It’s raining in heaven

Writing to you at 5am, as we were told to change the bus in Tan Tan. Tan Tan I always thought is capital of Western Sahara but we’re still way off the “border”.

It’s been a rainy day. Rainy and cold, felt like Poland. +10 degrees, gray, cloudy, miserable. Lots of mint tea consumed. I adore the mint tea here. When I was a child my dad and his dad would make mint tea at home, cooked in big pots, served cold on Summer days. The mint was collected from my granddad’s garden. Then there is no longer a garden and I still drink mint tea in bulk quantities but it doesn’t taste the same. Turns out what is sold in shops is peppermint and what the granddad grew was green mint. I wouldn’t know of course but there is green Dilmah tea available in Poland “with Moroccan mint”. And the mint flavour is like the one from granddad’s garden and there it is, among the ingredients: green mint.

It’s the same here but instead of green it’s black tea, served preferably sweet though in many places you just add your sugar as you want. One of the things Morocco does best.

Sun rises late in Morocco in February: after 8am. I went out of the hotel at about 10am and the place I use for for food and tea and coffee wasn’t even open. The place is called Lune D’Or, it’s right off Jemaa el-Fna but despite the location is not expensive and the service is very friendly. It’s either not marked on Google Maps or it’s marked but with some.strange photos, showing some golden couches and heavily decorated interior while the one I’m talking about is simple outdoor seating. The guys allowed me to sit in and drink coffee while they were setting up the place. It was going to be a slow day.

I always think of making a trip slow, even too slow, so that I can just do nothing but hang around & read books & drink coffee. This morning was a sample for me. I’m reading *House of Spider” by Paul Bowles. The book was recommended to me as a book to read while in Morocco. The author spent time here. I am not enjoying the book much. It tried to explain to me why Christians don’t understand about Islam and why Islam doesn’t understand Christians and why Muslims may struggle to understand each other but it’s written in a way that I struggle to understand anything. Or the bool is simply boring.

I bought an ebook reader for this trip, a kindle. It’s my first ebook reader and the book is the first I’m going to read in its entirety on a kindle. I already have 10 paper guidebooks in my main rucksack and they are heavy. I have Rough Guide to Morocco as an ebook but it’s a horrible format for a guidebook, the maps don’t display at all or they are too small, the formatting is all messed up, I use its pdf version instead, it’s better. I used to carry paper book for reading but I always ended up reading only one or two in 2 months and it seemed to me like dead weight carried around. Now, surprisingly, the reading goes fast and I may just complete my Goodreads reading challenge for 2019 of 13 books! 13 books is not much, I have friends who have reading challenge of 101 books per year but last year at the end I saw how many books Goodreads says I read and it was… 10. Pitiful. And I read more but the app didn’t record the reading dates but now I’m mobilised. Reading galore!

Next in turn is a book by a Polish Bartek Sabela *All grains of sand” (“Wszystkie ziarna piasku”), which is a non-fiction about Western Sahara. I already read the book but it seems appropriate to read it again as I’m approaching Laayoune.

After my morning falafel & coffee & tea I went to see Bahia Palace, which is on the list of Marrakech highlights in my Rough Guide. And indeed it is a highlight. I would even go as far as saying that if you only have 70Dh to spend on a sight to see in Marrakech, spend it on this one! It’s a residential building, a series of rooms, chambers and courtyards, empty but exquisitely adorned. I must admit, the geometries of Islam design are highly instagrammable and in the palace there is plenty of colourful patterns that are beautifully laid out on floors, walls and especially ceilings. The crowds were modest although queues sometimes formed for certain photo areas.

It’s on my way back from the palace to Jemaa el-Fna when it started raining.

And it didn’t stop.

I spent the rest of the day in a Le Grand Balcon café sipping coffee & tea. I remember back in 2001 there were busses parking in front of it. Now the square is free of car traffic. There are still motorbikes, occasional bicycles and sometimes donkeys.

From there back to my hotel, and on to the CTM bus station! In this rain taxis were not stopping for a stingy tourist like me and I was growing a bit desperate. Then as I was looking up the maps I discovered in Marrakech public transport is on Google Maps! I quickly rushed to the bus station.

Now, Google Maps not always contains public transport information (case in point: my home city of Krakow, where only trains are covered) but when it does it’s a godsent. I used it recently and successfully in Saigon, in Hanoi and now in Marrakech. As far as I understand it’s not Google who inputs the information but someone on the city side who has to do that, Google only provides the interface.

And soon there I was, admittedly a bit soaked, on bus no. 5, 4Dh per ride, on my way to somewhere close to CTM, which has its own bus terminal and runs a whopping 8 busses a day to Laayoune, 15hrs away. It even has its online schedule at ctm.ma and an app. Unfortunately online tickets are allowed only up to 72hrs before the departure.

There was a bit of a walk from the train station where I got off the bus to the CTM bus station. I got soaked even more and oh man, Marrakech streets are not used to this kind of rainwater. The streams were already flowing down the streets, the sand was turning into mud.

I got in and paid my ticket and they are not cheap at 360Dh + 5Dh for piece of baggage. Obligatory pre-departure shawarma sandwich and coffee followed (the bus stopped for food at about midnight for 30mins which turned into an hour) and here I am. It’s dark outside but the moon is full and outside is Sahara!