minutes. Finally, we are ushered out of Morocco.
Leaving Morocco also means leaving the paved road. Although the highways on both sides of the border are in good shape, the 4 kms of no-man's-land between them has no road at all, only a rough track surrounded by car carcasses. Our trusty Peugot bottoms out hard a couple times in the 20 minutes it takes us to cross this. On the other side, we are met with another series of offices to scurry between. First is the customs shack, where the fellows are far more interested in buying the car than inspecting it. Next comes passport control, passed with a smile. Finally, we buy some mandatory insurance for the car and are on our way. I had bought my visa in Morocco, which was good, as Helodie and Antione are a shade to honest with their plans and are only granted a transit visa that they must extend.
We roar out from the border back onto paved road. About 5 kms on, we come to the intersection where a gendarmerie post marks the branch of the road that heads to Nouakchott (where the French folk are headed) and Nouadhibou, where I am going, 30 kms the other way. I say a quick goodbye and good luck, grab my pack from the car, wave my arm in the air, and within 30 seconds a banged up old Mercedes shared taxi stops for me. I begin to feel properly African as I see the live goat lashed dubiously to the trunk. They have a free seat, so I hop in the front - that makes it the driver, myself, another fellow, and my pack in the front, and another 4 in the back. We roar off down the road, chatting amiably in French as the folk in the cab welcome me to Mauritania.
After a couple police checkpoints, we pull into a dusty lot that is the Nouadhibou "station". After a day of sitting, I decide to stretch my legs and walk to my auberge - I see a sign pointing to the centre ville, ask to confirm it, and head off down the main drag. The walk is pleasant, in the fading sun at 6:30 PM. The town is noticeably poorer than Morocco, with its main components being low, concrete buildings, drifting sand, and lots of goats. It's also loads friendlier, with everyone smiling, waving, or shaking my hand as I go by. I walk on. And on. And on. By the time I've walked for 45 minutes, I begin to think it wasn't the greatest idea, but by now, I'm stubbourn about finishing, and I walk on. Finally, in the last light of the day I reach the central town, ask some friendly folk, and find my way to the illustrious Camping Abba.
The auberge is largely set up for overland drivers, with a large lot for parking and camping that sits empty, surrounded by whitewashed walls and some few rooms and shared spaces. There aren't many guests, so they give me a 3-bed room to myself for the price of a dorm. I think it helps when I tell them I walked - turns out I had just schlepped about 8.5 kms with my pack on my back! The hotel staff are amused. My room isn't much, just a few beds, a tiny window, and paint peeling off the walls, but it suits me just fine. I drop my backpack, wash up, and shoot the breeze with the folks there for a while, until I notice that I'm utterly starving.
I promptly set off back into the centre looking for an open restaurant. The streetlights are broken, and it is not in every African city that I would happily trundle in darkness, but this is Mauritania, one of the safest places on earth, and I don't have a worry. As I'm starving, I decide to stop at the first place I see, which is a 24 hour restaurant on the main drag. The lady running the place laughs when I ask whether they're serving food, says "of course!" and tells me the menu. It's pricey, for the area - a meal is 2000 oughiyas, or about $6, but I'm too tired to go hunting around for cheaper. I settle on the fish (this is a port), and the lady asks me whether I want fish eggs? Of course, I say, being a fan of the things in sushi form. It's good that I do - when I get my meal, it emerges as an enourmous plate of fried fish, with a sort of hockey-puck cake of eggs that was utterly lovely. With salad (fresh veggies are a rare thing in my life these days), bread, and fries, I was laughing. I pass my meal chatting amiably about Islam with some folks in the restaurant as we watch inane Moroccan soap operas.
With a full belly, I wander out onto the street again and over to the fruit stalls, which are lit by bulbs on strings hanging over their wares. I see with joy that I've come far enough south to be in cheap mango territory, and spend $1.50 on 2 kilos of deliciousness. After a long trundle back in the darkness, I tuck into a huge mango and read a chapter or two of "Wuthering Heights" (classics are all I can afford to buy!) until, at about 10:30, my head gets droopy and I hit the pillow.
Such was a day.
Peace
Josh
Monday, June 8, 2009
All this running-around!
This is too cute not to be apocryphal, but I had someone tell me once that the East African slang term for a white person, muzungu, was etymylogically descended from another piece of slang, kazungu-zungu, which means "drunk" and literally translates as "my head's going round and round". The connection? What else do we foreigners do but meander pointlessly about? Not to mention drink. In any case, if anyone is reading this from East Africa and can check this piece of traveller gossip, feel free. I'll work with it, because going round and round is exactly what I've been up to for the past few weeks, in the best sort of way.
As of last actual travel update, I was writing from the Atlantic seaside town of Essaouira, where Mr. Mike Brown and I were doing our best to chat up the town drunks and stay attached to the ground in the face of some of the fiercest seaside winds you've ever seen. We did, in fact, have a showdown with nature on our last full day there, when we quested down the beach on hearing rumours of there being a ruined house in which Jimi Hendrix had written. We found the ruins, alright. We even startled awake the homeless fellow who was squatting in them. Upon further googling, of course, Hendrix had never actually been there, nor had he based "Castles in the Sand" on them. He had, however, spent a good long time in the area, and it was a quite interesting walk. Walking back, however, reminded us just why that town is the windsurfing capital of North Africa. In any case, with good food, a gorgeous old town, cold beers and sunsets to be had, Essaouira was a winner.
Life isn't all seaside and sunshine, though, so the following day it was up early and off to the bus, with a brief iterlude as we were pursued down the early-morning street by a rather disturbed fellow mumbling nonsenses, pointing at us, and throwing some pretty hefty rights at the air. I think he got distracted by a plastic bag, and we made our escape. After a couple hours of highway cruising, we arrived in Casablanca and settled in the lovely Hotel Colbert, a hotel 2 floors up in an old art deco pile for which we fabricated some sort of relationship to its satirical TV host namesake.
Casablanca, amongst travellers, gets a bit of a bad rap. I blame Bogie for filming the whole movie on a Hollywood soundstage. As the major port of entry to the country, and as the biggest city, most people pass through it. Lots of them expect some orientalist vision of Moroccan souks, or a city straight out of the 40s, full of piano bars and intrigue. You get neither. What you do get, though, I rather like. Much of the central city was built in the prewar years, and there's something I've always liked about old art nouveau and art deco buildings gone slightly to seed, with washing hanging from wrought iron balconies and clanking elevators in stairwells. That's central Casa. It's full of old cafes and bars in which the decor clearly hasn't been updated since the French left in the 50s, which when combined with the ubiquitous bow-tied waiters, does give it a bit of a decadent edge. Mike and I explored just that by launching into a proper pub crawl, managing 8 or 9 fine establishements before last call (at 11!). Hookah pipes were smoked, locals chatted to, and when one place turned out to be a brothel, prostitutes effectively dodged. A fine evening. Interestingly, although this was less true in Casa than it has been in some other Moroccan cities, bars are the one place where you may see the gender balance even out. While sitting at a sidewalk cafe table drinking tea is an exclusively male preserve, bars are socially transgressive enough already that you do find a reasonable feminine presence. As far as atmosphere goes, think the grungiest suburban strip mall joint and you might be on the right track.
This is not to say that we spent all our time in Casa just drinking in the local culture. Wandering around the city led to some cool finds, including the unfinished Catholic cathedral, where a few dirhams got us climbing the bell tower and running roughshod on the roof. Continuing the religious theme, we took in Casa's major tourist attraction, the feck-normous Hassan II mosque. Built on billions of dollars in public subscriptions in 1993, to designs by a French architect, the place holds 25,000 people inside and 60,000 in the outer courtyard. I was marvelling at the intricately carved ceiling so far above me when the tourguide mentioned nonchalantly that the whole bloody thing was on rails and opens like a stadium roof! Oi vey, oi vey...
Rounding out our major monotheistic religions, Mike's last day in Morocco was partially spent chasing down the Jewish museum, the only one in the Arab world. Our taxi driver clearly had no clue where it was, but neatly solved the problem by driving to the Jewish part of town, finding one of Casa's 5000 remaining Jews, and asking him! Blunt, but fairly effective. Eventually, we got there, and the museum was actually fairly interesting, with most Moroccan cities having hosted large Jewish communities until the foundation of Israel drew them away. After that, it was time for one last beer, and Mike headed off to catch his plane and resume his madcap African cris-crossings.
As for me, the next day saw me hopping on a go-train-esque commuter run to Rabat, capital of the country and a rather different place than Casa. When the French built them, they intended the relationship between the cities to echo the Washington DC/New York one, and so it does. Casa is the brash, busy economic powerhouse, while Rabat is a lower-rise, tidier, hassle-free government town. It also happens to be rather pretty, with a pleasant old town, some beautiful old whitewashed homes in the old Kasbah (fortress) and a new town with plenty of cafes and palm trees. I heard mumblings that day of concerts in the evening, and upon a quick internet check, discovered that I had wandered in for the final weekend of the Festival Mawazine, a "festival of world rhythms", and would be treated to a free Alicia Keys concert that night, and Stevie Wonder the next. Both shows were fantastic, although it was interesting to see the local audiences, normally so quick to dance, a bit unsure how to come to grips with Western idioms and English stage banter. Surreal. Rabat, otherwise, is a city of small pleasures - cheap fish sandwiches eaten overlooking the sea, quiet cafes and gardens and other little escapes, all a pretty good way to recover from the surprisingly crowded concerts. At one of the other shows, there was a stampede that left 11 people dead, something I wasn't even aware of until a few worried comments popped up on my facebook wall!
For all its joys, Rabat is a difficult place to kill more than a few days, so by the 24th I was off again, to Asilah, a tiny seaside town famed for gorgeous beaches and one of the prettier medinas in Morocco. Pretty it was - but I must admit, I wasn't a fan. Having been thoroughly gentrified, bought up by rich Europeans and filled with galleries, it was eerily quiet, completely unlike the old towns anywhere else. I rented a shack on a family's rooftop for a couple nights, which was lovely, although finding it involved a frustrating experience with some rather agressive touts. In any case, it's hard not to be a bit charmed by whitewashed walls and seaside castles, so I was far from grumbling. The main beaches were nothing to write home about, being coated (as, unfortunately, many are) with plastic bags and other sea detritus. Nonetheless, I spent a gorgeous day reading a book, attempting to swim in 6-foot waves, and turning myself a nice lobster-ey shade of red before hitching back from the beach in a dump truck and cracking a can of beer at sunset. Not bad, not bad at all.
It is, however, way too early in my trip for me to need a vacation, so I was soon off from Asilah to Tangier, another city unfairly slighted (in my mind) by foreigners for dirt and hassle. I suppose if you do arrive on the ferry from Spain and are chased through the streets by touts as soon as you pass customs, you might think something like that. With my arrival by train and easy settling into a cheap hotel with orange trees out my window, I wasn't complaining. Tangiers itself is a historical oddity, a city that was an international zone, run by a pretty dodgy council of representatives from 26 countries. As such, it was never a part of French or Spanish Morocco, and long served as a shelter for all sorts of shady dealings, artists seeking refuge, and other misfit things. That atmosphere lives on in a fairly pleasant way, with a thick layer of decadence lying over the place. The night I arrived there was the night of the European champion's league final, and the city was divided tribally, with different cafes devoted to Barca and Man U fans. It was the only time I've seen a female majority on the streets here, as essentially every man between the ages of 15 and 50 was in a cafe watching. Now, I'm no football fan, but I arbitrarily decided to support Barcelona because their shirts had "Unicef" on them instead of a corporate logo. Since they gave Man U what can only be described as a royal whupping, I was well placed to enjoy the festivities, which turned the city into a giant mass of car horns until well into the night.
After a few days there, it was goodbye to the seaside and off into the mountains. My first stop was Tetouan, which was once capital of the Spanish Protectorate and still maintains a distinctly Hispanic style in the new town, as well as the old, which is sometimes called Little Grenada (after the capital of old Islamic Andalucia). I spent a couple days there chatting with locals, making meals out of generous free beer snacks, and kicking my feet up on the balcony of my hotel room (which I shared with some impressively girthy roaches!). Continuing with the Andalucian theme, it was then off to Chefchaouen, the town in Morocco that probably draws the most backpackers.
This is not without reason. The town itself is gorgeous and clearly shows its Andalucian heritage with blue-washed walls and red clay roofs and pretty little squares. More important, from a backpacker perspective, is that 2/3 of the region's land is devoted solely to the growth of kif (marijuana), making this place once a famous stop on the hippie trail. Although those days have passed, there are plenty of stoned backpackers about, and plenty of people offering you everything from copious amounts of weed to the finest colombian coke (the path of which I would love to trace). Not being one for the international drug trade, I still rather enjoyed the place. I met up with the ever-affable Simon, a Quebecois fellow from Montreal here for a short trip, and we scrambled up one of the mountains hanging over the town, which took a solid day's climbing.
Since we were going the same way, Simon and I stuck together for a couple days, and he made pleasantly intellectual company as we made our way to Fez, grand-daddy of all ancient Moroccan cities, with an old medina that defies description (or navigation). Mile upon mile of twisted alleys leading to all sorts of mosques and squares and markets and workshops and other such chaos. As it happened, we also showed up for the Fes Festival of Sacred music, which led to encounters with sufi devotional chanting, Islamic rock reggae, dubiously religious pop, and other such fun. Having a tight schedule, Simon left quickly, but I lingered in Fes until last Thursday, wandering the "new" (post 14th century) town, taking in the tunes, and making 4 meals out of a huge watermelon, something my guts were regretting for a couple days.
Having heard that Mauritanian visas were no longer being issued at the border due to the upcoming elections, I needed to head back towards Rabat. Since embassies are useless on weekends, I stopped a couple days in Meknes, another old imperial city of some import. The town itself was nothing too impressive, it being a Friday (which sees most old-town places shut their doors), but it was well worth the stay for a hotel with loaner novels (I read 3!) and the chance to hop a couple shared taxis and walk through the countryside to Volubilis, the best-preserved Roman site in Morocco. I had the good fortune of arriving just after a school group led by a Canadian prof, who I stalked around the site all day for interesting tidbits. I'm not normally much for tours, but when visiting a huge ruined site, they can do wonders. Instead of colums and stones, I could see in my mind's eye this little provincial Roman city where only 2 actual Roman families lived, the rest made up of local Berbers frantic to imitate their Roman rulers by ordering Mosaics and columns from catalogues. Neat. The setting also helped - that part of Morocco is a solid Mediterranean climate, and the rolling hills of grain and olives around it look a lot like Tuscany.
And so it goes. From Meknes, I've now returned to Rabat, where my passport has been dropped off, along with $50 and a smile, to the Mauritanian embassy for a visa. With luck, it'll be ready tomorrow, and the next day I can start making my way south. I must admit, I'm looking forward to a bit more rough-and tumble travelling. Enough of these 4 hour train rides and sit-down toilets, I say! And I think I'll get my wish. From here, it's a quick 5 hours by Train to Marrakech, and then it'll be a 25 hour bus ride to Dakhla, the last town in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. There, I have to hunt for rides as there is no scheduled public transport, but within a few days I should either have found a spare seat somewhere, or paid for one in a 4WD. It'll be a long slog the 500 kms across the Mauritanian border to Nouadhibou, where I'll stop to rest, get some cash, and then wait for a trip I've been dreaming of for years - rattling my way across the desert for free in the empty hoppers of the world's longest train as it heads back to Zouerat to pick up another load. I can't wait.
So there we go. Now y'all know where I'm at. If I have the energy, I'll post a couple more times about Morocco. I'd love to discuss, for example, the food - but we'll see. In any case, look to my facebook tomorrow for some photos to go along with this long stream of babble.
Peace
Josh
As of last actual travel update, I was writing from the Atlantic seaside town of Essaouira, where Mr. Mike Brown and I were doing our best to chat up the town drunks and stay attached to the ground in the face of some of the fiercest seaside winds you've ever seen. We did, in fact, have a showdown with nature on our last full day there, when we quested down the beach on hearing rumours of there being a ruined house in which Jimi Hendrix had written. We found the ruins, alright. We even startled awake the homeless fellow who was squatting in them. Upon further googling, of course, Hendrix had never actually been there, nor had he based "Castles in the Sand" on them. He had, however, spent a good long time in the area, and it was a quite interesting walk. Walking back, however, reminded us just why that town is the windsurfing capital of North Africa. In any case, with good food, a gorgeous old town, cold beers and sunsets to be had, Essaouira was a winner.
Life isn't all seaside and sunshine, though, so the following day it was up early and off to the bus, with a brief iterlude as we were pursued down the early-morning street by a rather disturbed fellow mumbling nonsenses, pointing at us, and throwing some pretty hefty rights at the air. I think he got distracted by a plastic bag, and we made our escape. After a couple hours of highway cruising, we arrived in Casablanca and settled in the lovely Hotel Colbert, a hotel 2 floors up in an old art deco pile for which we fabricated some sort of relationship to its satirical TV host namesake.
Casablanca, amongst travellers, gets a bit of a bad rap. I blame Bogie for filming the whole movie on a Hollywood soundstage. As the major port of entry to the country, and as the biggest city, most people pass through it. Lots of them expect some orientalist vision of Moroccan souks, or a city straight out of the 40s, full of piano bars and intrigue. You get neither. What you do get, though, I rather like. Much of the central city was built in the prewar years, and there's something I've always liked about old art nouveau and art deco buildings gone slightly to seed, with washing hanging from wrought iron balconies and clanking elevators in stairwells. That's central Casa. It's full of old cafes and bars in which the decor clearly hasn't been updated since the French left in the 50s, which when combined with the ubiquitous bow-tied waiters, does give it a bit of a decadent edge. Mike and I explored just that by launching into a proper pub crawl, managing 8 or 9 fine establishements before last call (at 11!). Hookah pipes were smoked, locals chatted to, and when one place turned out to be a brothel, prostitutes effectively dodged. A fine evening. Interestingly, although this was less true in Casa than it has been in some other Moroccan cities, bars are the one place where you may see the gender balance even out. While sitting at a sidewalk cafe table drinking tea is an exclusively male preserve, bars are socially transgressive enough already that you do find a reasonable feminine presence. As far as atmosphere goes, think the grungiest suburban strip mall joint and you might be on the right track.
This is not to say that we spent all our time in Casa just drinking in the local culture. Wandering around the city led to some cool finds, including the unfinished Catholic cathedral, where a few dirhams got us climbing the bell tower and running roughshod on the roof. Continuing the religious theme, we took in Casa's major tourist attraction, the feck-normous Hassan II mosque. Built on billions of dollars in public subscriptions in 1993, to designs by a French architect, the place holds 25,000 people inside and 60,000 in the outer courtyard. I was marvelling at the intricately carved ceiling so far above me when the tourguide mentioned nonchalantly that the whole bloody thing was on rails and opens like a stadium roof! Oi vey, oi vey...
Rounding out our major monotheistic religions, Mike's last day in Morocco was partially spent chasing down the Jewish museum, the only one in the Arab world. Our taxi driver clearly had no clue where it was, but neatly solved the problem by driving to the Jewish part of town, finding one of Casa's 5000 remaining Jews, and asking him! Blunt, but fairly effective. Eventually, we got there, and the museum was actually fairly interesting, with most Moroccan cities having hosted large Jewish communities until the foundation of Israel drew them away. After that, it was time for one last beer, and Mike headed off to catch his plane and resume his madcap African cris-crossings.
As for me, the next day saw me hopping on a go-train-esque commuter run to Rabat, capital of the country and a rather different place than Casa. When the French built them, they intended the relationship between the cities to echo the Washington DC/New York one, and so it does. Casa is the brash, busy economic powerhouse, while Rabat is a lower-rise, tidier, hassle-free government town. It also happens to be rather pretty, with a pleasant old town, some beautiful old whitewashed homes in the old Kasbah (fortress) and a new town with plenty of cafes and palm trees. I heard mumblings that day of concerts in the evening, and upon a quick internet check, discovered that I had wandered in for the final weekend of the Festival Mawazine, a "festival of world rhythms", and would be treated to a free Alicia Keys concert that night, and Stevie Wonder the next. Both shows were fantastic, although it was interesting to see the local audiences, normally so quick to dance, a bit unsure how to come to grips with Western idioms and English stage banter. Surreal. Rabat, otherwise, is a city of small pleasures - cheap fish sandwiches eaten overlooking the sea, quiet cafes and gardens and other little escapes, all a pretty good way to recover from the surprisingly crowded concerts. At one of the other shows, there was a stampede that left 11 people dead, something I wasn't even aware of until a few worried comments popped up on my facebook wall!
For all its joys, Rabat is a difficult place to kill more than a few days, so by the 24th I was off again, to Asilah, a tiny seaside town famed for gorgeous beaches and one of the prettier medinas in Morocco. Pretty it was - but I must admit, I wasn't a fan. Having been thoroughly gentrified, bought up by rich Europeans and filled with galleries, it was eerily quiet, completely unlike the old towns anywhere else. I rented a shack on a family's rooftop for a couple nights, which was lovely, although finding it involved a frustrating experience with some rather agressive touts. In any case, it's hard not to be a bit charmed by whitewashed walls and seaside castles, so I was far from grumbling. The main beaches were nothing to write home about, being coated (as, unfortunately, many are) with plastic bags and other sea detritus. Nonetheless, I spent a gorgeous day reading a book, attempting to swim in 6-foot waves, and turning myself a nice lobster-ey shade of red before hitching back from the beach in a dump truck and cracking a can of beer at sunset. Not bad, not bad at all.
It is, however, way too early in my trip for me to need a vacation, so I was soon off from Asilah to Tangier, another city unfairly slighted (in my mind) by foreigners for dirt and hassle. I suppose if you do arrive on the ferry from Spain and are chased through the streets by touts as soon as you pass customs, you might think something like that. With my arrival by train and easy settling into a cheap hotel with orange trees out my window, I wasn't complaining. Tangiers itself is a historical oddity, a city that was an international zone, run by a pretty dodgy council of representatives from 26 countries. As such, it was never a part of French or Spanish Morocco, and long served as a shelter for all sorts of shady dealings, artists seeking refuge, and other misfit things. That atmosphere lives on in a fairly pleasant way, with a thick layer of decadence lying over the place. The night I arrived there was the night of the European champion's league final, and the city was divided tribally, with different cafes devoted to Barca and Man U fans. It was the only time I've seen a female majority on the streets here, as essentially every man between the ages of 15 and 50 was in a cafe watching. Now, I'm no football fan, but I arbitrarily decided to support Barcelona because their shirts had "Unicef" on them instead of a corporate logo. Since they gave Man U what can only be described as a royal whupping, I was well placed to enjoy the festivities, which turned the city into a giant mass of car horns until well into the night.
After a few days there, it was goodbye to the seaside and off into the mountains. My first stop was Tetouan, which was once capital of the Spanish Protectorate and still maintains a distinctly Hispanic style in the new town, as well as the old, which is sometimes called Little Grenada (after the capital of old Islamic Andalucia). I spent a couple days there chatting with locals, making meals out of generous free beer snacks, and kicking my feet up on the balcony of my hotel room (which I shared with some impressively girthy roaches!). Continuing with the Andalucian theme, it was then off to Chefchaouen, the town in Morocco that probably draws the most backpackers.
This is not without reason. The town itself is gorgeous and clearly shows its Andalucian heritage with blue-washed walls and red clay roofs and pretty little squares. More important, from a backpacker perspective, is that 2/3 of the region's land is devoted solely to the growth of kif (marijuana), making this place once a famous stop on the hippie trail. Although those days have passed, there are plenty of stoned backpackers about, and plenty of people offering you everything from copious amounts of weed to the finest colombian coke (the path of which I would love to trace). Not being one for the international drug trade, I still rather enjoyed the place. I met up with the ever-affable Simon, a Quebecois fellow from Montreal here for a short trip, and we scrambled up one of the mountains hanging over the town, which took a solid day's climbing.
Since we were going the same way, Simon and I stuck together for a couple days, and he made pleasantly intellectual company as we made our way to Fez, grand-daddy of all ancient Moroccan cities, with an old medina that defies description (or navigation). Mile upon mile of twisted alleys leading to all sorts of mosques and squares and markets and workshops and other such chaos. As it happened, we also showed up for the Fes Festival of Sacred music, which led to encounters with sufi devotional chanting, Islamic rock reggae, dubiously religious pop, and other such fun. Having a tight schedule, Simon left quickly, but I lingered in Fes until last Thursday, wandering the "new" (post 14th century) town, taking in the tunes, and making 4 meals out of a huge watermelon, something my guts were regretting for a couple days.
Having heard that Mauritanian visas were no longer being issued at the border due to the upcoming elections, I needed to head back towards Rabat. Since embassies are useless on weekends, I stopped a couple days in Meknes, another old imperial city of some import. The town itself was nothing too impressive, it being a Friday (which sees most old-town places shut their doors), but it was well worth the stay for a hotel with loaner novels (I read 3!) and the chance to hop a couple shared taxis and walk through the countryside to Volubilis, the best-preserved Roman site in Morocco. I had the good fortune of arriving just after a school group led by a Canadian prof, who I stalked around the site all day for interesting tidbits. I'm not normally much for tours, but when visiting a huge ruined site, they can do wonders. Instead of colums and stones, I could see in my mind's eye this little provincial Roman city where only 2 actual Roman families lived, the rest made up of local Berbers frantic to imitate their Roman rulers by ordering Mosaics and columns from catalogues. Neat. The setting also helped - that part of Morocco is a solid Mediterranean climate, and the rolling hills of grain and olives around it look a lot like Tuscany.
And so it goes. From Meknes, I've now returned to Rabat, where my passport has been dropped off, along with $50 and a smile, to the Mauritanian embassy for a visa. With luck, it'll be ready tomorrow, and the next day I can start making my way south. I must admit, I'm looking forward to a bit more rough-and tumble travelling. Enough of these 4 hour train rides and sit-down toilets, I say! And I think I'll get my wish. From here, it's a quick 5 hours by Train to Marrakech, and then it'll be a 25 hour bus ride to Dakhla, the last town in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. There, I have to hunt for rides as there is no scheduled public transport, but within a few days I should either have found a spare seat somewhere, or paid for one in a 4WD. It'll be a long slog the 500 kms across the Mauritanian border to Nouadhibou, where I'll stop to rest, get some cash, and then wait for a trip I've been dreaming of for years - rattling my way across the desert for free in the empty hoppers of the world's longest train as it heads back to Zouerat to pick up another load. I can't wait.
So there we go. Now y'all know where I'm at. If I have the energy, I'll post a couple more times about Morocco. I'd love to discuss, for example, the food - but we'll see. In any case, look to my facebook tomorrow for some photos to go along with this long stream of babble.
Peace
Josh
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