after one full day of travel here i was in Oujda, the biggest city of the Northeast Morocco. Oujda is a big frontier city very close to Algeria border, the majority of the population or works for the state or works in commerce. Oujda is the capital of contraband. Even the border is closed the import and export is very big in this sides. Algeria doesn't have restrcitions to chinese products so this products are much cheaper in algeria than morocco. there are markets with only products from Algeria. when the border closed some years ago there was a crisis in the city, many midle size hotels closed and the development slowed down, but now there is a hope that the border reopens next year.
after arriving and meeting my friends house and familly i went to the enviornment day celebrations at Oujda main park. there was an a activity with children, in wich one of them had to write or draw. the theme was desertification. many drawings had trees and i still don't know why.
in the end of the day i went for a walk in Oujda and see the game of Portugal-Angola for the world cup. it was funny to see that everyone were very intense wisshing that Angola won.
in the second day in Oujda i went to tagerhalt. the beginning of the day was not very good because there was fog everywhere. tgerhalt is inside a natural park and is sorrounded by hoods and hill. there i went to the ruins of the resistence headquarters. this fort was used by the morocan indenpendentists against spanish troops. even this part was french it was very near with Spanish border.
The main atraction of the park are the caves, and the landscape, that is very beautifull, after the fog went away finnaly we got the opportunity to see the view. the most funny part was when we had crooss a small water line and i realised that there was a fish crossing the road.
while we were eating in the midle of the park, a truck stoped and my frineds and the men from the truck started to talk and after some seconds this men were eating our food and talkin like they knew us for a long time. it was strange for me this but in the end they sold us some orange.
On thurday i didn't do much, we decided to see Oujda. Oujda is a modern city so old historic parts are very few. the main atractions are the walls of the old medina. inside of the medina instead of a lot of houses you have a giant souk. there you can buy everything you want. Inside the medina near the souk you can also see the oldest mosk in the city and of morocco and the courthouse and the first secondary school. in the night i went to see Brasil-Croacia, drunk some milk and got sick.
it was the worst possible getting sick i spend all wednesday vomiting and to increase my bad health i received an e-mail of my boss to go to work that day in Portugal.( in the end it was not important)
Thursday was great! i was feeling a litle better and i went to the beach, Saidia.
Saidia is coastal town that is developing very much their turism, my friend also wants to go live there. Near this city there is going to be a very big turistical project, with marina, golf course, houses, villas and Zidane is going to have a house there, for this they destroyed a big part o~f a mediterranian forest. near this turistical place there is a very important place for birds.
after admiring the destuction of the enviornment we went to cape del eau, a very nice port with great view and great fish. from there i could see the chafarine islands( three small islands near morocco that belong to Spain, there are no town in this islands only military units) . here we notice some problem of Morocco with Spain. Spain uses the islands to control ilegal imigrants and drug traffic, specially hashix.
not much has to be said about firday it was the goodbye of my friends and here i was on my way to Tangier, but now by bus.
to show how ilegal migration it's a serious problem in morocco here goes the example. in oujda you can see southsarian people beggining for food near the mosks, some of them came walking from Algeria, that is accused of not controling the migration, this men are travelling for months to the holly land, Europe. then after reaching morocco or other african mediterranian countrys they try their luck to cross the sea or try to enter Ceuta or Mellila. when i caught the bus there was an ilegal subsarian imigrant inside, that was expeld by the driver. all the way to Tangier the were police controling for imigrants.
other thing that is very easy to find in the road is people selling contraband gasoline from Algeria, in the way to Saidia we stoped in one of this ilegal gas stops.
On saturday morning i arrived to Tangier, took the fast ferry to Tarifa and then the bus to Algeciras.
i spent all day in Algeciras. there are a lot imigrants here. the main parts of the city is plaza alta and the market, i found there a very nice place to eat and mingle with locals. in the afternoon i saw Portugal win against Iran.
the problems came later:
i went back to the port to take the bus to Sevilla and then take the bus to Lisbon. i was stitting there waiting for the bus, calmelly, there was one more girl going to POrtugal, we saw the bus passing and then...............we lost the bus. it was very stupid but its true i was in the station and i lost the bus, in panic i tryed to fix the situation but the women responsible for the bus was stupid. the next bus to lisbon was only 24 hours later. so i decided to take the next bus to seville and then catch on sunday the first bus to Lisbon and i did it. finnaly on sunday iwas back to Lisbon.
worst than me was the other girl, she had no money and she already had sleept in the street ion the night before, i had to give her some money. she was nice but a bit crasy. she came from a litle town in the south of portugal but studied in Evora( a bigger town), and she sometimes decided to travell with very few money. this time she went to visit her boyfriend in Morocco, her boyfriend was in jail because of drugs traffic. in the way of algeciras to Seville there drug control on the road to see if people were carring drugs.
so here i was back to Portugal.
i leave on Sunday to ~Tokyo.
ally like i was in other dimention basicly because i was still on myself that i had arrived to Japan.
i arrived to aizu, at almost dark, it was about 18:00 and tryed to find the youth hostel. the youth hostel is located in the midle of nowhere in a place that i would never dream that there was a hostel, with almost no people on the streets. it was hard to find the place so i asked for help. i found an old japanese with me, that was very happy to help me, even he didn't speak english, he was great and phoned the hostel and then he took me there. just great, really great, this was just the beggining of the famous japanese hospitality.
