Fez

The tale of Marrakech, as James tells it, ends on a high note. Yet this isn't the whole story. Perhaps it was one of our dinners in the square, or perhaps a sip from the wrong bottle of water, but something disagreed with my longtime traveling companion, turning the seven hour train ride to Fez into something of a hellish journey for James. I've never seen the color drain quite so completely from a human being. When he wasn't curled in the corner of our compartment, he was stretched out in the corridor, confusing the locals as they squeezed past and stepped over him.

This left a void in our compartment, and as the stations and hours passed, it got to a point where we could no longer in good conscience keep the seat free. It certainly didn't seem that James would make any sudden comeback. Thus his seat went to a young man in a lavender shirt, who's name, we would discover, was Mohammed.

This chance meeting was to change the entire experience of Morocco for us. After some conversation, we were invited to dinner with Mohammed and his friends. With some skepticism, we took up this offer, and were massively rewarded. In the heart of the Medina, we were presented with a splendid dinner in a colorfully tiled room, along with seven or eight Moroccans around our age, and one New Zealander. Stacey, the girlfriend of Isham (one of the Moroccan lads) , became our link to the city of Fes. The two of them were incredibly hospitable, and offered to show us around the city the next day.

I cannot stress enough the value of such an offer. Navigating a Moroccan medina is an utter nightmare, with twisting streets, no signage, hundreds of people and twice that number of dead ends. Without guidance, you will never find anything... including your way home. Where we'd likely have spent the day blindly searching for a tourist office, instead we were shown to several mosques, a fantastic view out over the city, a carpet cooperative, a weaver's showroom, the city tanneries and the dyer's headquarters. And at night, we again were treated to an authentic home cooked meal, and a game of soccer in a nearby parking lot.

This was the sort of experience that you set out to capture when you leave home on a trip. The holy grail of travel. I really can't convey how fantastic it was to get this glimpse into real life in Fes, with people our age. We were visitors, but engaged visitors, not just spectators.

I've spent almost 180 days away from home, and if it was all just leading up to these few days in Fes, it's entirely worth it.