Tetuan and Chefchaouen

It's good to have a "fixer"-- you know, one of those people who knows everyone and can get everything done, even when you've been told that nothing can be done. Frank found us a fixer (who spoke French, German, English, and a little Italian in addition to Arabic), and he was able to find us a brand-new car (with air-conditioning, no less) to rent. We had thought we might need to give up the idea of renting a car here and wait until we got to Ceuta (the other Spanish enclave, so it's officially part of Spain) because we had been told that there were none available anywhere. We didn't want to wait because Frank had heard that it is a major pain to drive across the border and we wanted to take advantage of our bureaucratic state of being in Morocco. Our fixer (ahead of us on his scooter) also showed us the way into Tetuan (about 10km), where we were going to meet our guide.

After getting gas, we met our guide, Ahmed, a sort of professorial-looking man in his late 50s, with glasses and a beard. His French is excellent and his English is not bad either. He has lived in the medina (old walled city) for his entire life. His house is 450 years old and the last four generations (at least) of his family were born in the house.

It was a good thing he was along, though, because there is no possible way that even Frank-the-the-human-GPS could have found his way around the maze of the medina. We spent over five hours there, mostly walking around, but we did do a little shopping as well. This medina has existed virtually unchanged (except for cell phones, which seem ubiquitous) for over 600 years. There is electricity but no running water, so people still get their water from large public fountains and take baths at public baths. The baths have separate hours for men and women. There are, of course, no cars in the medina; they wouldn't fit. People transport things by wheelbarrow or hand truck. In fact, we went through some streets which heavy people or very pregnant women would have a hard time negotiating.

The medina has three neighborhoods: the Andalusian quarter (by far the largest one), the Jewish quarter, and the Berber quarter. Everyone lives everywhere now, but these influences are quite obvious.

The houses are set up around wide courtyards and they have very thick walls, so they are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. I was surprised that even though it was probably 95 degrees outside, as long as we were in the shade it was quite comfortable in the medina.

Moroccan decor is very colorful and very comfortable, with lots of sofas and cushions. Ahmed took us by his house, where we met his wife, his mother, and his mother-in-law, all of whom were in the very large main room (at least it is the large room you see when you enter the house). None of his kids were home. The ceiling was several floors high and the other floors were arranged around the central courtyard, if that makes sense.

Apart from the narrow streets, one thing that struck me was how small all the shops and stalls are. Moroccans can fit a huge amount of things in a tiny area; they are incredibly efficient in their use of space! This appeals to me.

In the medina, we were also able to see people working: weaving, making clothes, working on rugs and leather goods. We also visited the tannery and watched them drying and stretching the leather, as well as working on bags.

We wanted to buy a small carpet for the boat, so we spent quite a long time looking at rugs. Frank bargained "harder than a Berber," the owner said, but after mint tea and negotiations, we came away with a beautiful narrow Berber carpet for the salon.

Frank and Ahmed both said that having seen the medina in Tetuan, there really isn't anything better that we would see in Fez or Marrakech. Since we are not going to either place, I will believe them.

After we left the medina and said goodbye to Ahmed, we headed for Chefchaouen, a beautiful town (also with a medina) in the mountains. Somehow we missed a crucial sign, so a journey that should have taken less than an hour stretched to nearly two, but the scenery driving through the mountains was absolutely unbelievable. I will try and post some video, but unfortunately it was taken on my phone out the window as we were driving. That, coupled with my complete lack of talent as a videographer, pretty much guarantees that you will get no sense of how spectacular the view really was. Sorry!

The mountains are high, but the valleys are wide and gradual, and the landscape is so vast that I felt very small. I also felt incredibly privileged to be experiencing it. In some ways it's a bit like the west, but the isolated houses on the hills and the people walking on the side of the road (regardless of how busy a road is you will find people walking on the side of it) reminded me that I was somewhere completely and totally different.

By the time we got to Chefchaouen it was 9:00 and we were all starving. Our fixer had procured a guide for us here too, so we met Mohammed and he showed us to our hotel, which was in the medina of Chefchaouen.

I don't think I have ever stayed in a more beautiful hotel--Casa Hassan, should you ever get there--ceramic tiles and mosaics everywhere; our door was exquisitely painted wood, and the shower was beyond sublime. I will post pictures when I can, but suffice it to say that a shower like that should be every human being's birthright!

Dinner at the hotel restaurant was included, so Frank had couscous, Isabelle and I had tagines, and Max had--wait for it--spaghetti. Yum! No alcohol was served, but we were so thirsty we didn't miss it. I think we downed three liters of water in the course of the meal!

The only bad thing is that Frank seems to have shared his cold with Isabelle, so now she's feeling miserable. She takes a licking and keeps on ticking, though; she trekked all over the Chefchaouen medina and the mountain without complaint. I seem to be the only one spared so far, maybe because I have no Schicketanz genes, but if I do get it all if the tissues will be gone. 

The mountain air was blowing gently through the open windows when we went to bed. We were all woken up around 4:00, though, by the muezzin and the call to prayer. It's really a nice sound when there is only one, but the recordings of the prayers from all seven of the Chefchaouen mosques going at once was just a cacophony. I can't imagine that even the people who live there could distinguish what was being said!

After my spectacular shower (have I mentioned how great the shower was?) and a yummy breakfast of bread, cheese, olives, and not-very-good coffee (you would think that I would know better than to drink coffee in a tea-drinking country, but I just don't LIKE tea, except for herbal tea), Mohammed met us to show us the medina and take us up the mountain where the Berbers live.

This medina, too, had narrow streets and old houses like Tetuan, but their colors were so different: indigo, turquoise, bright blue, teal--and all of these colors in different shades and tints. If I lived there I would be voted the resident-who-is-most-coordinated-with-the-buildings. A worthy title, I think! So beautiful...

Chefchaouen is a mountain town, so it is very hilly. In addition to going through the medina and the market, we went outside of town, past the spring where people bring their laundry and up the mountain to a Berber house. The part we saw was very traditional; the sofa and what looked like a bed took up most of the space in this room, but there was a computer in the corner open to Facebook.

Everyone made a big fuss over Max and people were checking Isabelle out too. There were quite a lot of women who were not traditionally dressed so I at least did not feel too out of place.

On the way back from Chefchaouen, we are sardines (Max had chicken) at a little roadside place. Then we brought ourselves back to Smir to begin the process of getting out of Mirocco. Once the formalities were finished, we headed off to Ceuta, from whence I will send this. If you've gotten this far, I won't make you read any more.

Morocco! (At least so far)

Sorry for this long post, and apologies to all of you who have already read most of it via email (there is some new stuff at the end, though!)

We finally got to Morocco a week ago Saturday, coming into Saidia. We left Almeria Friday night thinking it would take us about 16 hours, but because of the current (which we didn't know about) and a lack of wind it took about 24 hours. We think this will be the only overnight passage this summer and I am very glad about that; I don't like sailing overnight.

Isabelle came the other night. It was really sweet because Max was SO excited to see her. I wish I had videoed her arrival.

This summer has been more relaxed than last year in that we are not on a time schedule, but that has also meant a lot of waiting, which has been a bit frustrating. Now at least we will have a few busy weeks in Morocco and then Isabelle will head back to Germany for the year and we will go back to Lagos in time for school to start.

We are hoping to have the boat lifted out and cleaned tomorrow and once that's done we will head up the coast a little way. It's very hot here, as you might imagine. Yesterday was Sunday, so the beach looked like Coney Island gone wrong. The Moroccans seem to go to the beach like the Spaniards--i.e., they bring their tents, umbrellas, furniture, food, games, etc. and move in for the duration. We show up with our towels and paddleball and that's about it! We don't stay for the whole day, though, either!

There are also a lot of things being sold on the beach--corn on the cob, grilled right there on the cart that the seller pulls along with him, mint tea (made with fresh tea on a portable brazier), sunglasses, beach toys, candy, and these beautiful baskets. I may bring some money to the beach this afternoon and lie in wait for the basket guy. Next day: I did bring money, but he never showed.  Very sad...

It can't be fun for Muslim women to go to the beach, though, because they are covered and rarely get wet. Once they do, though, they must stay cool for a while, because all their layers would be wet. They tend to stay under umbrellas.

Max is currently obsessed with Pokémon and if I hear one more word about Pokémon I may go stark raving mad.

We are looking forward to getting out of here and doing a bit of exploring and photographing. I don't want to take my camera or phone to the beach.

Frank's ATM card got eaten for no reason yesterday, and when we went to the bank this morning to get it back he said there were about six others there too. We will not be going to that machine again!

My French is not great but it's proving useful--finally!

Part Two--

I'm writing this as we head towards Malilla, the Spanish enclave. We got to Saidia on Saturday and did all the customs formalities, got our passports stamped, etc. There wasn't anything to do there except go to the beach, but we had to stay there because we had arranged for the boat to be lifted out this morning and the bottom cleaned.

It took a while this morning for customs to clear us out, but they finally did and we went over to the boatyard, only to find the place pretty much deserted and another boat in the crane. We asked around and were told to wait. We had tied up at the fuel pontoon, so Frank went to buy bread and I kept watch in case anyone showed up planning to actually lift the boat. No one did, so we got fed up and left. I'm sure no one noticed, particularly not the guy whom we woke up.

We were planning to go to this little fishing village and spend the night, so we went there. As promised in the pilot book and online, the authorities were very friendly. We pulled up to the bird poop-encrusted pier and were met by customs, who looked at our passports and informed us that, in spite of Frank's insistence that we were NOT leaving Morocco yet, customs in Saidia had stamped us OUT of Morocco, so since they were not a point of entry we needed to go back to Saidia and get stamped back in. They were perfectly willing to acknowledge that it was Saidia's mistake but there was, alas, nothing they could do about it. I think the guard on the pontoon felt sorry for us, though, because after customs left he told us that if we wanted to stay and eat in the town we would be welcome.

We opted to go on to Malilla, one of the Spanish enclaves in Morocco, which was going to be our next stop anyway. So far, the dominant impression of a Morocco has been heat and bureaucracy. We are hoping to actually get to do a little sightseeing in Malilla.

The Continuing Story...

When we last left our heroes, they had inadvertently "left" Morocco, so rather than go back to the site of the bureaucratic error, they pushed on to Melilla.

On the way, the wind picked up. And picked up. And picked up. It picked up so much that it was 25 knots by the time they hauled the jib in. It picked up so much that the furler broke when they hauled the jib in (although I don't think the wind had anything to do with that, really). It picked up so much that first Helen and then Isabelle had to sit on the sail so it wouldn't flap. On the up side, though, even with a huge ferry not 15 minutes behind us as we came into the harbor, Frank made an absolutely masterful mooring. Since we hadn't been able to get anyone on the radio, a couple of other sailors caught our lines.

Melilla has the strange distinction of having almost no restaurants, which is really annoying when it's 9:00 at night and you are hungry. However, we did manage to find one near the walls of the old city. It was excellent--and cheap! It was so good that we decided to eat there the next night too, it being too hot to cook and impossible to cook the meal ourselves for as little as we paid for it (plus, since we found ourselves 1.5 euroes short in a place that didn't take cards and with no ATMs anywhere, we thought it would be a nice touch to pay the rest of our bill!). The service was quite good, too.

Wednesday morning Frank and Max went to see what they could find out about the furler and Isabelle and I went grocery shopping. Our news was better--a good grocery store. So far, all the Spanish grocery stores have been excellent, although there does not appear to be any logic to the way they arrange their products. It was going to take two weeks to get the part for the furler, so we folded up the sail and are doing without a jib.

We couldn't leave Melilla until the wind shifted to the east, which, according to all predictions, was supposed to happen Thursday. Thursday duly arrived and the wind dithered. We ate lunch. The wind waffled but finally decided to shift, so off we went to the anchorage. We had a bit of a scare on the way there when the wind changed its mind, but it was apparently only kidding with us. We did not end up going to our originally planned anchorage, but another one not quite as far.

The anchorage was very pretty, right near a beach. The water was very very clear, Frank and Max checked the anchor, we all swam, etc.

This boat is very weird in that regardless of what the wind does, the boat goes broadside to the waves, so as soon as it got dark the pitching started. No one--not even Max--could sleep and then Frank discovered that the anchor had not held after all, so at midnight we hauled it up and headed out.

As soon as we got around the cape the fog and the cold set in. The current too--we were making barely 4 knots with the wind in our faces. I speculated that perhaps this is why people don't seem to take their own boats to Morocco; they take ferries instead. Thank goodness for AIS and radar!

Now it's 9:00AM and the sun is burning off the fog. We are going to Al-Haceima, a little fishing village which apparently has all the officials you could possibly need waiting to tramp all over your boat looking for smuggled goods and stowaways. We've got nothing to hide, but I don't want anyone trekking mud on board. Once that is over, we will officially be back in Morocco.

Everyone we have met so far has been very friendly and helpful, and I don't honestly expect the people here to be any different. The book that earlier information came from is outdated and apparently things have improved since then.

Your faithful scribe is very much hoping for a decent shower and perhaps some sleep before waking the camera up and doing some exploring, as she is sitting here offending herself. Tune in again next time for the continuing adventures of Americans Abroad, in which they try and avoid getting dive-bombed by pooping seabirds...

Al-Haceima and After

I know you are all dying to know this, but I am still offending myself. Not only were there no showers in Al-Haceima, there was no power and no water either, so we could not even shower on the boat because we have to preserve water, since we do not know when we will be able to refill it. At least we are all equally offensive!

There was, in fact, a lot of bureaucracy involved once we got there, but the bureaucrats were friendly and spoke more English than the vast majority of Spaniards we've met. The port is really not set up for private boats at all, and since we were not allowed in the military section or at the ferry dock, we had to raft onto some sort of industrial-type boat which was in turn rafted onto another industrial-type boat. We had to pay 25€ for the privilege. A rip-off.

While Frank and I were off doing paperwork, Isabelle and Max stayed here and hosted the on-board search.  That, too, was apparently conducted by friendly bureaucrats who seemed more curious than anything. We had to check Max's room thoroughly afterward to make sure that no one had gotten sucked into the mess and was unable to get out. I would hate to think there was someone starving in there!

Al-Haceima is hardly a fishing village. Rather, it's a pretty good-sized town, but you have to climb probably 200 meters up the mountain to get to it. Fortunately there were stairs, but when it's 90 degrees outside, you are pretty hot and tired by the time you get to the top!

There was nothing in particular to see, but we walked through the maze of the market. If you judge by the goods being sold there, Moroccans LOVE shoes. I think just about every stall--and many stores--sold shoes. Moroccans must have the best-dressed feet on the planet. Frank and Isabelle both got some. We also bought some vegetables and stopped at a café for thé á la menthe. I like it, but this one was overly sweet. I felt like my teeth were wearing socks by the time I finished it. Isabelle and I are trying to buy long skirts, as we don't have any, but we must be much shorter than your average Moroccan woman, since they all seem to drag on the ground. Without regular laundry facilities, I don't want to be walking around with a dirty hem! Meanwhile, we are dressing as conservatively as possible.

After we came down from town we went to the beach with Max but we did not swim because we were not brave enough to be the only ones in bikinis. Fortunately it had cooled off some by then, and the water was COLD!

Frank has caught a cold (probably from Max, who is largely over it after one day of the sniffly-snurfflies), but it will probably be better in the next couple days. In my considered medical opinion, I don't think it's life-threatening. After all, I did grow up with a doctor, so I know these things. The fact that he is an orthopod is an irrelevant detail, it seems to me. 

Last night when we were eating the fog set in again, but it has largely burned off by now.

After much waiting for our passports to be stamped and our ship's papers to be returned from the bureaucratic hole that is the port office, we left Al-Haceima around 8:30.  The sea is calm, we've got a headwind, and the outside speakers have stopped working. Frank has looked at the wiring but cannot find the answer. I have done everything I know how to do with the radio, but to no avail. We may have to sail in silence until we can have that looked at too.

To El-Jebha

Now we are off to El-Jebha (spelling?), where Frank is convinced that they will tell us that we have once again been stamped OUT of Morocco, in spite of his informing the officials in Al-Haceima many times that we are not leaving the country yet. They ignored him and just kept happily stamping. Should we be no longer officially in Morocco, we can look forward to a long trip overnight to Smir or to Ceuta, the other Spanish enclave.

What we want to do is go to Smir and rent a car and explore the interior of the country for a day, but it is not a port of entry, so if we have to go get stamped again I guess we will have to skip that. We will not be pleased...

For those of you keeping track at home, so far we have been able to avoid being dive bombed by pooping seabirds.

Tune in next time when you will find out the state of our passports: stamps or no stamps? Have the Moroccan authorities in fact understood that we still want to explore their country? Where did we end up--Morocco or the Spanish enclave? And has our luck in finding English-speaking bureaucrats continued (the ones in Al-Haceima actually preferred to speak English rather than French) or has it run out?

All these questions and more will be answered in the next installment of Schicketanzes Abroad, in which perhaps we might find a tiny breeze with which to sail…

Smir

Well, they wouldn't let us into El-Jabha, in spite of what the pilot book says. Apparently it's only for fishermen. The group of pre-teen boys who were swimming off the rocks were happy to see us:  "Hello! Hello! How are you?" A man made it clear that we were welcome to anchor around the corner, however, in this beautiful sheltered cove. Unfortunately, the beautiful sheltered cove was mostly too deep for us to anchor in and the shallow part seemed to have a rocky bottom. So it was off to the beach--again--to anchor. 

On the upside, the anchor held. On the down side, it was incredibly rocky. Frank's cold (a real one, not a Man-Cold) hit its worst point, so he was sniffling and snurffling all night. Neither of us slept and Isabelle didn't either. Max, however, slept like a log. 

We left this morning very early when we discovered that we were almost out of power, so we had to put the motor on to charge the batteries. Unfortunately, the same rocky waves are following us all the way to Smir, it appears. At least we are not fighting them, and even though there isn't enough wind to put the sail up, it is not in our faces.

The sun doesn't seem to be in the mood to show itself at all, although it did come out for just a little bit. It is a bit hazy, but not foggy, which is good because we don't want to deal with that too. Frank spent most of the trip on the bench trying to sleep and the autopilot did the work. The rest of us watched for boats. Isabelle got knocked off the bench by a wave and whacked her head and bruised her hip, but ultimately is all in one piece.

It was very exciting to arrive in Smir and to realise that it did not matter at all that it is a point of entry. Even if there had been a problem, we would have been OK. In spite of the marina's brochure informing us of the friendly and un-stressful welcome we would receive at this most modern of marinas, the woman in the office clearly hates her job and the customs/police did not say one work to me while they were filling out papers and stamping passports. It might be too much to hope for friendly bureaucrats everywhere, though.

Smir has absolutely nothing to see and little to recommend it, since it seems to be simply an outgrowth of the marina. The pilot book says "some provisions" are available, but all we've found is toast bread, sliced cheese, and water, so we've been eating out. We did manage to find a car to rent, though, so we will go off and do some exploring. Yippee!

The internet is quirky here, so no pictures. I will do it as soon as I can, though, I promise!

Catching Up

Last year's trip was characterized by hurrying because we had committed to getting to Korcula at the beginning of August; this year is the complete opposite. We have no real schedule, so we can take our time. Consequently, we've been able to stop for a couple days and wait for the wind, the World Cup, the weather, etc.

We were able to spend a couple of days in Cadiz, where we had also stopped last year. It was much nicer this time around, though, because it wasn't nearly as hot as last year. Unfortunately, the anchor wouldn't hold so we had to go into the marina. The marina is quite a ways outside of town, so we had to walk about half an hour into the city, but we didn't mind. The only downside was carrying heavy stuff from the store, but since there were four of us (Roger was still with us) we made it work.

15 July 2014

We've been here in La Linea for the past 8 days. Roger left in Tarifa. We will miss his yummy cooking and help with the dishes (plus it was nice to have another pair of adult hands on board), but it's nice to be by ourselves again as well. Here in La Linea we are looking for a fuel cock for the outboard motor and waiting for good wind. Since we've been here, we've had an east wind, which will not help us at all as we head towards Morocco. Isabelle will be here in about three weeks and we are going to Morocco with her, so we are fortunate that we can take our time. Even so, we hadn't counted on being here for quite this long! On the up side, it's quite nice here just across the border from Gibraltar. We've watched the World Cup, been into Gibraltar several time, and met some people from Lagos whom we had never met there.

The week has been weird. There have been many frustrations, but there have also been good surprises. The other night when we came back from the beach, before we even opened the door, our neighbour handed us what must have been 5 pounds of freshly caught tuna. As it turned out, he literally provided dinner when we needed it. We didn't realise that Sunday was a holiday here, so the stores were closed. We wanted to go out to eat in town and watch the World Cup, but when we went to explore the options we discovered that the afternoon had been the "red wine festival," in which the town turns into Bourbon Street after a particularly rowdy Mardi Gras. There was so much cheap red wine on the ground that my shoes literally came off my feet and there were drunk people everywhere--not a place to come back to for dinner with Max, so we went back to the boat to reconsider the situation and that's when our neighbour handed us all the fresh tuna. Dinner dilemma solved--and Max discovered that he likes tuna steak!

Frank, with the help of Erik (who has been in Lagos for the past two years but we had never met him and his wife before running into them in La Linea), was able to get the motor running, so there was much rejoicing. I bought a new battery for my camera and Max got a new charger for his DS, so little things were taken care of as well.

 Max in La Linea

 Couple holding hands in La Linea

 The Rock of Gibraltar

3 August 2014
The picture below is from Marbella, where we stayed for a couple days so we could go up into the mountains to this pretty little village called Ronda. Frank thought it would be fun to rent a scooter (he had one in California and is licensed to drive it), so he and Max went on the scooter and I went on the bus. When Frank first brought it up Max was not sure, but then he decided he liked it. It took them a while to get there on the scooter so Max decided he wanted to come back on the bus with me. It was a very windy road, so to take Max's mind off his incipient carsickness I told him to see how many Pokemon he could name. He got to 204 by the time we got back--impressive!

 A tourist junk leaving Benalmadena (where I won a bet that we had been here last year, so Frank had to do the dishes--not that I was excited about that or anything…)

 A tourist horse in Ronda--poor thing is bored out of his mind!

 A little cafe in Ronda

 Light in the church in Ronda

 Max in a window

 Also Ronda

We've had a couple of horrible anchorages; one which seemed fine when we anchored but turned out to be the rockiest one I can remember for a while. The anchor didn't hold and we drifted quite a long way, only to find out that the windlass needed to be tightened and we couldn't find the special wrench to do it. Frank finally made it work by putting his foot on it to hold it--he is a genius! We've since gotten a new wrench, which you know means that we will find the other one relatively quickly.

There's not much to see here in Alalamar, although getting the new wrench and figuring out why we kept losing power at anchor was exciting, as was NOT being out in the water for the bad weather. The town here is sort of built around the marina, which means that we are moored right in front of a cafe that had karaoke last night--man, are people BAD singers!

I'll conclude with my usual promise to update more frequently--you can take that as you will!