Morocco: Day 1

Time to catch up on the old blog.

So I get out of the boat and take a look around the immediate surroundings of Casablanca. Immediately my first thought is “Wow…sketchy”. And that about summarizes Day 1.

We caught a cab to take us to the train station. I was in an independent travel group with the rich guy (Dammit, prior Facebook arrangements) and since he doesn’t give a crap about money, but is used to getting what he wants, he threw us into a cab without a compteur (counter), and so we got majorly ripped off by the driver. I probably should have said no…but I was so overwhelmed I didn’t know what to do. What should have cost us 8dh a piece cost us 20dh. I hate that rich guy quite a lot sometimes.

We take the train to Marrakesh from Casablanca, which cost the equivalent of $20 one way. At this point, since my budget for Morocco was $100, Marrakesh already seemed like a terrible idea. By the end of the day I would be down about $50 on transportation costs alone.
When we got to Marrakesh, things didn’t look up at all. As we were exiting the train, a “nice” Moroccan man came into our compartment and asked where we were from. The girl next to us who we didn’t know said “Luxembourg”, to which he responded “nice”. We said, stupidly, “United States”, at which point he pretended Miss Luxembourg didn’t exist and proceeded to try to convince us to take a tour of the city with him. We said no at least 5 times: When we were on the train, when we were off the train, when we joined up with the rest of the group while off the train, when we tried to leave the station…you get the point. Anyway, eventually we got out of there.

Yet again, a horde of taxi drivers accosted us and demanded our business. Rich boy, being a rich boy, made us take another cab that ripped us off. We got to the central market place, which was like a scene out of Aladdin. You know when Jasmine walks through the Agrabah marketplace and there are little tents/stands everywhere and people offering her bread and jewels and for some reason a fish? That’s basically a pretty accurate representation of what it’s actually like. People grab you and touch you and demand that you look inside their shops, and when you show the slightest bit of interest, they hound you like you’ve never been hounded before. I took a look at a fez at one point, decided to wait on it, and the shop owner quite literally followed me for three blocks trying to make me come back.

The worst part of the day was actually my best photo-op. So we’re walking through the market when I see a guy who has one of those monkeys on a chain. Now, in retrospect, what I should have done was say “ugh, such animal cruelty. What a disgusting man that is.” However, being thoroughly overwhelmed by being in Africa, my immediate response was more along the lines of “OMGWTF GUYS MONKEY”. The monkey guy took notice of me (I was pretty flamboyant) and said something along the lines of “come take picture with monkey, it’s okay”. I, being new at this whole travel thing, was all gung-ho about it. One of my friends pulled me aside and said “NO. You have to PAY for that”. I didn’t believe her, but I decided to move on. Yet again, however, he kept following us. Eventually I turned back and said “okay, seriously, how much?” Yet again he responded, “no worry, no worry. It’s okay.” I was very hesitant, and turned to go…

And suddenly there was a monkey on top of me. Yes, on top of me. He had THROWN THE MONKEY on me. Well, I decided, I’ve lost. We got some pictures of me smiling with the monkey. I was done, but the monkey guy wasn’t. He ordered the monkey to JUMP ON MY HEAD. I think the only response I could muster was quite literally “Okay. So now there’s a monkey on my head. What do I do with this?” He got the monkey off and I was DONE, so done. I was speed-walking away before he could try to charge me…but then he got my friend. Monkey guy said “it’s okay, it’s okay. I can shake your hand?” So my friend, also being a bit naïve, shook monkey’s guy’s hand…at which point THE MONKEY JUMPED ON HIS HEAD. I have such an immense hatred for monkeys right now, you have no idea. After that, I was still walking, but my friend made the mistake of asking “how much?” God. So the guy tries to demand 200dh a piece, which comes to about $25USD per person. So he wanted $50 for throwing monkeys at us. I was basically like, you have GOT to be kidding me. We got away from him by shoving 100dh at him total. So yeah. Lost another $10 on a monkey. I never want to see another monkey again for as long as I live.

We started to get into the heart of the central marketplace. The streets were so narrow that I basically could have been on a lightrail to a Bronco game with how packed in we all were. And to add on to the problem, it seems that the people in Marrakesh have an obsession with motorcycles. They also have an obsession with riding it through the streets, the marketplaces, the sidewalks, and basically anywhere else that has ground underneath it. So yeah, nearly got killed by a motorcycle at least three times. (Incidentally, we also almost got killed by about 5 cars, since Morocco’s traffic laws don’t appear to, well, exist. We saw maybe two crosswalks in the entire city. Street-crossing was the equivalent to skydiving in both risk and adrenaline.) People were doing a lot of staring, and muttering a lot in French and Arabic. Feeling like a freak show is not fun, so I got back at them by taking their pictures like a racist tourist. What now, bitches?

We were very hungry, but didn’t want to spend a lot of money. A nice man (we assume he was nice because we started only speaking in Spanish to compensate for the stigma of clearly being foreign) guided us to a place where real Moroccans ate, not where tourists ate. We paid about 1/6 of what we’d have paid at a touristy place, so yay. Ordering was weird, though. We didn’t understand anything on the menu except the stuff that was, for some reason, American (I guess Moroccans like a burger as much as the next guy). We eventually ended up pointing at what the next table was eating and saying “I want that”. It ended up being some sort of tuna/egg/potato/tomato salad-ish thing with lamb meatballs and fries on the side. Or maybe the sald was the side and the lamb thing was the main course. I don’t know. I didn’t eat the lamb, but the salad-looking thing was fantastic. We also found a Moroccan flatbread stand and partook in that, along with some Moroccan mint tea. I have had SO much of that tea lately. It never gets old.
We spent most of the rest of the day just wandering around the city. Rich boy bought a whole bunch of frivolous things and didn’t even bother to barter. One great moment, though. He comes back and shows me this “awesome Moroccan hat” he bought for his sister. Turns out it was one of those Jamaican hats with the fake dreadlocks hanging down from it. I laughed my ass off and told him what he’s just bought. He didn’t believe me until I made the rest of the group confirm he’d been scammed. Good God, rich boy. Get a grip.

It hit nightfall and we found a cute place with gelato and, mercifully, wi-fi. I popped on Facebook for a few minutes and indulged in melon-flavored and fig-flavored gelato. I highly recommend them both.

We were on the train again, bracing for yet another 3.5 hour ride back to Casablanca. We met a woman who was actually from Ohio, and had been living in Morocco for many years. She actually had lived about a mile from one of the girls in our group. What are the odds? It was refreshing to hear her take on everything we’d just been through. She told us straight up what we should be paying for what, how to barter, where to eat, etc.
Here’s where things get ultra-sketchy. So we get back to Casablanca around 12:30am. Not exactly the best time to be wandering around any city, let alone a foreign city with a high poverty rate. We knew we needed to get home quickly, but the lady on the train had advised us to walk a few blocks from the train station to get a reasonable taxi driver versus another scam artist. The cab drivers kept following us, which was creepy enough. However, eventually they stopped. We weren’t sure why. Then we looked forward a bit and saw a scene straight out of Rent. There was a line of about 30 homeless men sitting side to side against a wall, smoking, brooding, and/or looking at us. We were not amused. One of the girls turned around and saw that there were suddenly about three guys following close behind us. They were yelling “hey, sweetheart” in English, despite there being two guys in our group. We sprinted the hell away. Fearing for our lives at this point, we hailed three cabs (the GOOD cabs) and went home.
Turns out we were the lucky ones. Another SAS kid had been mugged that day. Four guys surrounded him and took everything he had.
So yeah. $50 out with no souvenirs or pleasant memories, my first day in Morocco was sketchy to say the least.