12-6 The Home Stretch

40 pages and way too many hours holed up in various hotel rooms and I’m done with my ISP!

My plan was to spend the first two weeks researching (or cooking) and the last one writing. Erin and I decided to travel to Essaouira and Safi. We left Rabat bright and early—too bad our train was an hour late. I think it was stuck behind the party train. There was a big soccer game happening in Casa that day, and as we were waiting for our train, a train pulled up without an announcement. It was crampacked with boys, who jumped off as it stopped. After a few minutes, it started moving again, and they hopped back on—a few almost got left behind and had to run and jump on as it pulled away. As usual, we—being blonde—made a scene. When we started laughing at the boys running to catch the train, the whole bunch started yelling and singing. We could still hear them five minutes later.

On the train to Safi, we chatted with the people in our cabin, both of whom tried to invite us to stay with them. I don’t remember how we chose it—I think it came up when we were looking at the train map. We found the transfer stop to the bus to Essaouira and looked at what other cities were near by. Safi isn’t exactly a tourist destination; as we walked around, instead of catcalls, most people simply gave us confused stares. One evening at a café, a couple of guys started talking to us and were very curious how we ended up there.

We stayed in a super sketch hotel with a shared Turkish toilet. I think the man running it was pretty confused as to why we were spending all day in the room, but the fact that it was raining made it seem slightly less suspicious. The whole country pretty much flooded. The streets in Safi were rivers, and for a day or two, apparently they shut down all t he trains between Casa and Rabat because there was so much flooding. So it was a good opportunity to get some work done and not feel bad about staying inside all day.

Really, the only time we left was for diner. (Well, I went out around noon each day to pick up bread and yogurt for lunch.) At the restaurant, when we told them the food was bneen (delicious), they got really excited and brought out someone else (presumably the cook) and told us to say it again.

We tried to leave Safi on Wednesday, but unfortunately Erin got food poisoning. After throwing up in the street on the way there, she was ready to get on the bus—until she threw up again in the bus station… So we found a hotel and she slept all day. Mashi mushkil (that means no problem).

We took the bus to Essaouira. Good thing we weren’t in a hurry—the bus showed up half an hour late and then took half an hour lunch break in the middle. As we were walking through the medina looking for our hotel, we were approached by several men trying to get us to come to their hotels. The first one followed us forever even after we pretended to speak only Croatian, told him no, and tld him to go away, but for some reason, we trusted the second. He took us first to one, where the cheep room was already full, then to another, which didn’t even have a sign on the door, but was adorable and bright.

We had to stop back in Safi on the way back because Erin left her wallet at the hotel, and ended up eating lunch at a tiny little restaurant down the road. No one spoke French and the menu was in Arabic, so I went to try to sound out some options. After trying to explain that I wanted a vegetarian tajine, I ended up being shown a bunch of different tajines and pointing to the one I wanted. We ordered a tajine and an omelet, but they served us lentils, salad and fries as well…

I tried another new fruit. Unfortunately I didn’t have a camera. It was another variety of prickly pear, but this time, it was BRIGHT MAGENTA. Yes, that bright. It made my lips purple. It tasted a bit like pomegranate juice, which is funny, because pomegranate doesn’t taste like pomegranate juice.