Tuesday 26th - The Final Day

I heard Aguet come in last night, so was unnerved to find she wasn't here when I woke up and she'd taken all of her stuff while we were asleep. Nat spent most of the morning convincing me to go off on the excursion and leave her to find the sisters, even though I was concerned that I wouldn't be back in time for my flight. I'd wanted to spend my last day with Aguet and Nat whom had spent the last week driving me crazy and keeping me sane, respectively. Nat may have been unhappy that Aguet and I were leaving today and she was staying and that I seemed less concerned than when I thought Aguet would be the last of us to leave, but I explained that Nat can take any rapist or murderer in a fight and she would be fine. I already miss her endless sarcasm and mean sense of humour.

I went on the excursion with Allegra and Katherine, two hitchers I'd met last night and some other random tourists, a French couple who kept to themselves and two elderly British women on holiday who were quite cool. On the three hour trip out, we had to listen to the driver's CDs. Moroccan music is not good music. The waterfall and valley was an awesome place! We toured around the area for a couple of hours and grew insanely jealous of people who got to stay in the camp site there. The girls went swimming in one of the pools for a while, I hid in the shade like the pale, soulless ginger that I am and we got plenty of photos of the falls and the monkeys inhabiting the area.

As we left, I was more and more concerned about the time. This was going to be a close one. I arrived back in town and power-walked to the hostel to collect my stuff, bumping into Nat on the way to my taxi. She'd just come from a rather awkward spa-treatment of some kind to say goodbye.

This is where the horrible begins. Firstly, I urge you to never ever ever book yourself a Ryanair flight, regardless of how cheap it seems, you will regret it. I would be incredibly happy for the airline to go bankrupt and for all of their useless staff to lose their jobs and die of the resulting starvation. I arrived at the airport and already know the drill; check your luggage and collect your boarding pass by showing your passport and booking reference at the correct desk. Only with Ryanair, you can print off your boarding pass at home and if you don't, they charge you €40 for the excruciating effort and tremendous resources it takes for them to do it for you. When deciding which of my luggage to check, I opted to take my tent on as hand luggage due to its more convenient shape and size, only to find that tents are considered to be deadly weapons aboard a plane. The idiot security guard kept telling me to go and check it, which it was now too late to do, but wouldn't let me leave it and seemed determined to make me miss my flight by only offering a single impossible option. Eventually, his boss told him he was a dick-head with all the common sense of a piece of belly-button fluff (at least that's what I hope was said, I don't speak the language) and permitted me the privilege of abandoning my expensive tent to the whim of some moron in an airport.

Livid with how my short time in the airport had gone, we then had to sprint across the runway, only just making the plane as they were closing the doors. On board the worst plane I've ever been on, I looked for things to steal that might even the score of the €40 they had earlier stolen from me, but the staff didn't have the wherewithal to stock up up on stuff for the passengers even to buy, running out of food and drinks as the trolley made it only half way down the isle. I sat for four hours, marvelling at the incompetence of the crew in their dealings with the other passengers, until the end of the flight when we were subjected to what I wasn't sure whether it was the most appalling, bumpiest landing of all time; or the mildest, smoothest aircraft crash of all time.

On the ground, we were taken aside by security, because as a black chick and an unwashed, unshaven, hoodie wearing guy that looked far too pale to be arriving from Africa, I imagine the woman thought she was in for a jackpot of a drug bust. I had to disappoint her by showing her my charity T-shirt. She didn't even bother searching us.

I hugged Aguet goodbye and sent her on her way to Cardiff. My coach to Manchester is in six hours, so I'll be spending the night in this bus stop.