Off to the Beach

Last weekend, I needed some time away from the craziness that is my host family and the business of Rabat, and what better place to go than the beach?  However, I don't settle for any old beach, I wanted the real deal.  Therefore, going North to the Mediterranean coast was the only real option.  The voyage started with a very packed train ride to Tangier, which required that we stand in the hallway for the majority of the 6 hour ride.  On the train, my friends and I met several people who told us all about their version of Morocco.  Mostly, the conversations revolved around Moroccan food and hospitality, and Arabic.  I was actually quite proud of myself because I was able to conduct a full conversation using mostly Arabic; though I must be excused for the occasional slip into French when I didn't know a word.

The sun was beginning to set just as our train pulled into Tangier, and so we took a taxi to go find a hotel we could stay in for the night.  All was going well and we had found a very reasonably priced and decent hotel, until my one friend and I realized that we had left our passports back in Rabat.  A very stupid move, but nonetheless it happened.  There was no way we were going back to Rabat on another 6 train ride, and so there was no other option than to go the Central Police station to obtain a document stating that we were, in fact, legal immigrants/tourists and would not be asking the hotel we decided to stay in to perform any illegal activities.  So off to the Central Police Station in Tangier we went.  Normally, any police station in a developing country spells disaster in most people's minds, but each of the (non-uniformed) police officers we spoke to were very nice and somewhat helpful.  We were there to get an official document stating that we had entered into the country no more than 3 months ago and that we were, in fact, U.S. citizens.  As the officers began conversing with us in their very Moroccan way of bantering about everything and nothing at the same time, they pulled up all our information very easily.  However, somehow in the mix, they forgot to include all of this information needed by the hotel we would be staying at.  But that wasn't all.  As we were leaving, one of the police officers asked us if we wanted to be escorted back to our hotel, and how can you refuse an offer like that?  So we all piled into a police van and made our way down to our cheap but nice hotel near the beach.  We pulled up in front of a shop, and when I looked over at the shop owner, his eyes were bigger than I ever thought eyes could be.  As we stepped out of the van, I attempted to suppress the laughter that was almost consuming me, as this poor man attempted to figure out what was going on.  I thought that this would have been enough for the police officer, but then he told us that he would accompany us to the hotel to make sure that we got a good room and a good price.  Never mind the fact that we had already negotiated the price and found it to be just fine.

The next day was far less ridiculous.  We all met up for breakfast at a little cafe, purchased our tickets for the bus to Tetouan, and hopped on at 10 am for the 2 hour drive.  The ride was fairly uneventful and relaxing, but I must say the Rif Mountains are spectacular (even if the roads through them are atrocious).  And while we were making our way through a particularly bad pass, I could see electric-generating windmills on the far ridge.  It was a very heartening sight to see after being exposed to all the trash heaps that seem to be lining every street.  When we finally arrived in Tetouan at the bus station, we were all just a tad disoriented and it seemed like nothing was the way it said it was on the travel guide map.  So we picked a direction, and found a grand taxi to take us to the tiny beach town of Martil; about a 15 minute drive away.  The wait and travel time was definitely worth it.  Two months around my large family or 40 other SIT members can make you get a little crazy for some quite time.  And the beach at Martil was perfect for that.

We checked into our hotel, which was a two minute walk away from the Mediterranean beach, and took what we needed to spend the rest of the day lazing about on the wonderfully soft sand.  Perhaps I had just been deprived of anything like it, but that beach was spectacular!  For, the beach in Rabat is not that great, to put it lightly.  We all spent the proceeding 24 hours exactly like that.  I had a brief interlude of stress attempting to figure out housing at F&M, but fortunately that was brief and not as much of a headache as I thought it would be (Sorry to all of you who still have to figure things out!  I hope it all works out in the end).  The next day we tried to buy tickets for the bus heading straight from Tetouan back to Rabat, but unfortunately, it was already full, so we ended up taking a nondescript bus out of the bus station in Tetouan to Tangier, and taking the train from Tangier back to Rabat.

We got into Tangier with about 2 hours to spare, so we decided to go out and find a cafe.  The only type of food/drink establishment we could find: McDonald's!  It was actually a very nice McDonald's, and had a great view of the beach.  All in all, a fun, albeit crazy, adventure all in the attempt to find a beach.