Finally in Morocco!

The day came, Wednesday 14th December, I met with my new travel partner a day or so before and he spent some time seeing Carcassonne & it's historic Cite. Sitting in a bar in central Carcassonne across the road from the Eurolines bus stop for the bus to Granada ... wine was sipped for several hours amongst a few friends of mine. Phone call after phone call it turned out the bus was running an hour, then 2 hours and then 3hrs late, after being kicked out of the bar at closing time, my friends having left, we took shelter in the station until 1am!

Finally on board the bus, I caught a few winks as far as Valencia, we were transferred to another bus where I caught up on a bit more sleep and enjoyed the scenery passing us by. Eventually we got to Granada at 6pm ... about 3hrs later than planned which presented a problem, to go to Algeciras now (another 4hr bus ride) or to stay here the night and go in the morning. I didn't have a guide for Algeciras and had no idea about accomodation, so I went on the internet did some searching and posted a message on Lonely Planet for some urgent help with a hotel. It's strange to me, in the 19yrs or so that I'd travelled, I'd never had the internet to use before like this. A faithful 'anorak' of Andulucian bus timetables was online and posted a wonderful list of Algeciras hotels whilst I was buying our bus tickets south.

Spent a rather uneventful night in Algeciras in a clean but also strangely smelly hotel not far from the port. Getting up early the next morning we downed a few coffees before heading off to buy a ferry ticket across to Tangiers!

Crossing to Tangiers, I realised with some dread that my travel companion didn't speak a word of another language bar English nor had he been travelling like this, despite repeatedly telling me he had been to over 40 countries ... I thought I'd keep quiet for now and see how it continued, we arrived in Tangiers where I immediately lost him as he went down to the car deck for some reason. I waited and waited for him to re-appear from the car deck ... I gave up and went off to the bank to get some dirhams whilst being chased by every available Tangiers taxi tout. I went back into the port building to see if I could find him so that we could make a quick escape and onto a train bound for Casablanca, he was waiting for me but hadn't got any dirhams sorted out .. so as not to waste time I offered to share mine until he was organised.

Luckily I found a 'honest' taxi driver to take us to the Gare Nouvelle - well honest in the sense that the car doors weren't going to shut until I had made him put the meter on despite his protestations ... the meter went on and the fare was a 'normal' 8Dh, paying him 10Dh, he was still protesting that as a tourist I should be paying the 'non-metered' prices!!! Three Aussie girls arrived a few minutes behind us telling us that they'd got their price down to 30Dh a head ... I gave them a few pointers ... and went off to find a seat on the Sidi Kacem train.

An hour or so into the journey one of the Aussies came down the carriage to have a chat, her first time to Europe and Africa she was with her 2 friends who would be leaving her for the final 2 weeks in Morocco. We chatted about where to go and what to do when she left us to re-join her friends in another compartment, my travel companion handed out one of his cards which I'd never seen before, a bit like a business card but describing him as a traveller, without a home address ... oh well!

Getting into Sidi Kacem for the change of trains to Casablanca was a bit of a nightmare, the cafe there seats 15 maximum I would think, if you can imagine a busy train changing there with everyone jumping off to find food and drink it presents chaos in the cafe! The smell around the station from the factory behind was pungent to say the least. I grabbed two seats at a table with two Korean guys (who I am very embarassed to say I thought were Japanese on first spotting them and started in Japanese!) they were with the 'Korean' Peace Corps - I never realised the Koreans did this, the Americans have their own version but to find two lads from Pusan doing a similar thing, teaching IT to Moroccans, I was very suprised!