Today was ostensibly the first day of my “active adventure” tour. However, it didn’t really start until this evening. In the mean time I spent the day taking care of business. First thing I moved out of my hostel in the central Medina out to the new part of the city to the hotel from which the tour starts. My idea was to do some wandering in the new city to see the difference with the cramped chaotic older section.
After moving locations, before I could move on to pleasurable pursuits, I was going to take another try at getting a local SIM card for my phone. I purchased one yesterday, but upon trying to install it in the evening I realized it was the wrong type of card. Unfortunately cutting it down didn’t work and so today I was on the hunt for one that was the proper size for my phone. In the central medina I was unable to find a proper cell phone store to assist me as it seemed all SIM cards were sold by the corner store (not much help when you are having troubles).
Luckily just a couple of doors down from my new hotel is a proper cell phone store. They were very helpful in identifying the right option for me and we were all set to pop in the new card and activate everything when it turns out the SIM card tray for my phone was broken. The helpful young man sent me along the street to the local phone repair guru. I had to leave my precious phone in this mans custody for a few hours while he repaired it. I was resigned to the fact that I would not see my phone again. Luckily though when I returned at the appointed time my phone was not only still there but fixed (lovely man!). I then returned to the cell phone store and got everything sorted out there. So I now am up and running for phone and data for the next month in Morocco.
In the few hours while I waited for my phone to be repaired and to alleviate my mind of custody issues, I went to take a stroll in the lovely Jardin Majorelle. The gardens were originally created in the 1930s by a painter (Majorelle) but were then purchased by Yves St Laurent and his partner. His ashes were scattered in the gardens when he died in 2008 and there is a monument to him. And in keeping with high fashion the boutique sells massively over-priced but classy designer souvenirs.
The gardens were a blessed shady retreat from the intense sun that blasted down today. I saw a sign that said 30C but after all my tramping around it definitely felt much much hotter.
My attempt to explore this area of the city was a failure. I think I was in the wrong part of it as it was singularly uninspired chaos and concrete apartment blocks. I don’t think I would have been well rewarded anyway, but it was a very hot exploration of nothing.
This evening we had our introductory meeting of our tour group where we filled out paperwork and got an overview of our tour. There are only 7 of us in the group and only one of those is a guy. We have a tour leader who will be with us for the entire trip (Yacine). All of the women on the trip are individual travellers (except the woman who is with the guy) so we are sharing rooms. My roommate is from the US. There is quite a mix of people – the couple is British, 2 American women, 1 German, 1 Swiss, and me the lone Canadian. So far everyone seems really nice.
We went out to a local restaurant for dinner and it was fun to get to know each other. I’m looking forward to the next 10 days with these people and look forward to getting to know them better. Sorry – I was too busy talking and forgot to take pictures of people at dinner. Time enough for that later.