South America on Tuesday, Europe on Wednesday and Africa on Thursday
Friday, April 28th, 2006I finally arrived in Casablanca after a very long journey covering a lot of distance. Had a nice last day in Santiago, walked up a big hill, got to look at pollution. And went out for lunch. The long flight to Madrid was pretty standard, meet a really lovely dutch guy who was on the same flight so it was cool to have someone to wait around with. The guy I sat next to on the plane, I swear was an alcoholic, he had a hip flask and must have drunk at least half a bottle of whisky over the 13 hours! Finally getting into Madrid it took soooooo long to actually get to the hostel. First the airport is ridiculously large. I had to take a train to the baggage claim, then 10 bus to the part of the airport with the metro. Then with ,y giant big bag, having no sleep, i caught ‘ different lines to my hostel then walked around the streets lost for about 20mins before actually finding it! Dont you just love travelling…
Unfortunately I only had one night in Madrid as I had to get to casablanca to meet mum and sarita and cause I was pretty tired I just went for a bit of a walk around the area, got some food, brought a super cool top then went to bed. I did see a big museum called the something sophia but couldnt bring myself to do anything, so back to bed. However Madrid does seem really cool, lots to do, beautiful area where I was so next trip I will spend more time there. Early the next morining it was off to the train station to catch a 6 hour train t Algeciras to get the ferry to Morocco. Definitly in Europe now, very European prices….will def need to get a job to keep up this spending. Anyway meet a whole lot of people on the ferry, tried to catch the 3pm one, which arrived at 4 and left at 5. Guess we are already on African time! So after a 2 hour journey acroos the sea we arrived in AFRICA, totally awesome. Myself, some Aussies and a brit headed to the train station to get a night train to various places. Back in a country where 6 people and packs can fit in a taxi. The guys were all going to Marrakech which is a bit further than Casablanca but we were all on the same train, however they all got beds but the guy wouldnt give me one, why not? “no bed”
…right. So they all got to go off to their nice private rooms and I was stuck in the cheap section with loads of other people. My french hasnt exacly all come flooding back to me but can manage a wee bit and it will hopefully improve a lot over the next few months! We did have a bit of time to kill at the station so we just ate, lots. All these good samosa things and juice and sandwhiches, back to cheaper prices as well which is great!
So I caught this 8 hour train arriving in Casablanca at 5am, luckily Mum knows a lady fron morocco in New Zealand and we are stating with her family here and they came and picked me up. Great to see mum and sarita, we have done extreamly well gettingput up here. The family is sooooo lovely, amazing Moroccan house, cooking us amazing food, driving us to another city tomorrow where theyve rented us a house! its awesome. Really looking foward to the next week or so here, we are sooo lucky! im pretty tired so will just spend the day relxing and sleeping, in a real house!, and eating chocolate from New Zealand. Tomorrow were going camel riding!
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