well i’m on my way…

When I woke up it was still hot out, but it was obvious the sun was setting, so I decided to take a shower.  I noticed the water pooling up around my feet, and then into the bathroom, but I just figured the drain was slow.  When I finished, I was standing in a pool of water, the curtain was soaked, and when I pulled it back, noticed that half the room was underwater!   I put some clothes on, and opened the door, to ask Kemal, who was sleeping, if they had a squeegee.  Of course they didn´t so Ryan and I used a few towels to mop it up.  I thought Kemal might give us a hand, that this may have happened a few times before, and there was a quick and efficient way of cleaning this up, but no, he just slept.  This was our problem.  He told us after we cleaned up that the drain pops up.  This would have been good information when he showed us our room…

We wandered around the souks (the maze of shops that is Marrakech) and held a monkey.  First he gave us a high five, and I noticed how creepily his hand resembled mine.  We walked around some more and dodged people, carts, and motorbikes.  Ryan and I were crossing a square at one point and we heard a motorbike coming before we saw it.  I´m really good at running into people, and sort of dancing with them in order to get out of eachothers way, so I just frooze.  There was plenty of room on both sides of me for this motorbike to pass by.  He was headed straight for me, but I still stayed, since there was room and I figured he would move…But he didn´t, and ran into me as I put my hands out to stop the windscreen, so the guy started yelling at me.  WTF?  He had heaps of room, and he was moving faster, making it easier to change his path…I was unscratched, just a bit shaken up, and we continued walking. 

Went for dinner at Cafe France since I wanted pizza to ease my way in to Moroccan food.  We sat for a long time, just people watching, and got a kick out of seeing an entire family of four on a motorbike.  We headed back to the hostel and chatted with some people staying there, getting info on this desert tour we wanted to take. 

We headed back out, this time at the end of our street there was a human traffic jam.  We pushed our way through, and as we were sneaking along, I could feel fingers on my butt!  I turned around, and saw lots of guys looking everywhere but at me.  I turned around and continued shuffling through the crowd, but I could still feel these fingers on my ass.  I wheeled around, and yelled at these guys STOP TOUCHING ME!  Ryan turned around and said DONT TOUCH HER in a forceful tone.  One of the guys put his finger to his lips, as if saying, Be quiet.  We got out of that mess and Ryan admitted that he felt it too but thought I was grabbing his ass for whatever reason…Good thing we don´t keep anything in our back pockets…

We laughed about it, which was good.  I think one needs a large dose of a good sense of humor to travel in Morocco and a lot of tolerance.  We wandered around the food court, batting off the men trying to get us into their restaurant like they were flies.  The hassling seemed annoying, and not as terrible as people had warned us about.  We were also warned that we would be walking through horse manure, but never encountered more than a few ‘road apples’ in our path.

We saw a crowd of people around a smallish man and a girl-both wearing boxing gloves.  They were taking bids on them, it was obvious, but we stayed for 20 minutes and never saw a fight.  We watched a man go through the crowd, shoving his empty upside down hat under tourists noses-Ryan and I said no, since we hadn´t witnessed anything, but were shocked when we saw a man go through multiple pockets in his backpack looking for some change.  Scared. 

We watched some snake charmers, and learned later that they were setting up for snake fights.  Saw some children dancing traditionally-I assumed since they were in costume and following an older man.  It could have just been for show too. 

I saw the saddest, mangiest, hungriest looking cats I´ve even seen, loads of kittens too. 

Ryan got a henna tattoo (which he later got an allergic reaction to) which was supposed to last a month.  I write this two weeks later and it´s gone. 

All in all, harassment aside, it was an awesome awesome day.  =)

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 6:23 am and is filed under Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.