June 10
(this post, along with three more that will follow, are old posts that couldn’t be posted)
Marina, Woland and I were in Kho Phangan from May 17 to June 4th. Marina was on vacation, I wasn’t, but managed to spend time at the beach and enjoy different culinary experiences at night. The house we rented is atop a hill overlooking the mountains and the sea. It faces west so we had beautiful sunsets most days. The exception were two stormy afternoons with dark skies in the horizon, also beautiful. Every day I would wake up early, prepare coffee, feed Woland, do some work, and then we would all hike to the beach. I have great memories from our time in KPN. The only issue was driving there; a must if we wanted to have Woland with us, as no airline would take him. It took two days to get there and two days to come back.
I left Bangkok the night of June 5th bound to Tangiers via Paris and Rabat, and Marina, a couple of hours after me, bound to Washington DC. Mine was an uneventful journey, and except for the three-hour layover at CDG that I spent at Little Paris in terminal 2, I slept most of the way. From Rabat I was driven to Tangiers, a 2.5-hour ride over a desolated high-way. I arrived at the hotel around 6pm, dropped my carry-on and handbag in the room, and went to one of the restaurants downstairs for an early drink and dinner.
The next three days I had meetings with some entrepreneurs and managers working in the region, including in the special economic zone. One of those meetings took place at the oldest hotel in the city – better than the Movenpick where I was staying. The manager showed us around and in one of the corridors pointed to a Rembrandt hanging from a wall (see pic). If it is an original it would cost more than the hotel itself. I am not sure but want to believe.
I didn’t have much time to discover the city but managed to go for a run at the corniche and had dinner at a dry Moroccan restaurant in the medina. A fine city, in a privileged location, but not a place I would travel to for pure pleasure. Contrary to what you read in the fiction and non-fiction literature, it has become too industrial and lost its charm. I wanted to go to the Moroccan side of the strait of Gibraltar, but it was logistically impossible. Instead, I ended up close to Achakar, at Hercules’ Caves, where the waters from the Mediterranean merge with those of the Atlantic. The merger is discrete, you don’t see much. If one day I go back to those waters, I hope it will be sailing.
Yesterday I received news from the boatyard in Cartagena. BEHEMOOT’s engine has been taken apart and the different parts needed for repair are on their way from Bogota. I am still hopeful that BEHEMOOT will be operational sometime during the summer.
Sailing to the Pacific 