Untraveled World

Another day hanging about in a mobile phone store and I finally got a month’s worth of Internet service on my phone via Meditel. The coverage is apparently not as good as Maroc Telecom, but the store manager was happy to take the time to help me get the Nexus S connected.

Once I had the phone settled I pulled up stakes again and headed out along the coast route. The first day took me up to Cap Spartel and by the Grotto of Hercules, where I stopped for lunch, but decided to skip the paid tour of the caves. I stopped for the night at a “campground” near Asilah — essentially a parking lot by the beach where a couple of guardians living in a tent collect fees and watch the gear. I felt a little like I was setting up my tent on the edge of a dump, but it was otherwise a good location. One of the guardians, Said, offered to show me where to find a restaurant. After a long, winding, walk clear across the town past numerous other restaurants I knew I was being lead to a restaurant of Said’s family or friends, but I followed along gamely. The resulting couscous was fine, but more notable for the process of getting to it than the taste.

Asilah looked like a nice town, but I only spent the one night there. The next days were a short, pleasant ride to Larache, then a long day on narrow, pitted farm roads to Kenitra, and then another short day through Sale and into the big city of Rabat.

My primary goal in coming to Rabat was to get a Mauritanian visa, but I soon discovered that the Mauritanian embassy is currently delaying processing of visas for Americans. Reportedly Europeans can get visas the same day they apply, but for Americans the process may take two or three weeks or more.

As I mentioned in Tangier, the process of picking up and moving to a new place every day while navigating through languages and customs I didn’t understand was beginning to get old, so I decided to park myself in a Rabat hotel for a few days to think about my next step.

Coincidentally this gave me a few days off for Christmas and I was able to attend a fascinating Christmas Eve service at the St. Peter’s Cathedral of Rabat. Not used to Catholic services to begin with, I was fascinated by the combination of chanted scripture readings, a vigorous sermon in French (which I mostly didn’t catch), and numerous interludes of synthesizer and bass heavy choral pieces. The Cathedral was full and appeared to be mostly sub Saharan Africans, followed by a mixture Moroccan, French, and Asian congregants.

After several days of not doing much, I’ve decided that rather than send my passport away and wait for a couple weeks hoping for a visa to cross Mauritania I’m going to fly from southern Morocco to Senegal. I’ll buy a ticket to leave from Agadir in three or four weeks and then ride down the coast of Morocco to get there.

So, no grand Sahara crossing this time. I’m somewhat disappointed, but I’m also looking forward to enjoying the pleasant parts of the trip and avoiding the more bleak sections. Someday I’ll see Mauritania, but it doesn’t look like it will be this trip.

 

 

 

After a little research I realized that the ferries from Algeciras do not go to Tangier itself, but to a port called Tangier-Med some distance to the east of the city. Rather than make that trip, I decided to bike to Tarifa at the southern tip of Spain and take a ferry from there directly to the city of Tangier.

I took my leave of Zigor and Maria who had graciously let me hang about at their place for a few days. The biking was good although once again in an attempt to avoid busy roads I found myself on steep winding ones instead. I arrived in Tarifa in the early afternoon, found the post office, shipped my maps of Spain back to Portland, and then headed to the port. The next ferry was at 4pm and only took a little more than half an hour to cross the strait.

I debated whether it was a good idea to arrive in Tangier in the late afternoon, but decided to go ahead. Ultimately, taking the ferry into Tangier was not anything like the crazy chaotic experience I had been lead to expect. I had expected something like Nigeria’s Kano airport, but instead, I rolled my bike off the ferry, the police asked me a few questions, looked at my passport and then waved me through. I went straight to a hotel near the port which I had figured out ahead of time and only one fellow tried to offer to guide me anywhere.

My strategy currently is that upon entering a new country, I’ll head to a big city and stay there for a couple days until I get my phone connected to the local system. For Tangier, I decided to get a taste of history and stay at the old, ornate, Hotel Continental. Reputedly William Burroughs and Winston Churchill both stayed here (at different times I presume). It’s the kind of place where the staff where uniforms, but workmen might show up to the rooms next to yours and start hammering the doors out of their frames. Whole sections of the hotel appear to be unused at the moment and I spent some time this morning wandering the empty hallways looking at old framed photographs. Last night I turned on the lights in my room, they flickered a bit, there was a bang and smoke started pouring out of the TV (which hadn’t been on). The power seems a little more stable today.

This morning I met a Senegalese man, Mahmadou, who insisted on guiding me around the medina — the old part of the city. I tried to say no for a while, but then figured I might as well have someone show me around. I’m glad I did, Mahmadou is a nice guy and I got oriented and saw several things I would have certainly missed. One of these was a visit to the tomb of Ibn Battouta, certainly a candidate for the patron saint of bicycle tourists!

The rest of the day was consumed with trying to get a working data connection on my phone, with no luck so far. I’m beginning to think of phone companies as my nemeses on this trip. I’m going to stick around for another day tomorrow and try to get that sorted out. I’m also feeling a little exhausted from all the traveling and cultural change, so staying here for a few nights is quite appealing.