Larache

Today we had another free day, and since we felt we had seen most of Asilah the day before, we decided to go to another town, called Larache. At first we thought we would take the bus, so we headed up to the "bus station." This seemed to be a pretty shady area of town in general, and after being pestered by numerous people asking where we were going, we decided it wasn't much more expensive to take a taxi. This turned out to be one of the more interesting experiences I had in Morocco.


First of all, the driver convinced us that we could fit all 6 of us into his 4-passenger taxi. So there were four of us crammed into the back and two people in the front seat. That part wouldn't have been so bad, if we hadn't had a maniac for a driver! He didn't really seem to be speeding, but anytime there was a vehicle in front of us, he would drive so closely behind it, that if it even slowed down at all he would have to slam on his brakes. Needless to say, that alone made the 6 of us fairly nervous. Then at one point, there was a tractor puttering along down the side of the road, but we couldn't see it as we were mere inches behind the truck in front of us. So when the truck moved over to the left to avoid the tractor, our driver had to swerve quite quickly. And yet this little incident didn't stop him from following so closely at all!

We arrived in Larache and again did a bit of sightseeing, but as it was also quite small, it didn't even take one whole day. Overall, it seemed to be quite a bit poorer than Asilah had been. One especially interesting part was in the port. While we were there, we saw a couple of big grey motorboats with 4 motors each. When we got in trouble for taking some pictures with these boats in them, a policeman started whistling at us to stop. The Spaniards later explained to us that these were the boats used to transport drugs out of Morocco. Apparently drug exports are one of the country's biggest sources of income.

When we decided it was time to head back to Asilah, we first had to find the place where all the taxis gathered, and decide on a reasonable price for our trip back. There were more than 20 taxis and drivers at this place, and there was some confusion at first about where we wanted to go. Again, there were six of us crammed like sardines into one taxi, and this time the driver demanded we pay him in advance. But once we were in the taxi, a few of the drivers started arguing loudly in Arabic (we assumed over who got to drive for us). Soon it escalated and two drivers and the guy who seemed to be the "manager" of all the drivers came very close to getting into a fist fight. Luckily the other drivers kept them away from each other, but all we could do was sit there, since we had already paid for our ride! Eventually our driver got in and took off, but he seemed to be fuming the entire trip!


Once we got back to Asilah, we decided to rent a motorcycle with a cart behind it to take us to some caves on the beach that we had heard about. Once again, all six of us crammed into a very small space, and prepared ourselves for a bumpy ride! This time we got stopped by a policeman, but our driver was able to talk himself out of getting a fine. After about 10 minutes of driving, we got off the road and went through a field. There was a path but from the amount of bumping around we felt in the cart you wouldn't have known it!


The most fun (and scariest!) part was when we had to drive along the side of the cliff to get down to the beach. It was even bumpier and the driver kept getting stuck! All in all, it was a pretty exhilarating ride, and we laughed the entire way there. It was lucky that the journey was so much fun though, because once we got to the beach we realized the tide had come in to much for us to go to the caves after all... a small fact that our driver had either neglected to realize or mention! Oh well... we did get to see a beautiful sunset on the beach!


That was basically the end of my Moroccan adventures, as the next day we took the ferry back to Tarifa! I really enjoyed myself, but I was sure glad to get back to Spain!