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gods elevator, ¿going down?

After we left Mustaffa we had an incredibly good and cheap meal near the port while we waited for our bus to take off. there was a row of restuarants and we ate at the only one with tourists. not only that, but all the other restaurants were full of men and only men. men are scary. its even scarier to be the only woman. plus i had just been hissed at, so we stuck with the tourists.

the bus was surprisingly modern and cushy, just like the buses we take in spain. we got to fes (fez?) late-ish and the bus driver led us to a taxi driver who spoke only french and arabic. so we made up a few words in french to let him know we had no idea where we were going. we just wanted a hotel that had a shower. Now, we're not being picky tourists in the sense that we want a shower in the room, we just wanted a shower in the building.

the cab man took us to three before we found one that had rooms left... the room scared the bejuses out of me - there were stains on the beds and the tub was scary and dthere was no shower curtain and no towels.

so we went walking around to look for another one and within 5 minutes a 'guide' found us and took us to two hotels - one was full and the other was a 4 star hotel!!! and it was affordable! $40, i think. woo, it was fancy. we even ordered room service because we were too nervous and lazy to go out onto the street at dark.

when the bellhop brought our bags up to the room (i mean, really, it was a 4 star hotel!) jose was trying to ask him where he could buy cigarettes. even though the word in french is 'cigarette' we couldnt get the idea across. we even put on a quick one-act-play to demonstrate buying cigarettes and the guy just didnt get the idea. jose accompanied him downstairs to the receptionist while the bellhop explained to the receptionist that he thought jose wanted to buy hash! somehow jose got it all straightened out.

the next morning our 'guide' from the night before was waiting for us outside and he took us to his 'brother' (they didnt look alike at all) whose spanish was not too good and his english was even worse. he did a much better job as tour guide and took us to a really cool factory that makes porcelains and tiles and mosaics. it was really cool and they do it all by hand. of course we couldnt afford to buy anything...
but he also took us to some stupid rug store, a store that sells traditional moroccon dress at tourist prices, and a cool but touristy restaurant at tourist prices. of course at all of these places, our guide gets comission if we buy something.

while our guide at lunch, his other 'brother' took us to see an open air factory where they have sheepskins and they put the wool in one place and they take the skin and soften it in big clay things. the whole place smelled so awful and the people were so dirty from working there. it looked like a really large and flatened out honeycomb. on our way in we saw a man in his underwear washing himself in a public water thing and on our way out we saw a store and a side street completely full of sheeps wool. do you know how much wool it takes to fill a store?

back with our regular guide, we made him understand we didnt want to go to anymore 'traditional' stores because we had no money to buy things and that we wanted to see the market. it took a lot of convincing but he finally took us. woah. it was so nerve racking and it was bustling with people and donkeys and cars and people yelling and donkeys hee-hawing and wheezing and cars honking and there was so much to look at. there were women covered in henna and men selling live snails out of wheelbarrows and stalls full of shiny silver teapots and anything you can imagine and lots of things you cant.

1 comentario

mouna -

hi i read about your experience in morocco, and i was very shocked, i know that spanish people doesn't like moroccan at all , and you guys always treat moroccan like shit look at you,poor poeple that's always how it is if you are cheap and want everything for free, of course if you invest more you'll get better treatements that's how it works all over the world and even here in canada or even spain where i've been there for more than 6 times ho gosh you have a lot of poor poeple too go to sivilla, huelga, cordova,madrid,.... me and my family had even been robed and got almost all of our money gone, they broke into our car and took everything, in spain of course, no one wanted to speak english or frensh, they are rasist at least in morocco people try to understand what others want to say in your country you guys don't even boder i seriousely hate going there, and for sure hate spanish who hate moroccan's, anyway i got to go but seriousely i had the a wors experience in spain but i d idn't go and post everywhere so people can read about spain and spanish people
next time try to post a good experience not a bad one ok
bye