So Itchy!
I decided that I am done with large cities for a while so I’m going to skip out on Meknes and Fes. I was officially in those cities already if only to travel through them on the train. I am now going to head north to Larache, the next town along the coast that has hotels in my price range. There are beaches and old things to explore and it will be a good stop on my way to the Northeast part of Morocco.
I slept really well last night and I woke up with only a headache and no longer do I feel a cold coming on, which I am more than delighted about. I packed up my stuff and headed out towards the bus station. I have learned that the taxi’s that wait around tourist locations charge tourist rates and the ones about the city are generally more honest and tend to charge local rates. So I decided to start walking to the bus station and then get a cab ride on the way. I was able to get a cab ride and the driver actually used the meter, what a unique concept. In Casablanca all the drivers would tell me 50 DH no matter where I said I wanted to go.
When I got to the bus station a guy told me to go to gate number 4 for Larache. There are a bunch of windows and they all have destinations on the top and you find the one with your destination and go to that window. As the man had told me gate 4 said Larache. I went to the counter and the man behind the counter told me no. I assumed this meant there weren’t enough people or any busses. I went back to the middle of the station and looked at the other gates to see is Larache was on any of them and I found 2 more that had Larache listed. I inquired at each counter and was told no two more times. Then I found the gate for CTM, the government run bus service and they had computers and I was able to get a ticket for 5:30pm. The CTM man told me to take a taxi to the CTM station down the road to catch the bus.
I didn’t want to take a taxi from outside the bus station because I knew they would try to rip me off and so I decided to try and find the station myself. LP didn’t have the address in it because both bus stations are outside of town. I went to an internet café to waste time and looked up the address but it wasn’t listed anywhere I could find, not even in google maps, how disappointing! I ate some lunch at a local restaurant, where they give me more food than I could eat if I hadn’t eaten all day. I asked the manager of the restaurant where the CTM station was and he took me to another restaurant where the guys discussed it and then pointed me down a road and told me it would be two kilometers. Whenever I recount what people tell me, I am always recounting my impressions of what they told me because they speak French/Arabic. I look more at gestures and for words that sound like English to figure out what they are saying.
I walked down the road that they had pointed me in and it was very industrial with lots of busses and trucks. After I had walked at least 2KM I picked a point in the distance and decided that I would stop there if I hadn’t found it yet and come up with a new plan. I reached the point in the distance and I could see the end of the road I was on without a CTM bus station in sight. I turned the corner and went on the main road backtracking the way I had come from. I showed my ticket to a couple of people and they all pointed in the direction I was walking, back towards the original bus station. As I was walking I assumed that people were confused and didn’t know that there were two bus stations but I kept walking that direction because I didn’t have anywhere else to walk. Once I was fairly close to the original bus station I came upon the CTM bus station. I probably walked 4km out of my way to find it but I made it to the station in plenty of time, three hours before my bus was to leave.
The wheels on my bag have been falling apart for the last week and finally gave out today with the rubber splitting and preventing one wheel from spinning. I promptly ripped the rubber off of both wheels so that the plastic inside could spin on its own and hopefully won’t end up like Julie’s bag, at least not until I can buy a sufficient backpack.
Since I had such a long wait at the bus station I decided to watch a movie on my computer and picked Slumdog Millionaire. I have seen it before but I haven’t watched it since going to India and I wanted to see if I could better relate and see places I had recently visited. It is really embarrassing to be sitting at a bus station crying when everyone else is laughing or reading the paper and so I had to stop the movie several times and tie my shoes or look in my bag for something so that I could hide the embarrassing tears in my eyes and on my face.
The bus came about a half an hour late and I honestly wasn’t surprised because I am used to things being that way. At the bus station there isn’t great signage on the busses so when a bus would pull in I would get in line for it and when I got to the front I let the ticket guy tell me whether or not I was in the right line.
My seat on the bus was in the very back and at first I wasn’t excited about it until I realized the seats in the back were bigger and had more leg room than the normal seats. Then I heard someone next to me speak in English and I was elated. I was sitting next to siblings from the UK spending their summer vacation from school in Morocco with family. I spent the whole bus ride talking with them, it’s funny how talking to someone in English can be so exciting after not talking to anyone except myself. Yes, I talk to myself.
When we were 10 minutes from Larache, the bus pulled over at a roadside restaurant and the driver and most of the people on the bus got out. I asked the British people what was going on and they didn’t know either. Eventually we found out that the bus was taking a dinner break for 30 minutes, which meant more like an hour, only 10 minutes from my stop! I ate a pizza and drank a coke and then hurried back to the bus. It worked out but was very strange to stop 10 minutes before a stop to eat.
I wasn’t really sure where my hotel was so I just kind of wandered around and some how I found it with very little effort and a whole lot of luck. All of the single rooms were full so I got a double room, at a very reasonable price. There is a wedding going on with lots of singing and dancing in the building next to mine. I’m sitting here writing this listening to and watching them right now. I have attached an audio clip of the music that was being played.
I walked around the town tonight and I really like it so far it seems to be filled with lots of young happy people.
I woke up in the middle of the night itching all over and I turned on the light and my body was covered with hives. I started to freak out and I threw my sheet on the floor and I ran downstairs to yell at the manager, he was asleep and had no idea what I was talking about so I removed my clothes in the lobby and shined a flashlight on my body. He was very confused and groggy. I redressed and returned to my room where I examined the sheets but could not see anything on the sheets or on my body. I went to take a drink of water to calm down and realized that there was a whole in the lid of my water. Nothing else seemed to be wrong with me only the itch of the hives which was mainly around my legs and stomach. I was able to get back to sleep in my sleeping bag liner and in the morning the hives had shrunken down and no longer itched. I was unable to figure out where the hives came from, I threw the water bottle in the trash and stopped using the sheets.
My bus parked for an hour, 10 minutes from my stop
Larache market center at night
Hives love tan muscular bodies.
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