Beyond the civilised world

We had an early rise to get the bus that would take us to the ferry that would take us to Tangier which is in Morocco which is in Africa. Yay. We were then taken on a bus trip through the city and we stopped briefly at various tourist traps along the way to take a few photos - much in the same vain as the Japanese visit New Zealand. Apparently we didn’t have much time so when the bus dropped our group off, we were rushed along and through the Medina of the city which is where everyone lives. It was pretty cool and something that would be impossible as it is an absolute maze. I did feel a little weird taking photos where people lived, I guess the equivalent would be a coach load of tourists taking photos of the middle of Kaiti. Then we were loaded into an ‘authentic’ Moroccan restaurant for a lunch which was just as authentic as a hangi night at a hotel in Rotorua.

After the lunch we could slow down, which, oddly enough, was when the tour took us through a large building where we could buy carpets and other such African and Moroccan goods and spices at largely escalated prices. It was reasonably obvious that the tour guide got a commission out of this, he was all of a sudden in no rush to move everybody on.

Most of you are probably aware of my propensity for breaking seemingly unimportant rules. One of the seemingly unimportant rules was not to speak to sellers in the souk (no doubt because they want us to spend money in their shop). I however had bargaining in Africa on my list of things to do in my life and when I saw a nice present I decided to put the seemingly unimportant rule to the side and speak to one about his wares. Now the other thing some of you may know is that I am completely useless at driving a bargain. Anyway to cut a long story short, the seemingly unimportant rule seemed a little more important when I said no to buying said wares and he looked like he was going to knife me with a big curving blade that he no doubt had hidden in his clothing and I also got a fantastic bargain. Here’s what worked for me: never offer anything more than half of what they ask for and walk away and keep walking until they meet a price you are happy with. When he eventually reached a decent price I stopped and paid, I was happy because I thought I was getting a bargain at a 1/4 of his original asking price and he was happy because I paid more than he was willing to drop. A true win win situation!

I may have painted a reasonably poor picture of our time though it was a picture we had been told to expect and as we all know, lowering expectations is key to the enjoyment of such things and with low expectations of a coach tour I was entirely happy with our day, it would have taken a lot to dull the excitement of being on an entirely different continent, especially one as adventurous as Africa. I do think that I will avoid coach tours from now on though and I will certainly be returning to see the rest of Morocco, though a little more intrepidly next time. The ferry left and the swell had picked up a bit at the meeting of the Atlantic and Mediterranean, apparently the ferry is also known by some as the ‘chuck bucket’. I didn’t, but it was certainly an interesting 35 minutes and we walked with a bit of a wobble for the next hour or so after we got off. It was getting on a bit when we arrived back in Spain, but luckily I was able to take a late siesta on the bus before arriving back home for a light dinner of tapas and sangria.