Hey! Hey, you! Bonjour! Mon ami! Heellloooo!"
Stop. Stop it. For pete's sake, dear god, stop.
I kept me eyes set in the coldest, most bored possible way and stared straight ahead.
I am not going to your spice shop. Or shoes or couscous or dyed cloth or
music or art or pottery, nor your "uncle's" shop just around the
corner.
Even though, I know I'm white and western and probably make monthly in Alaska the annual median income here.
These are the winding souks of Marrakech, an endless maze of stalls and
shops where everything imaginable is for sale. I was passed several
times by boys pulling carts loaded with snails. The militant Berbers who
work them have pulling and swindling visitors down to a science, and I
was at times literally pulled in shops before I could jerk my hand away.
it's a romantically foreign scene, full of colors and smells and dust
and noise, squeezed into narrow passageways in the heart of the city.
Wandering them was my life for three days, as I lived on the roof of a
nearby hostel for €5 a night (50 Durham). It was a hectic international
group of Germans, Brits, americans, swedes, Romanians, and Spaniards,
all crammed together in what I now affectionately call the hostel
situation. Personal space is sacrificed in the glorious name of
sociality, and the result is usually remarkable people to spend time
with. To list the hostelers I have befriended over stories lived and
told is too big a task to try.
-------------
""Paddle! Paaaaaaaadddddle!"
Eva got moving and popped to her feet. "Wooo!" Success.
That's all you need at this stage. I wasn't worried about getting
anything more myself in the one ft beachbreak at Panorama Point. The
crowds of westerners lounging on the beach and up in their RVs watched
on, as a few of us rode the whitewash on epoxy longboards. The hot
Moroccan sun beat down on our necks, as a late afternoon breeze cooled
our faces and chopped the water.
Morocco is to Europe as Mexico is to the US. A warm, southern place to
hide from winter's greyness. And apparently, my planned basecamp of
Taghazout is at the center of attention. Germans and French and Brits
come to stay for weeks at a time in classy apartment rentals, and
suffers come from all over the world for Anchor Point. Slater surfed it
some time last year, a heaving and dangerous right-hander that spills
onto some nasty rocks if you bail in the first 10 feet. There are nice
restaurants and wifi cafes, and an unbelievable number of camper vans
passing through.
"Camel?" asked a kid towing a literal camel as I sloshes out of the water.
"No, no thanks." I replied, secretly desperate as I was for a picture with a surfboard on a camel. It'll have to wait.
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Now it's my turn to paddle. Hard. I make the drop, and my new favorite
board slows in a section of mush. The wave reaches the inside, and all
of a sudden jacks up vertically. Looking down the line, I can see the
top feather, teetering, thinking about it... It mystically pitches over
my head, and my eyes grow wide before filling with salt water.
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