We Are All In This Together—Cycling in Spain and Morocco, Day 4

It is 3 o’clock in the morning and we are on a seven-hour overnight ferry ride across the Mediterranean Sea. We chose the cheap seats and feel as if we are spending the night in one of Dante’s levels of hell. It is okay though; we are all in it together.

The man in front of me is snoring. Not cute kitten-like purrs, but loud, nasal, elephant seal-like bellows. Every now and then the noises must wake him, and he gives a few loud SNORTS! And then it starts again. Another next to me is watching the absolutely most annoying Arabic sitcom on his phone at a high volume, featuring a host with a showman’s booming bravado and piercing brittle, staccato, canned laughter.

My husband Twain, is lying across the three seats that do not recline above me in a semi-fetal position and trying to will himself to sleep, while I lie on the floor where his feet should be, using our panniers as a bony mattress to keep my body off the dirty floor. They are jutting into my kidneys and ribs in a most uncozy way. My feet are sticking out into the aisle and I pray no one steps on my broken ankle, but I am too tired to care enough to move them.

Other passengers have lain velvet blankets on the floor, wherever they can find an empty patch of space and have covered their heads with shawls. I envy their obvious expertise. Nobody has turned off the lights. A small child nearby cries “Ayuda me, ayuda me!” — over and over between his barking croup-like coughs. His mother tries her best to pacify him, but he is just too tired. We all are.

When we finally disembark and make our way through the border crossing to Morocco, we are bleary eyed to say the least, and all of my defenses are down. We weave our bikes in and out of chaotic traffic, focusing solely on predicting what the drivers’ next moves might be as they swerve and lurch to sudden stops with no apparent rhyme or reason. Both French and Arabic fill the air as people call to one and other over the din of the traffic. The smell of market stalls’ fare (raw meat, hanging from tenterhooks, piles of fruit, stacks of fresh bread and pastries) and diesel gas make my head spin.

Nearly all the women we see are dressed in Chadors, and as I stand on a crowded sidewalk, watching our bikes and waiting for Twain to change our Euros to Dirhams, I feel positively naked in my biking tights and short- sleeved shirt. Someone calls me “Snowy,” another “Silver.”
We find an inexpensive hotel on the bustling main drag, graciously shown our room by the host Mihmoun, where we are overlooking the streetscape’s mayhem. After I change into something less revealing, we go to fill our bellies and step in to the closest cafe, “Dar Abdesalam.” We are served mountains of foods, on plate after another, squid, shrimp, pastries, paella scooped from a dish three-feet wide, full of flavors I have never tasted with names I have never heard. Every one of my senses is saturated.

Now, finally, I lie on the bed of my hotel room. My eyes are begging to close, but I still want more, so I keep the window wide open. The smells and sounds of the market drift up. I know I won’t last long.

Tomorrow we head for the western hills to explore the quieter side of Morocco and probably won’t have WiFi. Google doesn’t recognize the place names anyway. We have a paper map. We are bike touring the old fashioned way.

Sorry-pictures won’t download today!