The spiritual capital

Travelling from Seville to Fez, Sunday 11 October

The highlight of the one hour fast ferry ride from Spain to Morocco is that we pass the Rock of Gibraltar. I’ve always been curious about this. A small island where the local inhabitants are Barbary Apes and Spaniards who work there in English businesses. The Rock and some of the surrounding environment was given to the Brits by Spain as a thank you for their help to remove the French tyrants in the 1700’s even though it sits surrounded by Spanish lands.

We are tasked one very important job today and that is to be the first ones off the Ferry. Another bus tour is on the same route and if we get behind them we will be held up at least twice as long at passport control when we cross the border. Being first is worth at least an hour of time and time is precious. We take our job very seriously. Five minutes before five minutes before disembarkation the more competitive of the Aussies and Americans have the access ways to the only exit blocked. The rest of us fill the little gaps leaning or lounging across aisles or seats to ensure that not even a Parisian woman could slip through our human wall. We prove to be very good. Within five minutes coming off the gang plank we are counted one to 42 back into the bus and away.

We are though still in Spain when we arrive in North Africa and need to travel 15 minutes south to reach the border (!) The Spain Morocco border control looks like a third world prison. No photographs allowed or we will be here for days. We watch at least half the people crossing the border get out of taxis on the Moroccan side then take their packages and clear customs picking up a new taxi on the Spanish side as we wait an hour or so for our passport formalities to be completed. Shopping choice is more interesting in Spain. We pick up our Moroccan guide Ahmed here at the Border. He has taxied in from Tangier. National guides are compulsory for tours and so he is with us for the next six days. Then a Doctor boards the bus and takes our individual temperatures using a laser thermometer that he points at our foreheads, but doesn’t touch skin (I resist commenting on the stupidity of this and sit demurely thinking charming thoughts as we have been instructed). No H1N1 here so we are cleared to go.

We spend the next five hours driving to Fez (the Spiritual Capital of the Morocco) every time our guide mentions Fez he says this so I now think that we are going to Fezthespiritualcapitalofmorocco). This is our biggest day of travel, we will have covered 820km today but our rather talkative guide is keen we know as much as possible about his homeland and wants to make the time pass as quickly as possible (I for one am grateful). I learn that there are 33 million people in Morocco - 65 per cent of them live in the country (read are very poor); that 68 per cent of men and 80 per cent of women are illiterate; that donkeys are still a common form of transport; that there are two ski resorts here…one of which I will pass in a couple of days when a handful of us go into the Atlas Mountains for the day; that the tax rate is 25 per cent; that Mosques here are square not round as they are in Spain and Portugal; that most people still don’t have fresh water in their homes but probably have wells or have to use the public fountains - the same ones the animals use; and that electricity is common now and tele very popular; prayers are five times a day for the mostly Sunni (sp) Muslim country; that the law has been changed and polygamy is no longer allowed (although there are some exceptions); and that women are no longer circumcised here. Reassured by all of that, I have a snooze.