Planes, Trains, and Blablacars

I didn't have a plan for how to get back to Spain from Morocco. I looked into flights, which were comparable in price to taking a combination of trains, buses, and ferries over land. And obviously, much faster. I had flown RyanAir from Madrid to Tangier, Morocco on a relatively cheap flight that I had purchased when I got to Madrid. But for some reason, I kept putting off buying the return plane ticket.

As I saw the cost of flights rising (I hate the “1 seat remaining at this price!”), I started to kick myself. Maybe I should have booked the flight earlier! But something held me back. I traveled through Morocco, procrastinating, unable to decide.

In the end, it wasn't about the money.

Plane travel sometimes feels like cheating on a problem. You get the answer to the problem without having to puzzle through the equation.

I wanted the journey.

I wanted the feeling of moving through space and time visually, viscerally.

I priced out all of the options and decided to take the overnight train from Marrakesh to Tangier, the northern tip of Morrocco so close to Spain that you can see it from its shores; the ferry from Tangier to Tarifa, Spain, and then some kind of bus/train combo back to Madrid via Algeciras or Seville.

Then while I was in the Atlas Mountains I met two girls studying abroad in Spain. They introduced me to Blablacar, an online ridesharing site in Europe that is growing in popularity. Drivers post their origin and destination, the date they’re leaving, and their price.

It couldn't have been more perfect. I don’t think Tarifa to Madrid is that common of a route because it’s the furthest distance possible within Spain to drive from Madrid. But I searched their website and found someone heading from Tarifa to Madrid on the exact day I wanted.

So I ended up taking the overnight train, ferry, and a BlaBlaCar!

The overnight train from Marrakesh to Tangier

The ferry from Tangier, Morocco to Tarifa, Spain

My driver, Victor, was waiting for me practically at the ferry entrance. Victor is a fireman in Madrid on a weekend trip to Tarifa for kite surfing wth his friend Paco, who rode shotgun. It was a good opportunity to work on my non-immigration related Spanish vocabulary. We chatted about health insurance (Europeans always want to hear about what they consider to be a messed up American system… at least now I can talk about the Affordable Care Act, which sounds reasonable to them), immigration problems in Spain (Spain got into a lot of trouble recently after authorities fired at undocumented immigrants trying to swim into Spain unlawfully), and Spanish ham (jamon iberico, which I happen to love and have eaten for almost every meal in Madrid, breakfast excluded...).

My blablacar

Victor taught me the difference between all of the different grades of Spanish ham. In case you’re interested, jamon serrano is meat from a white pig that eats regular feed and is the cheapest; jamon de bellota is from the best pigs, little black ones that run free and eat acorns their whole lives, so the meat has a nutty flavor; jamon iberico de recebo is from the little black pigs that are fed normal feed their whole lives except for the last year of life, in which they’re fed acorns; and jamon iberico is from the black pigs that eat regular feed.

Along the way, we stopped in Monesterio, a town in the province of Extremadura, which is the jamon capitol of the world. In fact, just as we entered town, there was a statue of a big ham hock that said “La Ciudad de Jamon” (the Ham City). Extremadura is where the jamon comes from, so it’s the best and cheapest place to get it. We lunched in Montesorio at a jamon truck stop. Un bocadillo de jamon iberico for me, which is just a roll with jamon iberico, nothing else, in it. Victor was quick to point out that the “beer” he was drinking was a non-alcoholic version on tap. Victor dropped me off at the door to my hostel in Madrid, around six hours later. A bus would have taken nine hours and the train would have been twice as much. With a good-bye and besos, he said, “If you need anything while in Madrid, you have my number.”

So hooray for the slow way! Sometimes it’s about the journey. And eventually, you arrive.

Here’s to not planning and letting it happen, finding new things, new ways, and new people.

Here’s to feeling the jostle of every mile under foot, every wave over water, and the train’s sigh at every stop.