Not the best picture in the world of Almeria but meh what can you do about it?!
After a fine night, we got up. Left the key on the receptionist's desk, as she wasn't there.
Wandered down to the port first, where it became perfectly clear that there were a lot of Almeria-Nador ferries. We got our tickets from Ferrimaroc for 11am as planned. After buying some cheese and bread from a Moroccan-run shop in the ferryport, we went back to town to look for some postcards and stamps. Ian wrote two while Laure read a little, then we went to the post office.
Ambled back to the port, down a very nice avenue lined with palm trees, with blue skies and sun overhead even though it wasn't really that hot. We only saw Moroccan people at the port, Spanish people we assumed prefer to go to Melilla. The ferry (called the "Scirocco") was alright; first we sat in the Pullman Lounge. When we left the port we went on the deck, then back in the ferry into what looked like a Starship Enterprise lounge, with an inverted funnel in the middle and plastic plants (and a ring of lights around on the ceiling). The ferry lacked entertainment, but then there were only 104 people to entertain.
Quickly the sea became pretty bad, and Laure started to get sick, finding it much more comfortable to lie down and daydream half-asleep. We attempted to play scrabble, but Laure kept having to go to the toilets every 10 minutes. Even though it was one of Ian's least comfortable boat trips ever, his stomach could probably digest molten iron and he was alright. He wrote two letters and lost himself in the guide to Morocco.
About an hour before we arrived, a civilian came to us and said, in English, "Are you English? Give me your passports to get them stamped." Laure had just woken up and asked "Where is it? Sure, in a minute." Laure thought he was someone trying to help but surely we preferred to go to the authority ourselves. The guy left quickly, with a gesture of the hand meaning "Oh and after all I don't care". Twenty minutes after, when she felt better, Laure went to the information desk to enquire about stamping the passports. The woman was surprised we hadn't done it, but then there had been no announcements. She said we could do it when we arrived.
When we got off we queued for passport control. When they saw ours were not stamped, they took them and we had to wait to the end of the queue so that the two policemen could take us to the official cabin/hut. As well as us, an old Moroccan man with a Moroccan passport also seemed to have trouble, but we didn't know why. Anyway, who was behind the grilled window but the man who talked to us on the boat. He wasn't very nice to us, saying that we didn't want to have our passports stamped on the boat so now we had to wait. Of course he never said he was from the police, he didn't have any uniform or an identification of any sort, and he hadn't even insisted. I told him we didn't know he was from the police, then he asked us if it was the first time we were in the country. When Laure said yes, he seemed to calm down a bit. We were finally handed our stamped passports back.
We thought the coach station wasn't far, but couldn't find any signs indicating it. We asked a couple of guards at the port entrance (by this time we had noticed that Morocco is a heavily policed place), and they told us to get a taxi. Of course, ten minutes before, a horde of taxi drivers had hailed us (yes, usually it *is* the other way round). So we went back to them, and they asked for 1000ptas/60Dh to get there. We thought it was a bit of a rip-off but we didn't have a choice. It turned out to be a fair way, about 10km. The port is not really in Nador, rather next to Melilla, and the lagoon is really big.
The taxi driver was friendly, and showed us a couple of things as we drove past them, like the Palais Royal, up one of the mountains. He wasn't very helpful with the name of the mountains though. He was quite curious, but then we would find out that all Moroccans are. We hit a roadblock but were not stopped. Apparently it's because of all the contraband. When we reached Nador town centre it became apparent that things were completely different than we were sued to, in many different ways. The buildings were light, there were wastelands between parts of towns covered with litter. The towns were really busy, a lot of men were at the cafes, lots of shops, and a dwarf woman was in the middle of a crossroads ("Everyone knows her" said the driver). We passed a couple of mopeds loaded with building material coming from Melilla. Laure wondered how *they* didn't get arrested.
We arrived at the bus station, and the first thing that happened was about seven people asking us where we were going, and naming places. We ignored them and Ian spotted the counter where it said Oujda. The guy (again without a uniform, who looked about 12 years old) sold us the tickets, 25dh each. We found the coach, still surrounded by lots of people (young males). We gave our luggage to one, but still followed him to see what he did with them. When we boarded the bus, we noticed a couple of kids and people getting on to sell chocolate and yoghurt (temperature??). Laure asked one if he had any chewing-gum, he said no, but the guy sitting in front of us said "you want chewing gum?", went off, and came back with two packets!! We talked to him quite a lot on the journey; he was a bit 'sticky', but friendly and interesting, his name was Fouad.
Arabic music was playing all the time. We drove through the mountains; it was quite dry because there was a drought at the time, and we passed over lots of wadis, but sometimes there were orchards of oranges, olive trees, and the occasional crop. It wasn't quite desert either, a house here and there and some villages. We went through a few towns, including Berkane, famous for its oranges. We came through three roadblocks and were stopped twice. Again at one station, a kid came on to sell sunflower seeds, Fouad gave us a handful, and it took us the rest of the journey to get through them - Laure was more used to eating them than Ian.
There were several stops in Oujda, Fouad stopped with us at the one nearest to the Hotel des Lilas, which we'd decided we'd go for. He walked us there. They had a free room as we expected, in fact the receptionist had most of the keys behind him. We said goodbye to Fouad, who by now had already officially invited us back to Oujda again someday, and we went to our bedroom. The room was nice enough, clean, though the flush didn't work, and there was no hot water, which was standard for Morocco according to the guide. The TV had only one channel. We plugged in the radio and Ian only found one FM station; a sort of station for French-speaking countries that actually played French music (eg David Hallyday).
Oujda lies only a handful of miles from the Algerian border (it is presumably possible to walk there), however due to the continuing civil war in Algeria, and the cool relations between Algeria and Morocco (over the disputed desert border which generally doesn't even appear on maps, and the Western Sahara zone), the border has been closed for several years. A once thriving trading post city is now effectively a dead-end. Consequently no-one comes here any more. Which does make it very easy to find cheap rooms :p
The receptionist said there were a couple of restaurants around, and indeed we found one on the crossroads 100 yards away - Le Restaurant National. When we went upstairs to the dining area, we found the waiter in the middle of his prayer, kneeling on the floor. For food, we had harira and six beef kebabs each, chips, salad, and olives. The harira is a strong-tasting soup, meaty, tomato, lentils, chick-peas, spices, really good. The brochettes came with a small dish of sauce which Laure thought would be harissa and really strong, but it wasn't. Again we didn't have desert, we always seem to have far too much food to want one. However Ian had a real mint tea with mint leaves in the glass, and had great difficulty stirring the sugarcubes in.
We went back to the hotel and finished a game of scrabble that we had started on the boat, which Laure won 263-245.