There are a few things I’ve learned over the course of my travels around the world. Among them is something I’ve fashioned into a bit of a rule: never blog jet lagged. I’m about to break this rule, and you’ll see why I created it shortly.
Soon after I wrote my last post, we arrived in Meknes on the slow train to Fes. Meknes is about 60 kms from Ifrane, home of the prestigious Al-Akhawayn University (the name means “the two brothers,” in reference to King Hassan II of Morocco and King Fahad of Saudi Arabia, who were not brothers but the name was chosen for political expediency, bla bla bla), which was our ultimate destination.
I should add here that we had “breakfast” at the hotel in Madrid before we left for the airport at 8:15 in the morning, Madrid time — Spain is two hours ahead of Morocco. Hence, our flight left Madrid at 10:30 and arrived in Casablanca at 10. After passport control and baggage claim, we got on the train to Casablanca Voyageurs station, where we changed trains for Meknes and rolled on slowly up the coast as far as a place called Kenitra before finally turning inland and making our way up the foothills of the Atlas Mountains to the former capitol of Moulay Ismail, scourge of the 17th century Mediterranean.
We arrived in Meknes at 3:20 Morocco time (5:20 in Madrid), having not eaten anything since breakfast except for a can of Coca Cola Light and a shared (small) can of Pringles that we’d bought at Casa Voyageurs. From Meknes, one takes a “grande taxi” — a shared, city-to-city service taxi — to Ifrane, a small village in the mountains about an hour away. We had decided on the train that we would stop and get something to eat in Meknes, and had two scenarios in mind: one, if the train had a left luggage office, was that we would leave our bags at the station and go to the old city where there are a number of restaurants and; 2, if there was no left luggage office, we would go to one of the restaurants around the train station itself with our bags.
I should mention here that Natalie stumbled over a high door sill in the hotel in Madrid, and her ankle had swollen rather badly, so Samer and I were sharing the load of carrying her luggage, and her ability to walk long distances was rather severely curtailed.
To make a long story short, there were both a ridiculous number of stairs to go up and down at the Meknes station, and there was no left-luggage office. We identified a restaurant nearby … that turned out to be closed … and wound up at a restaurant that I normally would not have ventured into on my own, but with the three of us we made it work. The food was surprisingly good, and no one appears to have had any violent gastro-enteritical responses, so we’re considering it a small victory.
Thus sated, we returned to the station, and realized our mistake. When the train had arrived, there was a long line of grand taxis outside the station. Now, there was one.
Samer is a champion bargainer. There is a very large wall tapestry hanging at home in the guest bedroom that I bought because he had whittled the poor guy in the Khan al-Khalili in Cairo down to such a bargain price that I couldn’t help buying it (Samer didn’t actually want it, he just likes bargaining). He’s very, very good at this. However, the Meknes Gare Taxi Mafia proved to be his match.
We walked up to the taxi dispatcher, a man who embodies the worst characteristics of such people. He was cocky and confident, and he knew that whatever happened, this was a game that he, not Samer, would win. I was virtually useless because I don’t understand Moroccan Arabic at all, and was able to comprehend only about 10% of what was said (Moroccan Arabic is one of those “worst case scenarios” for the learner of Arabic as a foreign language — it is the exception to every rule, the place where there’s always alternate grammar, and Moroccans have a very thick accent to the point where I have a problem determining whether someone is speaking in Arabic, Berber, or French — another language that I don’t speak).
I had been told by people at Al-Akhawayn that we should be prepared to pay 150 dirhams for the ride up to Ifrane from Meknes. In the longhand: there are 6 seats in the grande taxi, they cost 25 dirhams a piece, and in order to have the cab to ourselves, we have to buy all 6 of them. When Samer started negotiating, the dispatcher told him that it would cost us 300 dirhams because it was a Sunday night and “I’ll have to come back empty.”
Samer was pissed because the guy wouldn’t budge, and because, as he put it, “He thinks we’re rich and wants to screw us.” The driver flashed us a smile that said, “Scream all you want, I’m going to get my way,” and walked away, leaving us standing on the sidewalk with our bags.
“What happens now?” Natalie asked.
“Now,” I sighed, “We wait.”
For the next forty-five minutes it was a game of cat-and-mouse, watching Samer try to negotiate with taxi drivers, and watching the dispatcher and his cronies bully them into submission. Finally, Samer came back, his body language registering defeat.
“They want us to pay 35 a seat,” he said, “for a total of 210.”
Over the years, I have mastered the ability to speak without moving my lips (in order to minimize comprehension by a shopkeeper or vendor who claims not to speak English — in the same way that I have frequently relied on my obvious foreign appearance to monitor a negotiation in Arabic). I told Samer, “It’s cold, it’s getting ready to rain, and Natalie is exhausted. I’ll pay it, but I’m not paying him.”
Guess who wound up driving us to Ifrane.
I realized at some point — around the third or fourth time that we hurtled up the two lane mountain highway toward Ifrane
in excess of 120 kilometers an hour, in the wrong lane with oncoming traffic threatening to turn us into a pancake, our insane driver moving over with mere seconds to spare — that I’ve never taken a service taxi in Egypt. If the train doesn’t go there, the bus does, and if neither does, then it’s probably not worth a visit.
The landscape became increasingly more mountainous, alpine, and rocky the further we went. About halfway, someone had used spare rocks from the fields to write “Allah, al-watan, al-malek (God, country, king)” on the side of a hill overlooking the highway.
The closer we got to Ifrane, the worse the weather got. The clouds got black, and then it started to pour, and from the rocky fields and craggy hills, it looked far more like we were in Scotland than Morocco.
Finally, after moving into a patch of pines, we emerged from the countryside into a fairytale Bavarian style alpine village with the name “Ifrane” spelled out in flowers at the roundabout on the edge of town. If it weren’t for the women in headscarves, the men in burnooses, and the Arabic on the signs, it could be Switzerland.
On arrival at the University, we discovered that we were expected for dinner barely an hour later.
It’s massively cold up here — the low last night was 4 degrees Celsius (around 41 degrees F), and we’ve been wearing all of our clothes at once to try to ward off the chill.
At any rate. I’m parked in the library and probably ought to move along back to the housing to see what the others are up to (probably still sleeping) — it’s been an exhausting trip, and we’re spending tomorrow on the move again…
Happy Monday!
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