We’re in El Jadida, Morocco, a few hundred kilometers from Tangier where, coincidentally, Jack and the boys had a substance induced multi-week bender in the late forties. Sometimes, Jack turns the pages in the guidebook and today he let it casually fall open to El Jadida. This place looked like a pretty good spot to spend a day or so to break the desert labored bus journey north. A good spot for St. Jack maybe, but for those not quite as carefree as our patron saint we would, in not so proper English, term it as somewhat of a shithole.

We got the best hotel in town, 160dh ($20) for a double. We have an en-suite bath-closet. It has a toilet but it leaks and smells. Our shower teases us with a red knob for hot water and a blue one for cold but I suspect it’s just for show. There’s no shower head which is a dead giveaway there’s not enough pressure to split the water molecules finer than the flaccid stream of bone chilling and slightly murky municipal supply that will attempt to rid my body of the filth from outside. It smells like rancid lemons, an odor the two cockroaches I disturbed seemed not to mind. We do have a balcony though so we’ll be able to enjoy our view (both ocular and aural) over the busy intersection of Ave Ibn Khaldouin and Ave Des Far from pre-dawn to post-dusk. We’re right over the liquor store, another example of Jack’s guiding hand. A double irony considering alcohol is widely frowned upon in Muslim Morocco yet today seems to be delivery day and they’ve been unloading and then dropping bottles all afternoon. Our room has a key but more for illusionary benefit than actual security. But what this room does have, what Jack made sure it had, was a gently decaying desk and chair from which I can set up my 21st century Underwood and type this/his message from the grave.

“El Jadida is where the Moroccans go on holiday.” That fact, that single, simple, straightforward, unambiguous sentence on page 268 of the 2001 edition of Lonely Planet’s succinctly titled publication “Morocco”, should have been enough to warn us of the madness that would ensue. We know better than to go where the locals go on holiday. There’s no hidden treasure to be had, just 50,000 not-so-wealthy locals living it up for the one week a year they claim off work. We’ve seen it all around the world and here is no different.

We walked past the beach today, its renowned and revered as a great beach by every Moroccan we spoke to. I think there’s sand there, I really couldn’t tell. The waves may crash upon naturally occurring towel, lapping around millions of years of dramatically eroding beach umbrella. Its hard to say. Its even hard to say if there was any water or just a sea of people.

The town boasts a cafe culture but it, like most cafe cultures here, is a culture of leaving the women at home while the men drink coffee together. Smoky, dodgy looking characters who don’t smile and don’t seem to do much more than sit and stare at us as we make repeated laps past them trying to find somewhere to eat.

Don’t get me wrong though, we’re happy to be here – sort of. Its not that we’re happy to be HERE its more like we’re happy to be anywhere. This is part of what we now do and in my case, how nostalgia and boyhood dreams of wanderlust adventure manifest themselves. Jack knows this and now so do you.

Postscript: I’m writing this on our first night here. I have been wrong about seemingly worthless towns in the past. If you see more text below this postscript then El Jadida has a redeeming quality or two, if not, then just tell ‘em Jack sent ya!

Health care for the cats is much better than for the general human population. If you find yourself up the junction, with a bun in the oven or just plain knocked up, a box will magically appear outside a door for you to deposit your litter. Kitten survival rate is high although one shouldn’t discount the mortality rate caused by the feet of unsuspecting tourists. In the past four days we have walked by a box of new arrivals and today, we’re glad to announce, the kittens took their first tentative steps away from their mother – all eight of them – ahhh.

The best time for feline spotting is at dusk. The alleys are lined with our furry friends. They are smart enough to hug the walls for fear of trampling, often guarding the entry ways to lanes and alleys. The most alarming aspect to the cat epidemic is the encouragement of the little beasts into the restaurants. As you know, we love to eat with the locals and here we are eating with both the bipedal and quadrupedal variety. It is quite acceptable to all concerned to take a healthy portion of your dinner and drop it on the restaurant floor beneath your table. The cats that hang around the doorway are acutely aware of the sound of scrap and splat and race each other to the prize. Within a few minutes the floor is so clean you could eat your dinner off it, but only if you’re the next cat in line.

I had never really thought of cats being vermin before but here I think they are. There’s so many of them they are just bothersome. Quite a shift from how we in the west think of our moggies. Sarah takes it one step further by describing them as creepy and scary. She, I believe, is just guarding her food. The eyes of opportunity are always upon you even if they are a little squiffy from too much in-breeding.

Good grief David Browne, I’ve just re-read this entry and I can’t believe I’ve written all this about cats. I mean, here I am in a strange culture and I can only comment on is Top Cat and Bones. Am I the mad cat lady? If you have spent valuable moments of your day reading this, I’m sorry. I must have drunk too much mint tea (see previous entry).

Tomorrow we leave for a small coastal town called El Jadida and if I see any cats there I’ll be sure to keep my impressions to myself.

My samplings of both here in Morocco have led me to hypothesize that you can just about sum up the complexity of a society by its approach to its staple drink. Try this out for size:

Morocco: mint tea. It’s hot and the combination of green gunpowder tea, fresh mint and at least four sugar lumps per CUP (that’s about twelve to a pot) is a sure fire way to cool you down on a hot day. There is a complex ritual of pouring from one glass to another to cool the drink down and one must pour the tea from a great height to make bubbles in the glass. The Moroccans themselves appear to be quite hot blooded people too and seem to bury the icy coolness of mint deep down. I have witnessed quite a few explosions of temper, jabbering of Arabic followed by a smile and laugh. Tea imitating life or life imitating tea.

In Japan tea is not to be trifled with. The very complex ritual of the tea ceremony, lasting perhaps 30 minutes leaves the guest with a highly complex, very neatly presented cup of pasty green tea. One cannot fault the tradition and gravity of the ceremony but the end result is a perfection that only the Japanese can, or probably want, to understand. The mysteries of their culture hides in the tea pot for none but themselves to contemplate.

Chai tea from India is the same everywhere you go. The mish-mash of spices (the masala) that goes into every pot is just like the mish-mash of religions that make up the country. A little sweet and a little spicy and all competing for right to exist in the same cup at the same time.

Nepal has a much more basic and subsistence approach to tea. Black or Milk. Throw some basic black tea either in a pot of water or in a pot of milk. Serve when hot. There’s no time or inclination to make it any other way. There’s work to be done and besides, spices are expensive, save them for the dahl-bhat.

In Amsterdam, Lisbon and Barcelona the espresso rules supreme. Cafe Bica, Cafe Solo or just plain Cafe – one shot or two and some sugar if you wish. Cafe Du Lait is for tourists, real Europeans drink it neat. But, the European culture is a cafe culture so please, take as long as you like with the single shot and why not have a cigarette or two. If you smoke, as everyone seems to do there, the single shot is the only way you’ll taste the coffee anyway.

The Vietnamese borrowed their coffee habit from the French but the lack of refrigeration has led them to use canned, condensed milk. It’s sweeeeet and gives Sarah the runs so drink it under caution. Your coffee comes served as a glass of condensed milk with a single shot metal coffee filter perched on top. After five minutes or so, the coffee will have dripped into the milky goodness. But, just like most things in Vietnam, the filter doesn’t really work properly and one is often left with half a cup of coffee and a table disaster waiting to happen when you will invariably pick up the filter contraption and inspect it’s underside to see why it has prematurely ceased dripping.

Britain of course, is world famous for it’s tea. But,I’m afraid to say that the British wartime culture still pervades when it comes to making a cuppa. Firstly, the tea is always served with a dash of milk. The Indians and Nepali make their tea using just milk but the Brits may still think that milk is rationed so one dash is all you get. Also, the Brits are pretty thrifty with the actual tea. The mentality seems to be that if one drinks a lot of tea one should buy the cheapest available thereby saving money and perhaps ration stamps over the long haul. Perhaps if one invests a lot of time drinking something one should buy the best – you only live once.

But what happens when your country has no tea or coffee? That’s when the Nescafe corporation step in and the locals do their best with instant. We have seen some pretty creative names and concoctions using just a spoon of Nescafe and a bit of imagination (including coffee ice cream). In regions where tea is not readily available Liptons is served, and, yes, this includes the USA. On a side note from my side note, did you know you can buy Head and Shoulders shampoo in every village in the world. A grand statement I know, but I’ve not seen anything yet to disprove it.

Only the Americans could produced the vast array of coffee drinks that they now offer via the green goddess all of the world. The Triple Grande, Split Shot, Skinny Frapachino could only be created by the nation that has blended the world’s cultures together in a must have it how I want it, when I want it and I want a lot of it uber-culture.

The good news is that the world is not falling for the cryptic crossword coffee as much as you would think. Starbucks, obviously, is not in Morocco or Nepal. They have a few branches in India, a lot in Japan (but they LOVE American culture), none in Amsterdam but, to the salvation of the British who were proudly part of the Nescafe brigade, they are all over Britain. Unlike McDonalds the world seems to be absorbing the green coffee invasion gracefully and selectively. Perhaps because the local fare is so damn good but probably because there was no local hamburger culture for Mc’ds to originally displace, Starbucks and her clones remain somewhere the tourists go when they need a cup of home.

Marrakech was also hot – really hot – bloody hot actually. Anywhere from 45 to 50 degrees C which tops out at about 125 degrees F. It was so hot that our hotel room was the only sensible place to be from about 1pm to 6pm. I can’t say that I really enjoyed Marrakech that much although it was certainly good to back in the poverty again and not just for the prices but because we operate better, see more and experience greater extremes of life there. We were expecting Kathmandu in Africa but then this culture doesn’t appear to have the charm of the Nepali and the Djemaa is certainly no Thamel. However, to see, experience and most of all to HEAR this place is certainly a feather in a cap and earns us the bragging rights of starting a conversation with: “Well, when we were in Marrakech….”