Coughing at the border

If a man pressing warm grapes into my hand as the clock chimed midnight on 2005 was any indication of the weirdness of the new year then present circumstances are to expected. Bonded through grapes with an American and a Yorkshire couple, we fought our way onto the Almeria to Nador boat in a scene which can only be described as refugee style exodus. I had the comfort of my own cabin, but outside my door lay a groaning mass of humanity, bearing carpets, rugs and a disturbing number of bicycles. Arrival in Morocco was equaly surreal; Failure to pass passport control on the boat saw us straggle out of the ferry terminal hours after the others. The money machines were not working and we were still 11kms out of town. We haggled our way in using hard currency, to find that the Dakar rally had taken every room in the town, that I had inadvertently led us to the poshest hotel in the area, and that we already had a deranged stalker who was potentially suffering from AIDS and accosting us with every step outside the hotel. We sat under a portrait of the king, sucked the coffee from sugar cubes and formulated a plan to thwart the stalker. And so the American and I found ourselves sleeping in a half built hotel, complete with dry concrete in the toilets and workmen as an alarm bell in what is inarguably the worst hotel in town. She is sleeping the remnants of the ferry night awake and I have gone on a mission amongst the men clad like Star Wars extras to find cough syrup, tissues and cold killer. Yes we all knew I was due to be sick. Signing off from an impossible keyboard, Rowena; or in the Qwerty: signing off in qn i,possible keyboqrd: Rozenq.