We have a 6hr train ride ahead of us so thought it would be a good time to gather some thoughts.

We're on our way from Tangier, or Tanger as it's spelt in Spanish, to Fes for a few nights. I've heard a lot of good things about Fes - to quote the Rough Guide, it 'stimulates all the senses: a barrage of haunting and beautiful sounds, infinite visual details and unfiltered odours'. Ahh just what I need. In any case I'm sure it will be better than our experience last night.

Simply put, last night we got shafted. It sounds a little melodramatic, but at one stage I actually feared for our lives. I saw headlines. 'Aussie backpackers mugged and murdered in Morocco'. Yippy ky yay. I'm not sure what came over us but we were stupid. Despite all the guidebook warnings we fell for one of the oldest tricks in the book.

It was dark when we arrived at the port of Tangier and without trying to make any excuses we were damn tired. So what happened? Well as we disembarked we got targeted by a faux guide who claimed to work for the tourist information center. At the time he seemed pretty genuine and said he'd help us find accomodation (we hadn't booked any in advance), get us a taxi and help us avoid any of the husslers out there. Yes, ironic. But at the time it all sounded ok, that is until we got into the small little taxi.

The taxi driver looked like a cross between the grim reaper and the monk from The Da Vinci Code. As he slowly turned his cloaked head, yes I said cloaked, round the seat rest to stare at us the only thing missing to complete the pretty picture was a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Not wanting to judge a book by its cover I thought ok that's cool whatever but then the next thing we knew the faux guide jumped into the passenger seat and we took off. That's when the panic set in. 'Err how far is the hotel?' we asked as they drove up dimly lit side streets, 'and where is it exactly?'. Stupid stupid stupid. What were we thinking? As they conversed in machine gun French I thought (and pardon MY French) 'we're fucked'.

In the end it turned out ok though. We still have all our limbs and luggage, we just paid an extortionate amount for a relatively short cab ride and got stuck in the biggest dump of a hotel ever. Live and learn. We sure as hell won't be doing that again.

On a lighter note, here are a few photos from colourful Fes. Here professions are all about the trade...

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House of rugs

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Clay factory

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Fabric factory...

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...where we saw a real life loom. Cool.

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Me and Lisa. We met Lisa and her husband John on the train. They were on their honeymoon but we traveled around together for a couple of days.

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Me, Lisa, John and Saul enjoying a traditional Moroccan lunch.

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The tannery. Probably one of my highlights. It's where they treat and colour leather.

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And.. the end result. the largest number of leather coats, shoes and bags you'll ever see.

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Spice shop. You get get everything here. Even Mandrake roots. yeah.

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A shot of our guide at night. All the men in Morocco walk around in djellabas to keep warm. They're wool coats with hoods which look like something out of the DaVinci code.