Gouda's Cheesewheel

Tangier, Tetouan, Chefchaouen

Outside my hotel room in Tangier:


The girl I shared a room with:

We met on the train to Tangier. She's German, but studying in Spain; she spoke English and Spanish equally well, and would find herself speaking one instead of the other, which made her hard to understand sometimes. Her friend Mohammed found us the hotel near his house. He and she had some sort of confused relationship from what she told me. She was on her way back to Spain, in any case, as she was feeling very sick.

Here is the view of Tetouan from a rooftop terrace:


I was brought to this place by some guy who started talking to me in the Medina. He said he was a teacher of small children and that he was not asking any money. As it was difficult to shake him off my trail I had to go see his friends the rug salesman and the herbalist (this was all straight out of my guidebook--one of those scams where they try to sell you things; all I bought was a bag of cumin for my indigestion at the time, which was the whole reason I had gone walking in the first place). Eventually he finished the "tour" and asked for 20 dirhams, which is exactly what I thought he would do. I told him he was a lier (discretely, politely, but with conviction) since he had told me earlier he wasn't asking any money. He left me alone after I showed him quite clearly that I only had 2 dirhams on me, talking all the time about how he was poor and had three children. Whether that be true or not, I didn't have money even if I was going to humor him, and he shouldn't have lied to me.

Here is Chefchaouen the beautiful:

...and me, to prove I was here:



It's been raining ever since I arrived by bus; everything on my body and hand baggage is soaked. The saddest casualty of the rain was the corner of my journal--I've learned the downfall of using non-waterproof ink. Luckily not much was blurred. The hotel I'm staying in is nothing glamorous; I'll see if I can get him to lower the price a little. I took it because I didn't want to walk in the rain anymore, and all the hotels seemed to be full. Now the rain has lifted enough to walk around, which is how I came to this cyber. Anyway, that's all for now.

posted by Greta @ 9:43 AM