Though my ticket is for Casablanca, I've got four days before my flight and I've already done Casablanca, so when we docked at Safi, Morocco this morning, I abandoned ship. Though most of the ship emptied out for one tour or another, I think I was the only one ending his trip here and because it's so unusual, no one knew what to do with me and I had to do two hours of office-bouncing in order to do two minutes worth of customs paperwork.When I reached Bamako two weeks ago, I felt a great relief in having my transportation all reserved for a while, but now that I'm fully rested from my rough-riding, I'm even more enthusiastic about having the open road ahead of me, having to rely on luck. It shouldn't, however, take an incredible amount of luck to cover the 200 miles or so to Casa in three days.
Safi seems like a great little city: colorful, condensed marketplace, the cheap hotels I've missed so much, the hubbub of the port. I'd barely been off the boat for a minute when a young policeman of some kind asked me where I was from, how long I'd been in Safi and didn't I want to stay at his house and he could drive me to Casa tomorrow. This was altogether too fast a friendship for a born & bred heterosexual like myself and I begged off with some excuse.After my six-month summer, it looks like I'm in for a four-day autumn-- it's quite chilly and as soon as I'd changed my money (shuffled between no fewer than five banks) and dropped my load in a hotel, I bought myself a sweater. My loyal denim shirt had deteriorated to a point where I was stitching up and patching 4-inch tears every day. Finally I gave up and just wore my dirty undershirt around, but now with my pull (pullover), I feel like a million dirhams.
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Six hours have passed since I wrote the above paragraph-- so has the autumn that I thought would last four days. It's freezing! Maybe it's worse for me having just come from a tropical climate, but I never expected it to be this cold-- I thought I'd be able to go swimming, but skating would be more like it. To think that four days ago I would have leapt at a glass of ice water—now the sight of it would turn me to stone. And it's worse instead of better in my room, which is in a drafty stone building and has never seen the sun. If New York is worse than this next Saturday, I'm going into hibernation.
PHOTO CREDIT 1
PHOTO CREDIT 2
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