We cross the Strait of Gibraltar, a short 35 minute jaunt by ferry from Tarifa into Tanger. The wind here is fierce, whipped up to frenetic speeds by the peculiar topography around the Strait, and we feel every bit of this as we stand outside on the deck looking across to the Moroccan coastline...two worlds merely 14 km away, yet completely separate. The ferry docks and we ride over to the pedestrian customs, bypassing the long car line; we are awaited by the usual contingent of customs agents and metal detectors and bomb sniffers and the like, but we pass through the security checkpoint with our fully-loaded bikes and no one bats an eye...and we are off, riding into the slowly decaying downtown core of Tanger.
One thing remains constant about all places we visit: first, there is always the roving semi-lost stumble about town as we search for lodgings. The key is to appear natural in these meanderings, as though you meant to head down that road only to double back at the end and turn in an entirely different direction. At the tourism office they suggest that we find sleeping quarters in the Kasbah, the old district atop the hill out on the point that overlooks the sea and its adjoining rat-maze market alleyways - but we are tired from our sprint across the bottom corner of the Iberian peninsula, and do not make it that far before settling on a relatively cheap but decent-looking pension near the city centre.
Slowly decaying. Tanger is a port town whose time has come and gone. Many of the buildings are abandoned, such as an old theatre bearing a plaque of stones inscribed: "Gran Teatro Cervantes 1917". The walls crumble from neglect; only the minarets appear in good condition. All cultural precepts vanish once you step outside the safety net of European influence - for although the French once laid claim here, no wine is served in the bars, no alcohol of any sort...a subtle yet persistent reminder that we have willingly breached the net to come into contact with Something New. After devouring kebab plates, we struggle to locate the Kasbah; in typical fashion, I left our only map of Tanger in the pension room where it is of least use.
After our efforts take us through the Souk, past its decaying fruit piles discarded carelessly between the stalls and its cheap clothing and its spices and dates and cramped chicken cages, and up towards the imposing cathedral and mosque, we at last decide to ask someone where the hell the Kasbah is. The attendant at the gas station speaks Arabic, Spanish, and French, and so we settle on Spanish as the common tongue in which directions are given - and it turns out that, while we were meandering about the Souk, we were actually quite close...we just have to go further up, up towards the sea and the hill on the point.
We reach the Kasbah just in time to find its museum closed for the day - so we wander about its streets, packed with homes that overhang the alleyways and offer space beneath to passing pedestrian traffic. We get some way into the back streets before a young man comes up to us and offers to lead us around; he is at first friendly, but slowly his style shifts to official tour-guide-ness and we suspect an elaborate ruse of some sort...and it is elaborate; for he shows us the mosque and the places where various dignitaries and persons of fame have supposedly resided and the Koranic school and other such attractions, pausing every so often for good views over the city which we snap photographs of...before finally leading us down into the Berber markets, where he leaves us in the company of a Berber man who makes increasingly insistent attempts to sell us rugs. But here the con has failed - for we have neither money to purchase rugs nor space to store them. Once this at last becomes clear to the Berber salesman, he curses us and our mothers before we rush out into the street, where our would-be guide catches up with us and asks for a tip (in Euro, not dirhams!) Of course, we have no money for him either - and fortunately it stops there; he leaves to con less impecunious tourists in the Kasbah, we scramble out of the Berber markets as quickly as possible and hit the waterfront for yet another glass of sweet mint tea - our fourth for the day, I think, for this stuff is quite possibly the tastiest liquid ever to pass through our lips, and we would not have missed much if we passed our entire stay here on a mint tea crawl...
...and we retire to our room for a short while to lock the bikes and hide anything valuable that we cannot carry with us, fearing retribution from this Kasbah-Berber business alliance that never comes; only when we are satisfied that everything is as secure as we can reasonably make it do we head back down to the beaches, where the stage is set for a music festival yet no bands play; and we eat a sumptuous meal of fried seafood, tagine, and couscous, polishing it off in a nearby tea parlour with - what else? - more mint tea and massive ice cream concoctions. We eat until we are stuffed, replenishing the energy drained out of us over the long ride through heat and mountains, and then we walk along the beach, stopping to take a short ride on horseback. Valkyrie's saddle is poorly attached, and she slides off into the sand to add another to her list of battle wounds...
...and finally, having had our fill of food and tea and markets and curious scams, we retire to our rooms after winding our way back up past the clothing stalls and packed squares. No real harm has come to us in Morocco, and yet there is a vague hostility about the whole place - the hostility of those for whom the better life is not an far-off promise or illusion but rather something that stares them in the face every day - across the water in the beach towns and their resorts that spew forth rich tourists who pop over to Morocco looking for something exotic. We try to sleep, but cannot in the stifling moist heat; so we instead open the windows and lie restlessly on the hard mattresses, hoping to nod off for short snatches at a time. Tomorrow we catch the ferry back; for us, there is always that escape back to the safety net. For most in this world, there is not and never will be - and so they settle for long hours of honest low-paid work or conning tourists, hoping that each bit of foreign currency will pull that escape hatch just one bit closer. That is the harsh reality...