Day 16 Tangier

One of my recurring worries is money - whether or not we have enough on our person or in our various accounts, The Wizard card is of particular concern because we rely on it as our primary source of cash, having preloaded it accordingly. Attempts a week ago to obtain a balance via an ATM failed with card invalid as a reason - not promising. It still spits out cash though, thankfully. Online attempts to get a balance while in Morocco failed for allegedly invalid login attempts. The account is locked after three invalid attempts. I used up two and will not try again until we reach Spain. We had another heart stopper last night when we attempted to get more cash. Four attempts with two cards failed, and with our apprehension about money outlined above, we read the failure message as insufficient funds - a real panic started to set in. Only then did we read the message carefully - the machine had run out of cash! We walked to another machine where we had no problems.

The housekeeper Adil had organized a barrow man to take us luggage up to Ain Azliten carpark. Once there we competed with other people to get a petit taxi. We chatted and joked with a group of three young German women. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about how to go - whether to accept an outrageous offer of 100 Dh for a minivan or wait for a petit taxi. We contemplated getting the barrow man to take our stuff to Bab Boujloud where we knew there would be taxis. In the end this is what we had to do.

At the station there was consternation because our train to Tangier was not listed on the main board. The queue at the information desk was long so we asked at attendant. He asked another who called over yet a third person. He was able to put our fears to rest. We got on the train, but wouldn't you know it, the first class car was at the far end of the platform. There was one other couple in our compartment. They weren't very talkative at first. I had the bloke pegged as university professor but wasn't sure about his companion. Eventually my second attempt at conversation succeeded and we established that they lived in Marseilles, and that he was indeed a university professor. We talked about our collective travels in Morocco and the woman recommended the iconic Café Hafa in Tangier. It's on a slope with good views across to Spain.

We had to change trains at Sidi Kacem, something Joan had been concerned about because there was no indication how long we would have to effect the transfer. The trip to Sidi Kacem was very scenic, retracing the route we had taken to Volubilis. We made the change successfully, crossing the tracks to do so. The remainder of the journey was uneventful except for a loud bang near Tangier. It seemed that something had been thrown at our carriage, but I could be wrong. In any case we arrived in Tangier on time after a comfortable journey.

After settling into the hotel, we looked for a petit taxi to take us to Café Hafa, but our attempts to convey our destination were unsuccessful so got the hotel receptionist to write on a piece of paper in Arabic. This resulted in instant success and we got a very nice driver. The café location was a little obscure and remote. We were concerned about getting a taxi back. The driver graciously offered to come and pick us up again an hour later. We took him up on this and he even walked us down the lane to the café. This establishment was a far cry from what we imagined - rather daggy and down-market. Most of the clientele were young men, with a very small number of young women. It was also quite windy and cool. Nonetheless we had two helpings of very good mint tea, complete with the obligatory green mint leaves and a few orange blossoms what provided extra zest. While we could see Spain, we could not see Gibraltar, even when we walked along the slope a ways. Our taxi did indeed come back for us. 

On returning to our hotel we had dinner, our last Moroccan fare, at Petit Berlin nearby after which we went for a short stroll along the main street. For almost a whole block there were tables on the footpath occupied solely by men, many alone. Weird.

Back in our hotel we were watching TV, in French, and there was an item about Tangier ferries. Joan immediately suspected and a problem and went down to ask reception about this. Apparently bad weather had caused the fast ferry to be cancelled today. Not sure about tomorrow.