chicken bus to fez

While still in Azrou I met this moroccan guy who spoke pretty good english and invited me to come hangout in his house and drink mint tea. He was really into african music and it was all pretty alright, except he tried to sell me a burned cd for 5 euros. I didn't even charge that much for burned CDs when I was the only kid in school with a CD burner and I had to download all of the songs on 56k from napster so I just ignored him. I'm running out of stuff to read so I asked him if he had anything in english, and he started showing me his library. The first book was called "How to break your own heart" and was strongly recommended by Woman's World Magazine (unfortuantely the back cover was missing so i don't know what it is about, but the last sentence is the first kiss of the central couple =D), and the next was called "Bad Behaviour" about a successful girl living in her own apartment in downtown Dublin (i know, right?) who has everything except a man to make her less horribly lonely. Then she finds out her ex boyfriend is coming back to the emerald isle to marry her ex bestfriend and the blurb on the back implies so somehow wins him over or something. I was looking at the other books when the guy pointed at the first two and said, "those have very good stories." No doubt.

I left Azrou the next day and made it to Fez aboard the chicken bus for $2. I was happy they had cleared out all of the chickens before i got on, but the seats were still in pretty horrible condition and there were exposed wires hanging from the panel where the light and fan should have been.

Fez was pretty alright, just like most other large moroccan cities, except in a much nicer location. It's got green hills with fields that you can see from the old city and they look a lot like the okanagan. Could have been worse.

My hotel was kind of crappy because I was staying on the roof in a little cell with a heavy metal door that couldn't keep the cold out. it was especially bad because it was pouring rain and hailing later in the day. I didn't mind any of this because the lady who runs the place was such a sweet old grandmother and when i was coming back to sleep she called me into the office to show me a cat that was sitting on her stool and she thought it was hilarious and that the cat would soon be asking for passports and trying to check people in. I kind of miss her.

Fez has the largest intact medeival medina in the world and there are no cars allowed, which makes it much nicer than Marrakesh, but I got lost a couple of times. This wouldn't have been so bad except you couldn't ask anybody for directions as they all wanted to take you to their "cousin's" shop or show you the tanneries for a price and then a commission of anything you were pressured to buy. I let some guy take me to the top of his store to see the tanneries, and they were pretty sweet, but he predictably tried to sell me some leather stuff in his store downstairs. I looked it all over and i didn't want any of it so i turned to him and said, "i don't think that..." and then i just left. he was kind of stunned and by the time he figured out what had happened and was demanding a tip I had already disappeared around the corner. a great victory for the civilised man.

That night I met up with a pretty decent Canadian and a French guy and we hung out the next day and explored more of the city. unfortunately friday is a holy day here and almost everything was closed, but that made it a lot less hassle to get across town.

I had already checked out of my hotel because I had had enough of Fez and wanted to get to Chefchaueon in the north, but it turned out the only bus there left at 730 that morning. Fortunately a nice con man was able to direct me to a chicken bus that went to a nearby town that wasn't on any maps. I was a little suspicious that the place didn't actually exist and also a little worried about showing up in town at 2am, but it was better than sleeping on the streets of Fez.