entering morocco

ok so we left lisboa and had a bit of a complex mission to get to our first destination in morocco. firstly we had two coaches and one local bus that got us through the night and to the ferry in algerciras at the southern tip of spain. then we jumped on a ferry cruised past gibraltor, which in the perfect sunshine that we were blessed with looked pretty cool, and over the mediterranean. then we took our first step onto the continent of africa, but whilst we were geographically in africa we still weren't politically as we had landed in ceuta a little peninsula that in some colonial era throwback still belongs to spain. so then another local bus to the border (or its much cooler spanish name the 'frontera') and we got off and were herded into these long wire corridors for a long trudge over no mans land and towards morocco. it was reminiscent of the film 'children of men' (which if you havent you should cause its absolutely fucking brilliant). then we jumped into a shared taxi and headed for the city of tetuoan.

as we arrived in tetuoan i was thinking how efficeintly and easy our days travel had progessed despite our many how many changes and potential probelems were involved. then we hit tetouan, we had chosen the ferry to ceuta to avoid tangier which has a reputation for being like jumping into a pool of piranhas for new arrivals (with the piranhas being money hungry touts and taxi drivers). unfortunately we hadnt reckoned on the taxi drivers of tetuoan. after 24 odd hours of travel we were tired and susceptible, and its been a while since indioa so i was well out of proactise in dealing with touts and the like. anyway they managed to convince us not to catch the bus (the dude selling bus tickets lust have been in on it, even he told us not to catch the bus) and then proceeded to quote us insane prices. we kept walking away from the two or three who were particularly annoying and rude and trying to find others but everytime we found another driver suddenly the same touts would pop out of nowhere. eventually we found another one who wasnt in on it (or more likely was only in for himself) and were discussing prices when all of a sudden a police van rolled past, opened the side door, grabbed the guy, chucked him in and gave us a pleasant 'bonjour' all in the space of about a second. if only they'd been so efficent with the first dudes. then we got another taxi agreed a price, put our baggage in the back and got in only to find that the first, worst tout was sitting ion the front seat. then his mate started demanding that we pay him and not the driver so i shut the door in his face and paid the driver and off we went. but sadly we only went about 500m and were told we had to swap taxis, so we got out and there was the guy who id slammed the door on! so we got in the new taxi but couldnt leave till i paid the original tout for his 'help' man i do anything to get that 20dh back. anyway after about an hour and a half of stress and hassle we were on the road again, our new taxi driver was nice and he asked how much we paid we told him 100dh each (we were originally quoted 300) and he started yelling apparently he'd only been paid 30 for each of us. anyway the rest of our journey the driver and the rest of the passengers had a heated discussion the only words of which i understood were 'taxi', 'islam' and 'koran' but im pretty sure if hinged around the touts not being real muslims. anyway that was tetuoan it sucked but eventually we arrived in our mountain village destination of chefchaouen.