Across the Mediterranean to Morocco

Shortly after I boarded the ferry boat in Genoa we set sail across the Mediterranean Sea toward Barcelona.  The boat was unlike any ferry I had ever been on and was actually more like a small cruise ship than anything else.  That’s probably because the journey took nearly 48 hours from the time we left Italy until we arrived in Morocco.  There were nine decks, though the first five were mainly set aside for passengers' cars.  When I first got on board, I had to take an escalator up from the bottom level to the reception area on Deck 6 where I could take the stairs or an elevator to Deck 9 where the rooms with the reclining seats were located.  Instead of springing for a shared cabin, I had decided to save 50 bucks and get a seat rather than a bunk so one of these rooms was my home for the next two days.


Each room contained probably about 75 to 100 reclining seats, though luckily since the rooms generally weren’t even half full, most of us passengers could reserve nearly a whole row and lie across the seats rather than simply back against them.  It was almost like sleeping on a couch (except for the slight gaps between each seat) so it wasn’t all that uncomfortable.  The second night, the room was a bit more crowded so I had to settle for a row with only two seats, which was a little more cramped.  Some people even just laid down a bunch of blankets and slept right on the floor.  I did notice that of the 40 or so other people staying in the room, I was assuredly the only woman, most certainly the only American and quite possibly one of the few non-Moroccans.  I was obviously quite a novelty for my co-passengers and as a result I was asked for coffee more times within a span of 48 hours than ever before in my life.  By the end of the voyage, I felt like there were more people I was trying to avoid (so as not to get involved in yet another awkward “Arablish” conversation) than that I was pleased to run into.  I did have a nice exchange by means of Google Translate with a young Moroccan-Italian guy who was traveling from Italy to Morocco to visit family.

In spite of all this, the main problem with the arrangement of the room was that there was no place to lock up all my belongings.  There were a few closets in the back of the room set aside for left luggage, but there was nothing to secure the bags to.  The best solution I came up with was to padlock my big backpack to my smaller one so that it would be quite awkward and conspicuous for someone to try to walk off with both bags.  I also used smaller locks to lock all the zippers and secure the pockets on the small backpack. My video camera bag I just carried around with me everywhere since it was relatively small.  It was a bit of a pain in the neck to get into my stuff this way, but it was preferable to leaving it totally exposed.  My biggest issue came on the morning of the first full day when I couldn’t find the wallet that had all the keys attached to it anywhere.  I normally kept it in a small over-the-neck bag, but all that was in there was my camera.  I was at the point of trying to devise possible methods to free my bags so that I could access my belongings without totally destroying the luggage.  I was just about to go downstairs to see if anyone had turned the wallet in to reception when I checked my (thicker-than-usual) waist wallet and fortunately found it safe in there.  Crisis averted.

While we were at sea, there wasn’t much to do but read, write postcards, watch TV in Italian and wander aimlessly around the ship.  Normally more shops and lounges would have been open, but as it was still wintertime and thus the off-season, a lot of areas of the ship were closed off.  That left even less places than usual to go exploring.  On the first night after dinner, for lack of better entertainment options, I camped out at the one bar that was open in the central area of the main deck.  I made friends with an older Italian bartender named Massimo, who spoke barely any English, and a younger Sicilian cashier named Vittor, who spoke decent English.  The main benefit of this friendship (aside from quelling my boredom) was that after a while I stopped having to pay for any alcohol, tea, juice or pastries that I ordered while either one of them was working.  The only food they served at the bar was the pastries so I did have to go buy all my meals other than breakfast in the cafeteria.  Still, I’m quite certain they saved me at least $75 to $100 on what I would have spent on beer and prosecco cocktails alone.  Plus, I got in some really good Spantalian practice.  On the second night, after Vittor got off work, we went to go hang out in the crew area, which made me feel like I was getting a backstage pass to the boat.

On the afternoon of the second day at sea, we arrived at the port in Barcelona.  I was really hoping that I would get to go ashore for a few hours, but the crew member I spoke to told me that the port officials wouldn’t let those of us continuing on to Morocco disembark.  I did get to go out on deck once we had docked and I could see the city from afar, including the statue of Christopher Columbus in the main square and what I think was the top of the Sagrada Familia Cathedral.  Closer examination of my zoomed in photos could probably confirm this for sure.  It was nice to be out on deck when we were docked at the pier because when we were at sea it was too windy and cold to stay outside for too long.  After about three or four hours, we pulled away from the dock, looped around the harbor closer to downtown and then headed back to toward the open sea.

In the early afternoon of the second full day I was hanging out at the central bar with Massimo and Vittor as per usual when they asked if I had gone down to immigration.  I had heard them making announcements about going to the discoteque, but I thought that they were just referring to picking up the arrival cards that we needed to fill out.  Vittor told me that, no, I actually had to go down there to get my passport stamped.  It was the weirdest arrangement ever, going through immigration in a shutdown dance club.  When I walked in the door, I saw a well-dressed Moroccan guy sitting on a velvet couch with another guy smoking a cigarette.  A few other guys were gathered around another table across the way.  I was nearly convinced that I was in the wrong place, but when I asked the guy about the "policia," he pointed to a table with a computer and a bunch of arrival cards on it.  There was no one manning the table at the time so I went over and sat down until a few minutes later, the well-dressed guy came over and stamped my passport.  It turns out he WAS the policia in plainclothes.  I remarked to the guys how strange this was when I went back upstairs, but they just said it was normal in Morocco for the immigration officer not to wear a uniform.  Whatever.... as long as it was legal.

A few hours later, we arrived at the port in Tangier Med.  It was a relatively new terminal pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  I went up to an information desk to ask about taking a taxi, but the guy who was working there said I should actually take the free shuttle bus into the city of Tangier where I could get a cab to my hotel.  When we arrived in the city about half an hour later, I shared a taxi with an American college student who was studying for a semester in Morocco and had to catch a bus back to her school.  We had an interesting discussion about her experiences in the country thus far and she made me feel a bit reassured about traveling there alone as a woman.

Overall, I did much better on the ferry boat than on the cargo ship as far as dealing with seasickness so I'm pretty sure I would also do okay on a cruise ship, which is even larger than the ferry.  By the way, I found out why most of the trails in the Cinque Terre National Park were closed: Italy's Cinque Terre Region Readies for Spring Tourists.  Glad I could throw some tourism dollars (or euros) their way.