continent-hopping, beach towns, camels

aka, the long, crazy story of last weekend.

Our excursion on Friday was to Tarifa, the city at the southernmost point of Spain, and the ruins of Baelo Claudia, an ancient Roman city. Tarifa was a fantastic town. As a surfing hotspot, the main street was remarkably reminiscent of Santa Cruz or Santa Barbara, but combined with the interspersed historic buildings and narrow, alley-like streets that create the magic of classic European cities. During the day, it was pleasant and sleepy, but when we returned in the evening, it transformed. The streets were filled with good-humored people going to tapa and cocktail bars, restaurants, musicians…just delightful. We had a couple of drinks, but as three other guys and I had quite the plan for the next day, we had to turn in.

Backing up: after visiting Tarifa during the day, the “cultural excursion” (ok, field trip) continued to the ruins, which were fantastic, then to the beach alongside. Three guys had booked a hostel in Tarifa with plans to go to Morocco the next day. For no particular reason, I had brought my passport with me, and spur of the moment, I decided I wanted to go too. I got the go-ahead to crash on their floor for the night, and just like that, I was about to check another continent off my list.

We got to the port at 9 in the morning, bought a ticket package that included the ferry ride, a tour, and lunch, got our passports stamped and got on the ferry. At the port in Tangier, we met up with our 8-person group, and Ahmed, our tour guide.

“Ah, San Francisco, do you know the beat poets?” Ahmed asked excitedly upon finding out where I was from.

“Yeah, I do,” I answered.

“You don’t know who they are,” he said, apparently under the impression that I was trying to appease his madness.

“Really, I do!”

“Who are they?”

“Allen Ginsberg, uh, Jack Kerouac…” I trailed off, trying to remember others.

Ahmed was very excited. “And William Burroughs! All of them came to Morocco in the 1950s, I spent a lot of time with them,” he told us in his curious accent that had at least French, Arabic, and British influences. I was awed.

“And on our right, you are about to see where we’ll eat lunch,” Ahmed said excitedly as we began the first part of the tour: a drive through the newer part of Tangier. As we turned a corner, none other than the Golden Arches came into view. “Burgers! Fries! Eh?” We all looked at one another with raised eyebrows and feigned enthusiasm. “I’m kidding,” Ahmed continued. “We’ll eat traditional Moroccan food.” What a joker.

“One euro to ride them, free to take pictures,” we were told, as we made our first stop. We pulled over on the side of the road where an elderly Moroccan man was leading two camels down a stretch of dirt, each with an excited tourist perched on top. Daniel was the first one of our group to ride the camels, and he had a lovely trek down and back along the path. With some trepidation, I stepped up to ride next, alongside Ari, another one of our group. As Ari tried to get on, the camel jerked sideways and Ari quickly stepped off. “Glad I have this one,” I thought. Yet we successfully mounted the kneeling camels, grabbed onto the handles, and were off. I’d ridden a horse before and been fine, but stirrups make an incredible difference. This was scary as hell. I squeezed the camel with all my inner-thigh strength and made it to the end of the stretch. The elderly man turned the camels around and we were headed back. However, I’d spoken too soon about choosing the right camel. In the middle of the path, the camel kneeled down and rolled over on its side with a thud, crushing my foot and pinning my leg underneath its body. I screamed out of pain and fear. I don’t remember it being more than a few seconds, but apparently it was about a whole minute of yelling and camel-pinning before the man got the camel standing again. I clutched my toes, convinced they were broken. The van driver jumped out with some cream that he rubbed on the scrapes on my ankle and knee and wiggled all my toes, which was excruciating, not to mention idiotic. “Nothing’s broken,” he said. I wasn’t convinced, but as the adrenaline wore off, I realized that the pain was tolerable and calmed down.

I hobbled back to the van, realizing that if I walked on the inside of my foot and didn’t put any pressure on or bend my last three toes, I could stay mobile. At our next stop in front of the market, we stopped in a pharmacy and Ahmed procured ibuprofen and Tylenol with codeine to ease the pain and swelling. All three of the guys told me emphatically that if I wanted to go back then or at any point during the day, it would be no problem. As I could move my body in a forward direction, albeit slowly, without putting my foot in additional pain, I decided to continue.

Our next stop was the market. Besides freshness, a major difference between European markets with vendors occupying individual stalls and conventional grocery stores is that meat vendors tend to be less euphemistic. The first time I saw entire plucked chickens on a meat counter in Florence, I was fascinated and disgusted and took loads of pictures. That was tame compared to the Moroccan market. One vendor was enthusiastically hacking at a camel’s head, while a pile of fur-covered, freshly chopped legs lay in an inelegant pile in the corner. Another displayed a row of glassy-eyed goat heads. Yet the mountains of exotic-smelling spices, fresh fruits and vegetables, and gigantic bins of glistening olives presented a far more appetizing scene. The fish market was a huge, chaotic room packed with fish and seafood of all shapes, sizes, and colors, so fresh that the smell wasn’t bothersome.

After the market, we walked through the Medina, the old part of the city, which was similar to the historic district of any European city: sleepy, narrow, labyrinthine streets lined with tall buildings coated by crumbling layers of white paint, a few scattered stores, and the occasional Moroccan man or pair of hijab-sporting women. We walked until we reached the restaurant for lunch, which was an elegant building covered with brightly painted tile mosaics on the inside and outside. Lunch, which was included in the tour, consisted of fresh-baked bread, a tomato-based vegetable soup, beef kebabs with spicy sauce, and couscous topped with an incredible chicken-vegetable curry. For desert, we had tea cookies and sweetened whole-leaf mint tea. Although this meal would have been wonderful at any point, it was particularly appreciated after a couple weeks of the repetitive, plain Spanish food at the residencia.

 “It’s siesta time! Of course, we have siesta here too!” Ahmed announced as he led us through the hallways of a nearby building until we reached a room filled with brightly colored rugs. We all sat on benches around the edge as two men began unrolling carpets until they had covered the majority of the empty cement room with the tapestries. Meanwhile, they gave us a brief talk, informing us that their carpets were hand-sewn, dyed with all-natural dyes, were lovely on the floor or on the wall, and came in different colors. We all braced ourselves for the sales pitch, but after a few minutes of talking, the man concluded with: “Thank you for listening to my presentation. You may look around now.” Indeed, the strange situation, the absence of a sales pitch, and the abrupt awkwardness of the ending left us looking around at one another confused and amused. Yet we walked around examining the rugs, whose intricate patterns were truly beautiful. When I have 1100 euros to spend on a carpet, I know where I’m traveling.

The next stop was at “an authentic Berber pharmacy.” We walked inside and jars of spices, bags filled with plants and jars of creams lined every wall, yet the presence of another tour group getting a presentation led us to question the authenticity of that particular pharmacy. Our presenter described an assortment of their products including cooking spices, perfumes, essential oils, makeup, and healing ointments. Whenever he presented a new cream or perfume, he dabbed some on each of our hands so that by the end, the three guys and I all smelled of a delightful combination of roses, vanilla, menthol, musk, orange blossom, and others.

“Ok, now the buying,” he told us, and put a plastic bag in each of our hands. “Who wants a bag of garam masala? 2 euros. Very good for fish. Ok, no one? Three, two, one, ok.” He put it down. “Who wants this arnica cream? Very good for muscle pain. Ok, no one? Three, two, one, ok.” And on he continued, running through the entire list of products once more. One woman bought chapstick.

Before I describe the last stop at a jewelry store, I should explain the street vendors. They’re not like street vendors anywhere else I’ve visited. They follow you down the streets, shoving their jewelry/drums/toy camels/wallets/geodes in your face, haggling with you even as you repeatedly and emphatically inform them that you’re not at all interested. “Very good deal. 5 euro. 4 euro. 2 for 5. 2 euro. Ok, what price do you need to buy it?” (“None. I have one wallet. I don’t want two.” And what the hell am I going to do with a toy camel?) Luckily, if you ignore them, they’ll usually go away. While annoying, it’s not unsafe.

Now, back to the jewelry store. I wasn’t too interested: the style of jewelry over there is a bit heavy for my tastes; besides, this was all really expensive. The shopkeeper saw Ari pick up and examine a necklace and went to talk to him. “Very nice, very nice. This is 120 euro,” he told Ari, who quickly put the necklace down. The shopkeeper began to bargain with Ari. After some time, during which Ari tried to explain very politely that he’s a damn college student and isn’t going to spend 120 euro on a dumb necklace with a rock in it on a whim (highly editorialized), our tour guide came over and said something to the shopkeeper in Arabic. (I got the impression that the stores we visited on our tours weren’t supposed to pressure us into buying anything.) The man backed off, but returned soon enough, asking Ari for an offer. I was frustrated on Ari’s behalf. “Three euro,” I said from off to the side. The shopkeeper turned to look at me.

“How’s your foot?” he asked.

“Uh, it’s ok,” I answered, puzzled.

“It won’t be ok if you keep saying things like three euro. This is real silver and gemstones,” he said angrily.

“Man, I was just joking, it’s obvious that he’s not gonna buy it, so I was saying maybe if it was 3 euro he would…” I said, trying to explain myself. They take their bargaining seriously over there. Another street vendor got offended when Reid (our third UC-er) spoke to him in Spanish. “Do you speak to your mother and father in Spanish? Come on, talk to me in English, in your mother tongue,” he told him. I consider pressuring someone to buy your product for a good ten minutes a lot ruder than making a joke out about that situation (much less speaking Spanish) but hey, that’s the culture. If I want, I can leave.

Which I did, a short while later, just after hearing the Call to Prayer broadcasted on speakers installed throughout the city. When we made it back to the shore of Tarifa, we all shared a similar, interesting sensation of homecoming. Seeing signs in Spanish and hearing families speak the language on the street were very comforting: although we’ve only been there for two weeks, it’s starting to become the norm. Despite my camel-flattened foot, I returned to Cadiz feeling more balanced and grounded than I have since arriving.