My friends Alex, Paige, Oresta, Marisol, Hector/Mauricio, and I left Santander at 9:45pm Thursday, April 26th headed for Málaga in the region of Andalucia, Spain.
Oresta and Marisol
Alex, Paige, and I
We landed around 11:30pm and caught the last bus of the night into the bus station in town. The bus we were going to take the next morning headed for Algeciras (we were taking the ferry out of that city to Tangier, Morocco) was at 5am, so we didn't book a hostel and just planned on kicking it at the bus station all night. Well our plans were quickly changed when we found out the bus station closed at 1am and didn't open up again until it was time for our bus to load at 4:45am. Ugh :/
Our first idea was to go across the street to the huge bus/train station that also had a massive shopping center and movie theater attached to it. We found some massage recliners in the shopping center and decided to camp out there. Mine smelled HORRIBLE - like body odor and italian salad dressing :( so I found myself a nice spot on the floor. Then we got kicked out at 1:15am, since the entire station was closing for the night...
So next stop was a hostel to see if we could get a cheap room or two for a few hours until we needed to get on the bus. The guy told us it would be 90 euros total for 5 of us, and we talked him down to 60, but the majority of the group decided it was a waste of $ for 3 hours, so we ended up on some park benches in Málaga, until it got freezing cold and we moved to the side of a nearby building to shield ourselves from the wind. We also made a 5 person snuggle pile to stay warm. Around 3:20am we started hearing heavy and uneven breathing noises. I immediately got frightened, but we all decided it was just a speaker backfiring from the building. It continued unevenly for about 10 minutes and included the occasional fart noise, until finally a man got over the loud speaker and announced we needed to leave and there was a nearby park we could sleep in.
We walked by the park and there were several transients sleeping in it - awesome. We all officially had our first night on the street. We made our way back to the bus station and snuck into a bench right outside it and sat there until 4:15am or so - then we got kicked out by a security guard and were forced to go stand in the front of the building until 4:45am.
Queue smelly, belligerent, drunk dude who decided to come harass us and the other people waiting to catch the bus. He was stumbling around and pointing his fingers toward each of us at different times shouting in English and Spanish depending on the moment. He stunk to high heaven. Luckily there were a bunch of taxi drivers and a nice couple standing around, so we all felt pretty safe and he became a sort of weird entertainment for us while we waited :)
We then boarded our bus from Málaga to Algeciras and arrived there at 7:30am. We found a hostel for the night and then set out to buy ferry tickets and make our way to Tangier, Morocco. Our ferry was really nice and we all were super excited to step foot in Africa :)
Hector/Mauricio ready to go with his ferry ticket
Marisol, Alex, Oresta, Paige, and I
Hector/Mauricio in his very own seat
Paige and I (we covered our hair to try and be respectful)
Marisol, Oresta, Paige, Alex, and I
The pretty ferry!
Alex and I
The hills of Africa in the distance!
Tangier is 2 hours behind Spain, so when we got there it was around 11:30am. We cleared customs and boarded a bus to take an hour ride into the city of Tangier. Once we stepped foot off the bus, it was crazyyyy. We started being haggled by 2 guys who wanted to be our tour guides for the day "for a small tip". We repeatedly told them no and they kept following us down the street until I very clearly explained to them that I would not be paying them any kind of fee for their services even if they followed us. I know they were just trying to make a living, but they certainly did not want to stop even when they were hearing "no". We met some Morocco natives on the ferry over who were from a different city and they were very nice and helped us get to the beach before they went on their way to catch a train to their hometown.
The beach we found out, is not a place for women...we all put our feet in the African waters and then realized men who had been nearby were slowly drifting closer, and there were no other women in sight. So we grabbed our shoes and hoofed it out of there fast. One guy walked most of the way up the beach behind us, but we were okay. It was beautiful on the beach while it lasted!
Marisol and Oresta
Me
After that we decided to get some lunch and looked around for a safe place to do so. We found a restaurant with outside tables and decided to give it a try. I got 'pescado tagine' - which I found out was basically fish (a whole one, head, eyes, tail, scales, bones, etc) with carrots and potatoes - and many of you know just how much I loooove cooked carrots :/ Oh well - I ate the potatoes and what I could of the fish and then mooched some cous cous off of my friends' meals. A poor man was able to eat all of my cooked carrots with some bread and get a free meal of it afterwards, so I felt good.
The very interesting part about lunch though...apparently we were just walking billboards screaming "American" - understandable since 2 of my friends are very blonde haha, but our bodies were covered and 3 of us had our hair covered. We had a few men attempting to approach our table so relentlessly during lunch that the waiters from the restaurant had to stand around our table to protect us and shoo them off. They told us our meals were on the house for our troubles, but we refused and explained to them how thankful we were that they were kind enough to keep us safe, and then paid them.
We spoke in Spanish almost the entire day and told people we were from Spain rather than America to get some of the people off our backs and keep a lower profile. It did help a little bit, but it still was not a great idea to go to Morocco without a guy - people had no qualms about approaching or speaking to us wherever we went.
After lunch we went to the markets, and that is where I think all of us felt the safest and had the most fun. The street merchants were desperate to sell us things so we learned the hard way that we needed to be considerate of how much we actually wanted to buy something before we asked them how much something costs. Once you ask a price they will haggle with you until kingdom come as long as they get some money from you in the end. It really was kind of fun and interesting to be in the markets. One older man in the store kept pulling scarfs off of his shelves, opening them to show us and then exclaiming "wow wow!" to get our attention to buy them. It was pretty hilarious actually - and it worked because I bought some really pretty scarfs from him :)
Eventually we got finished in the markets and walked around a bit more. We were pretty over-stimulated at this point and decided it was time to catch the ferry home for the night. It took almost 45 minutes to walk back to the bus station and find our bus - since we found out our bus doesn't even pick us up at the actual bus station - which we couldn't read anywhere because it was all in Arabic. We ended up flagging the bus down in the street as we saw it passing by and the driver pointed to a corner and picked us and some other people up there. It was an hour back to port from there, and the countryside was beautiful. The city was pretty dirty and there were a lot of dilapidated parts - however there were well-manicured and pretty parts as well. In the country side there were rolling green hills with houses every so often, and lots of people sitting in the fields with their herds of livestock. It was a really interesting contrast from the city.
Once we got back to port we needed to clear customs so we could get on the ferry. I waited in line with my customs form and passport, and was called up by one of the immigration police officers.
He spoke to me in Spanish, so I responded and he immediately shot his head up, sort of surprised, and said "¿hablas español?" (you speak Spanish?). I said yes and then he told me to move over from the customs kiosk window and stand in the doorway of the kiosk for him. I didn't think too much of it and just did what I was told. He then asked me what my phone number was and when I am returning back to Morocco again. I was confused, and couldn't really remember the number at the time since it's new and I only have it while I'm here in Spain - so I told him my phone was dead, which it was, and that I didn't remember the number but I could try to get it from one of my friends if I needed to provide it in order to clear customs. And also explained that was the only day we would be in Morocco. He said that is wasn't necessary for customs, but that the phone number was for him because my friends and I are going to come back to Morocco to stay with him so he can show us the "real Morocco" and so he needs my phone number to contact me. I quickly started explaining I would not be returning to Morocco and that I am only in Europe for a short time so it's not possible. He then asked where I am living in Spain, what I am studying in school, how long I have been in Spain and how long I have left, and if I had a boyfriend... I answered all of those questions as vaguely as possible - other than the boyfriend one, which I was very clear to stress that I did indeed have a very serious boyfriend and was quite unavailable. He said, "are you sure? Because I will give you anything you want." I said I was sure haha. Eeeeeeeek. We parted with him taking a long hard look at my personal information on my passport, he stamped it, and then said "eres muy bonita, Natalie Yvonne West". I was sufficiently freaked out for the day after that, and we went on our way to the ferry - and I can't say I was sad haha.
I am really glad to have had the experience, and certainly enjoyed parts of it. It was the biggest culture shock I've had to date though, and I learned a lot, and really felt unprotected and lucky that nothing bad happened to any of us while we were there. Not because people in Morocco are out to get me, there were some good and bad just like everywhere else, but times are significantly harder for a lot of people, and customs are night-and-day different in many aspects. It wasn't appropriate for 5 girls to be out in town walking on their own, and that is probably why we received a lot of unwanted attention. Live and learn though! In the future I don't think I will return to Tangier, although I would really love to explore Fez, Marrakech, and Casablanca someday - with Travis, and a few other males in tow :)
We were sincerely exhausted and slept very well when we got back to Algeciras, Spain. Oh, and Hector/Mauricio doesn't have any pictures in Morocco because he was too scared to come out of my purse, and quite frankly I wasn't about to dig around for him when I was explicitly told by a Morocco native to keep my items in my purse, keep my purse zipped up, and have my hand on it at all times.
More to come in my next post about Sevilla, Granada, and more Málaga :) xo
Here's a few more pics from Tangier and surrounding areas though:
I'm really happy you got to be exposed to a culture that is so obviously different to our own! It is an experience that I'm sure will not be long forgotten...and I'm super happy you got home safely!!!
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