Tuesday, March 19, 2002 18:50
Weather: Hot, and wall-to-wall blue skies
Location: Room 12, Hotel Marrakesh, Chefchaouen, Morocco

What a day! It's very hard to believe that I had lunch in Seville yesterday. I'm in a whole other world here...

I got up at 7:30 this morning, had a quick shower, and packed my bags for the big trip. I was out of the hotel around 8:25, and walked up to the bus stop just as the first Cadiz-Algeciras bus of the day was pulling up. I hurredly bought a ticket in the office as the other passengers boarded, then dumped my pack in the hold and climbed on board. I'm glad I hadn't stopped for breakfast! A note for next time, though: Tarifa seems geared for early risers, and there were several cafés I could have stopped at.

Before long, the bus was pulling into the station at Algeciras. After asking for directions to the tourist office (my Spanish vocab having improved somewhat by now) I set off towards the docks. I made a short detour to a supermarket that the tourist office had highlighted on a map for me, and picked up a small bottle of water and a packet of biscuits. Opposite the supermarket, a modern-looking café served me café con leche and a passable croissant, using up the rest of my Euro change.

Down at the docks there seemed to be dozens of disreputable looking places selling tickets to the ferries. I'm not sure what their angle is--surely they can't charge more when the ferry company offices directly opposite are selling the same thing? Anyway, I went to the main Trasmeditteranean Ferries office and got a one-way to Ceuta for just over €20.

I took a seat on the upper deck and before long we were off. The trip took just under an hour, and provided a great view of what I assume was Gibraltar on the left-hand side. The strait was fairly calm and the voyage smooth.

Ceuta is a Spanish free port on the coast of Morocco. It's actually part of Spain, so you don't go through customs at the port, but rather, when leaving the town. This turned out not to be an advantage.

I located the tourist office near the port, got straightforward directions to the bus stop, and caught the #7 to the "frontera". It wound through narrow Ceuta streets and made several side stops en route, but eventually I got off and made the short walk to the border crossing.

This border is not like any I've been through before, though I guess that's understandable as I've never gone overland from a 1st world country to a 3rd world country before. Friendly, but well-armed Spanish border guards waved me through their side of the border, into a long corridor of mesh fence, enclosed on top as well as the sides. The equivalent fence going in the other direction on the other side of the road was packed full of people trying to enter Ceuta, at least a couple of hundred, and it didn't look like it was moving very fast.

The corridor then opened into the moderate chaos of no-man's land. After passing under a large arched gate, I was waved by a Moroccan agent into a foreign nationals area. There, it was not at all clear what one did next. A man waving bits of paper on the left called out to me, but he did not look at all like an official so I assumed he was trying to sell me something and moved on. After pausing to reorder my bags, I went over to a guard and politely asked where I needed to go to pass through customs. He waved over the other man, gave me the declaration form he'd been trying to offer me, and pointed me to a customs counter.

There were agents inside, but they were working their way through a stack of passports belonging to a Czech Rafting team that was crossing the border in two cars. I got ready for a long wait, and was soon joined by a Frenchman, an Italian, and a trio of rasta-haired twenty-somethings (whose nationality I didn't work out). Soon after, a large tour group of Germans showed up, and just as the agents were finishing with the Czechs the Germans somehow jumped the queue and the rest of us were left to fume quietly. In the grand scheme, it wasn't a major wait--I was through in a little over an hour, by about 12:30--so I took it in stride and moved on.

Next step was to get onboard a "grands taxi" to Tetouan, the first city, which I wanted to pass through on the way to Chefchaouen. There was no problem locating the grands taxis--there were probably 150 of them lined up--but it seemed suspiciously like I was the only person wanting to go to Tetouan. The economics of the grands taxis are that they seat six plus the driver, and without other passengers the group of drivers who'd cornered me wanted me to pay the full amount of the trip, about Dr. 120. This is about C$16, so it wasn't exhorbitant, but it was certainly more than the going rate for one person! I stuck in my heels, but after about 45 minutes of waiting we simultaneously ran out of patience and I was driven off, negotiating a token Dr. 5 discount as we went.

We passed along a gorgous coastline, with sandy beaches and the occasional hotel on the left, and green fields and pastures on the right. The mountains rose up in the distance, bare brown with a thin white icing on the highest peaks. I chatted with the driver in French about his family in Tetouan, the mountains, and his brothers in Belgium and France. As we pulled into downtown Tetouan about half an hour later, he tried to convince me to continue with him to Chefchaouen for "only" Dr. 215 more. I politely declined, ignored the fact that he hadn't offered me my Dr. 5 change on Dr. 120, and set off to find the bus station.

I was swiftly intercepted by another grands taxi man, who offered a trip to Chefchaouen split with other people. Since the cost of this would be much more reasonable, I followed him up to the grands taxi lines where, in fact, there were no other people and I was to take on faith that they would be picked up en route, to bring down my cost, of Dr. 200!

Not being born yesterday, I decided that two of these extravagant solo trips in a single day would be stupid, and went back to the bus station. Sure enough, a bus was leaving within the hour for Chefchaouen (I'd been assured by the grands taxi man the next bus wasn't until 7pm) and the ticket cost... Dr. 15. Much better! I paid up and had a seat to wait for the bus.

The bus station is used by several bus companies, more than 10, each of which having their own ticket agents, prices, and schedules. These are in no way made easy to decipher, so freelance agents pick up foreigners like me at the door, take them to an appropriate (one hopes) ticket window, and hope to take a cut and a tip as their compensation. I was the only obvious foreigner in the place, so I made it about 2 feet in the door before one of these guys got me. But in fact, he was quite helpful and I'm not at all sure I would have found the bus without him. His other client was a young lady dressed western-style, travelling to Meknès on the same bus. The bus was a bit late pulling in, and I was pessimistically thinking I'd been ripped off again, but shortly afterwards our agent came and navigated us down to it.

The lower level of the bus station was dark and chaotic. Ten or more buses were parked in the different bays, with no form of identification of their destination or company. Travellers mixed with salesmen and -boys of all sorts, and there was a constant clamour of the bus engines and the stink of exhaust.

The bus was dark and crowded. Most of the seats were already taken with passengers who had arrived from a prior stop. A steady stream of the salesmen passed up the aisle, selling biscuits, pies, watches, running shoes, rings, necklaces, pistachios, and chocolate. I put up with the heat for about 10 minutes before giving up and getting off the bus to wait in the relative cool outside.

After about a half hour stop, we set off. The seat I ended up in had little legroom, as someone's packages were jammed under the seat in front, and I had a last-minute neighbour, so it was quite cramped. With my daypack on my knees (my clothes pack being (hopefully) safe below) I scanned the countryside as we drove towards the mountains.

We passed several would-be passengers en route, but they were clearly out of luck: the bus was full. I opened my biscuits and gave a few to the guy next to me, who spoke a little french. After a while I flipped to the Moroccan Arabic section of the guidebook and tried a few phrases out on him. He seemed amused and pleased, and helpfully corrected my frequent pronunciation problems. His name was Rashid, and he was on his way to Chefchaouen for work.

Finally, after about an hour and a half, we were in Chefchaouen. I had identified a hotel that sounded good in the Lonely Planet guide, so after a quick orientation (and zipping my day bag back onto the clothes pack which had, indeed, survived the trip) I set off for it. I had a couple of offers of help to find a hotel (or some drugs!) on the way, but I was in the home stretch and took no heed. I splurged: Dr. 120 for a large room with an adjoining private shower and my own hole-in-the-ground toilet.

I then took one and a half hours to write up this diary entry, which covered only 8 1/2 hours of travel... Clearly a very full day! After stopping for a quick dinner in the Medina, I crashed.
posted by Tom at 8:52 PM | link |