Afriquana Europa Roma

Trip from Portugal through Spain to Morocco

It was a Tuesday morning and I have prepared myself mentally and physically that I am capable to hitch hike on my own that day.  I walked out the door of my host's flat and walked to the metro station to get to the outskirt of town.  The metro was closed, apparently that day they were having a strike.  So I had to wait for an hour amongst other hundreds of people trying to catch the bus.  It was a bit of a hassle, but I finally got to the bus station where it gets me across the bridge out of Lisbon.  I monitored my GPS so that I can stop closest possible to the petrol station beside the highway.

After getting off the bus, I walked 500m to the station and found out it was all fenced off.  I thought 'ok, you can do this!'.  I looked for the safest and most discreet fence to climb over, which I did.  I threw my bags over and climbed after.  With a big smile on my face feeling proud of myself, I took my 'Faro' sign out and walked to every single truck at the station.  Unfortunately none of them were going my way.  Bugger!

So I walked to the start of the exit of the petrol station and hitched from there.  A truck stopped but was going another way but insisted that the way he'll go will eventually get me where I want to go.  I thought to myself, 'gee, he's persistent'.  I didn't like the sound of it at all and said 'nau, i wait, obrigado'.  He was pissed off and climbed back on his truck.  Weird!

A few people stopped but they were only able to give me short rides, so I had to refuse even though I was starting to feel fed up after standing there for 3 hours.  An hour later, Pedro stopped and said, 'I'm not going to Faro but I'm going to Sines.  Which was perfect because I have organised a host a few kilometres south of Sines at Vila Nova de Milfontes.  It was a nice ride, Pedro was a really fluent english speaker so we talked about a lot of things and also congratulated him for being my first ride.

I got to Sines late at night and too late to hitch to Milfontes, so I stayed the night there.  After my experience the previous day, I was losing motivation to hitch hike.  The next day, I took a bus to Milfontes with a big guilt on my shoulder feeling like a total failure.  I wasn't proud at all but I couldn't find a motivation either.  I got to  my host's place in the afternoon.

At night, I cooked dinner for Sylvain who lives in an awesome mediterranean arabic style house with so much decorations from around the world.  We had really good conversations.  Sylvain's a barefoot runner and our talk that night really inspired and motivated me to continue on hitch hiking.

From left to right: A portugese style architecture in Sines; Trees farmed for the barks to be used as wine bottle corks; Beautiful Milfontes; Milfontes beaches, Portugese road; Algarve (Lagos); Sunset in Milfontes where I had dinner; Beautiful Lagos; Beautiful rocky Miilfontes beach; View from Sylvain's roof top; Sylvain on the right and his mate Falco on the left; Sylvain's nicely decorated house; Very simple bus stop in Portugal

After staying for a couple of nights, in the morning Sylvain dropped me off at the round about where people normally hitch. In 5 minutes I got a ride with a really nice couple of Portuguese guys who were heading south.  That day I travelled through almost every town in Algarve and decided to stay the night in Seville. I got to Seville at night and immediately looked for a hostel and got a bed. I spent almost the whole night at a place where all the locals like to hang out.  It was a really nice atmosphere and the fact not many people can speak English but still can have a great conversation with me, goes to show how warm and friendly local Sevillans are.  It also really inspired me to learrn to speak Spanish.

The next day I got up really early in the morning full of energy and walked all over the city all day long and met so many genuinely really friendly and warm people everywhere. I absolutely love Seville, the whole city really made me feel like home. In the afternoon I met with Sandra and Richard who are really good friends from Australia. We spent the whole night enjoying Spanish food and atmosphere. It was such a great night!

From left to right (all taking place in bonito Sevilla) : Flamenco dancers; Me on the tiled 'couch'; Bank Holiday fiesta, parade of drummers in awesome costumes; Cool Spanish Moorish style building which is a theatre;  Ladies banging on pots and pans on sttage for the fiesta; Love this building; Me with my favourite Richard and Sandra (Uncle John and Aunt Yoko); Thick chocolate churros after tapas and gelateria; Another bonito building; Bull fiighter statue; Sevilla view; Bonito architecture; Small  part of the biggest Cathedral in the world; Burger vending machine, very popular in Spain, I dare anyone to try one; The super grande Cathedral, can't get enpugh of it, such a complicated design and sooooo big. 

Early in the morning, I left Seville for Morocco. After a bus, ferry and a stuffed grand taxi ride and also a help from truly superbly nice Spanish and Moroccan friends I met during the trip, Emmanuel and I finally met again in Chefchaoun.  We were planning to spend a few nights there until the end of Eid Adha which is the sacrificing lamb/goat/cow day.  We thought the thick red colour blood everywhere in town would be very dramatic with the blue town.

Two days before Eid Adha, I got a message from Ouma, a host I organised in Fes.  She welcomed us to join her and her family for Eid Adha.   We thought it was a much better option because it is a family celebration and it would be nice to experince the culture with the locals.  So the next morning, we hitch hiked to Fes.   It was my first hitch hike in Morroco and it was easy.  We only waited for a car to come by and straight away we got a ride.  It was very lucky too that Hatim was going to Fes to celebrate Eid Adha with his family.

When we got to Fes, we met Ouma at the bus station and she took us too her family's house.  It was a nice local atmosphere with her family all gathering together for the big day.  In the morning, we saw the sheeps on their stairs.  I tried not to get too attached with the sheeps so that I don't get upset when the time comes.  At 10.30am, the professional slaughterer came and started what they had to do.  It was a really quick process which was great.  Straight away the liver and heart were made into kebabs and barbecued in the living room.  It is a Morrocam tradition to have barbecue inside the house like the nomadic way of cooking in the tent.  We looked around the neighbourhood and everyone was doing the same thing.  It was a very smokey day.

From left to right: Goodbye for now Spain, I miss you already; First landing in Tangier, Morocco; cactus fruit (note to self: never pick it yourself, only buy in market); the blue city of Chefchauon; decor of hotelwe stayed in at Chefchauon;  City view of the blue city in the morning; an amazing view of turquoise lake with red mountain on the way to Fez from Chefchauon; Medina gate in Fez; cool 13 century architecturein Fez Medina (oldest Medina in Morocco); view of Medina; typical Moroccan style building; nice architecture; me and Ouma (our lovely host) in front of sheep slaughtering action on Eid Adha day; me and Emmanuel taking sheep to the butcher to get cut; me making friends with Ouma's cute little cousin who is wearing a Moroccan berber traditional outfit.

After a couple of days stuffing ourselves with food and walks around the city, we head to the Medina and spent the night there.  After dealing with the craziness of the Medina, we hitched south towards Marrakech the next day.  We had a really nice long ride with Meriem and Akhmed up to Casablanca, who also treated us for lunch which was really nice.  After that we had another couple of rides to Settat, where we spent the night because it was getting dark.

Settat is an interesting small city where not many tourists go to, so it was very difficult for us to find a cheap hotel there.  We didn't have any option but to bite the bullet because it's impossible to camp in Morocco, with wild dogs and plenty of homeless people roaming around.

The next day we set out hitching to Marrakech.  Marrakech, here we come!!!

Europa Roma part 4

Sitges to Malaga then north again to Portugal

We loved it in Sitges and decided to stay longer.  After 5 days in this chilled out yet lively town, we started to hitch again.  At the service station, Miko picked us up.  He was an interesting guy who speaks 5 languages and was on his way to court to translate a case at El Vendrell.  He dropped us off at a petrol station and from there we got another ride with a couple of guys who were heading to Calafell beach.  Calafell had a unique character, Emmanuel would describe the place as 'a time warp to the 70s', because it seemed like nothing had changed since then.

We stayed for one night and saw fireworks again marking a beginning of a festival which we didn't stay for.  In the morning, we got up early to start hitching down south.  In Spain, it's  important to do long walks and standing in the sun early in the morning because around 12pm, you feel like you'll melt.  I guess that's why Spanish has siesta around that time.  Hitching in Spain has been impossible beside the road, so we have always been trying to hitch from service stations which gives us a chance to talk to people and because relying on 2 second physical judgement hasn't been working out well.

From left to right: Sitges beach; Santa Tecla festival during the Catalan independence anthem; Fireworks!!! Love it!!; Parade; The Spanish king and Queen and Moorish King and Queen; Me as close as possible to the fire crackers, love it!!; More parade in Sitges; Calafell beach; Old school transportation in Calafell; Calafell sunset

We got a ride with a funny non English speaking middle age man to Lleida and basically relied on body language and mimes to communicate.  Going towards inland of Spain seems like it was like going inland Australia, drier and hotter.  Having lost interest with the atmosphere and environment, when we were dropped off at the petrol station in Lleida, we crossed to the east bound to  hitch back to the east coast which was not easy to do because not many people passed through the area.   We finally got a ride with a couple of Brittish girls who were heading to Barcelona.  They dropped us off at the cross section of the north and south bound where we were persuaded by Fernando to visit Tarragona (which is where they were heading to) because it is bonito (beautiful) with Roman ruins and it is not a big city.  Although we were targeting to head further south, we were totally sold by the idea!

We had a little tour around the city as we got there, then got dropped off at the entrance of the old town.  We were glad to have been persuaded to go to Tarragona, it is a spectacular place and definitely bonito.  We also found a place to camp which had an amazing view of the Roman castle, thanks to our "Commando extraordinaire", Emmanuel.  The next day, we walked to the old town and found out that on that day every entrance to museums were free. Perfect timing! Again! Hitch hiking serendepity strikes again!!

The next day we tried to hitch out of Tarragona which was a little bit of a pain being a rather large scale city it turns out.  After going back and forth due to some miscommunication, we ended up at the petrol station at the highway around Altafulla where we met a brittish couple and spent most of the night with them.

We started to hitch late morning the next day and having not much luck with Spanish drivers, we saw a French car drove in the station and our eyes lit up with full of excitement and hope.  Sure enough, they picked us up and took us all the way to Valencia.  We stopped at a petrol station and hitched from there.  After an hour waiting, we finally got a ride with Tomas who is Polish and was with another hitch hiker, Floureyant.  Luckily he had a big van, so he was able to take us as well and also it was a really long ride all the way to Benalmedina which is south of Malaga.  Floureyant came along with us to look for a place to camp.  It was11pm and was impossible to find a camp spot because the whole place was full of resorts and fences around every property, even public ones.  The only upside of this place is that you don't have to look down constantly while walking looking out for dog shit.

From left to right: Beautiful sunrise as we woke up on Benalmedina beach; Relaxing and watching a stormy sunrise after a rough time; Picture with Picasso; Hostel in Malaga, love the grafitti; Roman theatre; Bull fight arena; View from castle after jammin with Spanish guitarist; Random live music for Malaga's lively weekend; Malaga beach; Odevalis, Portugal

We ended up having a restless sleep on the beach.  The next day, Emmanuel and I decided to go our own way because I wasn't ready to hitch hike in Morroco yet.  So all three of us parted that day.  Being clueless where to go and what to do next, I ended up staying in town again and experienced a rough night and morning due to drunk tourists and a thunderstorm but luckily was able to get out of the situations in one piece.

I was itching to get out of that crazy town and was definitely ready to leave Spain.  So I went to Malaga where I was able to get a bus scheduled for the next day to Lisboa, Portugal.  After what had happened the night before, I thought I should give myself a break and stay in a hostel.  I had a really good deal and met really cool travelers who a few were on almost similar journeys with me.

Staying 2 days in Malaga was definitely worth it!  I found out that it was the town where Picasso was raised and I visited his museum.  On top of  that, there were so many amazing sights to see as well.  It was a really comfortable place to be in for a solo female traveler like myself being able to easily talk and make friends with people around.  My favourite dude I randomly met was a spanish guitar player on top of the castle who I jammed with while resting after a long hilly hike.  It totally made my day and changed how I felt about Spain!  (Next mission, MUST GET A DARBUKA!!)  At night, I left for Lisboa and got there at 7am Portugese time.  It was an hour different to Spain.  I had made an arrangement to stay at Luis and family of 7 for a few nights which was located in Odevilas, a couple of kms north of Lisboa.  During my stay, I have been spoilt with really good homemade Portugese food and tour to the city and Mafra.  After Lisboa, I will be doing my first solo hitch hiking trip which will be covered on the next chapter..  Excited and anxious at the same time!!  Hope Potugal isn't as hard as Spain.  Fingers crossed everyone!!

From left to right: My wonderful hosts in Lisboa; An old monestry in Odevalis; The toilet in Mafra palace used by the king back  then, very fancy; The church in the Mafra Palace; Mafra Palace; Mafra Palace; Wild hogs head; Funny man with his dog on a bike in Lisboa; Lisboa city view; Gigantic pumpkin; Church in Lisboa