Frontier Morocco

Entering Morocco through a back route proved to be an interesting way to see the countryside and to experience this land from a less than touristy angle. We are traveling in a group of three: Ted, Marina and I. Ted is an American from Seattle who imploded his quintessential American dream lifestyle to travel the world and seek other truths. And he plays an excellent game of scrabble! Marina is a bold and eloquent Argentinean woman who is traveling for a few months with her sister. When her sister decided to get a job and work for a month in Barcelona, Marina decided to join our troupe. She is a cook by profession and loves analyzing the Moroccan food we encounter along the way.

The three of us have been adventuring together for nineteen days now. We are excellent travel partners, all three very easy going and down to earth. We have shared many meals and stories, and I am enjoying the laid back company. We have very little set itinerary and like to sleep in. We are not gung-ho tourists racing out to see the next temple market or monument, but rather prefer to drift through the day and see what we bump into. I like that.

So, we caught the ferry over to the African subcontinent from Almeria, Spain to a little rust bucket of a town called Melilla. This is not the main tourist route and we chose it for several reasons, among them being that it was the easiest southern coastal city in Spain to reach by train from Valencia and the additional journey down to Gibralter would add time and money to the voyage. The hostels in Morocco just across the narrow point of the Straits of Gibralter are also embarrassingly expensive. Not so in Melilla, since no one goes there.

Melilla is a city controlled by Spain. After departing the ferry and heartily welcoming each other to Africa and to Morocco, we discovered that to actually enter Morocco we would have to take a bus to the “Frontier” and walk across the border checkpoint. This proved to be a very interesting journey, straight from a movie set. The street was lined with cars facing every erratic angle possible. Old rust buckets that belched out plumes of noxious gasses, they inched their way toward the checkpoint through throngs of people walking along the sides of the narrow streets. Many cars were stopped or broken down, with lines of other cars waiting behind them. I saw a few cars that were parked and abandoned perpendicular to the road. How were people getting around these cars?

Once we reached the checkpoint, the three of us got in a slow moving line through the passport control. We waited in the heat with all our luggage until our turn came. We were shifted to another line, and then finally shuffled inside to get a photo taken. Then back to the original line. When we passed through the checkpoint, along with people carrying all kinds of big tattered bags full of goods, the language immediately shifted from Spanish to French, things became decidedly more Muslim, street hawkers attacked with ferocity, and the quality of life on the street dissolved into a feeling of disorganization and debris. There was an edgy feeling about the culture here, as though you should clutch your wallet a little more tightly in your fist, avert your eyes, and don’t talk to strangers. We hopped on a bus going to the city of Fes, and spent the day people watching and trying to get safely where we were going without incident or scam.

Located in the northern center of Morocco, Fes was similar in flavor to the Frontier town we came from, busy and chaotic with constant wheeling and dealing from people on the streets. The greatness in Fes was, in my opinion, the interior beauty of the international youth hostel where we stayed and the open kindness of the owner, Abdullah. This man was Muslim, and the building itself was as well, decorated with ornate tiles on the walls and beautiful carpets and tapestries hanging everywhere. There was a large interior courtyard filled with plants that had a very comfortable and friendly atmosphere. We spent two nights there, sitting up late and chatting with other travelers. During the day we took a tour of the city, with a guide upon Abdullah’s recommendation. We saw a ceramics factory, a tannery, a few famous Mosques and buildings. I am in love with the architecture here, the ceramic tiles with such beautiful mathematical geometry upon them. The designs seem so unique to me. I spent the day learning about the Muslim religion and traditions while talking to our extremely spiritual and pious guide, Rashit, who badmouthed women and took bribes from store clerks every time he thought we weren’t looking.