The journey south from Madrid was unexceptional until we got within a hundred km or so from the coast when the train had to climb down from the central plateau. At Algeciras I checked the ferry times and it seemed that I'd either have a two hour wait there or a two hour wait in Tarifa - a much more pleasant town further along the coast. So I got the coach to Tarifa and had a couple of coffees in a pleasant back-street cafe before getting the catarmaran to Tangiers.
Tangiers was still as hassle-free as the last time I visited - despite all the warnings in the guide books. The hotel was pretty run-down, buyt was cheap and was pleasant enough.
The following day I took the train to Rabat. The recent flooding was obvious, and over the next few days it would continue to rain. The line from Tangiers to the main Fes - Marrakech line was being electrified - this surprised me. Then I realised that the mainline is fully electrified, and has an hourly express service from Fes to Casablanca using a mix of the old but comfortable 'standard European' coaches and some very smart new double-deck electric units. The three main stations that I saw (Tangiers, Rabat and Marakech) were also very smart - Tangier and Marrakech being completely new and impressive buildings and Rabat was in teh process of being rebuilt - obviously to a high standard.
Rabat is a pleasant enough place - the souk in the Medina is as chaotic as any other, but not so large, and because it has so few tourists the market was not full of the tat seen in Marrakech. I ended up staying in the town for three nights as I arrived on the Saturday and finally collected the visa on Monday afternoon.
One of the few westerners I saw was Nick, an Aussie who was applying for a UK work permit. For some reason it was only possible for him to get the permit from Australia or Morroco.
The train from Rabat to Marrakech was good, the scenery was nothing special until an hour or so from its destination when we started winding up through the rocky semi-desert landscape of the Atlas moutains.
Marrakech was a disappointment. It was ridiculously full of tourists, and although the souk was astonising, most of the stuff was geared up for the tourists and not for the locoals. Still I did occasionally end up walking through an alley full of metal-workers, and found the odd local tea-bar selling the standard Morrocan sweet mint tea.
OK, It's now day 11, and I'm in Agadir. Well, that's only partly correct as I'm staying in Inezgane, a town about 7 miles from Agadir. The reason for this is that I got off the bus from Marrakech along with everyone else, and didn't think to ask where we were. After picking out my back from the chickens in the luggage hold of the bus and cleaning it of shit and feathers, I checkied into a surprisingly cheap hotel, and set off to find the beach while cursing that the map in the guide book seemed to bear little relation to the actual location. After some time (about an hour's walk) a theory started to form in my head that perhaps they hadn't just relocated the bus station out of town but that I was in fact the wrong town.
Anyway, as I type I'm on a 'day-trip' to Agadir from Inezgane.
The bus-ride from Marrakech to almost-Agadir was spectacular - four hours of climbing through the snow-capped Atlas mountains befopre finally decending onto the coastal plain. We stopped for a ten minute break in a small town in the mountains, where I picked up a kebab sandwich thing (30p), a mint tea (6p), and a botle of water (20p). It was on this journey that the weather finally turned and it stopped raining.
Thursday 30 October 2008
Thursday 23 October 2008
Part 3. Madrid, 23rd October.
Hmmm. I´m still not sure that I am cut out for travelling by myself. But generally it´s been good so far.
Things started erratically on the first day. I caught the train to Dover as planned, then the transfer bus to the docks. When I got there I discovered that there is a 45 minute check-in for the ferry. Which, it has to be said, is quite barmy, but I should have checked. Still, the full breakfast on the later ferry was probably as good as on the earlier one. At Calais docks I ended up getting a lift to the station with a bloke who´d just driven up from the Spanish border over-night and was waiting for his mate who should have been on my ferry but wasn´t. Even after battling with a French ticket machine for ten minutes to get a ticket (not the fault of my lack of French, but because the machine seemed to go on strike for a minute between each screen), I still managed to catch the planned train to Paris. Via the old, slow route. Which was a mistake. So, after leaving Folkestone at 7am, I finally got into the back-packers hostel at 5pm. Next time I´ll take Eurostar.
Bizarrely, a couple of days before, a friend who I´d travelled with to Africa twelve years ago, and is now happily living near Prague, happened to announce on Facebook that he´d be in Paris the same evening that I was there. So, after eventually working out how to use the free Velib cycles, and a manic twenty minute pedal across Paris, I met up with Jeff at Le Chat Noir, where he bought me a drink. A litre of beer that cost the quite shocking sum of eighteen Euros - enough to buy about 40 beers in the Czech Republic.
Day two started out wet and rather early. It was made even earlier by the fact I couldn´t sleep. A fact that may not be unconnected with the large kebab I had the night before. The 07:15 TGV to the Spanish border left Paris 23 minutes late. And arrived at Hendaye, five and a half hours later, still 23 minutes late. A futher four hours on the hard plastic seats of the narrow gauge electric EuskoTren saw me arriving in Bilbao. Walking rather oddly. It does have to be said that the scenery around there is fantastic. I suppose where Pyrrenees meet the coast is going to be pretty, but what surprised me was how green - and wet - it all was. I´m not sure why it surprised me, after all this is the Bay of Biscay, and mountainous west coasts tend to be a trifle damp in Europe.
It does have to be said that the Basque language (Euskara) looks bizarre. They have an odd fondness for the letter X. And most words seem to end in "ak". From what I can understand most verbs have very few forms. But they have an accompanying auxilliary verb that explains how many subjects are applying the verb to how many objects, when, and with how many indirect objects. Oh, and a Basque noun can have over 458,000 inflected forms. Well, that´s what it says on Wikipedia so it must be true.
Becuase it was still raining I didn´t see much of Bilbao. But I would like to return at some point. If it ever stops raining.
A relatively late start at 08:40 on day three for the six and a half hour journey to Madrid. Although that train was also delayed by 23 minutes. The Talgo train had some dodgy electrics - the internal doors took a lot of persuasion to work, and the temperature was about 5 degrees too cold for comfort for the first two hours and five degrees too hot for the last two hours. Still the three hours in the middle weren´t too bad. The Madrid hostel I booked was conveniently close to Sol metro station in the centre of the city. So I didn´t get too wet trying to find it.
Woke up this morning to find that it had finally stopped raining. And the sun actually came out for about an hour in the afternoon. But it was still bloody cold. Apparently Morocco has also been having really bad weather. Great.
Tomorrow will be another long travelling day - 6 hours train to Algeciras and a ferry across the straits of Gibraltar to Tangiers.
So, I´m off now to get some tapas.
Anorak tally (days 1-4):
15 trains (incl. metros)
3 buses (incl. transfer buses)
3 bikes (Paris ´Velib´)
1 ferry
1 car
Things started erratically on the first day. I caught the train to Dover as planned, then the transfer bus to the docks. When I got there I discovered that there is a 45 minute check-in for the ferry. Which, it has to be said, is quite barmy, but I should have checked. Still, the full breakfast on the later ferry was probably as good as on the earlier one. At Calais docks I ended up getting a lift to the station with a bloke who´d just driven up from the Spanish border over-night and was waiting for his mate who should have been on my ferry but wasn´t. Even after battling with a French ticket machine for ten minutes to get a ticket (not the fault of my lack of French, but because the machine seemed to go on strike for a minute between each screen), I still managed to catch the planned train to Paris. Via the old, slow route. Which was a mistake. So, after leaving Folkestone at 7am, I finally got into the back-packers hostel at 5pm. Next time I´ll take Eurostar.
Bizarrely, a couple of days before, a friend who I´d travelled with to Africa twelve years ago, and is now happily living near Prague, happened to announce on Facebook that he´d be in Paris the same evening that I was there. So, after eventually working out how to use the free Velib cycles, and a manic twenty minute pedal across Paris, I met up with Jeff at Le Chat Noir, where he bought me a drink. A litre of beer that cost the quite shocking sum of eighteen Euros - enough to buy about 40 beers in the Czech Republic.
Day two started out wet and rather early. It was made even earlier by the fact I couldn´t sleep. A fact that may not be unconnected with the large kebab I had the night before. The 07:15 TGV to the Spanish border left Paris 23 minutes late. And arrived at Hendaye, five and a half hours later, still 23 minutes late. A futher four hours on the hard plastic seats of the narrow gauge electric EuskoTren saw me arriving in Bilbao. Walking rather oddly. It does have to be said that the scenery around there is fantastic. I suppose where Pyrrenees meet the coast is going to be pretty, but what surprised me was how green - and wet - it all was. I´m not sure why it surprised me, after all this is the Bay of Biscay, and mountainous west coasts tend to be a trifle damp in Europe.
It does have to be said that the Basque language (Euskara) looks bizarre. They have an odd fondness for the letter X. And most words seem to end in "ak". From what I can understand most verbs have very few forms. But they have an accompanying auxilliary verb that explains how many subjects are applying the verb to how many objects, when, and with how many indirect objects. Oh, and a Basque noun can have over 458,000 inflected forms. Well, that´s what it says on Wikipedia so it must be true.
Becuase it was still raining I didn´t see much of Bilbao. But I would like to return at some point. If it ever stops raining.
A relatively late start at 08:40 on day three for the six and a half hour journey to Madrid. Although that train was also delayed by 23 minutes. The Talgo train had some dodgy electrics - the internal doors took a lot of persuasion to work, and the temperature was about 5 degrees too cold for comfort for the first two hours and five degrees too hot for the last two hours. Still the three hours in the middle weren´t too bad. The Madrid hostel I booked was conveniently close to Sol metro station in the centre of the city. So I didn´t get too wet trying to find it.
Woke up this morning to find that it had finally stopped raining. And the sun actually came out for about an hour in the afternoon. But it was still bloody cold. Apparently Morocco has also been having really bad weather. Great.
Tomorrow will be another long travelling day - 6 hours train to Algeciras and a ferry across the straits of Gibraltar to Tangiers.
So, I´m off now to get some tapas.
Anorak tally (days 1-4):
15 trains (incl. metros)
3 buses (incl. transfer buses)
3 bikes (Paris ´Velib´)
1 ferry
1 car
Monday 13 October 2008
2nd bit - Preparation
Well, I have started preparing for the trip. It's just that I haven't got very far with it yet.
Last week I went to the travel clinic just to get a yellow fever vaccination and the nurse helpfully extracted a further two hundred quid in exchange for giving me rabies and Hepatitis B as well. She also gave me some cholera in a glass. As I've had a few other jabs from the NHS (and that nurse took the word 'jab' to heart) my left arm now resembles a teabag. And my bank account is looking a bit redder than normal. Still, I guess it's better to be slightly skint than slightly dead.
Most of the last week has been spent tidying up the flat, catching up with friends and relatives, and working on some prevarication practice. This week looks like it may be a bit busier - as well as working out what I need to take and getting it ready, getting some anti-malarials, and sorting out my finances (such as they are); my mum's coming to stay for a day, I need to go to London to collect and fit a radiator for a friend, I need to go to London on another day to get more vaccinations and go for drinks with some ex-colleagues, I also need to feed a friend's cat, replace a brake caliper, a hub seal and two tyres on the car, sort out house bills and give the place a final tidy up. And it all needs to be done before the weekend when my sister is coming up to stay.
So, I think I should probably be doing something other than sit in front of the computer drinking vast quantities of tea.
The next episode should be after I've left. Although it would probably help if I actually booked some ferries and train tickets so I could leave...
Joe
Thursday 9 October 2008
First bit
Hi
This is a blog of my ramblings (verbal and physical) as I travel down from the UK to somewhere in Africa.
"Where's 'somewhere'?", I hear no-one ask.
Well, I'm not sure. My first target is Timbuktu - and other places in Mali - and then Burkina Faso and Niger. If, by then, I still haven't run out of money, marbles or health, then I'm intending on carrying on down south through Cameroon, Gabon, the two Congos, and then somehow down to Cape Town.
I don't intend to fly, at least, not until I decide (or am forced) to come back. So on Monday 20th October I'll be getting the train to Dover, a ferry to Calais, and then making my way down to Algeciras, on the Spanish side of the Gibraltar straits, by train. Then ferry across to Morocco, train and bus down south. I'll need to hitch across the border into Mauritania, and then it'll be 'bush taxis', boats, buses, trains, whatever, on from there.
I'm not sure how long this will take. I may get fed up with my own company after a few weeks (which is understandable, most people get fed up with my company after a much shorter time) and come back then. On the other hand I may end up on the road for several months. Realistically, I reckon I'll be away for anything between one and six months.
By the way, the reason I'm not taking the Landy is that I'd rather not do it alone; being stranded in a broken down bus in the middle of the Sahara is one problem, being stranded by myself in a broken down car is something else entirely. Obviously, the landy never breaks down, so I really shouldn't worry...
Anyway, enough for now. The next exciting installment will be about preparation.
It will be a very short installment indeed.
Joe
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