Josie's Mug
We departed our magical safe haven of Taghazout on a Saturday, bound for the slightly-less sleepy surf town of Essaouria up the coast of Morocco. Fully intending on trekking to the official ticket counter in the Agadir bus station, we found ourselves instead whisked by a safety-vested middle aged Moroccan man to what he promised was the, “Only bus to Essaouria! So cheap!”
After forking over a few precious multicolored Dirham bills, he scrawled a ticket for us with a choppy, teeth-marked pencil, shoving it into Katie’s palm and slapping the top of her backpack in a denounced manner. He gestured to a tall, tan man clad in navy blue swede sweatpants and Nikes standing rather amiss on the tiled corner of the street.
“Stand with him. Stand with him, bus to Essaouria.”
Katie and I exchanged calm but relatively skeptical glances, and scooted our way over to Swedepants. He looked us over carefully and held out his palm, gesturing for the yellow filmy tickets clutched in Katie’s hand. She passed it over. Swedepants squinted at the single, wavy pencil mark that was disconcertingly the only distinction on the otherwise blank ticket, and grinned at us.
“To Essaouria! Ahh, very nice. Very nice. Now you don’t need these anymore!”
To our collaborated and succinct horror, Swedepants proceeded to dramatically rip our tickets to pieces. This moment will forever exist in my memory as more dramatic than it most likely was; the image of a cackling, toothless man flamboyantly tossing bits of freshly purchased ticket high into the air, his light colored tongue engaged in blowing flapping raspberries, his hands, once finished with his arduous task, coming to rest in a quick empassioned bout of the Macarena.
The glances with which Katie and I exchanged following this display dropped any hints of relative skepticism in favor of full-on dumbstruckness.
“Uhhhh….” I blubbered.
“Erm…..” Katie gaped.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry. You don’t need these anymore, don’t need these.”
It was difficult to resist the urge to finish his statements with a malicious not where you are going, anyways.
To describe the bus which then squealed in front of Swedepants as “retro” would label it with a quaint and eclectic nature entirely undeserved.
Swedepants placed his two hands on each back of Katie and I and ushered us into the half-swinging door, up the steep stairs into the interior of the bus, taking a running leap himself in after us.
Keep in mind that the bus did not in fact cease its forward motion this entire time.
The interior was as dusty as the duffel bags; the air conditioning system that the bus company indubitably advertised as highly appealing served to only spit out more stale air.
The rear door of the bus never entirely closed during our jumpy voyage, stubborn in its blatant refusal to adhere to attempts made by Swedepants and colleague. So Katie and I enjoyed a nice, cloudy breeze of dusty road and small bits of sticky wrappers for our four hour jaunt.
Swedepants & Co. continually paced up and down the narrow hallway, every now and then kicking at the swinging rear door to grab the jackets of more yellow-ticketed Moroccans to pull inside.
With much anticipated relief, our dingy vessel finally peeled into the cage of a bus station, the welcomed “ESSAOURIA” sign clinging to the concrete grey of the structure never read better.
We somehow dodge the attempts of Swedepants to help drag out our packs from the ravines of the bus, and scoot our way as quickly as can be mustered away from the horrid bus.
We snuggled happily into the straps of our packs, a bit dinged but not otherwise suffering harm. Katie wrapped her arm around my pack, and I leaned my head over to rest on top of her hair.