This one was even more beautiful than the last! I'll put pictures up at some point but it doesn't really matter because the pictures couldn't come close to capturing the beauty.
Also we had a fun adventure getting to Chefchaouen (where I am right now, and where we climbed the mountain). We left at 5:30 PM yesterday evening and were supposed to get here at 10:30. At 9:00 PM the bus stopped. We didn't think much of it until about half an hour later, when we finally asked what was wrong and they said the brakes were broken. They said it would take about an hour for another bus to get here to finish the ride, so we decided to wait (the bus wasn't crowded so we were basically just hanging out, it was fine) instead of paying $10 each for a taxi to take us there (also, the taxis that go that fart are really, really sketchy. Sometimes the doors don't really close all the way and are generally terrifying). An hour and a half later we asked again what the deal was, and they said again that it would take about an hour. Now we talked seriously about getting a taxi, but again decided against it because we figured it actually would probably be an hour (not entirely sure why we thought this) and we were still having a good time. An hour later we asked again and they said it would be about half an hour. We no longer believed them so we started calling taxis. This was really confusing. There was already one guy with his taxi in the area, but he needed to call his friends to have enough taxis to take all of us.
There was a definite communication problem trying to talk to this guy and negotiate a price / not have him call his taxis before we figured out the price, but he spoke French so we brought our two best french-speakers over, who were both women, to facilitate conversation. Then when they came over he said "no French," we think because they were women and he didn't want to talk to them, but I'm not sure about this. Regardless, he didn't speak French after that at all so we had to communicate in Arabic, which ended up working reasonably well. Eventually we got the idea that more taxis were coming and we agreed on a price.
Unfortunately, at this time we started being told pretty insistently that a bus was actually coming and would arrive in 10, 5 minutes. These time estimates were really low so we thought maybe they were actually true, and we didn't want to take taxis if we didn't have to, but we also didn't want to put all of our eggs in the bus basket. We sort of just sat around waiting for something to be decided for us, and then the bus actually arrived probably about 5 minutes before the taxis got there. We gave the taxi driver a hundred dirhams and went on the bus, and I guess in the end he probably didn't give any of it to his friends so we probably really screwed them over... On the other hand maybe he did and they got a great deal. Who knows. The end of the story is we arrived at about 2:30, 4 hours later than we should have.
Also we had a fun adventure getting to Chefchaouen (where I am right now, and where we climbed the mountain). We left at 5:30 PM yesterday evening and were supposed to get here at 10:30. At 9:00 PM the bus stopped. We didn't think much of it until about half an hour later, when we finally asked what was wrong and they said the brakes were broken. They said it would take about an hour for another bus to get here to finish the ride, so we decided to wait (the bus wasn't crowded so we were basically just hanging out, it was fine) instead of paying $10 each for a taxi to take us there (also, the taxis that go that fart are really, really sketchy. Sometimes the doors don't really close all the way and are generally terrifying). An hour and a half later we asked again what the deal was, and they said again that it would take about an hour. Now we talked seriously about getting a taxi, but again decided against it because we figured it actually would probably be an hour (not entirely sure why we thought this) and we were still having a good time. An hour later we asked again and they said it would be about half an hour. We no longer believed them so we started calling taxis. This was really confusing. There was already one guy with his taxi in the area, but he needed to call his friends to have enough taxis to take all of us.
There was a definite communication problem trying to talk to this guy and negotiate a price / not have him call his taxis before we figured out the price, but he spoke French so we brought our two best french-speakers over, who were both women, to facilitate conversation. Then when they came over he said "no French," we think because they were women and he didn't want to talk to them, but I'm not sure about this. Regardless, he didn't speak French after that at all so we had to communicate in Arabic, which ended up working reasonably well. Eventually we got the idea that more taxis were coming and we agreed on a price.
Unfortunately, at this time we started being told pretty insistently that a bus was actually coming and would arrive in 10, 5 minutes. These time estimates were really low so we thought maybe they were actually true, and we didn't want to take taxis if we didn't have to, but we also didn't want to put all of our eggs in the bus basket. We sort of just sat around waiting for something to be decided for us, and then the bus actually arrived probably about 5 minutes before the taxis got there. We gave the taxi driver a hundred dirhams and went on the bus, and I guess in the end he probably didn't give any of it to his friends so we probably really screwed them over... On the other hand maybe he did and they got a great deal. Who knows. The end of the story is we arrived at about 2:30, 4 hours later than we should have.
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