DAY 228

Friday 24 February 2012

After a good night's sleep at the rest stop, we were up at 9 AM with a full tank of diesel heading from Fez through the backside of the "kif",we mean Rif mountains. The 11 hour drive the day before had taken its toll, but we had a 9 hour driving day ahead of us, so with bright eyes and bushy tails we started up the winding switchbacks into the breathtakingly beautiful mountains. When a car going the opposite way frantically waved for us to stop, Dian, at the wheel at the time, steadily drove to the nearest village. She and Charles checked to see if anything was on fire, but when a man asked Charles if he'd like some hashish, we realized that was the only thing that might catch on fire.

Soon we saw many people, all men, gesturing with two fingers like they were holding a cigarette. We learned later that the area around Ketama is a legal pot growing area (the only one in Morocco), but the selling of it is not legal, nor is it taxed. Our friend Aziz later said he had told us of this, but Charles claimed "selective memory."

We got up to the snow line, and Charles made a snowball, and was wolfing down his lunch in order to avoid being solicited, when three men came out of nowhere to offer us kif! There were huge sacks of fertilizer stacked up near the sides of the road, and Dian spotted a hidden "hot house" where we assumed the marijuana was grown. According to Aziz, the drug lords can make a lot of money, and their mansions next to traditional Berber houses were a testament to that.

Dian wished that instead of speed bumps and barrier gates, the drug lords would put money into filling the pot holes, but the place is famous for its pot. We emerged from the mountains in the town of Tetouan and were in Tangiers by 6:30 PM. A quick phone call to Aziz provided us with guidance back to Paul Bowles' apartment, where we parked in our old spot. We had pizza for dinner, and after Charles paid the neighborhood watch guard we went to sleep in our van.