m is for morocco.

Originally uploaded by cup of jo

our stay at lizzie's complete, kara and i decided to head to granada for the weekend before skipping continents briefly before our next farm [from which i now write].

we headed out from lizzie's in the early morning and arrived in granada around 10 am. from the bus station we caught a bus to the train station, from which i planned to do the impossible-- read a map directing us to the cheapest hostel in the city. we got on bus number 33 and kept out a clear eye for signs of the train station. literally, signs. after the first half hour had come and passed, things started to look a bit grim, but it wasn't until we were the last two passengers on the bus that it became suddenly clear that we must have missed the train station by about 20 miles in the opposite direction. the bus driver said something to the effect of "you have to get off now" at which point i replied [in my highly rehearsed spanish] "donde esta la estacion de trenes?"

his response: head in hands.

not exactly what i was looking for, but at least we were communicating.

after that he went on to say that the train station was 30 minutes in the opposite direction and that we would have to pay another fare-- a whopping 1.10 euros...it broke the bank-- to get back. we paid up while mr. bus driver and his bus driver friend amused themselves by making fun of us.
his friend kept saying "calle" and making a little walking motion with his fingers. then they would look at each other, keep laughing, and do it again.
i still can't decide if they were laughing with or at us, but i have a strong feeling that it was of the latter.
regardless, we joined them.
stupid american girls, us.

after finally making it back into town, we decided to settle for the whatever hostel we could find, and fortunately for us it was rather cheap and lovely. we spent the rest of the day ambling around granada-- visiting the albyacin district, watching live flamenco dancing. we tried to make it to the alhambra palace, but by the time we had gotten there the tickets were sold out, so we decided to wake early the next morning and go, before catching our bus.
turned out that we didn't have enough time to actually see the alhambra-- they divvy up groups into 30 minute walk-throughs and ours happened to be right when we had to walk back to our hostel-- but we did manage to see some of the other ruins and the beautiful gardens. it was okay, though, because we met two english girls who had mistakenly bought their tickets at two separate times and therefore couldn't view the alhambra together, so we gave them ours before dashing off.

from granada we caught the bus to algeciras [right on the coast overlooking africa], and from algeciras we took a ferry across the strait of gibraltar into tanger morocco.
being the only two english speakers and passengers on foot aboard the ferry, we were ushered aside on making land so that the captain could warn us of the possible danger [since we're such rich americans...although, jesting aside, one american dollar amounts to 8.5 moroccan dirhams. picture this: a medium pizza for about 3 bucks. i have friends who would wet themselves] and escort us off of the boat and onto dry land. we didn't arrive until well after dark, roughly 9 o'clock. that actually ended up being to our benefit because the ports are almost always flooded with guides who are at your heels with offers to show you around the city. lucky for us there was only one waiting outside at that time of night.

his name: mostapha.[a native moroccan, he spoke seven different languages in order to support himself and his wife as a guide. his favorite thing to say was "you got it?," and you better believe that he expected a response. he was also in the habit of making us take pictures about 1,256 times over the course of the next day, and whenever it was picture time he would tell kara and i to "make a picture." he really was truly lovely, though, and asked us throughout the day if we 'were feeling morocco.' yes, we were feeling it.]
before you could say 'tom's your uncle' he was following us down to the street offering to be our guide for the following day and get us a taxi to our hotel that night. most everyone that we had spoken to recommended accepting a guide because not only are they really cheap, they help ward of the hecklers. we accepted and he led us to a taxi, dropped us off at our hotel, and told us to meet him outside the next morning at 9.
we checked in and then headed out to grab a bite to eat, ending up at a little hole-in-the-wall cafe where we dined on paella and seafood and watched ET Hollywood Entertainment about Highschool Musical III [barf]. i don't even watch that when i'm in america.
oh, the
eye
ron
ee.

the next morning we set our alarm to grab the complementary breakfast and be outside of the hotel by 9 to meet mostapha.
thinking that we were late, we rushed down stairs to see if he was there.
nada.
we waited.
nada.
then we asked one of the security guards [not of our hotel, we're not that posh] the time and he said that is was 7, not 9, but 7 am.
apparently we hadn't set the time back after crossing over from spain. so back to the hotel we headed to snooze until we actually were supposed to be up.

at 9 we finally did meet mostapha, who led us up the city and into the market that takes place every sunday. it was busy, dirty, lowd, crowded, real. there were herbs on the side of the street, chickens ready to be taken home and butchered, spices everwhere. he took us into the men's work building that was funded by the government. the sexes are separate not only in work but in most aspects of life as well. in church they sit on separate sides of the room, and one thing that really stood out to me was how few women were out on the streets. the men out-numbered them 20:1, easily. honestly, we did so much over the course of that one day that i have a hard time actually recalling everything that took place, but regardless, it's been my favorite day so far.

some of what i can remember--
part of the 'package' was having a taxi driver at our disposal who led us throughout the city wherever mostapha wanted to go. nearing the end of the day he took us to a cave where some random guy dressed us up like peasants and made us hold water jugs standing next to a fountain. this is not a lie. then an old man told us to dip our hands in the water and that by doing so, we were guaranteed matrimony within 2 weeks.
needless to say, i haven't had any offers of marriage.
yet.

after the cave, mostapha took us to meet his friend who had about 4 or 5 camels. kara and i were under the impression that we were just going to pet the camels and "make" a few pictures, but apparently mostapha had other ideas. before we knew it, we were riding them across a busy road and into a field [mind you, at this point it was nearing the end of the day, cold, and drizzling] and paying 10 euros a pop to look like we had been dragged through a hedge backwards about 12 times. that was by far the most cliched touristy thing that i've done so far and i would like to keep it that way, thankyou.

mostapha was a wealth of information, and no doubt we saw more in one day with him than we would have in three or four days left to ourselves. at the end of the day he took us back to our hotel and we said our goodbyes. the rest of our stay we stayed relatively close to the hotel, and only wandered around a bit. mostapha warned us not to venture into the old part of town on our own, and we took his advice. even walking through the newer parts of the city was pretty exhausting. the men are no doubt the worst hecklers that i've ever encountered.

on tuesday morning we headed to the port and took a ferry across to tarifa, and from tarifa we were to take the bus to algeciras, from where we would take the bus to malaga, find a hostel for the night, and the next morning take the bus from malaga to castel de ferro to our next farm.
we ended up missing our bus in tarifa by about 3 minutes, only to find out that the next one didn't come for another 2 hours and 40 something-odd minutes.
except only that it didn't, because once again we had forgotten to change our clocks. it actually came in 40 somthing-odd minutes, but we waited the full time. once we realized that not only was the bus not coming, but that i wasn't the time that we thought it was, we had to wait another hour and a half to catch the next bus.
so basically we waited about 4 hours when 40 minutes would have sufficed.
ha.

from there, everything went as planned and we arrived on this farm on wednesday the 29th with another wwoofer, chantelle from australia. since then both kara and chantelle have left, and i'm here for another week before heading out on the last stretch of my trip to travel up spain and into italy before flying back into granada and out again to the States.

i hope that each and every one of you are doing beautifully well
and i hope to see you all very soon,
as mostapha would say,

sha allah. [god willing]

.j