We are here! In Marrakech! Our journey, as usual, was not entirely without blog-worthy incident (though my idea of blog-worthiness may not be yours). We started the day by waking up and having our morning pastry and coffee. Then we went back to pack. At about 2:20, the manager of the apartment showed up. He has been a little to find lately, so we were a bit relieved that we didn't have to just leave the key there.
Since our staircase is deadly, I took down the heavy baggage one at a time. Then we headed out. It was just a short time later that a guy with a blue cart offered to take us to the bus station for just 20 dh. I had only 24 dh in assorted coins, and then money that he couldn't probably make change for. So we agreed and headed down to the bus station. Once outside the medina, his hat kept blowing away and I kept running after it to retrieve it--like a dog chasing a Frisbee. Finally we made it. I paid him 20 dh by putting 6 2 dh coins into his and saying "douze", then putting 3 1 dh coins into hand saying "quinze", and finally putting a 5 dh coin into his hand saying "vingt". He recounted and it took him a while with all those coins, but in the end, he was happy. The Supratours bus office was still closed and there was a large crowd of people. Finally an employee came and everyone lined up. Elena went in and soon came out to tell me I had to get 2 luggage tickets for 5 dh each. I did--paying with a 100 dh note.
We let the long line of people get on the bus while we waited in the shade--then finally we boarded and found our seats. The guy in front of us was in full recline leaving only a small amount of space. His 10-ish year old daughter was next to him. Elena asked if he would move his seat up. He said he would temporarily. Then he moved it back when I sat down. Elena tried to ask again. He became confrontational and acted, more or less, like an asshole. Many people were watching the scene, including the guy's wife. I didn't say anything, but in a small fit of anger, gave him the bird such that the only person who could really see it was his wife. Elena moved to a seat in the back, but I stayed. The guy said something to his daughter in French about being on vacation. Then, as if he wanted to hear, he told her in English, "they are Americans." I'm not sure if a 10 year old girl understood.
At that point, my feeling on the event changed. He said it was his right to recline to the maximum position and because he was tall he needed to. But when he used the event to poison the mind of a 10 year old girl with hatred and justification of being an asshole, I knew he was my moral inferior. It sort of made it easier to bear, but in in the end, he is the one who will succeed in poisoning his daughter. I hope his wife was ashamed of his behavior. A girl who rode with Elena said the guy was rude after witnessing the event. His tone was very ugly and condescending, after all. Several minutes later, his daughter moved her seat back up. I did a little gesture that no one saw except, possibly her mother saw it from the corner of her eye. It's the one where you touch your heart and then, like blowing a kiss, send gratitude through the air.
We eventually made a stop and after that, the girl moved to another seat. Perhaps she understood what had happened and didn't want to be a part of it. I can only hope.
Anyway, I left my Routard guide out for him to see--what would Americans be doing traveling on a Routard guide? And I sat and read La Sorcière de Portobello in French. He then pulled out a book from his overhead compartment and left a magazine or journal called "Writers and Poets" there for me to see. Then he started reading something that I could tell was English, but I couldn't tell the title of the book.
I sat there the whole time. I don't know if he felt uneasy having used such a demeaning tone against Elena, but if he did, I was going to be there with the back of his seat in my face, him knowing that the back of his seat was in my face.
When we arrived, I figured we had a bit of a walk ahead of us to find a hotel. Elena tried to organize our first night by emailing a hotel to make a reservation. She was confident that the reservation would stick. I was confident that a customer at the door is worth more than a customer with a reservation backed by a promise but not a deposit. So when Elena checked her email and was informed that there were, in fact, no more rooms left. I wasn't shocked at all. The reason we needed a room was that the apartment Elena arranged was looking iffy. We rented from an acquaintance in Montpellier who is Moroccan. But she needed to send the key to her neighbor. The key had not arrived as of Sunday. It suddenly arrived today. Without me knowing, Elena had met the girl on the bus who let Elena use her cell phone to ask if by some miracle, the key had arrived. It had.
So the bus eventually arrived in Marrakech. We got off and got our stuff. We brushed off a few taxi drivers while I rewrote Elena's chicken scratch of the address into something a normal person can read. Then we headed out to the taxi area. A guy asked if we needed a taxi. We showed him the address. He quoted us 30 dh. We asked him if he couldn't just use the meter, so he dropped to 25 dh. He took us there but couldn't find the exact building. Finally we decided to get off. We paid him 25 dh and no more. No meter--no tip--just the quote. And, hey, he didn't even take us to our destination. Though we were in fact only about a half block from it. Elena called the neighbors and they came and got us.
The apartment is nice. Two bedrooms, a large sitting room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. We are still in the process of figuring out how exactly to adjust the gas and how to get hot water for the shower, but tomorrow we'll ask.
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