Eid Mubarak!

 

Eid Mubarak!

Two basic posts here – the second will come first – tomorrow is Eid, which is I think a commemoration of the sacrifice of Issac (which didn’t actually happen, thankfully).  It’s kind of like Christmas – Moroccans everywhere (I assume Muslims everywhere) head home to celebrate with their families.  Because it is such a big holiday, there is little to no public transportation (other than cabs) in Morocco on Wednesday.  This posed a problem for our little group and folks scrambled a bit to manage.  Stephie (not Stephanie, as I had called her) and I grabbed a ‘gran taxi’ (intercity) first thing this morning to get out of Chefchaouen, which was the Bermuda triangle of available busses, and headed to Ouzane, an hour and a half south.  As mentioned, Moroccans don’t travel particularly well and one fellow (of the six of us passengers in the Mercedes) managed to puke in his mouth and hold it there till we pulled over.  His buddy had some oils that cleared the air and we were good to go.  From Ouzane it was easy-peasy to get onto a bus to Meknes, where we figured no problem, overnight there, me head to Casa and her to Marrakesh in the afternoon Wednesay.  Then we learned about the lack of public transport Wednesday, and the unavailability of busses from Meknes on Tuesday.  So I parted ways with Stephie (who was a great travel buddy!) and took a petite cab (their city cab) to the train station on the other side of town.  Once there it was a quick ticket nab, found I would be in town soon enough to get into the youth hostel I stayed in before, and am now sitting in the same room!  The train ride was comfortable and easy, I met a few Moroccans my age heading home and we parceled together enough Spanish French and English (mostly from one fellow) to share a few thoughts.  I am behind on my languages – his fourth (English, after Arabic French and Spanish) rivaled my second (Spanish).  I have tomorrow to kill and am thinking of trying to find a laundromat – cause some of my clothes are dirty.  And I have little better to do, Casasblanca is basically a big polluted metropolis where nothing will be open tomorrow.  A day to recharge hopefully. 

Secondly – yesterday the Aussies, Stephie and I tried to summit the mountain (hill) behind Chefchaouen.  We walked for a while, decided to just go straight up, and turns out the hill was protected by magic sleeping beauty style – pricklies, rocks, no paths whatever, and far far higher than it looked.  But we made it, hoping to find a path, but we saw that we were on the wrong hill, no path, so we scooted down the far side.  This is after the Aussies wisely gave up and headed back for some mint tea.  It was a hard climb, but it afforded us some great views. 

Finally, the day after tomorrow I head to Tunis, and then to Egypt in all likelihood.  Not sure how or where yet, but I’m thinking about moving more slowly this time, and continuing to work on attaching myself to crews, and being open to the world.  Hope you all are well!  You are on my mind! 

The path we wanted

Chefchaouen ) a long way away