et deux

alors...i feel like a storyteller reading to imaginary children and possibly adults...darcy and i ended up on our last day roaming the streets in search of candles, and instead stumbled upon people hawking henna, so we thought, why not? and both got our hands henna-ed by this woman with stained hands in her living room while she and her family watched spanish soap operas dubbed in arabic. it's fading now, but it was beautiful...it wound up each hand from my wrist to my pointer and middle fingers...we opted out of the black. it was more expensive, and i think is a little too close to the henna muslim women actually get when they get married...

i had decided before leaving for morocco that it would be a genius idea to take a boat, yes, a boat, from the eastern coast of morocco to andalucia (spain). because fez is in the center, and i had booked my flight back to paris from sevilla, i thought it silly to go all the way to tanger on the north west tip, cross the strait of gibraltar, and then have to go all the way through andalucia to get back to granada.

well...it may have been easier to eat the 200€ and fly from fez to granada.

here's how it happened: i bought a bus ticket from fez to nador. 110 Dh, 11 euro-ish for a 6 hour bus ride through the atlas mountains. downside - it left at 3 am. step two = ferry nador- almería. something like 50€, but i had to pay in Dh, in cash. that was another 7 hours of travel crossing the mediterranean. also note that i have not eaten, nor slept much this day. and all the moroccan or spanish people (of which there were maybe 20 or 30) on the ferry looked at me like i had 4 heads and a tail, some white chick wearing a green corduroy hat she bought in sweden to hide her unwashed hair traveling alone with henna on her hands who doesn't speak arabic or spanish. you can imagine.

so i arrived in almería exhausted and deliriously hungry and found the bus station but was AGHAST to discover that the last bus to granada had left a half hour before. i had not taken into acount the 2 hour time difference between morocco and spain. that's right people, next time you travel this way, always pay close attention to subtle things like NO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME IN AFRICA. oh god, was a pissed. i broke down crying in the station. i think that transcends all languages.

i stayed the night in a pension in almería (hot shower, bed, that's all i needed) and bought a train ticket to granada for the next morning.

next: martha in alhambra!