Welcome to Maroc - Blogabond

We stepped off the boat and were hustled in a matter of seconds. A taxi driver and an unofficial tour guide managed to “help” us get some money changed and after bundling us and bags into the car, set off for a 3minute journey (supposedly 5km walk) to a ‘cheap’ hotel. The funny thing about this was that as typical westerners, we got into the car and immediately went to put our seat belts on. “You’re in Morocco now! You don’t need to bother with that” the driver said turning round to us and not paying any attention of the people he was just about to run over. So we were stung by both 70dirhams (7euros) for the taxi which should have been 4dhs (40cents) and the guide which was to just get rid of him (and because we didn’t have anything smaller) 100dhs (10euros), lets just say we were very careful not to make the same mistakes again.
We found our feet here and got a few Arabic words under our belts, not to mention stumbling through with some French.

Our first night we stayed in the Medina, noisy and a little more than we wanted to pay for a room with a shower and no toilet so we moved out and into a hostel the next day to for 150dhs a night.

Although it was up about 10 flights of stairs and the hostel itself was located on a steep hill, we had a great view

and breeze from our large room with ensuite. The people were quite nice too and let us cook one night so we didn’t spend too much money. More money for spending as Kat bought a traditional Moroccan leather bag to replace her blue plastic one that had fallen apart 2years ago but was still “usable”. Karma came though the next day when she almost took her eye out with it somehow, but it was to be expected apparently as its leather.
The only real touristy thing we did was to go to the museè du Kasbah which we sort of stumbled across in the end, despite some little brat saying we were going the wrong way.

A wee word of warning for anyone who hasn’t been to Morocco yet, don’t ever believe it when someone says “that way is closed, you’re going the wrong way”, especially if you are visiting a point of interest. They’re lying! It’s not like us to be judgmental, it’s just unfortunate that we’ve been stupid enough to believe it several times and then having to put up with them trying to be your ‘unofficial tour guide’. Just go your own way. We found some great streets doing just that and although we got lost a few times, we enjoyed exploring somewhere new.

Getting back to the Kasbah, it was grand but not earth shatteringly amazing. We’re biased because we couldn’t exactly grasp the French, Spanish and Arabic writing explain the history of Tangier, but we got the gist. Something amazing did happen outside though… after days of trying to find an English guide book of morocco with no success whatsoever, we found one. Dated back to 1998, with such a faded front cover it’s a bit of a joke, the guy wanted 100dh for it so using our rusty haggling skills we got it for 80dh – rip off but it’s something.
At least now we had a little more of a clue as to where we were heading and some information about the town as a rough guide.

written by

Kat and Ben on June 11, 2009 from Tanger, Morocco

from the travel blog: Kat & Ben's World Adventure

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