So we get this guy (guide) come up to us to show us a “nice place to stay” now this is a story, so they leave me and the bike parked on the side of the road while the guide takes Trev to find a nice hotel, he promises!! After about ½ hour they both come back, trev grinning from ear to ear, yet im not buying it, i can feel that this is going to be interesting! He has found us a place, a burbur homestay , for $40 euro a night, breakfast included. So we take all bags off the bike and again i stand on the side of the street with just me and the bags now, and believe me im definitely getting some looks, i don’t like being the odd one in town, the kids are cute, they try talking to me but of course they all speak French. Trev and the guy go off again, the guy jumps on the back of the bike and off they go to find safe parking for the bike for the two nights, this means find someone to watch over it on the streets, yikes.
So they get back to where i am and them we are off to the homestay, Trev assures me this will be real cool, just what “He”, being the key word, was looking for. We are still in our full biking gear, sweating in the 33 deg heat and now starting to smell that rancid body smell just like we used to before we acclimatized in the carribean, its a gross smell, still carrying all our bags, im not smiling at this point you can imagine, i wanted to book into a hotel in the new part of town, the Ibis for $58 and take a taxi to the old part to explore, sounds reasonable dosnt it? Anyway after walking into this maze, and i mean maze it went on forever, people meandering thru and it can only be 8’ – 10’ wide, we arrive at the door of the place, a very large heavy door with a big knocking knob on it, looks like your entering into a castle, well a castle it wasn’t albeit perhaps the date it was built, 1306. There awaiting us were 6 faces of the Moroccan family whos house it was we were about to stay at, its a room about 10 x 10 with a table and bench to sit at and they are all sitting on a built in like concrete couch looking up at us cause they sit close to the floor, i get introduced to the owner who speaks French only and then shown our room which if you turned to the right it was the door, if you looked up it went up 3 stories but so tiny. Our room well it was a double bed in one corner, a very old dresser, like a round table in the middle and couches around 3 sides with morocco fabric very red and gold and jazzy i will say, but this place is old, theres no AC just a fan that dosnt seem to help and no windows. The bathroom is old and he has to change the gaz tank before we can get hot water, the shower kind of works but then all of a sudden it decided not to and spray thru the –side- of the tap so everything gets wet including the toilet paper, yes which they had which was a bonus. I looked sideways and there was the standing throne bathroom because of course here they don’t sit on toilets they stand and squat with a hole in the ground, wow is this a culture shock.
Trev will tell you his version it sounds so much more romantic, you can see why you have to be careful reading these travel books because it really depends on what you like and would like to experience. I have to say at this point my true colors were beginning to show and i was not smiling, trev said whats wrong and i was still trying to process what in the hell pocessed him to think that i would have a smile on my face! He says to me “your not smiling” i say just give me some space im not sure what or how im feeling at the moment??
Im thinking to myself, what is wrong with me, this is a new country and different but why am i annoyed that its not like home and europe, clean and fresh and with all the things i like for a holiday? I guess what it is, is that this is not a holiday, its an adventure, this is very different indeed.
In reflection i started thinking about this place in relation to me and what thoughts run thru my head as im meandering thru this labyrinth. I think what it reminds me of is like a human body, if you can imagine being inside a body with all its good clean parts and still its gross dirty parts yet the body needs it all to survive, well thats what ive come to think about this place, all of what im seeing is needed for this Medina to function the way it dose? Its like a pulsing body.
What is nice is that i no longer feel bad or guilty when I express how and what im feeling about it all, it used to be that I would just say nothing or very little if i didn’t enjoy a place but now i really go into what it is that im thinking and i think it helps to accept the things i don’t like instead of feeling bad about not liking them, if you understand what i mean!
It kinda felt like when you go into ice cold water, for a while you cant breath and it dosnt feel very nice but then you get used to it and thats what happened to me after being immersed in it for a few days.
The safety i feel in being able to honestly express what i am feeling about this mystical place.
One thing for sure i know is that we would not have had this experience had we not had this guide, he was great and for only $10 a day and of course if trevor hadn’t got us into this in the first place.
I still have feelings of not knowing whether id rather skoot back over to the beach in spain or continue on to see more of Morocco, i know we will be seeing more as thats the plan, i must say i wouldn’t have wanted to miss this experience for the world. The people are respectful and wonderful and gentle, they seem to spend a lot of time with family and the kids are running around everywhere and you don’t get the sense that the parents need to worry about them at all so really thats all thats important!
I will never forget our lovely host who offered us sweet mint tea that night when we got back and sat for two hours with us trying to have a conversation, at one point it was like playing pictionary and sherades, neither of us really knowing what each other was saying - we couldnt figure out at one point if he had 3 daughters or 3 wives! we laughed.
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