The bathroom was vile, crumbling and water damaged, with stained and torn towels, the bedspread was ripped with some gross fluid dried on it, and the room was lit by a bare flourescent bulb which made everything look even nastier than it otherwise would. And the ants were everywhere and aggressive. Could not have been less inviting. I put off returning to my room as long as possible, but eventually I headed back there to go to sleep. I decided to read for a little while, and as soon as the room was still, I heard scuffling underneath the bed, and then chewing.
Mouse. The end.
That pushed me over the edge, and I called the front desk and said I needed a new room and explained what had happened. They claimed that the hotel was full and that they would send somebody to deal with it. Twenty minutes went by with no sign of anyone, and at that point, now 2 in the morning, I was so freaked out about staying in the room that I called the front desk again and said, basically, "I understand that you don't have any rooms available, so I'm coming to sleep in the lobby. Me staying in this room with vermin tonight Is. Not. Happening." Miraculously, they found me a new, much nicer room. Except that the toilet hadn't even been flushed, let alone cleaned. So disgusting.
The next morning, I talked to the hotel manager, very calmly and politely, but noting all of the points above, and she gave me a refund for the night and a sincere apology. It was good of her to make things right, but it was a terrible stay. The worst part is that this room cost about 50 percent more than any other lodging I'd stayed in anywhere in Morocco, and the conditions were much worse even than the hostels that cost a tenth of the price.
It wasn't just the hotel, either. I mentioned in a previous post about worrying about how taxi drivers in Marrakesh make a living, because you can drive from one end of town to the other for under $3. In Agadir, I wasn't concerned about them. Because of the confusion regarding my initial riad reservation, my cabbie charged me $30, unapologetically. At dinner, I was served three tasteless chicken skewers (one of which was raw) and a small plate of cold french fries and charged about three times what a good meal in Marrakesh would cost. The same thing kept happening at every possible turn: overcharging and under delivering. The attitude everywhere was quite plainly "We don't give a sh*t. Take it or leave it."
I understand that in Morocco, some people will only see me as a means to make money. But it's fine with me as long as they treat me with the same courtesy and basic respect that I show to them. If people treat me like a customer, or a client, or a guest, or whatever, that's all cool--I don't have to be their friend. But in Agadir, they treated me like prey. It sucked.
After all of that, and with crazy heat, I really didn't feel like hanging around town and loafing on the beach, so I hopped a bus to Taroudent, a town an hour inland. I've met some nice people here, and my riad is lovely, but I'm struggling a bit to understand what I'm missing about the town. The Rough Guide to Morocco said, "With its majestic, tawny-brown circuit of walls, Taroudant is one of the most elegant towns in Morocco." They enthused about it being "a friendly, laid-back sort of place. . . with the good-natured bustle of a Berber market town." Sounds like someplace right up my alley.
But the weird part is that, with the exception of the brown walls, I can't begin to reconcile that description with the town I'm in. Happily, it is nowhere near as bad as Agadir, and I am really enjoying the riad where I'm staying. And I have met a handful of people who have been really welcoming and friendly. But Taroudent seems to have almost no tourists, there's nobody shopping in the souk, Moroccan or international, and when I walk down the street, I feel like a zoo animal. People are staring at me. It's really odd, and I can't quite figure it out. It's happening often enough that I'm going through that whole mental checklist: "Is there something on my face? Don't think so. Is there toilet paper trailing from my shoe? No. Is my skirt stuck in my nylons? Nope, not wearing a skirt or nylons. . . . " I can't figure out what it is.
The best I can come up with is that it is maybe just that odd for a foreign woman to travel alone here, and perhaps with my short sleeves and the scarf over my shoulders, I'm still not covered enough (even though it's well over a hundred degrees). It's true that most of the women here cover there hair and a lot of them wear jellabas. But at the same time, there are quite a few Moroccan women, and I would judge MOST of the younger women, not wearing any head covering at all, many in short sleeves and covering less skin than me. I can't figure it out.
It was so noticeable last night that I couldn't bear the idea of eating dinner in a restaurant alone, because usually only men eat in the restaurants and sometimes it's uncomfortable if you can't find a place that is frequented by foreigners. So I ate a couple of packaged cookies from the local grocery store and called it good. Today, I took it easy today and didn't venture out again until lunchtime. Same sensation, although I did meet a couple of really nice people who went out of their way to find out where I was from and to express how welcome I was here. So kind of them--that really felt reassuring.
But after having eaten so little in the last couple of days, I finally felt like I didn't have much choice. I went into a restaurant with like 15 men and no women, found a seat in the back corner and ordered some chicken. To their credit, nobody raised an eyebrow or gave me the slightest bit of trouble. The waiter was perfectly polite to me, but without smiling. They drank their Cokes and I ate my chicken, and we all watched AlJazeera on the big screen together. There are moments in life where I really wonder how on earth I arrived at a particular spot, at a particular time. This was one of those moments.
I'm thinking cookies sound good for dinner tonight. And tomorrow I'm headed back to Marrakesh so I can catch a train to Casablanca.
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