So my day started off at 6 am to catch a taxi to get to the strain station in Casa to take the 3-hour train to Meknes where Sonia and I were meeting to drive to Mellilla so she could take her car to Malaga where her dad who was flying from Manchester was supposed to meet us so he could drive the car back....got it so far?
HA! Easier said than done. The Saga....
I get to Meknes, and we head out about 2:30 for the 5/6 hour drive to Nador, which is the border city to the Spanish enclave of Mellila. As we are leaving Meknes we get stopped by the cops for speeding which Sonia promptly got out of using her feminine wiles...ie. tears. First obstacle crossed. Our ferry out of Mellila to Malaga was leaving at midnight so we thought we had plenty of time. We'd given ourselves an extra 4 hours to get through customs and find the port in Mellila. HA HA! What we didn't count on was the beloved Moroccan King being in Nador and everyone and their dog going there to greet him! Needless to say the drive 5/6 hour drive took about 8-9 hours!
When we got to Nador, the city that should pride itself on it abundant lack of signage - we got lost for the better part of an hour because a STUPID POLICEMAN told us to go in the wrong direction. It's only 10 minutes from Nador to the border!!!! Whyyyyy??? At this point in the evening we're freaking out because our ferry now leaves in an hour and a half and we're still not out of Morocco. We're also very tired because we've both just come off a 2-week intensive teaching session and had been traveling since the wee hours of the morning.
Now if you've ever tried to go through customs in a developing country, the word "orderly" is not in anyone's vocabulary. It's more of a vomit-inducing bottleneck of traffic and snarky officials trying to deal with people who don't know the meaning of "line up"....my favorite was the separate lines for men and women! But we prevailed! But not before they told Sonia that she went to the wrong Spanish enclave! Ha....they were just playin' though...all good! Have you ever wanted to hit someone repeatedly with a hammer????
So after they took our passports stamped them (supposedly) we got through to Spain with an hour to get to our ferry, only to realize that we had completely forgotten about the..........TIME CHANGE! We now have 5 minutes to find the port and get on the ferry. Alas, having become used to the Moroccan clock where everything starts at least an hour after it's supposed to - we were unaccustomed to the Spanish "let's leave 15 minutes before the time on the ticket" clock.....and dude that ship was halfway to Malaga before the clock struck 12! The men checking the cars at the port had a good laugh at our expense.
So it's midnight, we've missed our ferry. No problem, everyone misses ferries....I mean my ancestors missed the Titanic by a WEEK! Sometimes it's a good thing you know? So the next ferry is leaving at 6 am, and the tickets open at 4 am so what else to do but grab some euros and head out to the pub....up until this point in my life....beer had never tasted so good. We ended up "sleeping" in the car for about an hour outside the ticket office and getting our tickets changed...not ideal. but no problem.
Being the good well-seasoned travellers we are, we were determined to get this right. So we were the first in line to the ferry. Same guys checked out our car, and we headed to our first encounter with Alejandro the porn star ferry customs official. He's taking our passports and tickets....the ramp to ferry is just meters away-and we realize he's not giving my passport back. We both think he's just taking a moment to admire all the bloody visas and stamps that adorn the pages of my passport...and then he says, with his chiseled jaw jutting out and his bling dangling over his well-tanned muscularity.... "Where is your Spanish stamp?"
Yeah, that's right. The morons working customs did not stamp my passport to go to Malaga...because even though it's the SAME FREAKING COUNTRY you need a different stamp to go to the mainland. And Sonia's all good cuz she had the coveted EU passport. So he says GO GO GO you have time! Go to customs and get it stamped! Sonia, in her car without insurance, speeds through the early-morning streets of Mellila to customs where we jump out of the car (if I had been more agile there definitely would have been some hood rolling, a la Starsky and Hutch) where Mr. lazy-ass STAMP GUY takes his sweet time....scoffing at my plea to hurry because our ferry is leaving in 5 minutes. We get back to the ferry within 15 minutes - 5 minutes before it's supposed to leave only to realize that it is, in fact, also half-way to Malaga, having left mere minutes after Alejandro told us we had time to go to customs.
AHHHHH! NOW WHAT? Sonia's father is at this time sitting in the Malaga airport without a phone waiting for us...the next ferry is not until 2:30., but that doesn't even go to our destination and would mean driving through the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the dark for 4 hours. We definitely need to catch the 3pm ferry to Malaga....Sonia's dad is just gonna have to count airport ceiling tiles for the next 16 hours.
I'd like to also add that at this juncture in our sojourn I'm sure Sonia felt deep regret at having asked me to accompany her on this trip as it is I, and my Canadianess that have potentially sabotaged the whole flippin thing....I asked myself repeatedly why we needed Independence...I could handle having slightly bad teeth and hey, I wouldn't have to spell elevator anymore....oh wait, I could not, with good conscience claim Margaret Thatcher as a fellow patriot.
Moving on, we need to sleep, having been up for more than 24 hours at this point. We had not planned a night in Mellila so cheap is the way to go. Cheap as in "HOOKER HOTEL" And we ran into 3 of them....one had really cool eye make-up though. And once the guy giving us our rooms got over the fact that we didn't need a room for just an hour and that no we were not in fact lesbians - he gave us our ant-infested room...thank god Sonia had brought sheets with her!
Sleep was good...Sonia only ran into one hairy naked guy in the toilet but she didn't have her glasses on so it was okay. We get to the ticket booth ask for tickets to Malaga so of course they give us tickets on the 2:30 ferry to Al Masomethingorother....which they refused to change even though it was their fault they printed the wrong bloody tickets. The computer wouldn't let them change it anymore.... After about 3 harrowing hours of begging and pleading and getting Alejandro's hot ass involved they still wouldn't change the tickets until finally by some miracle they got the head- ticket dude to override the computer and all was well....there were also more tears involved...but we were going to Spain! The car-checking guys let out whoops of laughter upon seeing out car go through the checking station for the 4th time that day.
Malaga was great. No problems. Beer, Beach and Sun.
Trip back home from Malaga to Mellila. Not so great. On the ferry back, it was super-wavy. I mean, things were crashing on the boat and people were falling and vomiting and it was just not a cool situation. I, who gets sick when the elevator goes too fast or I jump, managed to not throw up. But Sonia who had never been sea-sick disappeared into the bathroom for 4 hours. I tried to get up and look for her at one point but nearly lost my lunch and fell down a flight of stairs. After the boat got to Mellila and everyone had disembarked...Sonia was still MIA, and I'm a bit frantic...cuz, where would she have gone? Apparently she had to have some crew carry her out of the bathroom to the first class lounge. She could barely walk and was hyperventilating...it was definitely more than sea-sickness. Small victory for the budget travellers though...she was sick on the carpet in first class!
We had planned to just go back to Hooker Hotel because we had no money, but there was no way we could go there in her condition. We made it off the boat where some paramedics passed us who were coming to help a lady who had hurt her leg on the boat. They told us that there was no way they were letting Sonia go without checking her....as she really did look like death warmed over. So they took her in the ambulance and I got a lift in a police cruiser to the hospital were we stayed until about 4am, where some Moroccan reporter wanted us to tell him our story...uh...no. Then we splurged on a nice hotel. In the morning she felt better and we walked over the border to meet our Knights' in Shining Armour who drove us back to Casablanca in a black Mercedes....the white horse was in the shop. We got back at about 1am and I was greeted by a dead bird on my balcony and text message saying that we had to work the next day.
The end......so tired.
SONIA'S ADDITION:
And to think that this was the pitch for the 'rescue liam trip' (i'm such a dreamer romantic!!)
"now for the pitch)....(deep breath in...) imagine the fantastic-ness of the last Liam-Sonia-Erin trip! up from Meknes after a hearty Mahjouba breakfast...through the beautiful scenery of the altlas of Morocco...through the riskay ketama valley...wonderful smells, sights and sounds...into the Rif to witness the culture and behavioural patterns of Sonia's ancestral tribe...somewhere i have never been! taking national geographic worthy photos...feeling the cool mountain air flowing through our 'we deserse a goddam break after ass sucking intensives' hair. Then over the border into Mellilla - you wud have visited 2 of the smallest and one of the least sommonly accessed spanish enclaves in the world...followed by a mini cruise across the med to land on the beautiful anadalucian shores...(let your mind wander and ....
either that or stay in dusty smelly polluted casa and go back to work feeling like you shudda gotten outta town...we will be lone travellers who wud most likely be permanently on the road, fighting against the injustices of the world like the A team, if we werent efl teachers, together making yet another crazy liam related trip with each other to remind us that it is possible to have fun on a ‘rescue liam’ trip...we owe him!!(pitch more or less over)"
even though you felt bad about being Canadian when we realised you couldnt leave the spanish enclave because half asleep customs officials hadnt stamped your passport, rest assured i didnt hold missing the 6am ferry against you one bit...I would like EVERYONE to know that the saga would have driven me to mental hospitalisation if you hadnt been the best travel buddy in the world! THANK YOU xx
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