Day 26: Tanger, Morocco

Last night we slept well in the hostel. We got up at 7:30, got ready, repacked, and walked to the ferry terminal. Things went smoothly at the terminal. We had a rocky crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar. It took about 45 minutes to cross and things were a bit confusing when getting off. We had a sticker that only a dozen others had as part of a tour organized through the ferry. We had our own guide but were combined with another large tour group for part of the tour.

The first part of our tour was by bus going from the new part of the city to the old part of the city Tanger. On the way we stopped to see camels brought from the Sahara desert 1,000 miles away. Then we got off of our bus and went on a walking tour through the Kasbah. The Kasbah is a section of town where people reside without many shops. In the Kasbah we saw a snake charmer. There was one cobra and one painted snake. We also had an amazing view of the sea. We could see the coast of Portugal, Tarifa, and Cadiz clear across the Strait of Gibraltar.

We ate lunch at an authentic Moroccan restaurant. There was a group of musicians playing Arabian music. Talk about a small world: The man we sat next to was born at Monroe Community Hospital in Rochester and resided in Penfield for 6 years of his life. He now lives in California, but it was so crazy to mention that we were from Rochester and have a man in Morocco say, "Oh, I know where that is. I was born there. My father worked for Kodak". Our lunch included bread, ginger vegetable soup, beef kabobs, chicken couscous, honey cookies, and mint tea (said to help with digestion). While being served our chicken, the waiter knocked over Christine´s cola and it spilled ALL OVER Kim´s pants. We had to laugh because Kim had been making fun of Christine for having a big grease stain on her jeans from her Shwarma in Almuñecar. Some of the cola dripped on Christine as well. Since we both had Khaki colored pants on, it eventually disappeared.

After lunch, we split from the big group and went with our tour guide. First we went to a carpet store. Morocco is very well known for the handcrafted carpets. While at the carpet store, a presentation was given by the owner who in essence was trying to sell us his beautiful products. The rugs are hand double knotted and it takes one person three weeks to make. The big size (for a living room) averaged around 1500 Euros, which would be about $2250. We found that the Moroccan sales tactic is to divide and conquer with persistence. They tried to sell us every size rug, eventually working their way down to the size of a bathmat for 80 Euros. After they got it that we didn´t want a rug unless it was magical and could fly us home at the end of our trip, they sent us downstairs to look at the leather goods, jewelery, wooden crafts, cushions, and metal works. One of the sales people followed us exclusively. When another guy tried to draw one of us away, they began bickering heatedly in Arabic. The original guy won and continued to show us things. When Kim showed interest in the slippers that they had, the man actually got down on his knees to untie Kim´s shoes and take it off so that she could try on the slipper. Eventually, Kim bought a pair of slippers, haggled from 35 to 20 Euros and Christine bought a solid cedar carved duck, haggling the salesman down 10 Euros from the original offer.

The next stop was the spice shop. There was a demonstration where we got to smell various spices with various uses. The demonstrator had a young assistant who could come around and let us smell or try the products demonstrated. For one of the spices it had to be sniffed through each nostril (used to clear sinuses). He even provided the service of plugging one nostril at a time for us. That took us a it by surprise. Their demonstration was effective. We bought some rose scented lotion, a musk cube to keep mosquitoes and flies away, and Christine got stuff that helps with congestion, headaches, snoring, and colds.

Next we went to some other markets. We found neat change purses which we have been seeking. This concluded our tour and we walked back to the bus. On the way back to the bus, a street vendor was trying to sell Christine some hats. Christine loves hats. Through a tough barter, and with Kim´s help, she got a little hand crocheted hat from 16 down to 10 Euros. Since it is windy, she hopes it will help to keep her hair from flying all over. The vendor must have walked an 1/8 of a mile just to make the sale. Then to get back to his spot he had to climb uphill. It was fun.

The bus took everyone back to the ferry terminal. When we got off the bus our tour guide from our small group told us we had to get back on the bus. Apparently we were the only ones of the entire filled bus doing the 2 day, 1 night tour since it was just us, the driver, his assistant, a bus aide, and our tour guide. As the driver drove (to where we assumed was our hotel), he dropped off our tour guide and then our bus aide. On our lonely ride, our driver nearly clipped a young boy on a bike, almost ran over a dog, and came close to hitting several cars as he laid on the horn, beeping, and muttering things in Arabic.

We finally arrived at the hotel. It is right on the coast and is secluded from the main hotel strip. Our bus driver came in with us, talked to the hotel manager, and left. The manager gave us a key and we walked down dark hallways to find our room. Our room smells funny, has no towels, cigarette burns in the comforters, and is overall a bit skivey. However we do have a balcony with a great view of the water and beach.

After eating some comfort food (chocolate and cheetos), napping for once just didn´t seem appealing as the beds didn´t look very inviting - tonight we will definitely be using our sleep sheets. We decided to take a looksee at the pool since it was too cold and windy at the beach. The pool looked clean, but it is too cold to swim. Since it was quiet and nobody was outside there, we sat down and started to write this part of the blog. As we have been writing this, the previously deserted pool deck has been filling with rowdy young 20 somethings French boys. We just took a head count and there are over 20 of them. We feel better seeing people here that don´t look creepy, even though we have no idea what they are saying.

We went inside to a nice lounge to document our pictures we took for the day. We started to fall asleep and there is nothing close to our hotel at all,so we went up to our room. Pillowcases and towels arrived which is a plus. We came to the decision that is was siesta time in Spain (Morocco is 2 hours ahead). We napped until we were awoken by a loud group of men chanting, yelling, and singing. We were scared and confused because it was another language and was relentless. Then there were several knocks on our door. We refused to answer the door, move, or talk. If someone busted in, we were prepared to bludgeon them with our flashlights, fists, and shoes. Christine decided to call the reception desk to figure out what all the commotion was about. Here were Christine and Kim´s hypotheses:
1. Ritualistic Sacrifice
2. Soccer Match
3. Someone having a baby
4. Bachelor Party
All of which we did not want to risk leaving our room for. Once connected with the reception desk, the thought Christine was calling from England. They did not understand her language much so she gave all sorts of verbs such as, "chanting, shouting, yelling, screaming, singing..." all of which got her nowhere.

When the coast was clear (we didn´t hear knocking on the door or people in the hall for awhile), we whipped open our door, maglight flashlights in hand. We were fine. We went downstairs for our dinner. It was included in our tour. We ate a potatoish soup with bread. The main course was fish, but we asked for a substitute. So our waiter offered a cheese omelet. We ate that with fries and steamed vegetables. Dessert was a weird sherbet type of ice cream. We brought our own water to dinner with us.

Our waiter was real nice. He was amazed by our pink, hard plastic water bottles. Picking up each one to examine it. He asked if we were English or Australian and we said US. He started naming off major cities, "Philadelphia?, Boston?, New York?". It was weird that he started with Philly, but we agreed, yes, New York. Immediately before we could even give our "We are from upstate New York" spiel, he asked if it was nice and how our big buildings and Mr. Bush are. We smiled and simply said, "good".

We both felt a little off, possibly due to our changing diets. So we decided to watch movies on our Ipods. We hope to sleep well because we have a long day of traveling and connections to make tomorrow.

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