Last night we hunted down the (only?) bar in Azrou to have some beers and watch some football. It was part of the Panorama hotel and located around back, inaccessible from the rest of the hotel. Special Flag seems to be the best Moroccan beer and costs 14 DH which at $2 for a small bottle is about the same as back home. We sat around talking with the local patrons (who must be non-Muslim!) until it closed at 11pm. This morning we planned to hike in the hills surrounding the city which must be the beginning of the Middle Atlas mountains. I woke up early and was ready to go by about 9 but my friends were sleeping in after all those (3) beers the night before. They slept while I had my usual breakfast of cafe au lait, orange juice and cheese omlette at the cafe on the main square. By 10:30 they were ready to go. We bought some bread, vache qui rit cheese, Snickers and oranges for lunch then just started out in a random direction. Before leaving town, we met some kids playing football who wanted to accompany us. This was great because the official guide wanted 200 DH for the day. They took us on a nice circuit until 4pm through some forest then farms then hills. The terrain in the last section looked like it would be a great mountain bike trail, and the views of the valley were fabulous. Back in town we had tea at the oldest boy's house and saw his (pet?) pigeons. Throughout the whole day, communication was only possible in French and their command of the language was quite bad. Tomorrow we plan to be on the bus, travelling the 300km or so south to the desert. Then I think I will split off from our group, head to Marrekesh, then Rabat, then get back to Paris somehow by the 9th.

Left Fes this morning for Azule by taxi collectif and it is much nicer here. The only good thing about Fes was the hostel had a bunch of other people staying there. Too bad they lock the doors at 10PM! Actually, the Fes pizza was pretty good too. Short post, but I can barely type because of this stupid fucking keyboard!

The one nice thing near Meknes as far as I could tell is the Roman ruins at Volubilius, so we hired a grand taxi for a few hours to take us there and back. You walk through what's left of a Roman city from 2000 years ago. The nicest parts were the tile mosaic floors and the columns still left standing. Actually, I thought the nicest part was the drive to and from the site since it got me out of the city. We were back by noon but by the time we figured out that there was nothing else to do it was past checkout time. The hotel guy first said we had to pay for the night even if we wanted to leave right away, then he said we only have to pay half. My travelling companions wanted to leave as much as I did, but they didn't understand the concept of "sunk cost", so I just took the guy out side, paid him the 60 dirham penalty, and asked him to pretend he had changed his mind. So now we're in Fes, and it's a little nicer I guess. We're staying at the hostel here, but no-one else is around.

Today I'm in Meknes after a long annoying bus ride. It's hard to get where you want to go from Chefchaoun because all the busses are full by the time they pass through. We couldn't come here directly so instead we got a ticket to some awful suburban bus station to wait for another bus. It was like a Moroccan purgatory, only Meknes isn't heaven, it's just another big city full of scams and car exhaust. My distain for the 3rd world city is coming back to me ... One crazy/disturbing thing that we saw: Some kind of festival is going on right now where they kill one sheep everyday, so on the bus people were transporting these animals around like cargo on the roof. They tie its feet together, hoist it up to the roof of the bus, then tie it there with a bungie cord. That's one unhappy sheep. Also, some guy on the bus had this huge butcher knife that the Gendearm told me was used for the sacrifice. That's just the kind of thing you want to have flying around the cabin in case of an accident!

No post yesterday because I was out in the Rif mountains away from the internet cafe's of Chefchauon. We just got back a few hours ago from our 2 day mini trek. It was really good and I'm glad to have met people who wanted to do the same thing. We started by just calling up the guy listed in LP as in charge of this stuff, met him for a little discussion about details, and the next day headed out with our guide. We met Mohammed at the Parador hotel at 8am yesterday morning after having a hurried but good breakfast in the square in front of the Kasbah. After picking up some bread, water and chocolate for lunch, we headed out of town by going up through the cemetary and past the Auberge into the forest. I was carrying my full backpack minus my heavy France and Spain guidebooks which I left for free at our hotel. The other two guys put all their essentials in one bag, and also left their combined inessentials at the hotel. This way they could trade off the pack during the hike. The weather was perfect for trekking -- both days it was sunny but cool. In the morning or in the shadow of the mountain was the best temperature. I can't imagine doing this in the summer because it would be HOT. The first day only went from 8 until a little afternoon, but it was straight up the whole way. The LP calls this section "gruelling." We had second breakfast at the top of the first pass at 1800m, in a nice foresty part where you could camp, and from where you can see the Mediterranian sea. The way down from the pass was a 4x4 road and we had a couple Landrovers pass us in both directions. A little further down, we ran into some hash smugglers with little backpacks who wanted to know if we saw any police on the way. Mohammed didn't mind helping them out, and we didn't have any problems. So at about 1pm we arrived at the first village where we would be staying the night. It was only a couple buildings surrounded by little fields for growing Kif (Cannabis) and farm type stuff. The room where we would sleep was reserved for trekkers and was nice enough. We paid 100 Dirham (~$15) to stay the night which includes dinner and breakfast the next morning. For the rest of the day we just sat around doing nothing but playing with the village kids. They didn't speak a lick of English or French and only a bare few words of Spanish. Actually this was true of everyone we met in the mountains. All the kids shout "Hola!" (Spanish) to get your attention then either "1 Dirham" or "Stylo" (Pen in French) to tell you what they want. We didn't give them either even though they tried to pick it right out of our pockets! It was pretty fun anyways -- we just spend the whole afternoon just playing around in the field with them. They really liked my sunglasses with the orange coloured lenses -- I'm surprised I got them back at the end! Also it was funny because four out of the eight kids were named Mohammed! After the sun went behind the mountain and it got cool, we headed back to our refuge (the kids weren't allowed in there). Next we got a tour of the hash production operation! These guys are not drug dealers or anything, they are just farmers, and the overwhelmingly prevailing crop is Cannabis. During the Winter, the plant is not growing so I think they are busy processing the harvest from last season. All throughout the day you could hear this whack-whack-whack-whack sound from the lower level of every building we passed in every village in the Rif. This is the sound of the guy with two sticks hitting a bag of leaves sitting in a silk type screen. They do this for a long time until all the dust falls out the bottom and the hash oil remains between the bag and the screen. You can see the Cannabis dust just lying around in piles everywhere but the plants and the processing all happens discretely (except for the noise!) indoors. We were allowed to go down to the lower level of our refuge to see the process in action. There were two guys down there smoking Kif and doing what I just described above. The rule was just no pictures. The other rule was no "business" as our guide called it. Even if you get up close to the production, and even if you smoke some when offered everything will be super safe and you'll have no problems so long as you don't buy any thing. This is why Mohammed doesn't like when his clients buy because it can only lead to problems. What are you going to do with a Kg of drugs anyway? You can't smoke it all in Morocco and you definetely can't bring it home across the border! Anyway it was pretty cool, but I have to emphasize that these aren't like the drug dealers you see in movies with Uzis and Villas in Colombia. These people are poor farmers who just grow the most profitable thing. When we first arrived at the refuge, I realized my black sweater which was bungied to the outside of my pack was missing, and must have fallen off at the lunch break. Mohammed told the refuge guy to ask the next 4x4 driver that passed to look for it on the road and send it back. Sure enough, a few hours later, a Landrover dropped off my sweater, so I got it back for a small 20 dirham tip! Once it got cold and dark, we went into the room with the stove and ate dinner which was vegitable stew on top of couscous and mint tea to drink. For the rest of the night Mohammed and the farmers smoked and played cards while we put on every jacket we had and sat outside looking at the sky. The sky was clear and there was no light pollution out there in the mountains so the stars were great. We went to bed pretty early, but it's totally dark and cold out there and there isn't much to do. I appreciated by new headlamp even though they do have solar powered electricity which runs these tiny flourescent lights in each room and a stereo in the trekkers dorm. We slept-in until about 8 the next day (today) and had bread, butter, olives, olive oil, and tea for breakfast. I also paid a bit extra for them to make me a tomato, onion and olive sandwich for lunch. After the big ascent of the previous day, we were all happy that the whole morning was downhill. I had a big blister on the side of my heel, but I bandaged it up and tied my boots tighter for today. (Otherwise I'm really happy with my new North Face hiking boots -- last night everyone was drying their sweaty boots/shoes by the stove, but I had no such problems thanks to Gore-Tex!) After a little descent along the road we hit the next village, and stocked up on water and oranges. The road ended so we took the path North descending along the stream. Since the water is at the bottom of the valley, and the sun never really gets very high in the sky, the water was frozen and the path was covered in frost. The temperature was cool but fine for hiking. Eventually we started ascending along the side of the valley as the stream fell into a bit of a canyon below. The landscape was really nice to look at -- just like Nepal, except you don't have the REAL mountains in the distance. We planned to stay the night at the next village, but instead since we were such fast trekkers we decided to do the trip to God's Bridge that same day and take a taxi back that night. God's bridge (Pont Dieu/~Something~ Allah) is a natural stone bridgem and is listed as a there/back side trip in the LP, but our guide knew how to do it as a circuit. The way we approached was nice because you could really see the roch arching across the river. When you arrive up close to the bridge to cross it, it's not obvious due to the vegitation that there is nothing but it between you and the water 100m below. At the bridge we saw a International school group of 16-17 year olds from Spain which reminded me of our Westgate 1997 trek. From there we walked/scrambled up for another couple hours to the dam at the end of LP's day two station where the taxi would pick us up. On the way we saw the really nice cottages where the club Med-ers (allegedly) stay for three times what we were paying. Before we left, we had fish and chips at this terrace by the dam. The funny thing was that the fish was not in little sticks like in N/A, but rather was whole fish just dropped in the deep frier! You just ate the fish meat right off the fish skeleton! It tasted pretty good actually! The clouds rolled in during the taxi ride back to 'Chouan so maybe it was good we didn't stay out there another day. We had to pay for it anyways though, because "250Dh/day" doesn't mean per actual earth-revolving-once day, but per trekking day, and we had done "a double" by making the God's bridge trip in the afternoon. Whatever. To celebrate on the way home, our Mercedes taxi stopped to pick up beers at "a shop" which looked a lot like someone's house. We drank them (with some nuts) during the drive back, but only when there were no people looking at Mohammed's insistance. Before we entered the town, he put the empty bottles back in the bag and left them behind a bush on the side of the road. I guess alcohol is prohibited here, so it's not cool to ride into town with everyone holding a beer. So that was the end of the trek. We got dropped off and then walked to Mohammed's "house" to exchange addresses and pay. But it was actually his "brother's" house, and by house he meant carpet shop. What the hell would I do with a carpet? I don't even own/rent a floor right now! We suggested that the carpet guy focus his sales force on older tourists who own houses to put them in, but he retorted that they would make great gifts for our parents. It was a funny way to end things. We picked up our stuff at Goa and switched hotels to a cheaper one with working hot showers -- i.e. (hot) water actually comes out of the shower head. (I actually tested it the hotness personally before we checked in. Mohammed, who recommended the place, was faux-offended that I didn't trust him. I said "Yes, Trust ... but verify!" - Ronald Regan)

Yesterday afternoon we ordered dinner from our hotel guy before going out (because it takes a while to make) but when we returned at the agreed time, there was no food. He said it wasn't clear that we wanted it, but I guess he just forgot. Anyway, he sent someone shopping for groceries and we sat in the living room playing cards for a couple hours while he (!) cooked dinner. It turned out to be really good -- bread, a kind of potato salad thing, and meat balls with a tomato sauce. After that there's wasn't much to do so we all went to bed. It gets quite cold at night, but my new sleeping bag is rated as good until -12 degrees and it was just perfect. Also, the hot shower feature of our hotel doesn't seem to work for me. I went to have one this afternoon with the following results: First minute: Cold water, Second minute: no water. My friends had better results but never more than one minute of hot water. Today we didn't do too much except walk around and sit on the roof of our hotel. But we did manage to phone the guy identified by the Lonely Planet book as "President of the Moroccan trekking association" and met him to arrange a little three day circuit here in the Rif. Hopefully we will leave tomorrow morning and also find some more people to distribute the 250 Dirham/day guide fee among.

Sweet! My unofficial Quest transcript has a new section: - - - - - Degrees Awarded - - - - - Degree : Bachelor of Mathematics Confer Date : 2004-06-19 Degree Honours: With Distinction Degree Honours: Dean's Honours List Plan : Combinatorics & Optimization, Honours Plan : Computer Science, Honours

Today I am in Chefchouan, a couple hours by bus outside Tangier, but it is a world of difference. This town is so nice, while Tangier really sucked. We are in the mountains which are very nice and the weather is clear and sunny but cool. Also the hills and countryside are green and very un-desert like. On the bus I met some guys from Belgium and Brazil and we now have a hotel together. The hostel was open but is empty and is a 15 minute hike up from the town, plus no hot shower so we got a hotel for twice the price. But it's still only 50 dirham which is ~5 Euro or $7. We're just walking around the medina now and I think tonight we'll sit around on our hotel terrasse and have a beer. You see a few other tourists walking around the city, but very few. It's not like a tourist town at all. Nobody really bothers you besides a few faux-guide offers. Most people I've talked to speak French so communication is easy. Sometimes also English, Spanish, Portugese etc etc. These are all second languages however. Among each other they speak Arabic.

Typing on these keyboards is impossible!!! Ahh I just figured out how to change languages to English and all is well again. I made it to Tangier, Morocco today. By some miracle I woke up this morning at 0730 without an alarm and made the 0815 train to Algeciras. It arrived at about 1430 and I immediately got on the ferry (about 17 Euros). Chatted with some cool French people and some Moroccans as we crossed over. We arrived just as the sun went down, and they all took off on the bus while I got hustled into town. The hostel seems to be closed so I got a cheap hotel room (50 Dirham) and a fucking expensive meal courtesy of a very "helpful" guide. Whatever -- I'm just glad that's all over. Had dinner with an American and British travel couple who were nice but whose first agenda item was to score drugs and go back to their hotel to smoke it.

What a stupid day today. I used a whole rail pass day to get only to Madrid. I really need a watch with alarm to catch those early trains. Totally unproductive. Tonight I�m at Los Amigos hostel and hope to get the train to Algeciras tomorrow.

Right. Last night I went to bed after walking around for a while with Katy (UK) and Colin (USA). It was pretty chilly with the wind, but I went in my sandals to get my feet out of these hiking boots. As always happens when you aren�t the one navigating, I have no idea where we went, but it was really nice to chat with people when you start out in a new place. The beds at Point Gothic are kind of "Hollywood Squares" style -- you get your personal square for sleeping, stacked two high, in a big room with about 15 beds. I climbed up into my square beside and got ready for bed. In the square next to me was a girl and guy who started talking about, then having sex. They must have been too drunk to think about privacy (the pub crawl had just returned) because it was clear that neither the curtain covering the front of your square nor the piece of plywood forming the wall provided any. It was really quite funny, but I put my earplugs in and went to sleep. Next morning I had to get up early to pay for another day (checkout is 0930) and catch free breakfast. Went back to sleep and got up around 1. - Took the metro to La Sagrada Familia which is a big Gaudi church. - Walked from there to the Arc de Triomf and the Parc de la Ciutadella. - Checked out the drummers and the food/crap vendors there. This hippy scene seems to happen every Sunday afternoon at the park in at least: San Francisco, Montreal and Barcelona. - Met two Irish girls at the Cascada Maura and Ryana because we both had the LP Spain book. - Took the metro with them to Parc Guell (subsequently recommended by Ben) which turned out to be really weird and great. You can tell that this is one of those places that if you actually live in Barcelona you�re like "Yeah, I�ve never been." I tested my hiking boots by jogging to the very very top where you can see the whole city and the wind nearly knocks you over. Fabulous. - Metro back to the hostel then tried to check out the graphically recommended by Jamalio, "La Pedrera" but its on the roof of a museum that was closed (and non-free) - Had lunch at the best spanish fast food place Pans-Company. Sandwiches on toasted baguettes.

I am no longer getting email addressed to my @uwaterloo.ca email account! I tried to logon today and check it but I�m now listed as "inactive" (I am going crazy trying to punctuate with this Spanish keyboard) Anyway, please use johncormie at hotmail dot com until I get this sorted out. Where was the grace period??? So, I am here at the Gothic Point hostel (with free internet!) in Barcelona, which I am proud to say is not the first one listed in the Lonely Planet, nor is it even listed at all! My friend in Nice recommended it and I even found it without even knowing the address. My first few hours in Spain have been frustrating because I went from being King of Tourists in France because I could communicate with everyone, back to one of the annoying people who just point and blindly speak english at locals when it�s clear they don�t understand. Today I spent on the train, but the time that I wasn�t on the train was in Monpeiller on a layover. I spent two hours walking around, which was exactly enough of the town for me. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but I feel like I really saw everything. It seemed much more french than Nice, with big open squares and old looking stuff, and statues of people on horses in the middle of promenades. Last night we went to a bar called Thor, which was fine, and drank expensive beer (singular, ie one each because of the price -- too bad it was Friday not cheep "Thors-day"). We means me and Nathan and his two friends Paula and Leo from the Chez Patrick hostel downstairs (which seemed cleaner and more hostelish than our cheap apartment style room). A cover band played english top 40 music all night and we sat there eating tiny cans of peanuts from an impossible to operate vending machine.

Today I totally wasted by doing nothing at all. I woke up around one, walked around, and realized I'm done with Nice so tomorrow I'll leave for Barcelona by train. Last night was pretty fun though -- I went to a couple of bars with my hostel friends Eva (Poland) and Nathan (USA) and drank 2 Euro Heinekens. Tonight will be slower I think -- we just bought a bottle of wine to drink back at the hostel.

Today I'm still in Nice, spending time on the beach and walking around. Avoided McDonald's for lunch by having this cool pizza-pocket like crepe. The weather is so nice -- it was 20 degrees this afternoon with totally clear skies. Also, today I called Lidia today my friend from Montreal who lives in Toulouse. Hopefully we'll meet up soon. Tonight hopefully I'll be going out to the bars with some hostel people. Yesterday I payed 7 Euros for a beer (!) but tonight I'm told will be more reasonable.

I was leaving Jan. 13 and had a few things left to pick up at MEC in Toronto first, so Jen was going to drop me off at the bus station at 10:30 even though my flight was at 5:30. The funny thing was that as we were trying to leave the house to catch that bus, we realized her car was boxed in by Natalie's behind, Matt's in front and the Glenco station wagon on the side. Because none of these car owners were around to move their vehicles, and after trying various impossible escape manuvers for a few minutes (think Austin Powers) I popped the Neon into neutral and me and Jen pushed in through the snow far enough up to allow us to back the car out to freedom!

Anyway, all was well from then on. I got my new backpack properly adjusted at M.E.C. Toronto (which involved exchanging it for the right size!) and picked up some other stuff there, then took the TTC to the airport. For some reason my return flight from Paris is direct to Pearson, but on the way there I had to fly through Montreal. By 10AM the next morning I was at Paris CDG.

I plan on seeing Paris with whatever slack time I have left on the way back, so I took the train directly from the airport to ... well at this point I still hadn't decided exactly where I wanted to go first, so I just took the next train leaving which was to Nice, all the way in the south of France. The TGV is supposed to cost extra on top of your Eurorail pass, but this reservation fee turned out to be only 3 Euros. The train was super fast until we got to about Marseille and started stopping all the time. In total it took about 6 hours.

Nice is pretty great so far, but I'm basing that mostly on the weather. It feels like San Francisco in the winter.

Since I'm planning on going to Morocco, I needed to get a boost on some of my vaccinations. I went in to UW health services this morning expecting only a prescription for the oral Typhoid vaccination and Cipro (in case I get sick with something random), but it turned out I also needed protection from hepatitis B and Diptheria Tetnus. So I get the prescription then go to the dispensary to get the additional shots. I'm seated on a stool, shirt half off because it doesn't roll up far enough, waiting for the nurse to give me the injection. I normally don't do well with needles, but I figure this time I have it under control. She gives me the shot, and I think, "Everything's fine." She asks me how I'm doing, I say "Fine." I then think to myself, "Maybe I've finally gotten over my thing with needles ..." The last thing I said before hitting the floor was something like "Uh oh." I woke up on the floor, lying half in the dispensary room with my head and shoulders out in the hall with about four people around me. Apparantly the nurse caught me before I cracked my head open on the floor.

I bought a ticket to Europe from Jan. 13 until Feb. 9 to keep me busy until work starts. I plan to travel down from Paris to Morocco, do some trekking and come back. Really, that's the whole plan so far.

Kickoff (plaza) has Foosball for $0.25 -- The coin slot has space for two quarters, but you only need to put one in the rightmost!