Thanks, St. Chris

As I mentioned a few weeks' back, I've been very thankful for my 13 years of Catholic schooling during this holiday. St. Christopher is most surely looking after us. We even considered going to Church to thank him, but then thought we wouldn't understand the Mass in Spanish. While 13 years' of Catholic schooling should pretty much guarantee you know what's going on no matter the language, it's been about 13 years since I've been, so we're still thinking about it.

Anyway, we know St. Christopher is looking out for us because there he was on the Spanish shore of Tarifa waving us goodbye as we headed for Tangier. A few things had happened between Sevilla and the ferry to confirm he was on our side.

As I've said, we spent so long trying to plan our trip to Morocco that seeing Sevilla was highly compromised. We had originally planned to get the bus to Algerciras, ferry to Tangier and then train or bus to Fes, then Marrakech and perhaps Casablanca if we had time. Many people warned us against just doing Fes and Marrakech. In one friendly (friendlier to Bindi if you know what I mean ;-) ) Englishman's words, we would get the "biggest head f**k of our lives" if we went straight to Fes or Marrakech. Plus, he said, there is more to Morocco than the cities, much more. They're the worst part.

What did he know anyway? He picked Bindi up by saying "room" a lot. (That's all it takes Englishman: she loves that accent, especially when you say "room", so get ready!) Hardly the font of all knowledge, right? So we decided to stick to our plan and go to straight to the cities.

Until....another helpful man - German this time - told us we could get a Eurolines bus all the way from Sevilla to Fes and not have to deal with the nightmare of Tangier. Excellent! The website seemed to confirm this. We'd met a 19-year-old French Canadian boy who was also planning to travel to Morocco so we decided to take him under our wings and share our excellent local knowledge. He was so pleased and came with us to the bus station, where that rumour was well and truly nipped in the bud. So we went on to the next bus station. No joy. And then I thought I'd found a brochure which meant we could get the bus in the night instead of the morning. And then we found out that was wrong too. By this time Felix was shaking his head, leaving us for dead and sticking to his own original plans. There goes our French interpreter!

So, we made the brave decision to take one step at a time. There was too much detail in what we were trying to plan, so we made an agreement to plan one leg of the journey at a time. All we needed to do therefore was to get to Algerciras. Easy. Six buses a day from Sevilla. Since that was so easy, I even looked up the train times from Tangier to Marrakech and as luck would have it, we could get a night train that night! Right, we packed up and took off to the bus station, got on the bus, and were very happy with ourselves.

As we were pulling into Algerciras a friendly Spanish man started chatting to us in English and asked us where we were going. We told him, and he was also going to Tangier so we said we would follow him. He and his colleague then so pleasantly organised our ferry tickets in order to get the fast ferry to make it for the train, bought us a coffee, took us to the bus, got us on the ferry and told us all about how one of their sons had studied in Sydney. Ah, it's great to live in a world where everyone loves Australians.

Then, en route to the ferry, we found two Canadian girls also planning to travel to Marrakech on the night train. And they spoke French! Perfect. It was a wonderful journey on the ferry as Team Commonwealth planned our assualt on Tangier so that we could make it to the station in time for the overnight train. And anyway, if we didn't make it, by this time we had discovered that our Spanish mates, Juan and Tony, owned a hotel in Tangier and they had told us we could stay there if we got stuck. We didn't find out about the other hotel in Ibiza or the yacht club and seafood restaurant in Tangier until we got there. What we would have done for a big meal in a nice restaurant...We'd just spent our last euros filling up on pizza and pringles in order not to starve, or worse still, have to buy food on the train in Morocco! Why didn't we ask them what they did before now?!

So Juan and Tony got us out of the port in Tangier headed in the direction of the legitimate taxis, waved us goodbye and Team Commonwealth set off on a mission to get the overnight train. And we did it! Oh, how we love Canadians. We all felt so much better having found other people on the same mission, and Bindi and I felt so safe to have some French speakers with us. We ended up getting a couchette in first class for about £20 - not bad considering that was also a night's accommodation. And to be honest I would not have wanted to share such a small cabin with people I didn't know. Especially since - and unfortunately for the team - I remembered a story Dave had told me just as we were dosing off to sleep. Apparently, while travelling on a train in Italy some kind of gas had been sprayed into his cabin in order to make the inhabitants fall asleep so as all their wordly belongings could be stolen!

Is that story true Dave?

In any case, I was pretty unpopular for having told it, and we all slept with our passports and money down our pants. But we made it - with all our belongings and not starving to death!