Aug 28-29 The Long Journey Back. Part I - Taxi to Tangier

We had some time in the morning before breakfast was served, so we went down to the beach for a bit. Everything seemed so fresh and clean in Asilah. I don’t know if it’s just because we were away from the heat of the desert and the smog of the cities, but I associate Asilah with a crisp blue colour (see final paragraph).

One last croissant washed down with mint tea and we were on our way to the taxi station, passing by a post office on the way there to drop off some last postcards. One final round of bargaining at the taxi stand. I forget what we had to bargain down from, but we chartered a whole taxi and we were smart enough to ask to be taken to the major taxi stand in Tangier (grand taxis usually go from the stand in one city to the stand in the next), rather than all the way to the port. We could easily get there on our own in a petit taxi for much less than the markup.

It was an uneventful ride up, on a highway hugging the coastline. And we were back. In that crazy first bus station in the middle of the road where we had started. We hailed a petit taxi which took us right to the port. Here, we finally snapped these two pictures of these standard-issue ‘grands et petits’ taxis which had gotten us all around this country. The grands taxis look the same across Morocco, but the petits ones change colour depending on the city (we also saw red and green). You can see the ferry terminal in the background of the grand taxi picture.

Next - The Long Journey Back. Part II – The Ferry Ride To Algeciras