When I try to recall what my hardest, most arduous journey has been so far in all my travels only one trip comes to mind: Marrakesh to Cairo. It all began with an innocent decision at the travel agent's office, tucked safely away in Southern Ontario.
"Your round-the-world ticket has no air carriers that travel out of Morocco," my travel agent informed me. I was taking a brief hiatus from my year-long, global journey to recover from a nasty bout of malaria. "You say that you want to go from Marrakesh, Morocco to Cairo, Egypt but this ticket won't do that, " she said.
"No problem," I said, thinking at the time that it truly wasn't. "Just book me to travel out of some port city in southern Spain, and I'll take a ferry. And the stage was set.
Day 1
My best friend and I spent three weeks travelling all over Morocco. It had been a fun and interesting trip, brought down only a bit by a chest infection on my part. I was recovering, not yet back to normal. We were carrying on together to Egypt. She had a plane ticket that departed from Casablanca; I had this ferry thing to contend with. Since neither one of us was leaving from Marrakesh, we hopped on a train together and spent three hours talking about nothing. The only ominous sign that hinted this trip would be horrid was the fact that none of the lights in our cabin worked, so by the end we were in complete darkness.
We arrived in Casablanca, said goodbye and I waited to catch the 9:30pm train to a middle-of-nowhere town called Oujda. Never heard of it? Not surprised. Tourists don't go there. Oujda had only one thing going for it - it was the closest town to the port city of Mellilla. Because, you see, my travel agent had me booked to fly from Malaga, Spain to Frankfurt, Germany (wtf?) back down to Cairo, Egypt. Malaga, as luck would have it, saw only one ferry from Morocco and that sucker left out of Melilla. So, a train to Casablanca, a train to Oujda and then...somehow to Melilla.
While waiting for the train, an official came up to me and asked to see my ticket. It should be noted that I very much stuck out at this point. White girls don't ususally travel alone, and they sure don't hang around Moroccan train stations after dark. He reviewed my ticket and informed me that I was NOT on the 9:30pm sleeper train, I was on the 10:30 train that had no sleeping compartments. After thirty minutes of negotiating in broken English, French and Arabic I was made to understand that the ticket was set in stone; I couldn't buy a different one.
Fine. The good train came and went. The crummy train showed up an hour later, I found an empty cabin and laid down to sleep. Sadly, it was not meant to be. Halfway through the nine hour trip, somewhere around 2:00am, a Moroccan family joined me. This was during Ramadan, so of course they were joyfully 'breaking their fast' and sat up eating and talking all night. We arrived in Oujda at aroung 7:00am, on a drizzly, crummy day. Why was it raining in the desert, you may ask. Well, because that's just my luck, that's why.
Day 2
Bleary-eyed, I made my way to one of the kiosks in the station. With broken French, I asked the best way to get to Melilla. Take a taxi to the bus station, I was told. From the station, catch a bus to Nador/Melilla. Gotcha.
I stepped outside and a cluster of taxi drivers surrounded me. Once again, white girls stick out. One picked up my bag and started walking to his car. I've been around, and I know how these guys work. I immediately put my foot down on the price and the location. He argued, insisting that he drive me all the way to Melilla, rather than the bus station. Back and forth. He names a good price, I agree. We then proceed to his...unmarked taxi? Taxis in Morocco are colour coded and obvious. This was a car. This is how people get killed. I express concern that this isn't a fucking taxi. He pulls out a tag attached to the licence plate and assures me it is. By this point, I am tired. I have also travelled for enough months to be a little bit lackadaisical about stuff, so I give in. I settle into the back seat and he drives away. He then informs me that we are off to the police station. What? Why? I must tell them that I am travelling, he says. We have reached the only moment in my life thus far where I actually texted a friend back in Canada what my location was, where I was going and the registration number of the cab, just so in two days when I didn't show up in Cairo they'd know where to begin the search for my body.
But, people are good. We in fact DID go to a police station. After that we drove three and a half hours to Nador, which runs right along side Melilla. It was "the frontier" as the taxi driver put it. "You get off here," he explained. "Here" being a dirt road in a slum with about 50 cars and foot traffic trying to stream through an eight foot gate at the boarder.
You see, my friends, Melilla is technically a Spanish enclave. You've gotta clear customs to actually get into it. Apparently it was impossible for him to take me into Melilla, this was as close as we could get. So I crossed into "Spain" on foot amongst yelling, mud and hustlers flocking around me. The good ole' Canadian passport jumped the queue and flung open the doors, though. When the border patrol looked at my passport he merely shook his head and said, "You come very far." How true.
It was so odd to cross into Melilla, I can hardly describe it. Literally a dozen yards away there is a dusty, developing country slum complete with naked children in the streets and chickens running wild. On the Spanish side, all is mediterranean blue and clean streets. Birds sing and people walk around on clouds. Not really, but you get the idea. That there can be such a clear division in living conditions over some arbitrary border always gets me.
I caught a taxi to the port, got my bording pass for the ferry and grabbed some lunch. "What was I worried about?" I thought to myself. "The distance is a pain in the ass, but it's not stressful at all." Cue impending fuckup.
At 3:00 I started to notice that the port was deserted. I finally tracked down a security guard who spoke not a word of English. God bless her, after much pantomime and me drawing pictures and taking off my watch I was made to understand that although there is only four kilometers between Melilla and Nador, Melilla is on Spanish time. There is a two hour time difference and it was in fact 5:00. The ferry I had watched pull away was the one I was supposed to be on. Not to worry, she explained (in Spanish), the ticket counter would open again at 8:30pm and I could exchange my ticket for the midnight ferry. She even offered me a hug when the horror of my mistake showed on my face.
I took her advice about the new boarding pass and at 11:00pm I got in line to board. Ferries are huge, and it takes some time to get from ground level up into the decks. I cleared security, went up the escalator and through all the tunnels to the gangplank. JUST when I was almost on the ferry, a small victory in my grasp, the Spanish customs officer took my passport. He flipped through it slowly, twice. "No good. You have Morrocan exit stamp. You have no Spanish entry stamp," he said. And where do I get one of those? I asked. "At the boarder. You have 25 minutes. You have time."
Now is where the scene from the movie starts. Here's me, running back down the tunnels and down the up escalator with all my luggage (his tone when I asked if I could leave it behind suggested that he suspected I was carrying a bomb), screaming at the one taxi out front what I needed. No English again, so more pantomime and frantic throwing of bags in the back. The taxi driver stopped the car and tried to explain to me that it was 11:10 and the ferry didn't leave till midnight so I was okay on time. You have to board the ferry by 11:30, though, and it was fortunate for everyone involved that I am unable to scream, "Shut up and drive the car FAST you fuckhead!" in Spanish.
Screeched to a stop at the boarder kiosk, ran up to the counter, waited behind another girl, got a stamp finally, ran back to the taxi who had finally got the picture and pulled away before I was fully in the car, flew back to the port, through the security, up the escalator, through the tunnels to meet the same guard. "All set?" he asked. "You tell me." I replied.
Once I was physically on the ferry I checked in and was issued a key. Puzzled, since to my knowledge it would be a seat, I went to where I was directed. I opened the door and a bright light shone and a choir of angels sang. Not really, but I had a private bedroom WITH BATH. Finally, a break!
Day 3
I arrived in Malaga at 8am. I figured since the hostel was going to charge my credit card anyway, (another broken English argument) I was going to sit through the layover and put my bags with them. Spent the day in Malaga (very nice town), and went to the airport so I could finally fly to Cairo via Frankfurt.
The first flight, to Frankfurt, was on a brand new plane, the pilot informed us. The flight crew evidently was enamored with it, since once on the runway we stopped completely then the pilot hammered the throttle so hard everyone was pinned back in our seats. The flight itself was uneventful, but once at the gate in Frankfurt they couldn't get the portway to dock on the side of the plane. After waiting for about 25 minutes the pilot announced that we would be exiting from the back. The stairs finally arrived, everyone turned around, and they managed to get the front exit to dock. "We will be exiting out the front," the pilot announced.
The flight to Cairo started off oddly. I had the very last seat at the back of the plane, at the window. An Asian man with horrible b.o. sat beside me and proceeded to wrap himself in the blanket like a mummy, put on a sleeping mask AND a surgical mask, headphones and then fell into his own world. Which worked out well, since the flight was the most turbulent I've ever been on. At one point the entire contents of my tray flew off onto his lap and he never stirred, even when I was picking glasses and forks off his legs. The turbulence was so bad that I actually had to brace myself to keep from smacking my head into the window. The flight crew were strapped into the jump seats behind me, and they kept yelling helpful things like, "Wooo-hoo! YEAH!" Whenever a particularly nasty bit would hit.
It is an ordeal in itself to get a visa in Cairo. You buy it from the bank (???) then wait in line. After a fight with the cab driver about the fare, I arrived at the hotel at 4am. The bellhop brought my bag up to the room and as I was lifting it over the threshold the handle snapped off.
And that, friends, is how I travelled from Marrakesh to Cairo.
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