المملكة المغربية Morocco, Part I

Journal Entry: April 24th-27th 2005

The boat ride from Almeria to Meillia was 6 hours long. We stayed in a bottom part of the ship. Chris and I walked around the ship to check out the city lights of Almeria, while Nate and Attila played cards. As soon as we arrived in Meillia (Spanish territory of Morocco) we walked across the border into Morocco and had to endure a long 6 hour bus ride to a beach town of Al-Hoceima.

Al-Hoceima! This town had potential of being a North-African resort of a city. Nothing of the sort. The town had a weird vibe. Local town people would stare at us, as though foreigners have never step foot in this place. The Only refuge we found was in our hotel room, the Al Hana.

We thought that being on the other side of the Mediterrean that the water would be warmer. Europe, I guess is not that far way as I hoped for. The beach was erry, no women sun-bathing, just guys playing soccer. They soon stopped playing once we step foot on the beach of Al-Hoceima. Why? such a mystery!

Even with the strange town's people behaviors, we tried to shake off their stange vibe by taking pictures, thinking of new travel destionations, etc.

Chris! we were lucky to have such a talented guy who not could sing, but play music and had many jokes to pass the time. Little did we know that we would have a difficult time getting served in restaurants, buying only dry goods from the local markets and finding a grand taxi to get us out of town. 3 days. we were trapped!

For 3 days, we were lucky to get from our hotel to find refuge in another hotel, only to escape having strange guys following us everywhere we went. We felt unsure why guys (and only guys) would follow us, without even saying "Bonjour!" We didn't want to find out their reasons. We agreed that even with the uncertainity of getting a grand taxi, we will take another bus to get us out of this town. The Next destionation, Chefchaouen.

المملكة المغربية Morocco, Part II

شفشاون Chefchaouen, city of blue
Journal Entry: April 26th-29th, 2005



Finally wegot the courage to get up early to inquire about bus times and fares to Chefchaouen. It seemed as though were running smooth, almost too smooth. "What will come of this?" we thought.



After enduring a long 6 hour bus ride going through the Rif mountains and going through small peasant towns, and having to endure a man not sitting far from us vomiting in a towel and having him leave the towel on the floor; and the bus without having any air conditioning or any windows to get some fresh air. We finally arrived in Chefchaouen!!


I never got the real name of this hostel Attila mentioned. But he knew the owner of this hostel. His name was Mohammed. He'd traveled around Europe and many parts of Africa. His theme: providing a true African exprience even as far North in Africa!


This city was amazing, with blue coloring all over mixed with white colored buildings, this was the coolest place I have seen in the world.



Back at the hostel. Mohammed's hostel not only had lively African drumming sessions, but small rooms where one could smoke, drink whatever they wanted. He went way beyond the normal service one would get in any ordinary hostel. I guess he wanted us to have a good time, and we did.


Finally, we were able to relax without having to be hassled or hustled for drugs and anything else for that matter. Still, there were problems. Nate and I didn't spend that much time together. We were getting on each other's nerves. Chris and Attila were caught in the middle of this silent battle.


Even with our problems, silent or otherwise, we just couldn't get enough of the great hospitality of this hostel. The price, I should mention was somewhere in the price of 3 dollars a night per person. Also the great morrocan food was something else we couldn't pass up. Chicken tajine, couscous and of course the infamous mint tea. why leave?


Alkim, a friend of Mohammed, who spoke english and french fluently, showed us around the city and was a great friendly guy too.


With all the great foods we ate and smoking Hashish, we had to get our good health back by taking a hike up in the mountains.


We found a nice shaded spot up the mountain, where we talked about life, future careers and how everyone was feeling. This was a great time for me and Nate to put our differences to the side. We also learned that Chris will soon be leaving back to Europe. We were hoping that he would stick around longer. We will meet him again someday. . .


We left the next morning for Casablanca!

الدار البيضاء Casablanca, Morocco, Part III

Journal Entry: April 29th -May1st, 2005

Casablanca! A city well known for the infamous movie, ......Casablanca. Nothing of the sort, just a big city with an old feel of former French colonialism.



The ride to Casablanca was nothing pleasent. We had to transfer bus after bus, without understanding Arabic and the broken French spoken to us. We just followed their commands to get off the bus and go to another bus. The only enjoyment I had was playing with this beautiful 1 year old kid who sat with his mother and father. His smile made my time wonderful.


The city had style like an old Parisien style mixed with a North Africa appeal. The women in this city were beauitful, exotic and very sexy.

Though, many of the city's women were not dressed in traditional fashion, their beauty was something not easily missed.


Though this city was filled with man advantages with beautiful women, bars serving beer, great restaurants, like most places around Morocco; we had to deal with the forever scams of taxi drivers or people not wanting to give us the right place, which we wanted to stay.

While our taxi driver knew that we request L'hotel du Palais, he decided to take us to a place, which a friend of his owned as he said "voila!" Voila, ce n'est pas L'hotel du Palais. The taxi guy tried to assure us that the place we were was the hotel we were looking for. Now, (bragging rights here) but I have a great knowledge of the French language and I understand that Palais is spelled as P A L A I S, right? The hotel were first arrived was Al Mara...something. Attila managed to find the hotel with his great mapping skills.

This city unlike other cities we've visited was free from husslers, scam artist (besides the first taxi driver) or anyone being curious to who we were. To the people of Casablanca, we could have been city residents to them. I have to admit, it felt great not hearing someone calling me "friend"


Certain times of the day, I would venture out of the hotel room away from Attila and Nate to explore this city. This city was very alive, motorcycles, dance clubs, bars, beer vendors, you name it. I wanted to capture every moment while I was there.


The streets were always filled with cars, people walking and bakery stands on almost every corner. I had to remind myself that I was not in Paris, France.

Unlike other cities in Morocco, Casablanca is blessed by providing a lost curious traveler names of streets in both French and Arabic. And the streets were not as confusing as I thougt they would be.

Even with everything in sight, we couldn't miss out on one of the world's infamous sites: The Great Mossque of King Hassan II.

¡España! We're coming back again, are we really looking for a job?

Journal Entry: May4th thru May6th 2005

Allah sent a messenger



We left Casablanca around the mid afternoon. We took a train to Tangier, about 4 hour ride. It was to see the countryside for once. At this moment, we all were getting tired of Morocco and the constant hustle of people trying to sell us things from this to that. Even with my broken Arabic for no, didn't seem to go well with some vendors. Even with my Français: laisse-moi tranquille, si'l vous plaît! It got so bad, we decided that we would cease to say anything or give any hint that we were foreigners or even we knew one another. They were not buying that, we dressed like Europeans and we couldn't escape who we really were.

The train stops in some town in the middle of nowhere, we're told that we would have to transfer to catch the next train going to Tangier. Merci! thanks I said..............We got into our next train, and we found an empty cabin room: "fuck yeah!" Moments later, our temporary cabin oasis came to an end. A very tall Moroccian man came in and sat down. Silence returned, as we gazed away from one another, looking towards the outside window of the world on this train. "Bonjour!" Are you guys Français? Without thinking twice about it, Nate said that he was Canada, Attila is from Québec. So I had to ask myself, so where the hell am I from? "Brazil but I study in the USA" Did that go well? So this guy named Sherif told us a story about good health, love and family. One story until this day, sticks with me:

A man's father is getting old and possibly he is dying. His son tells him his father that he can't take care of him and sending him to an elderly community would cost too much. He says to his father, I must kill you, because you are too old and there is nothing I do for you, father! The father pleaded with his son. Finally, he told his son, 'if you are going to kill me, please take me up in the mountains in the forest that is where I want to die.' The son puzzled by this, said to his father 'I can kill you here, there....what is the difference? I have to kill you, father' Finally, the son complied to his father's dying wish. He took him up the mountain deep in the forest. The father told his son to follow him until he found the right place where he wants to die. The son asked his father, why has he chosen this paritcular spot to be killed. The father said that 'this very same spot where I stand is the place I killed my father and this will be the same place where your son will kill you'

After we arrived in Tangier and caught a boat going back to Algeciras, Spain, Sherif's message of good health, family and love. We couldn't stopped but to wonder the meaning behind that story and how we were so sudden to prejudice this kind man who just wanted to express kindness and friendship. Was it possible that Allah brought us a messenger to remind us of our hatred has no place in this beautiful world? Or was this a way to strengthen our friendship or our broken relationships with our family? Our fathers?

Ronda, a picturesque town deep in valley of Andalucia. Even with beautiful scene of this town, we came here to contact Attila's friends to get information on getting a job. Attila showed me and Nathan around after we found a hostel nearby. We also found a cheap Chinese restaurant in town for only six euros which included Tsingtao Beer.

The guys spent sometime hanging out in the hostel, I went out and did my usual, taking pictures, taking in all what I could see and exprience. I found a local internet café and I also found the nearest grocery store. I bought the usual and naturally shared with my travelmates, fruit yogurt, bottled water, bread and nutella chocolate and of course nice green spanish olives. By the way, it was Attila's 23rd birthday. We got drunk that same night.

The next day, we took the 12noon train to the town of Cortez de la frontera, another small town like Ronda around the same region. Here, we supposed to meet with Attila's friend Juan, who had or knew about light construction work in the area. We spent a few hours at a local pub drinking spanish beer eating peanuts and chatting with some old men in town. Later on, Attila finally got in contact with the guy and all what Nate and I got was that we could come by this Juan guy's place. But, Attila was concerned that even if we were able to get there, how will we get back to Ronda? Because the train only runs certain hours of the day. I suggested that Juan could take us back to town or simply walk back along the train tracks.

It shouldn't come to anyone's suprise that things were looking good. Juan never returned Attila's text message nor did he answer his phone calls. It shouldn't also come as a suprise that we ended up taking the last train going back to Ronda. Silence, dirty looks and uncertain filled our train cabin room. It was probably the quiet train ride I ever had in my life. We got back to our hostel, we tried to put some understanding to this problem, which we were now facing. My bank account also revealed something even worse, my balance is running really low. This was an alarm. None of us had return airline tickets to go back home and none of us wanted to return home. At least, Nate and I were fully aware that there was nothing back home and there was no home to return. We went out that night to have a beer. Still, we couldn't make any sense of it.

Instead of finding a way on how we were going to find work, the guys started having some weird bullshit competition with one another. I didn't understand why. Attila dominated the knowledge, whereas Nate domainated the spirit of things. I watch this somewhat calm war between the God Jupiter versus Zeus withou having a way to resolve their matters. I dominated the destination. I told the guys that I knew going into this trip that I was going to be fucked with money matters and I took this risk to be my two best friends and wanted Nate to exprience the world of traveling and even with fights, arguments and sometimes a lack of space, was all a part of the travel exprience. We all agreed and resolved our differences. We went out for another night on the town and had a few beers. We left for Granada the following morning.

Listen to:

1)Blur from the Great Escape Album:

Track 11- Ernold Same
Track 12-Globe Alone

2) Juanes from album, Mi Sangre

Track 4-Camisa Negra

¡España! Back in San Jose: Living Youth Hostel

Journal Entry: May 8th thru May19th?

We left early in the morning leaving Ronda to head out to Granada. We almost missed the train, because Nate and I forgot to pull money out of the ATM machine, though, we could easily paid with our debt card. Again, anger and silence dominated our ride towards Granada. After having our independent moments of being angry and frsustrated with one another, we agreed that we will take the next train out of Granada to Almería to go back to San José. So much time has passed that we had to remember that we left our main backpacks there at the hostel.

It was good to have a warm welcome back from the hostel staff and they returned our backpacks as how we left them. Though, we weren't truly worried about having our things stolen, we took our essentials, passports, wallets cameras, etc. I forgot how heavy my backpack was. It seemed as though we really didn't have any idea on what we were planning to do next. I think we just wanted to remain in small sleep spanish town along the coast. It was therapy, or more?

Girls know it all. . .

We spent most our time hiking around hills and beaches near by. At night, we would go out to a local Italian restaurant. We met some really cool travelers from all over the world. Imagine meeting complete strangers in this hostel, which was not as flashy, party like envirnoments. It seemed as though these other travelers just wanted to find a place to relax after coming from the hussle of the big cities around Europe or in the world. Even though we were trying to relax and clear our heads, it still didn't stop the Study Abroad American girls to make quick distinction in our group. Particuarly, one night, we did our usual, eating tuna sandwiches, beer and our usual dialogue of Garmisch, our friends and so on. Well this girl just had to interupt and inquiry if any of us read Lord of the Rings. Attila and I said no, but to her luck, Nate stated that he did. She felt necessary to sit at our table and inquiry how we knew one another and how was it possible that we could travel together for so long, etc. Later that night, we went out for some beers. This girl, she somehow wanted to change the topic to zodiac signs. She amazed us with her powers on how she knew that Attila was a Taurus, because of his arrogance and I was a Libra because my insecurities and love and hate feelings I had for the world. But to her convience, Nate was an Aquarius. She was puzzled by the fact that with our diverse backgrounds, age differences and different zodiac signs, how were we able to get along for all this time. She said that she just couldn't see how that would work for her. Attila stopped me, but she just wanted to fuck Nathan plain and simple. They left for the beach to have a romantic evening at the beach. Attila and I spent an un-romantic evening of having more beer.

What is next? I asked the guys and as always no answer. My head hurt from trying to figure out the next plan. I guess there was no need for planning. Things weren't going well. Attila told me that he needed to spend time way by visiting some friends in Granada. Nate was hanging out this Australian guy named Grant and they met some girls whom they convinced spending a night at the beach. Maybe, we all needed some time away from one another. I was lucky to meet a guy from Italy who was traveling alone and we took some days by hiking around Cabo de Gata, the beaches and mountains and checking out some ruins in the area.

I must admit even though I told the guys that maybe we needed to spend time away from one another, I really missed Attila and Nate. My hostel room felt empty and too quiet for me. I sometime worried about my friends and prayed that they were doing well and with good company. Most my days was spent writing e-mails to family and friends back home, taking pictures and meeting new travelers at the hostel. Even our hostel staff became so relaxed with my presence I became in charge of late night arrivals by providing them with room keys, bed linens, towels and taking their money and giving it the hostel manager, Olvado the next day. It felt great having things going in order, in which I wanted. Even meeting new people I couldn't help to mention about my friends, Attila and Nate. It only revealed that I really cared about this guys and honestly, I love them.

Nate came back 3 days later and I wasn't sure if I was ready to have him back. I met some girls from Australia and I hate saying this, but it was good to have some center of attention for a moment. With Nate being around, all the attention will be brought on him, because of his daring handsome beauty. Jealous? Me? Yes, I was jealous of my best friend. How will we make it with this obivious fact that seperate us or better yet, were we going to continue to allow people to make division within our group?

The girls from Australia, known as Bertha control, their musical group name played some cool tunes and we sang songs all night under the dark sky. Their songs reflected about honesty, love and friendship and having control in one's life. I accepted Nate back into our hostel room and we regained our friendship back and agreed to respect each other. We spent the other days exploring around, we found unique trails and other ruins along the forgotten path. Nate and I talked a lot about what we will do next, as we tried to reason out why it would be impossible to regain this same feeling of freedom of travel back home. We perfectly knew that once upon returning home, we will have a very brief moment of fame as we will be able to tell our stories of adventure, the people we met along the way, sharing our pictures, our writing skills, new foreign expressions and words and so on. And once all have been told, we will need to show that we can find a job right away and return to the world or sense of normalcy. Even though, we could fight against the concept, but we will be defeated or go hungry and homeless and isolated from others who can't accept that we will not conform. Dharma Bums part II. Kerouac didn't prepare us for this part in our journey.

¡España! San Jose: Hiking & Exploring Photography

Pictures can speak for themselves, exprience our world away from home!