D-Dog’s Blog

Due to unprecedented levels of public demand, I’ve decided to sit down and compose a post off the cuff, so bear with me. Today was the day we were supposed to visit the cascades, a series of waterfalls in the mountains. We’d received some good advice from a Canadian chap called Guy about the best way to do this, so we thought we were pretty prepared. Unfortunately, due to an untimely illness, Frank wasn’t well enough to go, so the eighty-five year old bloke, (Chris) who I believe Pascoe has mentioned in passing, came along for the ride. It actually turned out to be quite stressful; Chris spent the entire journey talking about anthropology and guffawing loudly at his own witticisms, and the driver decided that he would milk his cargo of rich Europeans for all they were worth by depositing us, at various stages of the journey, at establishments clearly run by his brother-in-law/second cousin twice removed/best mate. So we looked at pots, pans, hats, necklaces and other bits of traditional Moroccan paraphenalia, as well as being given a tour of someone’s house (?). Lunch was alright, and, of course, the scenery was magnificent. We arrived back at the hotel to find Frank feverishly tossing and turning and speaking in tongues (probably). A quick post, but stay tuned, we are still here.

duncan

I could write a detailed and damning apraisal of pascoe’s faliures as an individual; I will instead leave that to speak for itself, more than apt as it is for the job.

After an awfull train journey, marred by lack of sleep, sticky seats, being woken up by guards telling me to watch bags,food piosoning and worst of all, pascoe, Marrakech seems like a surreal and dreamy heaven. My body has yet to adjust from the wretcing pains that have bedevilled it since the arrival of Pascoe, my confused and consequently paraniod mind has sought a link between the two, but I am sure that in future my apreciation of this place will mature and improve. From what I have witnessed so far this place seems to be like a giant market, selling everything you would ever want to find and much that you would not, several times over. It has vendors ranging from clean, shiny, glass fronted shops, decked out with all the fittings of a western shop, and others consisting of dribling beggars with a few wares spread across a cloth, one of whom I am sure was selling Duncan’s phone. The place is also set against snowcapped mountains, which in the heatwave and distance apear to be level with ourselves. The prominence of hustlers, dealers and con-men also seemes to have noticably reduced since we left the north, very odd considering the prominence of tourists. All this could make Marrakesh our best visit yet, Pascoe and Duncan, thick as thieves, certainly seem to be loving it.

Expect much more from this town, and Jimmy, keep up the bad work.

Dispel all glamorous illusions from your mind – the Marrakech Express is crap (at least it is if you don’t pay the extra money for a bed, something for which I, unjustly, was blamed). So we spent the twelve hour journey on uncomfortable seats, dodging the cockroaches (alright, there was only one, but isn’t that enough?), trying vainly to get some sleep and playing the band name game (after five hours there was weak material coming up – Kevin Federline, Nicole Ritchie, and the classic guessing of bands that might just exist). Anyway, the less said about the journey the better, but Marrakech is a breath of warm, fresh air. The weather is the best we have encountered so far and there seems to be plenty of things to do. Frank even seems to have made his peace with Pascoe, but I don’t know how long that will last; we’ll just have to wait and see. The heat is making me somewhat lethargic, so I’m going to leave it at that, but expect plenty more from Marrakech.

So here I finally am, sitting in a Tangier internet café, writing what feels like my memoirs. It isn’t, because many more instalments will follow, and I am merely recounting the events of a single day, however, my exhaustion is such that it feels much more.

The story begins at 5am yesterday morning, with a lift from my dad to Exeter Airport. I bid farewell to my loved ones and skipped aboard a plane to Malaga. As the plane touched down in Spain, a feeling of overwhelming optimism washed over me. The sun was beaming, I was ten minutes ahead of schedule, and I was looking damn sharp in my newly- acquired leather jacket (circa 1975), a veritable icon of retro chic. This optimism was, however, swiftly quashed by the realisation that I was in Spain. And I don’t like Spain. I don’t like the smell, I don’t like the mullets, I don’t like the food. I was, on the other hand, very pleased with the bocadillo con tortilla that, along with a packet of crisps and the accompanying cervezas, would prove to be my sole source of sustenance for the whole day. The coach journey to Algeciras passed without incident, save being woken from my deep, dribbly slumber by a pair of Spanish girls who seemed to think that I might like to get off early, at Marbella. I didn’t even smell too bad at that stage, and so was slightly confused at this implication. I spent the rest of the journey looking out of the window, marvelling at the rugged, mountainous landscape of southern Spain, which was a revelation to me.

Algeciras, on the other hand, was anything but. I, like many of you, had read the blog entry on it, and so was prepared for the worst, and was right to be. Algeciras is a real hole. Every fibre of its being is devoted to escape. Every other shop is a travel agent or ferry ticket office, its sole focus is the port itself, and everyone I saw enter the town began immediately to seek a means by which to exit. It is always a stop, but never a station.

I bought a ferry ticket, checked in, and jumped aboard. It was here that my troubles began. For a start, the ferry left a full two hours after it was supposed to, and then mild seasickness set in. To top that, there was a massive queue of people in the area adjacent to the cafeteria so I couldn’t get anything to eat. I managed to fall asleep, to my relief, and was awoken by a friendly Moroccan man who informed me that we had arrived. I looked around, and the ferry seemed deserted. I wasn’t late, all was well, so I joined the queue to leave the ship. Ten minutes later, feet away from dry land, I was refused entry to Morocco on the grounds that my passport had to be stamped on board, which of course explained the earlier queue near the cafeteria. I had completely neglected to perform this simple formality. Oh, bugger, I thought, now I’ll have to wait all over again. How right I was.

Back on board, I was told that I would have to wait for the border control officer to return from a short trip to the post office. That was at seven o’clock. At eleven o’clock he returned, by which time I was a gibbering wreck, having realised that I am a total craphead. After my passport was stamped and my visions of a disgraced return to Spain had dispersed, I tried to leave the ship, but the passenger gangway was long since retracted, and my only means of exit involved ducking under a lorry (the underside of which donated a small amount of muck to the top of my rucksack, which has now spread over most of my body and my clothing, including my white wife-beater) and exiting via the lower car deck. At the port I met a beaming Duncan and, having travelled for eighteen hours and thoroughly cocking up everyone’s evening, I went with him to the hostel and slept, only stirred by a fat man’s 80-decibel snoring and Frank’s quiet insistence that he hated me. I was utterly happy.

Now, I’m tired, I really smell and I’m wasting your time with this gargantuan post, so I now bid thee farewell, dear reader. Until next time, goodbye.

>Yesterday, it seemed as though our week long stay in Chauoen was to be marred in the same soaked confusion in which it began. The rains built up from driving to monsoonal as the gutter’s streams fast became brown, street wide torrents. A sure sign that your day will not be a pleasant affair is getting up and feeling compelled to undergo the irksome task of timidly inserting your already damp socks, clinging to your numb feet, into black plastic bags before squelching them into sodden, hyperborean shoes. That, need I say, is just how yesterday began, it got little better.

Professing to live on an entirely metaphorical plan, Duncan seemingly took on the malevolent quality of the weather, probably seeing it as a trope for his thinly concealed spite. He began the day by chastising me for my abnormal sleeping patterns, this put us on a poor footing for the rest of the day. over a frosty “Economist” and ”cafe au lait,” we sat, silently, purveying ethereal signals of reciprocal hate before eating and then trudging, depressed, back to the hotel. Duncan went to bed, and I spoke to Pascal, who, typically, offered me some opium in an attempt to cheer me up. After brief consideration I declined, regretting my decision as soon as he smoked it and slumped into what looked like a very contented sleep, grin spreading over his face.

Today, the weather improved, and Duncan seems to have cheered, and we are on our way back to Tangier to meet Pascoe with a mixture of trepidation and deep rooted contempt.

This town is getting a little tiresome. Yes, it is beautiful, and yes it is supposed to be the nicest place in Morocco (according to both Rough Guides and some Canadian guy we met the other night who told us not to expect anything better), but we’ve spent too much time here, and there isn’t much to do aside from wandering, wandering, and more wandering. Yesterday, while I was wandering, the owner of a local shop saw I was passing, saw I was a European (and therefore grossly wealthy) and offered to shake my hand. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t let go, and after about a minute of relentless shaking he tried to actually pull me into his shop while I shouted “let go!” over and over. Eventually I squirmed free of his over-zealous grasp and made my escape, but I was left shaken (get it?). I think Frank’s planning to do some shopping for traditional native garments today, if he ever gets up (yesterday he slept in until half past one), so I might join him and perhaps purchase a pair of the snazzy yellow slippers that everybody seems to be wearing.

Unlike a country like England which is often so drab that you cant help but find little quirks to love and marvel at, this place is so fundamentally nice that one seems drawn to finding little faults to loathe obsessively. The people are kind and talkative, the scenery i stunning, the culture is more familial and communitarian, the food is cheap and delicious, and yet all to often you find yourself mulling over the fact that a lot of people are only friendly because they want your money, becoming sharply aggressive when they don’t get it and the culture is so tightly knit that you are seen as animal prey by a society only thinking of itself. today two people told Duncan that they had given me 150 dihrams worth of pot and that i had told them i would pay tomorrow as i had no money, they then said that as I had not turned up, he should fork it over instead. Just now the told the same story, inverted, to me. Then, when i told them they were lying, they shouted at me and demanded money, I called one of them “koos” and walked off.

If this were Torquay at two in the morning, populated by thrashing, lairy crowds, viciously high on vodka and red bull, i would not mind the unpleasantness, it is that this is a place of near unrivaled beauty and welcome that makes it quite so depressing.

I am sure in time I will come to look past these things, but, for the time being, it is bringing me down.

Another day in Chefchaouen (I think I’ve spelt it correctly – I’m never quite sure), and with the clouds dispersed and the sun in the sky it seemed a good time to do some extensive exploring of the area. We started with a walk up the hill to the crumbling mosque that overlooks the town, from where you can see everything, and where we were trailed by a remarkably persistent hustler/pusher whose name was Noureddine. Noureddine, bless him, didn’t seem to understand that no meant no, and he continued to hassle us while we were drinking our green tea in a cafe at the foot of the hill (this was probably about two o’clock). The day continued uneventfully with no sign of Norry (as he shall be known from this point on) until we finished dinner in the Medina (soup, chicken tagine, jus d’orange  – excellent) and he intercepted us. Seven hours after our previous meeting. My concern is this – Norry speaks good English, he’s pretty fluent, and he’s obviously determined; I think he could be quite a success in the world of business. Perhaps when I see him next (which will undoubtedly be as soon as I leave the hotel tomorrow morning) I’ll tell him to see a careers advisor. I don’t know what the returns are like in hustling, but I’m sure he could make more as a CEO of a multinational. He just needs direction. On a completely different subject, Frank and I are both awaiting Pascoe’s imminent arrival with trepidation – we fear he might destroy the delicate group dynamic; it would indeed be a shame to lose the shrouded bitterness that we’ve both become so accustomed to. Maybe we’ll just direct it all towards him; yeah, that would work.

 P.S – I’m aware that this post was pretty pointless, but it has become clear that the precedent has been set and we need to produce at least one post a day if we want plenty of hits hits hits (which we do).

If arriving in Chefchauoen was a wet, threatening and surreal experience, marred by crazy women and local hustlers demanding “paper not coins,” stating emphatically ”I give you small change for 200 dihram” (the price of 4 nights at a hotel) for their nonexistent services, then promising “big trouble” when we did not pay, staying longer has been an uplifting improvement. not a half hour after first being promised “big trouble,” we were pledged “big welcome” by a lovely Berber man with a wife from Brighton. This dramatic reversal of fortunes seems to have been emulated across the board. The weather cleared up immediately prior to sunset, revealing an incredibly beautiful town, painted pastel blue in the centre, with vast mountains jutting into blackening skies behind, and a huge, swirling, opaque bank of mist retreating toward the waning sun. When we were told that this place was beautiful, we were, as is uncommon in Tangier, not lied to.

After a lovely dinner of soup and lemon tajine, Duncan shunned reality once again and retreated to the dream world of sleep, and I spent a few fruitful hours talking to a Canadian hippie called Guy and four students from Hamburg. the hotel we have been staying at looks exactly how the whole world would appear had the hippies had the verve to mechanise and expand. covered in mattresses and cushions, in the style of an opium den (this place has at least twice as many ash trays as people), it is run by two settled French hippies, who appear to spend the whole time smoking kif, listening to music and reading, somehow also managing to keep a very pleasant guest house.

 The town itself is small and possesses a kind of enchanted charm. The walls and pavements of the Medina are painted blue, this makes it cooler in summer, and while it loses none of the ramshackle charm of Tangier’s Medina, it lacks all the sad dereliction, poverty and grind of that place also. it seems to have an aura of completeness, never trying to be to grand, leaving that to the mountains and instead creating its own, geographically nonsensical microchosms of life and toil.

Always remember that age old Canadian proverb: “dreams are free (until you get Alzheimer’s).”