The hardest sell in the south
Trip Start
May 08, 2002
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3
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Trip End
Apr 15, 2003
Tangier, Morocco
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
The day before yesterday made the 24 hour trip from the hostel in Barca to a hostel in Tanger. Tanger did not endear itself to us. We should have known it may not be the best way to enter Africa when our ferry captain failed to complete a very straightforward parallel park (in ferry-ing terms) and we spent the next hour 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 (roll on Marrakesh!). But by far the least pleasant aspect of Tanger were the hustlers.
"Hustlers of Dehli, Bangkok, Kathmandhu, Camden town - you have a lot to learn!"
These guys would not take "la" for an answer. And after a semi-sleepful night on the train through Spain and meeting African heat for the first time, we were in no mood for the hard sell.
It is perhaps a shame that our perceptions of Tanger will always be tainted by such. The city itself is more or less split into two: the new town which was created by Europeans this century and has a faded grandeur that reminded us of Southend-on-sea (which is not necessarily a bad thing); the medina is the old part of town and is incredibly impressive. It looks as though it has barely changed over the past 400 years. But we will not be rushing back to see more.
We did not intend to spend longer than a day in Tanger anyway, but our experiences there made us reluctant to take another overnight train into the centre of Marrakesh and emerge bleary eyed into another unfamiliar city (plan A). Instead we had a leisurely morning at the hostel, and caught a bus to Assilah (one hour further south along the coast) where we are now (plan B).
Assilah is much more laid back. We have even had a whole (very pleasant) conversation with one of the locals that did not involve any attempt to sell us accomodation, food, goods, a private tour.
Tomorrow, however, we move on again to Rabat, and from there down (or up, depending on your perspective) to the High Atlas Mountains.
More later.
Barbie & Ken
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No warm beer; No cricket; No BBC World Service
No Carlisle United; No KNIGHTON OUT
No Dairy Milk; No Crunchy Nut Cornflakes;No absinthe (it was closed); No Spanish (or at least, not enough)
No Dirty Three
...Having a good time regardless! **************************
