Thaan: Spain/Morocco Part II: Morocco

So I took a ferry over to Tanger from Tarifa. It only took around 45 minutes. Immediately after getting out of the ferry it began, getting hassled by multiple Moroccans that is. I was told prior to arriving in Morocco that they try to get money out of you any way they can. With this in mind I decided to forget my English and only speak German as to thwart the harassers away. Turns out some of then spoke German, oops. Either way I managed to get away from them trying to get me a taxi and go to their hotel. I went and exchanged some Euro to Dirhams, sat, and then assessed the situation. When I got up I managed to quickly find someone, rather be found, for a taxi. It was the sketchiest taxi ride of my life. We went through narrow roads in the city, more like pedestrian roads with people walking around. It was hectic, but I guess for them it was completely normal to drive walkers and bikers of the 6ft wide roads. Finally making it to the hostel, Cherif, a passenger in the taxi offered to take me around the town for a few hours for a price. I ended up taking him up on the offer. What I learned later is that this is something standard, take the tourist to your friends' restaurants and shops and overcharge him. Good thing I'm a damn good negotiator and scored a rad poncho for 70% lower than the guys original offer. Later in the evening Brad met up with me at the hostel. Over the next 8 days or so we traveled around the country.

Day 2 we traveled to Chefchaouen and cruised around. Day 3 we went to Fez with the intent to do a few day journey organized by a company. This consisted of going to the Sahara desert and riding camels staying over night in the desert, visiting Ourzazate for a day, and finally ending up in Marrakech. The 3 day tour turned out to be a lot of driving, but fun nonetheless. I even got to hangout with some monkeys we saw on the side of the rode. Words of advice, don't drink mountain water. It killed my stomach for a solid 3 days. We stayed a night in Marrakech and in the morning headed to Essaouira for 2 nights. It was a cool beach town and the weather was a lot cooler than the 100 degree weather in Marrakech. From there we did one more night in Marrakech and then I flew back to Germany in the evening of the following day. Another word of advice, if you go to Morocco definitely go for a hammam. You get scrubbed with a rough glove, bathed, and hang in a saunalike room.

There's so much more that went on during the trip and a lot of interesting people met, but to write it all would take hours of time and probably way too much to read. So I'll leave all of the awesome details for oral storytelling. Pictures below chronologically and also more in the "Part III" blog. For some reason I couldn't upload all of them to this post.

Arriving in Tanger