I Was Kidnapped in Morocco
May 2008
Viator Travel Blog: Editor’s Note: All of us at Viator are thrilled to offer a small and growing collection of Morocco tours. The inaugural things to do focus in and around Marrakech. Over the next few weeks we’ll add Fes and other destinations throughout Morocco. As they say in Morocco, As-salam ʿleykum and welcome!
The road to Fes from Marrakech
Do I remember my first visit to Morocco?
Let me put it this way — do you remember the first time you were run over by a bus? Dropped from a plane without a parachute? Locked in a room with a poisonous snake?
Yeah. I remember my first trip to Morocco.
I was 20 years old. I was doing my junior year abroad studying in Ireland and somehow — forgive me, if you haven’t already — I convinced two of my closest friends to include Morocco on our “around Europe in 4 weeks” backpacking odyssey that summer.
At the time Morocco was nothing more than an idea to me. A distant concept. A combination of Indiana Jones meets the Arabian Nights. I had never visited an Arab country before, let alone a Muslim country. Neither had my two friends. It was going to be an adventure.
And in the interest of making a very long story much shorter, here’s the abridged version of what happened. (If you want to read the full version, I’m afraid you must buy a very forgettable Lonely Planet travel literature title — you have been warned.)
It is hot
Three 20-year-olds arrive in Morocco by ferry from Spain. They immediately board a train — a 14-hour train — to Fes, 4th class. If you’ve never heard of 4th class, that’s the section of the train with chickens and goats, no glass in the windows, wooden benches, and certainly no…