As big of an adventure as I predicted that Marrakech would be, what I wasn’t prepared for was the grand adventure that getting there would entail. It began on the ferry, a ride that was supposed to take only an hour or so but ended up taking two-and-a-half. All the while David and I kept thinking that actually swimming it would have been faster. I guess the agitation came a lot from David’s friend.

You see, as we were boarding the boat David (sick of the casual friendships I seemed to just happen into while on our travels) befriended a fellow American. Kyle Foley author of Wrestles with God and “inventor of words.” (no joke, it’s how his business card reads…). David helped him with his bags and then in a further gesture of goodwill invited him to sit with us. He took us up on the offer and after 5 minutes, David regretted it. Not that Kyle was overtly obnoxious, he was just opinionated and talkative and kind of weird. I’m 90% certain at least one of his ex-girlfriends has a restraining order against him. He nearly admitted as much. I think also it was his approach to conversations and the fact that it was hard to listen to the words Kyle was speaking with out staring at his dry, breadcrumb encrusted lips. But after about 2 hours of debating with him of life philosophies, religion, politics, and modern literature I was done with talking and wanted desperately to be off the boat.

When it finally happened it was a mad dash. You see, I knew that we’d be arriving into port in Tangier and from there it was still a 12 hour train ride to get to our destination in Marrakech. The smart thing to do would be to buy the train tickets before hand that way you could ensure yourself a sleeper car. The problem however was that they had a policy (that seemed comply inane to me) that you had to buy your tickets WITHIN Africa. So as frustrating as it was, I couldn’t buy them online or on the other-side of the water. What this made for was a ferry full of people all scrambling to get to the train station in time to secure their seat on the only train for the day. No one, and I mean NO ONE wanted to get stuck in Tangier. We had all read the same reports, reports that spilled lucid details of common muggings, scams, luggage thefts, and touts. The touts of Tangier are world renowned, they will try anything thing they can to take a buck from you, and most importantly they are RELENTLESS. And so every report we had all read ended the same way: Spend as little time as possible in Tangier.

And so like the hundreds of others we spilled off the boat and made our way through the pockets of touts shouting seemingly helpful propositions. I thought that we should try to walk to the train station from the boat to avoid a “fresh of the boat” fare from the taxis. Problem was I had no idea where the train station was and it’s not like you can just ask anyone (since many touts worm their way into your pocketbook by giving directions). Eventually we happened upon a police officer and asked in broken french for directions. He told us the general directions but said we’d pretty much have to take a cab. Still I wanted to distance ourselves a bit further from the port to get a better fare. In retrospect two white guys with luggage in Tangier are going to get the same rate anywhere but you know what they say about hindsight. Nonetheless we walked about half a mile further then caught a cab and a friendly driver was happy to take us to the train station charging us 10 euro for the short ride. The fare seemed a bit steep but we hadn’t yet converted any money (again thinking the businesses RIGHT off the ferry would charge a higher rate) so we couldn’t complain too much.

And finally we were at the train station in line to get two of those coveted sleeper bunks for the all-night train ride. Waiting in line we practiced our French for buying tickets and chatted with fellow tourists. They told us the average cab ride was about 5 Dirham (or about a buck) and we had just paid him the equivalent of 100 Dirham… Lesson learned.

It was not to be the last lesson for the day, for as we finally got to the ticket window and tried to reserve tickets I learned WHY you can only buy Moroccan train tickets in Africa. THEY ONLY TAKE CASH. A national train service that only takes cash. I was astounded. You can call it third world ignorance if you like, but visit their website, it’s really well designed. I couldn’t believe a company with such a good site could be so archaic to only take cash…

We had to get out of line to go to one of the ATMS that I had read was the easiest way to get Dirhams. David tried one first with no success. “Maybe it’s broken” we thought. So unworried, we tried another, but that one was reportedly out of money. So we went back to the first one and I tried my card. Nothing happened. Now we were starting to get worried. So we asked around (again in broken French) where the nearest ATM was and were answered back with “downtown,” or in other words a cab ride away. So we sucked it up and caught another cab from the train station to go to a bank, any bank, that had an ATM. We tried 3 before giving up, hoping that it was a problem with our cards and NOT that we had collectively spent all of our travel money. We tried to call the bank but our phones wouldn’t work. So we were forced to go all the way back to ferry docks where there was a bureaux de change. Now we were really worried. With every second that ticked on we were losing a chance to get two of those train tickets. The fear of staying in Tangier propelling us on.

At the ferry dock (where our misadventure began some hours ago) we cashed in every red cent we had; pounds, euros, and 100 dollars of emergency money my mom put in David’s shoe just before he left the US. Lord only knows what it smelled like but we were very very happy to have it because between the two of us we would just have enough money to buy the tickets. So we raced back to the train station and asked what the fare was for our gallivanting. “20 euro” the driver replied. “You mean 20 Dirham” I said in a friendly I-now-know-how-this-works kind of way. “No, 20 euro” he replied in an unfriendly-you’re-going-to-pay-me-now kind of way. I argued with him for a short time but because I was desperate to try to get a train ticket and because I just so happened to have one last 20 euro bill and nothing else, I paid him and we ran to the ticket booth.

The sleeper cars had sold out. So it was to be a 12 hour train ride in a seat… not fun. The man at the ticket booth asked if we wanted first class or standard class and I turned to David who was counting our money. We had just enough to buy the first class tickets but that would leave us 12 hours away from the coast, in the middle of Northern Africa, with no money what so ever and no plan. at this point we still weren’t sure if the problem was our cards or a lack of money.

David turned to me and said: “Let’s just go back to Spain. I want to get back on the ferry, where I can get money, I DON’T want to get stuck here.” I told him this is what the adventure was all about, took the money of of his hands, and said: “Deux billets de première classe, s’il vous plaît.” “If we have to ride it for 12 hours may as well have a comfortable seat right? Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? We can always have someone wire us money or something” I said as enthusiastic as I could muster. To be honest though I really had no idea what we would do when we got off the train. We had to pay our hotel upon arrival, and if anything, I mean anything, went wrong we could really be in a bad place. After all we didn’t even have enough money to buy a Coke on the train. Still I smiled and tried to exuded the it’s-all-under-control attitude. Despite this he still seemed to prefer the “go back to Spain plan.”