Tangier

I went to sleep on a train in the baking heat of Marrakech and awoke to a stiff Mediterranean breeze in Tangier. How long was I asleep!?

Marrakech is a lovely city, in a muted way, due to the murderous heat. Tangier is mor glamorous, perched above the water on a spectacular harbor. While Marrakech is mostly pink, Tangier is mostly white, and it shines in the sun.

Perhaps I should have called this blog "Things That May Interest Only Me" because I'm ticking off a list of things to do that people generally don't get as excited about as I do. Like this picture.




I'm standing in Morocco, in Africa. In the distance, you can see Spain, in Europe. I think that's pretty cool.

I had been following the Euro Cup but I lost track in Morocco. Had I been paying attention I might have hustled over to Spain a day early to watch the final there. Spain won, of course, so I'm sure I missed a heck of a party! There were a lot of Spaniards in my hotel (and the surrounding cafes), so every time something good (or bad) would happen the whole neighborhood would erupt.

Marrakech

My travel book describes the central square of Marrakech "one of the world's greatest spectacles." This is not an exaggeration. Called the Djemaa el-Fna, it is a bombardment of the senses. I first saw it at 10:30 on a Thursday night, and the combination of sight, sound and smell, and the crazy energy of the place, gave it an almost hallucinatory feel. It was quite overwhelming.



The plaza is more crowded at night because of the oppressive daytime heat. People here take advantage of the cooler night hours to go out, eat, socialize, etc. The labyrinth of souks (stalls) is open all day but the food vendors who operate in the open square are only open in the evening.

There are tourists everywhere, of course, but there are also punk kids whizzing by on scooters, women in burqhas, families, snake charmers, acrobats, musicians, etc., etc.

The city itself is beautiful and quite safe. I felt safer here than in Baltimore, which is a sad, sad observation. All the buildings are a pale pink. There's very little trash in the street. People on the street pay no attention to tourists, which is a bit odd considering how aggressive the scammers in the market are.

I had been warned repeatedly that the hustlers and scammers in Marrakech are especially difficult to deal with, so I prepared myself. Or so I thought. To begin with, I hate haggling. I think the charms of haggling are overrated. Saying part of the charm of visiting a market is haggling with scammers is like saying part of of the charm of driving is crashing headfirst into a bridge abutment.

Tonight I catch an overnight train to Tangier, and from there I plan to take the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar into Spain.

Self portrait, Morocco

It's been a hectic few days. I woke up in Panama City on June 22 and visited the Panama Canal before taking an overnight flight to Madrid. I arrived in Madrid on June 23 and had a layover of several hours before catching a flight to Marrakech, Morocco. I arrived there at sunset and finally got to bed at about 1 a.m. on June 24.

Now it gets hectic. I had planned on visiting Marrakech, then taking a train north and hitting a couple other cities along the way. Instead I woke up a few hours later, climbed in a van with seven complete strangers and drove two days to Merzouga, near Morocco's eastern border. From there we rode camels into the desert and camped overnight.

On June 25 I slept under the stars in the Sahara Desert.

This is our group. In front is Mustapha, our Berber guide, and the last shadow is your humble narrator on camelback.





These are the times I wish I was a better photographer, so I could capture the gradations of color and shadow in the sand. And of course there's no way to capture the sensation of total silence. After everyone had gone to bed I sat on the sand and listened, and there was nothing: no animals, no people, no traffic, no wind, and no artificial light in any direction. From the top of the ridge we could see out to the east into Algeria.




And as always, what made it really worthwhile was the people I met. I've been chastised for not posting pictures of me, or anyone else, for that matter. In my group there was a French-Canadian girl, a Mexican guy, three Venezuelan girls and our guide, Youssef. He took this picture, so those are his feet you see. From left to right it's me, Daniela, Ana, Alejandra, Daniel, Caroline. (And in case you're wondering, yes, every one of the girls is drop-dead gorgeous.)




I mention the nationalities of everyone involved because there's a funny little travel story involved. After struggling with Spanish for a month I was genuinely terrified about visiting Africa for the first time, in a country where I can't even read the alphabet, let alone speak the language.

When I mentioned my concern quite a few people said, "Don't worry, everyone in Morocco speaks French." Great. I don't speak French either. In fact, I know more Arabic! Even though I traveled for a full calendar day and a half to get here I didn't sleep much because I was listening to my Arabic language instruction on my iPod.

So of course I ended up in a travel group in which the primary language was ... Spanish. Thankfully, everyone spoke English and was kind enough to do so for my benefit. Our guide was awful, but it was a great group of people, which helps when in you're cooped up in a van together for three straight days in the desert with no air conditioning. I was prepared for the heat and the dirt and the sweat but one thing I could not get used to was drinking hot water. We'd buy bottles of water and if we didn't drink them immediately the water quickly warmed to the ambient temperature, which was about 100 degrees.

But it was worth it!

The miracles of technology

How did people travel before the internet?

I spent last night in a hostel in Costa Rica which is known for, among other things, having the best internet setup in the country. Long story short, coming here was something of a mistake, considering how little time I have left in Central America, so today I'm cutting my losses and catching a bus to Panama City. 16 hours...

I'll be arriving around 4 a.m. so I went online to find a hostel there with 24-hour reception. I was staying in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica, and like most Central American capitals, there's not much to do and it can be more than a little scary. So I decided to take advantage of the internet setup to make some additional travel arrangements.

After about an hour I had reservations for hostels in Marrakech, Morocco; Beijing, China; and Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. The hostel in Mongolia is by all accounts the best in the country, and it's $5 US per night. I booked a budget room in the most sparsely populated country in the world in minutes on the internet. I think that's pretty cool.