Saturday, August 24, 2013

Not the Marakesh Express

I love the old movie Casablanca?  I've watched Humphrey Bogart and Inger Bergman suffer heartbreak so many times.  In our Lonely Planet Morocco travel book, we read that a former American diplomat had taken it on herself to build Rick's Cafe, imitating the design and atmosphere of the old movie.  We knew we had to go there, but first we had to make it to the city of Casablanca.  Besides, that was where we were supposed to meet up with our GAdventures travel group to see the rest of Morocco.  We were about to find out it wasn't going to be easy to make it to Casablanca.  

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Leaving our hotel in LaLinia, we hauled our bags back out to the bus stop and sat there almost a half hour waiting for our ride back to Algeciras.  At the bus station, we walked about 600 meters toward the ferry station.


Seeing a huge sign across the street from the station, "Ferry tickets," we bought two there.  The store keeper gave us Moroccan money for our Euros.  The sidewalks and streets were really bumpy, so as I was pulling my suitcase across the pavement, I took a tumble, skinning on my knee and gashing my elbow.  A man who had supposedly been trying to help us tried to pull me up until Jerry yelled at him to let me get up in my own good time.  If that was the worst fall of the vacation, I would be fine.

Inside the ferry station, we found out we could have bought our tickets there.  The girl at the information desk told us we had bought tickets for the slow ferry, to go back and trade them.  We didn't want to go all the way back there.  Instead we went upstairs to a virtually empty waiting room, where another man told Jerry we were on the slow ferry, and it was three hours late because of Ramadan.  We walked through security, and inside, the policemen told us the same thing, so we decided it would be better to get tickets for the "fast" ferry instead.  After a girl at the ticket counter told us to go back to the guy we'd bought the tickets from and exchange them, that's what Jerry did, while I waited there with the suitcases.  

Generally in our travels, our ferry experiences have been terrible. (I'm thinking now of Puerto Rico, a slow, crowded ride where I had had to sit on the floor, packed in amid strangers, for two hours.) Here, there were so many Muslim families with huge suitcases, cardboard boxes tied with rope, and enormous vinyl bags stuffed with something heavy.  They had obviously gone to Spain to do some serious shopping.  The Muslim men were so grouchy at 3:00. They hadn't had a sip of water or anything to eat since dawn and had to wait until sunset. They couldn't smoke either--no sensual pleasures between dawn and sundown. 

In the waiting room, Jerry met a handsome couple from Denmark who were hitchhiking their way across Europe and Morocco, sleeping in hostels along the way.  They told him people had been so nice and helpful in every country.  In fact, they had asked a Spaniard with a boat to take them across the Strait of Gibraltar, but because of the choppy waters, he couldn't, but nevertheless gave them 100 dirhams so they could buy ferry tickets.

We followed the mob onto the claustrophobic halls of the ferry, stuffing our bags in a baggage room.  Upstairs, we had to stand in line to fill our papers and have our passports stamped.  I was glad the authorities did that on the ferry instead of making us all wait outside before boarding to do it.   There wasn't a good place to sit, and it was really muggy and dirty inside, so Jerry and I decided to go out on the deck.  




There, we met a man from Jordan traveling with a Moroccan woman. We four sat out on the grimy deck.  The outside was hot, too. Smoggy. Nasty smokestacks made it hard to breathe. The Rock of Gibraltar was masked in smog as we passed. A Muslim man walked by, shaking his finger and admonishing the Jordanian for eating a plum. "Ramadan!" he scolded.  Jerry had to be sneaky to smoke.  It would have been rude to smoke in front of a Muslim.

Algeciras

As soon as we made it to the port, a Muslim man with a beard met us.  "Taxi?"  He led us outside where several taxis were waiting.  He took us to one.  The rate seemed high. We were in Tanger but had no idea how far it was to the train station.  We negotiated what we thought was a fair price, according to the Lonely Planet.  In the car, I would have enjoyed looking at the scenery, but I had to keep my eyes on the road.  This man drove like a maniac--way too fast, considering all the traffic. We were almost killed when we topped a hill; there was a traffic jam right in front of us, with cars almost at a standstill. Our driver crammed on his brakes to keep from slamming into the car in front of us. The brakes were still squealing as I looked over my shoulder to see a car bearing down on our taxi.  That driver, too, was slamming on his brakes.  I had time to ponder the possibility that our vacation was over--or that we were dead.  We would have been smashed between two cars if the driver behind us hadn't surged alongside us instead,  in the space between us and cars heading the other direction.  It took a while for my heartbeat to settle back down, and I don't think it was normal until we made it to the train station.

We thought we had planned well, with about and hour until time for the train to leave.  But the clock said 6:15 instead of 8:15.  I showed my iPhone to a man, who said, "Spain time."  He tried to explain there was a two-hour time difference because of no daylight savings time in Morocco and an hour change in time because of Ramadan.

We had a three-hour wait in the train station.  Hungry, I checked out the single food counter and picked out a sandwich of olives and corn.  A Canadian couple with two sons in motorized wheelchairs asked us to watch their luggage while they went for a walk.  They walked while the boys buzzed around them in loops.  When they came back, we listened to their travel stories--traveling with two handicapped children.  The boys, the mother told us, both had cystic fibrosis.  At one time in their lives, they had been able to walk but now were bound to their wheelchairs.  That, however, did not keep them from acting like teenagers, wheeling around the train station, enjoying the large space to cavort with each other.

Before it was time to leave, we had to use the restroom.  Two Muslim women held out their hands as I went in.  I remembered reading in the travel book that in many places in Morocco, we would need to pay the attendants to use the bathroom.  I didn't have a Moroccan coin, so I went on in, and when I came out, Jerry told me he had paid them for both of us.

We noticed one of the families with all the luggage and packages we had seen on the ferry were also there at the train station.  At sundown, Jerry and the father of the family stood outside smoking.  He seemed calmer now than he had on the ferry.

When the train finally came, it was an ordeal to load the Canadian boys' wheelchairs.  The family had a sleeping car, but the chairs were too big to go through the doors.  The father lifted each boy and carried them one-by-one into the cabin.  With help from Jerry, some train conductors, and several kind strangers, they were able to load the two-hundred plus pound chairs onto the back of one train car and the back of another by the cars' connectors.
  
Jerry and I had decided to go first class--it wasn't that much more expensive--and we had assigned seats.  Our compartment had seats for eight passengers, four on each side facing each other, but we had the whole coach to ourselves.  It had been a trying day of travel, and I was exhausted.  My main concern was that I wouldn't know when to get off the train.  Its final destination was Marakesh, although we were told this was NOT the Marakesh Expresss, since it would be stopping at several towns and villages.  At the first stop, people got off, but I didn't know how they knew where they were.  There were no signs I could read.

During one of the stops,  Jerry watched the conductor harassing two women trying to sneak into a compartment on our car.  We guessed it must be common for people in the crowded second class seats to try to find a better spot for the long ride.  

In our cabin, Jerry poured some of our Gibraltar scotch into our water bottle, and we were able to relax a little.  I put up all the arm rests on my side and stretched out across four seats.  Jerry did the same on the other side.    At one stop we were awakened by the conductor, who announced the name of the town.  We said, "No, we're going to Casablanca."  "Casablanca," he repeated, and I was pretty sure he'd wake us up at the right time.  Sure enough, later in the night,  he opened our cabin door as the train was slowing down, and announced, "Casablanca." We grabbed our heavy bags and climbed off the train.  It was 5:00 in the morning.  Later, Jerry realized he'd left his Thunder cap on the train.


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