The Trans - The Sea Side!

So - it's been a few days since I have written.  I got a bit lazy!!  Marrakech was overwhelming so I didn't want to write anymore there...I just wanted to leave.  So let me think - not much happened there after my last post.  We had a lovely dinner and the next day we had to go and meet the truck in the early afternoon to head to Essaouira, which is about a 3 hour drive from Marrakech.  Now - I thought the plan was to stay in Essaouira for 2 nights...but apparently that's too expensive because there is an actual campsite.  So we drove about 2 hours and we saw the sign that said "Essaouira - 8km" and then we turned around and drove off the highway onto a super rocky road and found a place to set up camp in the middle of lots of scrubby bushy and rocks!!  Excellent.
So we were all a bit crabby - well except for the people that were pretending they were super excited to bushcamp because they are hardcore.  It ended up not being too bad of a campsite and it was an ok night (I drank quite a bit of vodka to help make it better) but it was warm and not totally horrible.  But the bad part was the next morning.  So we wake up and make breakfast and faff about taking down our tents and packing everything away to drive 20 minutes down the road and put our tents back up and faff about unpacking everything again at the campsite.  WTF?!  We could have just stayed at that campsite for 2 nights - not had to put up and take down the tents twice and spent more time relaxing in town and eating all the fabulous seafood and chilling out by the beach or in one of the lovely roof-top terraces.  But oh well - we didn't do that.

So then the big decisions had to be made.  I had asked the tour leader earlier if I should go back to Rabat and sort out visas or if I could stay south and meet the truck in Agadir as they drive south.  Now, my thoughts on this whole group tour thing was that the fee I paid for the tour was for the tour leader - who is also called the courier.  Now the courier's job is to sort out our visas and stuff.  So basically - I thought I had paid her and the company to get all my visa stuff organized - otherwise I could have done it all from London before the trip!  GRRRR...anyways - so the tour leader was shocked that I would think of not going up to Rabat to pick up my passport / visa from the Mauritania embassy.  She told me she didn't think she would be able to pick it up.  WTF?!  That's her job.  I gave her the receipt and she is picking up hers and another American girl's passports - why do I need to be there?!  But she told me I should go - so I was planning on staying on the truck up to Rabat.  But Geoff and Eti convinced me that's all BS.  Which I agree - I don't need to be there to get my Mauritania visa...but I think the real reason she wanted all of us to go back to Rabat is because she fucked up our Burkina Faso visas.  Basically they all have the wrong dates - and we need to enter the country before 23 December.  Which is impossible.  Eti (who speaks French since she is from France) told the tour guide this while we were in Rabat immediately upon receiving her passport back - but the tourguide didn't believe her.  She now believes her and has taken everyone's passports to go back to Burkina Faso embassy to get them amended.  She thinks she is "friends" with the lady at the embassy, which I can't believe since she isn't friends with anyone and has a terrible manner in dealing with people...but she thinks she's "friends" and so the embassy will just give us new visas.  I think that we are in Africa and they are going to say - hey dumbass - you left the embassy without checking the dates in the 20 passports you had to make sure they were correct - so your fault and you need a new date you need a new visa and you pay another 75 euro each.  If this is the case I don't think I have any responsibility to pay for a new visa because I'm not the one that messed up!!  She messed up all of our visas, its her job to make sure we get the right ones, its Oasis's responsibility to pay for her mistakes.  Haha!!  One of the guys on the truck asked her what would happen worse case scenario if we needed to pay new visas and she said "Well, you guys would pay for them of course"  LOLOLOLOL!!  I will be pretty pissed if I have to pay a bit more and will write a nasty letter of complaint to Oasis.  Actually - as of right now I am planning on writing a nasty letter of complaint to Oasis about this whole trip anyways.  The tour leader is basically a joke and she could care less about this tour and the group.  And - I don't know - Oasis Overland is not recommended by me...I think there is no transparency about anything, especially my local payment of like $600...which I feel because everything is a secret I think our tour leader is pocketing any left-over money - because my payment should equate to $10 per day.  We get like $1.50 for food per day per person and then the only other main cost is the camping, which when you are sleeping in the bush for free...you aren't spending much.

Ok - I am going to stop bitching now because I just got really great news!!  The tour leader just called me and we got our Mauritania visas!!!  WOO HOO!!  I don't have to pay like £700 (like $1,000) to fly to Senegal!!  That is the happiest news on this whole trip I think!!  YAY!!  So now I am happy and don't need to bitch about the company anymore.  She can't sort out our Burkina Faso visa's today because the embassy is closed - but no matter...that will get sorted if we have to pay another fee or whatever - its easy enough - but yay!!  I get to drive through the Sahara!  It will be kinda tough I think and oh - I also learned they don't treat the water in the jerry cans very well so I need to stock up on bottled water...the tour leader was nice enough to tell us about one of her other tours when "they must have forgotten to treat one of the jerry cans" so that half of the truck got dysentry!!  WTF?!  And she thought it was a funny story.  That they were all shitting and throwing up for days and days and days through the desert!!  WTF?!?!  Dysentry is a disease they got on the Oregon Trail computer game and died of when I was little.  I didn't think people in the real world got it (now - I know they do...but I'm just saying...wtf?!  How can it be funny that its their fault people were super super sick because they forgot to treat one of the jerry cans!!)  And Geoff saw our driver treating our water and was like - oh that's not enough treatment to sanitize the water and the driver said he doesn't like the taste so he doesn't put much in!!  WTF?!?  No wonder my stomach has felt better since I stopped drinking the truck water.  But I was going to stop complaining...

So Essaouira - its a lovely lovely chilled out beach town.  Its really small and easy to get around.  We stayed in the campsite with everyone the first night, which was ok.  We spent the day in town - had a massive massive fish dinner.  We ate at the touristy food stalls where for like 7 euros we each had the biggest plate of food every along with salad, bread, and french fries and water.  Amazing.  It was all super super fresh (ie. still moving) and they grilled it quickly on the BBQ.  Perfect!!!  Otherwise - we've just been wandering around.  The last 2 nights we've spent at the "hostel" here.  Jo and I have kind of a private room - it all went a bit pearshaped...but its ok.  Its a good enough place to stay and the people are friendly.  Yesterday a group of us (by the way the truck only stayed one day so they left for Casablanca and Rabat after the night at the campground - so just Geoff, Eti, Jo and me along with Toni (Spanish girl) and the OK's (a couple from the UK) stayed behind...which isn't really only because that's nearly half the truck has completely given up on the group and hates being with everyone :P)  But anyways - so Toni is staying at the hostel and she invited us with a few others she met to walk down the beach to a town Jimi Hendrix is supposed to have spent lots of time at.  Its not really true but it was a nice enough walk and we ate a horrible omlette at the Jimi Hendrix cafe :P  But the weather is nice here - its sunny and so relaxed!!  I'm glad I stayed here instead of sitting on the truck and going back north into the cold!  Especially since its all ok and I got my Mauritania Visa!!  YAYAYAYAY!!

I'm going to stop writing now because my hand hurts.  I have a bunch of pictures to upload.  I'll add them to a separate post because they are on my phone and there is no where to plug it in at this internet cafe.  I'll make sure I post again tomorrow because then it might be like 10 days or so before I can post again - because we'll head down and start crossing the Western Sahara and then into Mauritania!  (Sorry about any massive spelling errors...this computer is French and so it thinks everything is spelled wrong on the spell check and everything has a red underline!!)