Salaam from Morocco
Time flies when you’re on the road, living like a bum out of your backpack, bussing, training, hitching your way across borders until you feel like you could throw your entire bag and it’s contents into a giant bonfire with zero regret.
My last post was written in Italy, from where I would train mistakenly to Austria and exhaustively drag my body across all of Germany to the little town of Freiburg to visit a good friend from home. We spent our time catching up, enjoying German bread, the outdoors, and doing a little camping. It was wonderful to see her living in her new home!!
Our farewell to Janet, led to another adventure in ridesharing…with Veo.
There is nothing I can say about Veo which could accurately describe the insanity Meg and I experienced for a fullfledged 1900km, from Freiburg, Germany to Granada, Spain. Upon first glance, his skeletal wilted frame and long blonde tresses, complete with receding hairline and red bandana might have given it away. Or perhaps, as we boarded the automobile it was the slew of crystals strewn across the dashboard. Veo’s fulltime occupation was to sell these energy sources at music and yoga festivals. Or maybe we should have gotten out of the car as Veo proceded to explain his experiences of his past life at the pyramids in Egypt, or his theory of global telepathy, or his theory of aliens, crop circles and the earth’s central energy points. (There are five, in case you were wondering).
But no, we decided to continue on our forty eight hour journey which led us to one night of wild camping, sans tent, but including many bug bites and an evening from hell. Complete with frightening trance music, as venus crossed over the sun or something like that, and Veo’s increasingly loud chanting as the night grew long, we suffered a general and very real fear for our safety. After 24 hours of driving Meg and I suggested around 4am that we take a rest, and sleep, seeing as Veo was pulling off the road every 30 minutes to take 10 minute naps. When he awoke from these naps he would speed up to a solid 140-180km/h with the trance music blasting at full force.
This is what someone had to say about Trance music
I normally listen to rock, but sometimes if I'm playing a game online (like chess) that requires deep concentration, I listen to trance just to help calm me and to help me focus.
-Dan (yahoo answers)
Perhaps this is what Veo thought he was doing.
Meg and I were unsure of his methods but he remained vigilant in his desire to reach our destination. His desire was so strong and his mind so insane that Meg and I are pretty sure he forgot that we were people and thought we we were just negative frightened energies that he could chant away if he persevered.
And what can I say. We reached Granada around 8am, where Veo took us to some natural hotsprings complete with old naked Spanish men and a naked Veo. It was a much welcomed break, supplemented by a little bit of the child of the earth’s craziness.
We finally parted ways at a grocery store near the bus station in Granada, the heat was pounding, we were completely exhausted but we had made it.
Having left our tent in the West Bank, Meg and I invested in a new 20 euro dollar store, children’s quality two man tent, lovingly named ‘Tenty’.
After Granada we spent five days camping illegally on Bologna beach, a severely windy but ultimately beautiful sandy beach in the most southernly point in Europe. On our sixth day we hitched to a new location, where we knew there was a campsite with showers. After sneaking into the showers and admiring our extreme tans, some might say they were a little scary, we passed out in our new home, only to be awakened early the next morning by screaming policia civilia. We quickly packed up Tenty and made a fast walk for it. We spent the following weekend in Gibraltar, the British part of Spain, climbing a mountain with monkeys, thinking about Morocco, and drinking beer with our couchsurfer.
Following this we went to Morocco.
More later,
Larissa
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