Passing Through The Pillars of Hercules

Reporting from Tenerife Canary Islands, October 29, 2024

Hercules in Ceuta, holding back the Gates of Hell, so that we can get where we’re going. .

Hardly anything has gone wrong aboard the Villa Vie Odyssey in the last two weeks which is, quite frankly, taking all the fun out of things. I'm just kidding. Of course things have gone wrong. Just not so much with the ship. A few blips with the air conditioning and the hot water. Still-empty hot tubs & swimming pools. Nothing serious, though. I, on the other hand, continue to be a work in very slow progress.

The lingering consequences of Covid had a lot to do with that. Not sure when I caught it, but it was definitely on the ship, probably somewhere between Belfast and Brest. (Learn from me, kids: Licking doorknobs is fun, but it’s just not worth the risk!) I felt a little headachey (which I first attributed to too much shitty beer), had a night of fever and chills and reluctantly descended to the bowels of the ship, the Odyssey Medical Center, which is basically a loading dock with gurneys, bins full of free condoms and seasickness pills and three friendly medical professionals from Serbia, at least one of which is believed to be an actual doctor. They asked me questions, stuck things up my nose and then told me to go to my room for the next three days. I was officially Covid-positive and, quite properly, quarantined.

Which was fine by me. I had books. I had wi-fi, I had unwatched episodes of Doctor Odyssey (Big Deck Energy, Y’all !) They brought me three meals a day, anything I wanted from the full restaurant menu, none of that half-ass room service menu bullshit. Then, after the aforementioned three days, one of the medical professionals came to my door and asked if I was feeling better, which I was. So he said, “Ok, quarantine is over.” And that was it, no further tests, no admonitions of any sort. No future protocols. No requirements to wear a mask out in public (although I did) for any period of time. I could go upstairs, maskless, and sneeze all over the buffet if I chose to do so (which I did not), Perfectly acceptable, protocol-wise.

Chefchaouen, home of the Blues.

After five days of not leaving my cabin (and hardly getting out of bed) it might not have been the smartest move on my first day out to attempt a tour of Chefchaouen, the famous Blue City in the Rif Mountains of Morocco, a couple of hours drive from Tangier, where the Odyssey was docked. I felt okay for a while, but then we started walking up hill.

My hips hurt, my back hurt, I was in danger of drowning in my own perspiration. As we wound our way through the blue-glazed alleyways, past the vendors, the glorious painted doors, the impossibly-serene stray cats, I was always the last person to make it up any incline. And this includes Fran, a fellow Resident who uses a walker. My slow plodding and profuse sweating led to this conversation with our guide:

"No more going up," I finally said. "I can't do it."

"Only down," he promised. "No more up."

And then we went up some more. Bastard.

Fran looked back and shook her head. I'm pretty sure she was embarrassed to be seen with me. As was I.

Got them low-down pitiful perspirating Chefchaouen Blues. (photo by Theresa Collins)

I survived — barely — until lunch on the terrace of the Triana Restaurant, where we ate goat cheese salad and pil pil shrimp and tajine and other allegedly Moroccan specialties with names that sounded like Star Wars planets. And there was beer. Beautiful, cold, non-shitty beer. I was saved. (Also the mini-van taking us back to Tangier was just around the corner. I may have panicked too soon.)

Casablanca Premium Lager, available wherever fine Moroccan beer is sold, So, pretty much just Morocco and Walt Disney World. (photo by Theresa Collins)

I was too worn out to walk around Tangier the next day, so I didn’t get to visit the hotel and pub where William Burroughs wrote “Naked Lunch,” or hang out at the Cafe Hafa, famously frequented in the 1960’s by everyone from Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg to Jean Genet and the Rolling Stones. I didn’t drag myself out of a bed until well past noon, a lifestyle choice which I think all of them would have approved.

The Odyssey spent the next few days going back and forth through Hercule’s Pillars, the Strait of Gibraltar, if you prefer, the twin peaks of Calpe Mons (the Rock of Gibraltar) in Europe and Monte Hacho in Africa, overlooking the Spanish enclave of Ceuta that juts out from Morocco, from which it is separated by a fortified fence. The Strait at it’s narrowest point is only 8 miles wide, the mouth of the Mediterranean, and according to legend, the passageway to the portal between Hades and The Known World. We, disappointingly, saw no three-headed dogs. Or Prudential logos. Because, unlike Burroughs, we weren’t chock full of hashish

In Gibraltar. Inscription should have read, “You are here.”

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As Ceuta is a tiny speck of Spain tacked onto Morocco, Gibraltar is a vestigial bit of Great Britain , wedged onto the south Spanish coast, a once-critical military outpost, the embodiment of The Empire, now reduced to a sunny haven for English tourists and assorted tax refugees. The Odyssey docked there for a couple of days, giving the Residents ample opportunities to climb The Rock, encounter the famous colony of Barbary Apes (and in at least two cases, get bitten by them) and watch pods of dolphins feeding in the Bay of Gibraltar. I did those things, too (well not the Rock-climbing part ;I opted for the cable car ). But, because my priorities are in order, I mostly went looking for pubs.

Possibly not the original decor.

I had high hopes for The Star Bar, (formerly The Star Tavern) alleged to be the oldest bar in Gibraltar, a place where legend has it that Christopher Columbus used to stop by for a steak before heading out to commit various genocidal atrocities. There is absolutely no evidence to back any of this up (except for the atrocities part). The Star Bar is a fine upscale pub tucked away on a side street. It has excellent tapas and friendly bartenders. But the interior is all blonde wood paneling and track lighting and I’m not sure how often Columbus played the video slot machines. It was disappointing. Not a trace of smallpox to be found.

The Lord Nelson was more what I had in mind, dank and dark inside, stone walls, oil paintings, built inside what used to be fortified British barracks, originally constructed to withstand The Great Siege in the late 1700’s. Alas, The Lord Nelson has only been around since 2001. Authenticity is hard to come by, I guess, in a place with this many tourists. The beer, however, was delicious.

We sailed to Malaga after that, then to Casablanca where I proved, yet again, that I am bad at touristing. Decided to do a half-day air conditioned mini van tour of Casablanca, hitting all your various hotspots and tourist traps. Was gonna charm a snake, eat a scorpion, assassinate a double agent, the usual.

The Hassan II Mosque, the Jerry World of Casablanca.

We started out, though, at the Hassan II Mosque, which is the 3rd largest mosque in the world, and is basically what a mosque would look like if built by Jerry Jones. The roof opens and everything. It cost $700 million (a conservative estimate) to build and looks it. Built by and named for Morroco’s King Hassan, who ruled from 1961 until his death in 1999 and apparently had no qualms about taxing his impoverished subjects to pay for a monument of marble and granite and Italian chandeliers that even Donald Trump might have looked at and gone, “Eh, too much.”

So the guide drives us there and hands us off to another mosque-only guide who leads us past the civilian line, elbows a rival guide out of the way and squeezes us into the mosque interior, where he promptly hands us to a third guide who conducted the actual tour. Shoes were removed. Marble was discussed. At length. I lost interest and my feet hurt. But I soldiered on, pretending to listen, silently wishing I was somewhere else, sitting down & drinking a beer.

The most famous movie ever made about Casablanca.

The inside guide eventually finished. Shoes were returned to their rightful place. We were supposed to go back to the mini-van driver, but had no idea where he was or where we were supposed to meet him.

So there was no visit to the medina, no snake charmers, no fake Rick's Cafe Americain. Which was ok by me. I split a cab with a couple of other Villa Vie refugees, and returned to the ship, where I had Spanish IPA's in my my mini-fridge and cigars in my bedside drawer. I smoked one on the aft deck as Casablanca's skyline receded into the night, thinking to myself, “Ahhhh. No more up. Only down.”