I decided to leave it there with the last post to give you a break and
start a fresh with the next part of the story. This one is called the start 30 hour
bus. Travelling from Madrid to Accra January 2012.
On the train, from Tangiers to
Casablanca we were offered yoghurt from a little girl, then she stared at us along with her mother, almost the whole way. And we slept. It was out of my
control, my eyes were so heavy I must have slept for 3 hours. When I woke up I felt
like I could run a marathon. I needed that sleep. There are so many travel
guides and stories to scare travellers, don’t sleep, hide your belonging;, keep
an eye out all the time. I slept like I was in a coma, I think James slept too,
even if he was awake he would have been too tired to do anything anyway.
Sometimes I think those stories are just there to scare you. The train we were on passed through Rabat, a marble railway station. Cream marble and very well dressed business
people, such a contrast to everything else we had seen along the way.
We pulled up outside an entrance in an alleyway. The cab driver knew we were looking for a hostel, and what we got
when we arrived was pretty close to it. 2 very, I don’t want to call them
dodgy, 2 interesting bedfellows, 2 men who had a striking appearance
that did not resonate feelings of trust. There we go. James and I, dazed from
everything, decided to book one room, with twin beds for 2 nights to find our
feet. We paid in advance and were taken up to our room. Now, this part I feel
kind of bad about, I hold a level of guilt, but I feel like the whole situation
of our time in Casablanca the guilt can be somewhat resolved. One of the greasy
men from the reception took us up to the room, insisting on carry my bag. (I
work in a hotel and often carry the bags of the guests up to their rooms, and
have no problem carrying my own bag). But he insisted and I didn’t want to be
rude. Well. He took us up to our room and it was nice enough. As he was leaving
and we were thanking him, he started saying farmey
farmey farmey. What? Sorry I don’t understand. He started rubbing his hands
together and continued saying far-mey
far-mey farrrr- meeee. Oh right, well, we had nothing. Not even euros to
give him, so we apologised and thanked him for bringing up our bags. He trudded
off, very unhappy with us.
The taxi ride from the station
over to the hotel was less than brilliant. I don’t know what I was expecting of
Morocco or Casablanca, but the amount of filth and rubbish blew me away. We
needed to find our feet, but I had notions of Casablanca being like the movie,
sunset romances and Humphrey Boggart, not rubbish. It was all white rubbish,
like plastic bags and paper. The buildings were are very similar in style to
Madrid, but nowhere near as high, only 2-3 stories, as opposed to what seemed
like 6-7 stories in Madrid. I also noticed that the buildings were white as
opposed to more of a cream colour in Madrid. I guess that makes sense as
Casablanca is white house.
I don’t remember much else about
it, apart from being taken by the taxi somewhere we weren’t expecting to go. We
had no say in the matter either, he was driving and we were in his control. He
parked out the back of an alley way entrance. And that was it.
When James and I came to our
senses we realised we didn’t want to spend 2 nights there. We wanted to keep
going, apart from the shock, it still wasn’t ‘Africa’ wild and free like we had
been waiting for. We weren’t in ‘it’ yet and we wanted to be, a little too impatiently.
I had a shower, and James went
downstairs to the ‘reception’ desk to ask if we could check out the next day,
not 2 days later, we’d already paid, but we only wanted one night. He came back
up and said well, we can check out
tomorrow, but the guy said he has already taken all the cash in the til to the
bank, and can’t give us any back. We are to go to the manager in the morning
and he will sort it out for us. Ok, well, we don’t really have a choice
then.
When we had freshened up, we ventured
out. I don’t remember carrying a map, but I’d told James the best way not to
get lost was to look behind you when you turn a corner, then you’ll be able to
find your way back easier. It’s not very good advice, but it had been working
fine for me in my 6 months of travel leading up to this trip, so why shouldn't it
work now?
We walked through the streets. Avoiding
the rubbish, we were heading for the bus station, as the train could take us no
further. The bus station was at the end of small road, there is a small stall
type shop, selling newspapers and snacks, a small waiting area with about 30 seats,
a baggage delivery desk for larger items and a booking desk. We spoke to someone about traveling as far south as
the bus could take us. We told her we were heading for the border to Mauritania.
Before this trip I hadn’t even heard of Mauritania, or the Western Sahara, I didn’t
know anything about Mali or Burkina Faso, and suddenly we were about to be
there.
The lady behind the desk had very
little English, but more than we expected. On a small scrap of paper
she wrote down the details of the next bus. We had a look, and decided to have
something to eat in a nearby restaurant and decide on our plans. She told us we
should book it soon as it does tend to fill up.
We went to what seemed like a kebab
shop, it was open on 3 sides except for the counter. We sat in the fast food
style restaurant seating, ate our dinner while cats ran around the floor and
contemplated the price of the ticket, verses our alternatives. For about AU$50 each we
could get from Casablanca to Daklah and it would take 8 hours. That’s ok I guess,
8 hours on a bus, at least we’d be there by the end of the next day. Then if all went well we'd be on the Iron Ore train riding into the depths of Mauritania by the weekend. We kept eating,
talking, taking it all in and deciding.
Then, one of us realised she hadn’t
just written the times on the sheet, she’d written the dates as well. This bus wasn’t
going to take us 8 hours, it was going to take us 32 hours. Over 30 hours on a bus
is a very different story. After the initial shock and fits of laughter, then
more shock and the reality sunk in, we’d come this far, what’s a little more
adventure. Plus what’d we’d had planned for the next 5 weeks, 30 hours on a bus
through the desert wasn’t such a big deal, was it?
We walked back
to the bus station, confirmed the dates and times, and bought our tickets. The next
morning we found the manager of the hotel, as requested the night before. We
wanted our money back. Well, what a surprise, he was in the real entrance to
the hotel and what a palace it was. Covered in marble and chandeliers hanging
from the ceiling. We were definitely duped by the taxi driver and the 2 odd
fellows at the reception in the alleyway the night before. They did a good job taking us in
through the service entrance, if they’d brought us in the front door we’d have
turned around and walked out. I don’t remember how much we paid for the room,
but it wasn’t that nice.
We spoke to the
manager and told him our conversation the night before, he apologised, there
was nothing he could do, and he couldn’t refund our money. But he did give
James a note on a scrap of paper that had the date and his signature, and it
said that the hotel owed us one night’s stay on them to replace the money they couldn’t
give us back. HA. An IOU from a swanky hotel. Almost 3 and a half years later James still has that scrap of
paper in his wallet, with no intention of going back.
We packed up
our bags and left the hotel for the bus. I remember spending the morning
searching and searching for a place that had a printer, but I have no memory of
what we needed to print. We walked everywhere, it wasn’t a confirmation for the
bus, it wasn’t a hotel booking, as once again we had no hotel booked, you’d
think we would have learnt.
We got on the
bus, it was almost full. We had one banana each, a coke and a mars bar each. That
was it, for 30 hours. We guessed the bus would stop somewhere but we had no one
to ask, and no way of finding out. James was in the aisle, and I was on the
window. There was a man on the other side of the aisle next to James who had
spent some time in Canada and had picked up on us speaking in English, but we didn't find that out until later.
The bus pulled
away from the terminal and we were on our way. Our journey was completely in
their hands. I was still writing in the same diary I had bought 2 months
earlier in Warsaw. There is a page with a little dot – Casablanca, and another
dot a bit further down the page, Daklah. But we had no way of knowing if that was
actually where we were heading. We could have been going in the other direction
completely. We drew maps on the back of the seats in front of us and giggled, worried. At least we didn’t have any accommodation booked, so if we
were going the wrong way, we weren’t going to waste any more money on accommodation
we didn’t use.
About 3-4 hours
into the journey the bus stopped in Marrakesh, the driver made an announcement
and everyone started getting off the bus. We looked at each other. We were both
starving, but had he said a 15minute break, or be back at quarter past? The man
who had spent time in Canada told us to go get something to eat, there might
not be another chance for a while.
I remember at
one point James said to me, what if they
take our bags off, what if they steal our things? All I could say was, well there is nothing we can do about it
now.
In that short
break we ventured across the street to experience our first taste (EVER) of
street food. We had the most amazing bread, Turkish style flat bread, like a focaccia,
and a tagine. Wow. What an experience that was in itself. We bought a post card
for mum, and got back on the bus. When would it stop again? Another 4 hours? Were we going in the right direction?
Part 3 to come.
