LYNN’S SPAIN/MOROCCO
JOURNAL
Day 15, Thursday, May 23
Travel Day to Ronda (Rabat to Tangier to Algeciras to Ronda)
The hotel clerk said the night before that we would not be able to have a full breakfast (pastry shop did not open until later, etc.) early in the morning, but the hotel staff came through: eggs, rolls, juice, coffee, tea. It was a short taxi ride to the train station—we almost could have walked. We had one last hassle at the train station—a man in a blue uniform grabbed our luggage against our will and carried it to the platform. But then he wouldn’t take out money when we tried to tip (so we thought he was employed by the train station). When the train came, he came back and helped us load our stuff into the train. Then he wanted money, 20 DH, but all we had was 10 DH left. We managed to find a dollar bill, but he still wanted more (even though $1.00 is worth more than 10DH. We found another $1.00 which he grabbed. By then, the train was moving—I don’t know if he got off, and I didn’t care. Not a nice way to leave Morocco, and he wasn’t even nice—but hey it was only $3.00.
Lynn
and Fatima
The two women who got on the train at Sidi Kacem made up for the bad experience. One (Fatima) spoke English and French; the other not. Fatima was going shopping with her friend in another town that offered lower prices (she said it was contreband). Her husband was a security officer on the train—we later met him. She had beautiful henna designs on her hands—mine were very crude by comparison—but lovingly applied by Zahara. They were done by a specialist who had come to her house in preparation for her younger son’s circumcision. She used to work in import/export in Casa, I think of clothes. But since she got married, she lives in Sidi Kacem. (Sidi Kacem is also where we transferred to catch the train to Fes). She claims that Moroccan women have no rights and that husbands beat wives. She gave me a plastic bangle that looks like ivory—as a remembrance. Philip took pictures and promised to send copies. They got off before we came to where we had first caught the train in the middle of nowhere on our way to Fes. Her husband later pointed it out to us.
We made it to Tangier without further ado. At Tangier, we made it through the crowds of guides and taxi drivers and got ourselves a taxi to the port area. There we were able to buy ferry tickets for about $20 each (same price we paid before) even though this crossing (Tangier to Algeciras) was longer. We made the 1:30 p.m. ferry—it was not as nice a ferry as the one that took us from Algeciras to Ceuta.
African Coast from Boat
Tangier
We got hamburgers and walked the deck some. It seemed to roll and pitch a bit more than the other ferry, especially in the beginning. The crossing took about 2 hours, plus we lost 2 hours between Moroccan and Spanish time zones. I had a somewhat uncomfortable experience. We took turns walking around while the other watched our backpacks. I went in search of the easy chairs to sit on, started talking to a friendly seaman, who steered me to another level where the easy chairs were. But this area seemed to be deserted—and just the two of us were in the room. I didn’t catch any bad vibes, but still I was uncomfortable so I fled as soon as decently possible. No dolphins—saw the Rock again. We landed at Algeciras and got our suitcases out of the hold.
Then it was a quick taxi ride to the train station, where by luck a train to Ronda was just about to leave. We reached Ronda in an hour or so where there was a small train station that had no tourist information desk to call for hotels. We figured out the phone system and called a fancy hotel (not the Parador) that was in the Dorling Kindersley guidebook. The clerk, who mercifully spoke English, said they only had a single, which we took. We took a taxi to the hotel for 4.50 euro. We checked in and got a promise that we could most likely switch to a double the second night.
Lynn
on Hotel Balcony
Our room was beautiful, easily the best we had on the whole trip! We sat in the lap of luxury for two nights—it was heavenly! It was indeed a single (single bed), but it had a beautiful marble bathroom with THICK towels and a patio of its own. The hotel was built on the edge of the cliff and from the patio we had an absolutely stunning panoramic view of the mountains in the distance and views of the olive orchards and farms in the valley spread out below—still very green. Ronda was almost impregnable because it sits atop a limestone cliff. In fact, it was the last Moorish town to fall to the Christians because of its strategic position. We showered, changed, went down to dinner in the hotel—too lazy to leave the hotel. We had (too much) paella for two, possibly the best meal of the entire trip. We did not sleep too well in the single bed—getting too old.