Larache to Rabat - Day 123

Date: December 19th, 2009
Distance: Cheating by bus!
Country: Morocco
Song of the Day: Last Christmas - Jimmy Eat World

More cheating. Too many buses. I just don't feel too bad though. I woke up to pouring rain and more wind. I knew I wasn't going to enjoy two days of riding in miserable weather to get down to Rabat.

So yeah, I on a bus. Actually I hopped on two buses. I bought a ticket and was walking around to find my bus. I didn't see it so I started asking one of the attendants at the bus station. He brought me over to a bus going to Rabat. So I got all my stuff loaded on. One of the baggage handlers was asking for "five ten" Dirhams. When I bought the ticket they said that it would be on 15 Dirhams. So I went to pay him 15 Dirhams. But he wanted 50. There was no way in hell I was going to pay him that. So I just got on the bus. He kept arguing with me about the price, and I wasn't going to budge. As we pulled out of the station one of the other passengers figured out what was going on. He asked me for my ticket. Turns out I had a ticket from a different company. I was on the wrong bus. The 50 Dirhams was for the whole ride me and the baggage. The bus stopped and I was unceremoniously dumped, with all my stuff, into the middle of the street.

By this point it was pouring rain. I had to race back to the bus station and find my real bus. Turns out I hadn't missed it because it was 20 minutes late. Then there was a whole pain to get my bike on there. It would have been easier to pull the bags off, but they wanted to charge me baggage handling for each one. I I left it all on, then they counted it as only one bag, so only one charge. Fine, have it your way. I had to help them get it all on the bus and not squished. With all the rain, I was soaked by the time I got onto the bus. Still everything was good, and from there it was a fairly quiet trip down to Rabat.

I met my cousin and his friend Emory at the bus station. The station was on the outside of town though. So we had a quite a walk back to the hotel. They don't really have crosswalk lights here. You just wait until the cars stop, then cross a street. Moroccan sidewalks aren't bike friendly either. So getting around the streets was interesting. Still it wasn't bad. I didn't even rain on us.

Once back at the hotel we got the stuff dropped off and headed out for dinner. Just a couple of sandwiches, but it was good. It was also fun talking with the guys about their experiences in country. We stayed up pretty late talking about all the adventures we had been through before hitting the sack.

-Dravis