Between a Rock and an Easy Place (Gibraltar & Spain)

By ferry we crossed the narrow stretch of water that is the choke point of the whole Mediterranean which separates the two continents of Africa and Europe. I’m not sure if I let out a breath of relief or the sigh of a sad goodbye as we cruised across Spain with Morocco in the rearviewmirror.

Our first stop in Spain was the extravagantly named  La Linea de la Concepcion, only because it accommodation was half the price of Gibraltar, a ten minute walk across the border, and the purpose of our visiting the area.

One of the best perks of world travel is the education in world politics and history. It’s not the reason I travel, but it’s certainly a welcome side effect. Gibraltar is a great example of this.

Here’s the deal real simple; Gibraltar is a small chunk of land on the southern coast of Spain. It is known as ‘The Rock’, but is actually a small mountain. It is a colony of Briton, and is under UK rule, because of its strategic location at the mouth of the Mediterranean. They have the pound, English pubs and British accents. Of course Spain says its theirs, and is a point of tension between the two nations. Because it is such a small parcel of land, with a population of just a few thousand, neither the UK or Spain consider it a big enough problem to risk diplomatic ties. Occasionally the tension will flare and the border will be closed, like earlier this year when the UK built an artificial reef which encroached Spanish waters. We spoke to a local and asked him about another recent event, a Spanish ship entering a small harbour of Gibraltar, and his reply was that it should have been shot at and sunk. Yep, the Gibraltar’s, especially the old folks, hate the Spanish since the days when there were siege attempts and the border was closed, leaving them cornered on their little rock for thirty years. Nowadays the people of Gibraltar want to be independent but neither the UK or Spain would ever allow it.

Maybe trivial from a distance, but not when your walking through tense immigration to get to such a tiny pocket of land. The only access to the town of Gibraltar is a road/footpath that crosses the airport tarmac, so when flights arrive the road and walkway is closed while the plane lands. Photo above is me the tarmac, pretty strange.

The limestone ‘rock’ is impressive, and at the top there are great views to be had of the Gibraltar straight, the Spanish coastline and mountains, the town of Gibraltar below basically next to the Spanish town of La Linea de la Concepcion, and on a clear day, Africa. Up the top of the rock are the famous apes which roam about unaware of their own political connotations; the popular legend on Gibraltar is that so long as the apes sit atop the rock, the English will remain (inspired by several siege attempts that were said to be thwarted by the apes alerting the Gibraltan defenders of the Spanish whereabouts and night time movements. )

We crossed back over into La Linea and explored the little Spanish town, having a great meal at the first of many tapas bars we were set to encounter. Tapas is a series of small dishes as opposed to a big meal of the one thing. It’s a great idea, and the food itself was amazing; chorizo sausage, goats cheese, ham (or prosciutto, really), paella, bulls tail, and much more. In most of these restaurants, as well as in supermarkets and butchers, ancient looking legs of ham are either hanging up on the wall or locked into place ready for carving.

 

 

 

 

 

Photos of legs of ham, and tapas of chorizo and bulls tail.

 

From La Linea we travelled to Seville, the capital of the Andalusia region.  If tapas wasn’t enough, it was here that we discovered the joys of the much loved ‘Churros con Chocolate’ – a Spanish addiction to churros dipped in lava thick hot chocolate. Rin was in heaven, and we found a great little bar packed with locals that we made our downtime hangout in Seville.

The parts of southern Spain we saw were nice, pleasant, pretty – all positive. It was just so easy compared to the previous month in Morocco. The crowds of people were never quite as crowded and bustling, my wallet and camera never felt so safe and secure in my zipped up pockets, and my mind wasn’t constantly monitoring my surroundings at the same time as being blown out my ears. So we stayed out late, wandered slowly around the quant streets, ate tapas dishes at several bars, saw the big cathedral (third biggest in the world), visited the bull fighting ring (oldest in Spain), and watched paper thin slices of mouth-watering ham being carved off hoofed pigs legs in deli’s.  Nothing earth shattering or life changing for me, but relaxing and interesting no less, and I didn’t take it for granted that I was there.

We would be returning into Spain again soon, but first we had to check out its bankrupt neighbour, Portugal, so we got on a bus and it drove us west.

Colors of Morocco (Morocco, Part 3)

After exploring the ancient cities of Fez and Marrakech, and following the trip out to the Sahara, there was still plenty of Morocco to get to.

From the desert, right on the eastern border (with Algeria), we went back through Marrakech and out to the Atlantic coastline. It felt a huge journey in itself to go from the sea of sand that was the Sahara to the sea itself within 48 hours.

 

 The town was called Essaouira. The city walls were right on the water’s edge as if to protect the city from a tsunami, and the medina was bustling, but it was far less frantic and tense than the previous cities. There was action like anywhere in Maroc, but after getting familiar with the town, after the cutting the dreads out of my hair (and thus ridding myself of fleas), and giving ourselves two more days than necessary, it ended up being somewhat relaxing – I never expected to be relaxed in Morocco.

Maybe because of the long hair, maybe because of the peace sign on my shirt, maybe because I looked ‘feral’, but I was offered drugs continuaously here. This town was where all the famous hippies came to escape back in the sixties so I guess some of those vibrations, and habits, still reverberate around the place. Most of the dealers were cool enough when I shook my my head, but one guy went nuts when I refused to buy his hashish. He called all the bad curses he knew in English, most bizarrely ‘Liar,’ and ‘Convict,’ and most memorably ‘Faggot Motherfucker,’ which Rin adopted as my nickname over the next few days.  

A highlight of Essaouira was heading over to the port on dusk as the fishing boat cruised back in filled with a boat load of fish,being trailed by clouds of sea gulls. The folks of the town waited on the docs to get the fresh fish straight off the boat. Dusk was a busy hour on that little port, and me and Rin just stood amongst it letting it all convulse and flow around us. The Sahara was extraordinary, and this was entirely ordinary, but no less important.

 

Casablanca was next. This city is famous because of the glory days of the French occupation, and the movie of the same name. Well the glory days are long gone, and all the people who remember Casablanca are dead or dying, so what left of this place? Not a whole heap really, except for being the economic and business capital of Morocco, having shantytowns amongst skyscrapers, having lots of coffee shops filled with men, and having the world’s tallest minaret. The minaret was immaculately detailed and shockingly huge, if you can see the ant sized people at its base in the photo. That was the ‘extraordinary.’ The ‘ordinary’ highlight was sitting in a dingy restaurant and having the staff come up behind the table, lay a carpet down in the direction of Mecca, and start the prayer song. When he was done, the guy hawking shirts on the sidewalk came in and used the little space himself while the restaurant staff looked after his gear.

 

A town called Meknes was a favourite for a few reasons. 1. Upon arrival the taxi driver didn’t rip us of – didn’t even try. 2. When we checked in we were upgraded to the Royale suite, far more than we hoped for the $16 each per night we paid. 3. We walked around for hours and hours and seemed to be the only foreigners who had found the town. 4. Great street food of lamb sausage and spice on plastic chairs in a litter ridden car park. Meknes had everything I love about Morocco – exotic looking city walls and gates, camels heads hanging up in alleyways, a sense of controlled chaos, and cheap everything.

If Meknes didn’t make me happy enough, next was Fez, which I had previously visited before Rin arrived. I was her tour guide and when I got back into the town it was a reassurance that this is my favourite place in Morocco, and one of my favourite places on this big, wide world. Rin had to go through the shock process again (didn’t help that just after we arrived some weirdo shopkeeper begged Erin to be careful about the men in the medina), but soon she understood what I love so much about it.

Heading north, we took a bus into the Rif mountains, home the most extensive marijuana cropping activity on earth – 42% of the world’s produce is grown here! We stayed in small town called Chefchaoun, which had a labyrinth of streets soaking a blue paint wash. Like every other town in Morocco, I was offered hashish at every turn, and the hotel we stayed even had some growing on the rooftop terrace. It was the town of blue and green.

 

 

The final stop of our grand tour of Morocco was Tangier. The seaside town sits right where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, and faces off across at Europe, the mountains of southern Spain standing out on the horizon. Tangier has interesting history, having been occupied by folks all over Europe. In the 60’s it was made into an ‘international zone’ where several countries had share, and this led to it becoming a base for artists, shoddy businessmen, cold war spies and international fugitives. Capote, Burroughs and Kerouac all did some writing here, and artists such as the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan came for a getaway from the western world and some artist ‘inspiration.’ It must have been a hoot. Safe to say those times have passed, and it has since been returned to Morocco.

I had one last tagine and soaked in the energy of Morocco and its people, glad that I had been able to see so much, yet wishing I had bus tickets back south to some other dusty and wild town.

After a month in this crazy country it was time to leave and cross that narrow stretch of water into a whole other universe.

Sand and Stars (Morocco, Part 2)

I have always loved feeling like a tiny spec in an epic landscape. I never thought I would have the opportunity to go to the great sprawling sand dunes of the greatest desert in the world, the Sahara. There are few things that I have seen in the world that compare to it. But let’s start at the beginning.

We paid a ridiculously cheap price to be driven out to the desert in a minivan over the course of three days, and we saw some amazing things on the way.

 

 

The first day we drove up over the Atlas Mountains, taking a mountain pass that was very picturesque. Along the way we saw several small villages. These were made out of mud and hay blocks and very extremely basic, the inhabitants mostly sheep herders. Some were perched on mountainsides and looked like they had been there for thousands of years. These are the homes of the Berber people.

 

In Morocco there are two peoples. First, there are the ‘Berbers’, the natives to the land. The other are the Arabs, those who ventured across from the middle east preaching Islam. They now live together, pray to the same god and talk the same language, but there is no way a Berber is going to let you think he is an Arab.

From the mountains we came down to the outermost reaches of the Sahara, a rocky and gravelly plain that extends one way to the foothills of the snow-capped atlas, and the other to an oblivion of a moon like landscape. I couldn’t believe we could see such a contrast in scenery in just a matter of hours.

In the desert we saw more berber villages, usually built around a small oasis of palm tree’s. It was almost cartoonish in how cliché it looked.

We came across one large oasis that was unforgettable. The landscape surrounding was bone dry and rocky, an endless covering of brownish orange. But right there in a valleyed trough, a forest of palm trees was growing. There was even a small water course from a natural spring, and the locals had initated some cropping, which promoted the development of a small town. Here we saw women washing clothes in the stream water, wander through their cabbage and alfalfa plantations, and took in the bizzare scene of a forest sprouting out of a desert.

 

 

One town we came across happened to be the nicest and most ordered town I had seen in all Morocco. It was called Ourzazate, and I was surprised to learn that its wealth comes from Hollywood. Its natural desert beauty has been the backdrop for a bunch of movies, and there is a movie studio, a film museum and several nearby ‘locations.’  (Gladiator, Game of Thrones, Kingdom of Heaven, Lawrence of Arabia, etc). The town itself also had a nice old medina, or Kasbah, made out of mud blocks.

 

 

But the real reason we were out here was to see sand. Dunes and dunes of it.

 

The first hints came when we saw small rises of dunes no higher than me, spotted with camels (of course). Then suddenly, in the distance, we spotted the sharp rise of a giant sand dune, with several more behind it. As we drove into the town at the foot of the dunes, they loomed large behind it.

I’ve seen some epic landscapes in my day -  Mt Fuji, Grand Canyon, Uluru – and these sand dunes were every bit as awe inspiring.

We got on camels and rode for an hour and a half as the sun lowered casting shadows on the dune depression, and then finally set. The dusk washed over the landscape and soon we were riding in the dark with the first stars coming out above us. The endless dunes and the way they charnghed colour as the sun went down met my high expectations of the beauty of the desert. The whole time I was wide eyed, trying to breathe as much of the scene into my eyes as I could.

That night we slept in tents on dunes while the local berber men cooked us up a feast of targine – the best meal I’ve had in Morocco. After, we climbed our way to the top of a nearby sand dune and could see the headlights of the border patrol in the distance. The Algerian border was only 35 kms away and there are desert pirates all through that country (and it’s no secret Al Qaida is active in North Africa – there was a tourist targeted terrorist attack in Marrakech in 2010 which I thought about whoever I was in a busy area).

 

If the desert itself didn’t blow me away enough, the stars above sure did. I now agree with all the clichés about the desert having the best conditions for star gazing. The night sky out there was brighter than any sky I have ever seen. It was as in-your-face as objects millions of light years away can be.

It also happened to be Rins birthday, and the group of us sang happy birthday as we rode the camels in the dark.

 

That night Rin and I couldn’t take our eyes off the sky because we knew we would probably never see stars that bright again. It took us a while to get to bed because we kept telling each other ‘just one more minute.’

I will remember the desert and those stars for the rest of my life. That night I told the universe that I was sated, that I have had far more than one person deserves from it. 

Everything from here is a bonus.

 

The Medinas of Maroc (Morocco, Part 1)

Only a few hours after arriving in Morocco I found myself winding through the labyrinth like maze of alleys in the dark, hoping I would remember the route back to the hotel. I was walking fast, my heart was beating hard and I was glancing nervously down every narrow alley I passed. I was told that people you run into in the alleys after dark might be your friend, or might not. When I finally made it back to the safety of my room I wondered if I would ever muster the courage to venture out again. What god forgotten part of the world had I landed myself in this time?

Morocco hit me hard.

The medina is the old part of the city, narrow streets and buildings all crowded in on top of each other. Most towns here have a medina. The medina in Fes, my first stop in Morocco, has over nine thousand alleys and streets, and is the world largest car free urban area. It is enclosed by huge walls and is so infinitely complicated that most foreigners don’t stray too far from the big outer gates. Its unlike anything I’ve ever seen, and combined with the mosque minarets, the palm tree’s, and the snake charmer music and call to prayer songs, it reminded me of a the stories of Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba.

 

Fes, ‘the dark star of Morocco’, is one of the world’s most important cities for Muslim history. Geographically it is northern Africa, but culturally and aesthetically, it’s as Middle Eastern as you can get.

On my second day, after separating my money between my pants and jacket pockets, and even stuffing some in my shoe, I set off to get lost. For four hours I walked, completely confused and a little concerned at a few points, but totally blown away by the strangeness and the excitement of the medina.  Alleys were overcrowded by vegetable stands, meat stalls, metalwork huts, shoe shops and café’s, with donkeys and motorbikes and crowds of people squeezing through the narrow ways. Alternatively, the alleys could be harrowingly empty, dark and feeling like they are closing in. It’s in these streets that if someone asks for your wallet you comply without hesitation then find your way back to a busier area. (Having kissed my wallet goodbye before I landed in Taiwan, I am way overdue to be relieved of it, so I’m not going to be too traumatised or disappointed when it happens).

My time in Fez was filled with freight and awe, in equal parts. I took some pretty silly risks walking through the medina at night which I wouldn’t repeat and it might be as scared as I’ve felt all year. But the city itself was so energetic. There was so much to look at, all crowded together, it was all so basic, public urination, chicken being weighed and killed right in the open, a camels head hanging up at the butcher specialising in camel meat, the streams of people pushing past each other, the piles of fruit, the spices, the calls of touts trying to get you into their shop or restaurant or to sell you drugs (the latter being extremely common) – just the overwhelming commotion. This city is scrappy and smelly, not like the sometimes sterile cities of the developed world. It was humming with life, and I couldn’t help but nestle myself within it as deeply as possible.

(I would have taken better pictures of the bustling alleys but I was too hesitant to get my camera out.)

 

From Fes I travelled to Marrakech, having chosen the 10 hour bus which passed over Morocco’s highest mountains as opposed to the much shorted train which takes a different route. It was a great decision because we went as high to see snow, something I never expected to see in Morocco, and then came winding down from  the mountains heights through a series of small dusty towns all the way to the furthest stretches of the Sahara. It was a truly epic day of travel, from snow capped mountains to desert plains. What a world!

 

Marrakech is the cultural capital of Morocco, and for the first four days in town I rented a room of a local guy who sat around drinking coffee all day. He had a nice place and spoke English well so it was a cool base. Also renting a room from him was an old man from the UK we called Baba, meaning father in Moroccan. He was retired and was intent on spending the whole three months of his tourist visa staying in the one place and smoking hashish all day every day.  As if it couldn’t get stranger, a neighbour who came round of an evening was a former heavy metal singer from a  band called White Heat. This guy was so over the top, so caught up in the glory days that I thought he was just having me on, until I googled his band and watched a video clip from the 1980’s. A retired stoner, a washed up heavy metal singer, a lazy Moroccan, and an aussie travel; that’s stranger than fiction.

I walked from the city to the airport (which was an adventure in itself) to meet Rin. She flew all the way from Sydney to Marrakech via Dubai and Paris, and I greeted her at the airport with a fake rose I took from a hotel room and a T-Shirt I had made up that read ‘EK4NZ2014’, alluding to her year contract in Wellington. It was great to have my favourite co-star with me again to share the scenes.

Rin was as happy to see me as I was her, but she was shocked at how much weight I’d lost, how knotty and dreaded by hair had become, and how blonde it had got. She didn’t realise at the time (and neither did I) that I also had fleas.

Morocco hit Rin hard as well. Exotic tales and superficial tourism marketing of the country fail to convey how third world and chaotic it really is. As the taxi drove us back into the city, Rins eyes filled with tears as she realised she wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Rin is no stranger to the third world, having visited countries like Malaysia and Thailand and Albania within the last 18 months, but she was utterly overwhelmed. It took a few days for her to get comfortable. It didn’t help that that first night we got ripped off by the taxi driver, and then by the chef at dinner, and had maybe the most filthy accommodation we have ever shared (we had a mouse in the room one night).  There was also the warnings we’d heard about people being robbed in the alleys, and how local men are known to harass foreign women.

 

(This photo shows how a shoe shop can be pretty much on top of a butcher - its all I giant mix of life in the medina.)

 

 
 
 
 

But soon enough she was in the groove of Morocco with me and we had Marrakech to discover. Towering minarets, snake charmers with enormous cobra’s, night markets with extensive food booths selling skewers, tagines and cous cous, and an endless confusion of alleys and streets to explore.  The two of us strangers in a strange land.

Morocco is the reason I quit my job, I just didn’t know it at the time.