Dar Sultan Tangier

... Then there was the matter of finding our B&B. As we left Dar Jameel, it started to downpour. We got to an area where there were taxis and took the taxi ride from Hell. We had directions in English, Paul can speak French well enough to get-by and Jenny can put Spanish together for basic communication. Our cabbie looked about 16 and only spoke Arabic. It should have taken 5 minutes to get to where we were going. One hour later ...

... It is so loud and so persistent that when he stops
snoring briefly I think he is dead – either through choking on his own tongue
or I had an out of body experience and suffocated him with his own pillow. The
USA should have used him instead of water-boarding to extract ‘secrets’ from
alleged terrorists. It’s more inhumane.

So after three
weeks of this in Croatia and a few nights in Marrakech I was tired, cranky and
ready to split up for a ...

... 1 new pair purchased in Marrakech) 6) Cities we have been to in two weeks 7) Blonds in Rabat (but one had a really bad dye job!) 8) New Facebook friends I've met! 9) Times a day I put sanitizer on my hands 10) Amount in dirhams for minimum wage in Morocco (about $1.50).

... we scraped enough of a combination of Euros and Dirhams to pay for our train ride, moved to our compartment and were finally able to relax for the 8 hour trip back.

The long train ride back was somewhat uneventful, although we had a couple of false endings when we thought we'd arrived only to find out there were a few more stops left. Thankfully we finally arrived at the final station at Casablanca, negotiated a reasonable rate for the taxi back to the hotel ...

... in one of the shops though. They were super nice and the guy was gay for sure! and cute! haha We chatted for a while and then we said our goodbyes as we headed back to our meeting point to go back to our hotel in Tetuán. We ended up seeing the Canadians about 6 times in the market. I kept getting suggestive glances from the guy. haha. Nothing wrong with a little flirtation I suppose. We got back to our meeting point and met Michael Douglas ...

... back to the hostel. My last day in lagos was spent again lying on the beach with the 2 canadian girls. I took them to my favourite beach and we lazed around in the sun and went swimming in the freezing ocean, this was my first full swim here - i had been too chicken to get the whole way in as it was freezing! but we all doggy paddled out underneath a huge natural archway in the side of the cliff and out into another cove, then got too cold and decided to paddle back to ...

... after reading books, seeing movies, talking with other travelers, etc., but to finally see firsthand the people wearing traditional clothes, the obvious male-dominant aspect of the culture, the women with their bodies and hair completely covered, and to feel the palpable presence of religion upon first hearing the muezzin--it's practically a shock to someone who grew up with western values. Additionally, Morocco is a developing nation, so it was ...

... evident. I was feeling slightly shaggy, so I took advantage of the opportunity in Asilah when I saw a barber shop. I figured, "This shouldn't be too hard. I'll just do like I always did in Egypt and point to the clippers and say "Itnayn" (the Arabic word for two)." It turned out the barber spoke no English but this was one of several occasions through West Africa where I ended up conversing with someone in Spanish because ...

... away then ... Since I'm here during Ramadan, I'm more or less observing the fast. Partly out of respect and partly due to the fact that food isn't highly available anyway. However, a couple times I've given in and had a beverage during the day -- it's not easy walking around all day long without a drop to drink. Many restaurants are closed entirely, even after sunset. One fun thing to do is to go to a cafe just before sundown and grab a table. You order some ...

... itching to step onto African soil (and remove our weighty rucksacks) while the crew stood around staring at the gap between the ferry and the docks.Fooled oursevles into believing that Tanger is not as bad as the guidebooks make out when we made it to our hostel with minimal hassle.  But upon leaving our hostel later, the minor mishaps took shape.  We had a disagreement over the price of a mint tea.  We continually got lost in the so-called simple medina ...