Our trip over 17 days took us from Ottawa, Canada to the farthest point of Figuig, Morocco. En route we travelled through Spain, Gibraltar and the north east of Morocco. We left for the trip with a very open agenda and only 2 basic time markers to hit. Highlights were seeing some of the Gaudi buildings in the international year of Gaudi, seeing Flamenco dancing and Charlie Chaplin and other street performers, seeing a friend's traditional wedding in Morocco. This page gives an overview of our route, visually and verbally. In the description of where we went and how are hotlinks to sub-pages with photos from our trip with some descriptions of what you're seeing.
| Madrid | Barcelona | Barcelona: Gaudi | Costa del Sol | Gibraltar | Fes | Train: Tanger to Oujda | Bus: Oujda to Figiuig | Figuig | Wedding | Casablanca |
Although we passed up the donkey cart that met the train (It was for the luggage anyway) all together we used a lot of means to get to wherever the wind blew us. We took 4 airplanes and 3 airlines (US Airways, Royal Air Maroc and Air Canada for a total of 8 hours return), an overnight train 4 times (ONCF in Morocco first class and 2nd class, RENFE in Spain to go from Madrid to Barcelona and back then another leg in regular seats from Madrid to Malaga). We also saw the inside of many taxis: the unmetered taxi that had to be push started in Fes, the red petit taxis swarming around Oujda, the grey huge taxi of Casablanca and the famous yellow NY city cab. The most spectacular cabs were the ones in Morocco because of their tasselled tapestry on the dashboards and the speed of driving. One thing about traffic in Morocco and Spain though is that horns are used as driving school taught -- little bip-bips to notify other street users that you are here and coming, not like in Canada where it is a blaming blare after the fact, past the point where anyone can change the situation. The first class on Moroccan trains was better than second class Canadian National Rail. (We have never travelled first class on Canadian rail to compare.) The ONCF voiture-lits is better than the sleeper cars in first class on Spanish trains since the ONCF has a bigger compartments and in addition to bottled water has a real towel, not disposable, a couch instead of a window ledge, a real sink with a worktable cover that makes the space more useful and a free Belgium chocolate. All airlines are excellent but the RAM airline workers seemed more elegant and poised and it offered for the same length of flight more airtime of movies, sleeping eye cover and socks, and unlike another previous competing airline, headphones didn't come with a surcharge.
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On the subject of getting about, inside Spain
we used 2 cities of metros -- Barcelona and Madrid, systems which were as easy and
transparent to use as Paris had been. Both cities and the French Colonial part of Fes,
Morocco look like a version of Paris too without as many cleaners. In central Spain, Madrid we walked extensively as we would in Barcelona and Fes for 4 to 10 hours per day on foot. In north Spain, Barcelona we also took a hop on and hop off tour bus in Barcelona the day before the company went on strike. To see Gaudi's works we spent a lot of time on our feet and figuratively speaking, knocked off our feet. After taking the train to Andalucia, Costa del Sol we took non-metro buses to get to Gibraltar's ferry which, as it turned out, rarely existed. We went to Gibraltar, U.K. Gibraltar is so tiny that we did the entire thing on foot and I'm not sure there is any other option except for the city cleaning and transport trucks. Up to the top of Gibraltar we took the air tram to the top as another means of transport. At Algeciras we found a ferry to Tanger, Morocco. Between Algeciras Spain and Tanger, Morocco the ferry left an hour and a half past scheduled departure and took over 4 hours. But the ride was smooth. The World Heritage Site of Fes was seen largely on foot by tour guide and alone together. The overnight train of Tanger to Oujda was eventful in the sense of it being a night train with a transfer at 1 am or 2 am and arrival in Oujda at 5 am after a night of no sleep. We crashed at a hotel for 5 or 6 hours sleep before check out time. Next came the Long Distance Bus to Figuig. We took a long distance bus from Oujda along the border of Algeria to Figuig and back. The buses in Morocco, and the delivery trucks that we didn't ride in there, were festooned with curtains and plastic grapes and plastic strings of flowers;it reminded us of the buses of Philippines and Cuba decorated with idiosyncratic paint jobs and lively characters of drivers. For part of the trip Moroccan music with the woman's interjections of yo-yo-yos played to the constant spread of rippled desert sands and sparse pink-red rounded mountains. In Figuig we were shuttled around by private car thanks to Majid and various members of the wedding party who piled us in with them. There we attended the Figiuigian Wedding of Nadia and Mustafa. Casablanca was our departure point with tickets from there to New York City, USA, then home. |
Color always surprised us on our trip for one reason or another whether it was the brightly decorated dump trucks, delivery trucks or taxis or the landscape itself: The rare bits of water in Morocco was an iridescent teal like pictures we'd seen of the Mediterranean, which when we saw it, was generic slate blue grey. In Spain and Morocco the mail boxes were yellow not blue, red or green as we'd got used to. Color surprised in the subtle browns of hillsides shifting into the sand colored tent communities. The spectacular shades of woven, beaded and satin caftans and djellabas. The uniform narrow spectrum of brown people everywhere then crossing over into the lumbering white and sunburned red Gibraltar's pubs.
To wake up on the coast of Morocco and have left behind the desert and see so much green everywhere was like taking off rose colored sunglasses, getting ready to re-enter out Canadian Life at home -- so humid and pervasively green with fall coolness beginning. Our hot peppers and tomatoes ripe and cucumbers swollen yellow in our absence.
2002, Pearl and Brian Pirie | Back to Pirieworld.ca |