The Good Life in Mirleft

Diving under with the crew

I’m living an incredibly good life here in Mirleft, Morocco. A life where I am confidently understanding what I love and pursing just that. There are many times where I have felt as if I actively ran away from good feelings, and while I realize that most people I know wouldn’t say this about me, it is something that I have experienced in the past and that I trying to change in the present. This is part of the reason why I left Casablanca so suddenly- having tasted the good life here in Mirleft, I couldn’t reason myself to stay in the big city. And now that I’m back, after deciding to return because I just wanted to feel good, I find myself consciously accepting what I see as a bounty of positive feelings that I’m experiencing through an array of mostly aquatic activities, and it feels awesome.

Hanging

One of my most basic joys have been the moments after a wave crashes, when I’ve dove under the whitewash and resurface in a turbulent water full of sand, air, and currents. Instead of immediately lifting my head to breath and swim out of the post-wave mess, I’m beginning to rest within this chaos and enjoy getting tossed around on the surface. It feels like a million fingers moving all over my body, and there are times when I get the sensation of being tickled. Other times it feels like hands pushing me around, even pushing violently for a moment or two, but eventually settling down to a deep massage. It’s because of the way the waves break here. The lip of each wave breaks slowly, leaving a trail of whitewash , so that even when you dive under and swim to the surface, there is still a large swath of churned water behind. I feel like this heals my body.

The crew loves the

Bashir!

I’m basically a beach bum, but because I am so conscious of this, it somehow feels perfect. I wake up and go to the beach in the morning for one of two reasons. Either to harvest mussels and other mollusks with the newfound friends, or to run and swim and stretch on the sand. I return to the beach each afternoon, experiencing the water at a different tide and viewing the soft sand as a warm and welcoming retreat from the waves. Coming out of the water I run straight towards the sand to burry myself in its warmth, a familiar feeling to the California experience, but I’ve felt so relaxed these days that I often find myself falling asleep for a minute two, waking up with a sanded face and a smile.

Beach at Mirleft. Look at all that warm sand!

View of the plateau look over the cliff and into the Atlantic

I played a really interesting game the other day, that simply involved the feather of a seagull and some sand. As we were lying down in the sand towards the back of the beach, Bashir built a small mound and then buried a seagull feather within in, covering what had been left exposed with more soft sand. We then proceeded to take small drags of the sand with our fingers, slowly revealing the feather within. This continued, and you weren’t allowed to slow the movement of your fingers, until the feather fell to one side. If it fell towards your side, you lost, and were made to do something really funny and crazy at the beach, like climb to the top of a rock and yell “Allah al Akbar”, or go mess with some tourists, or simply run to the end of the beach and back. I found the game extremely delicate and awesome.

The crew after a Sunday surf session

The oasis of Mirleft

Language, or the use of language, has developed beautifully within my life during these travels to the south of Morocco. In most any other traveling experience, the acquisition of another language has been very important for me, and I’ve always attempted to restrict my use of language to that which I was learning. While I would like to continue to work on my language skills, I realize that this is not my project for the year, and that I can instead focus on using language for what it should be used for: to communicate and get things done. This is especially true in Mirleft, where everybody is essentially tetra lingual, speaking as a first language Berber (otherwise known as Amazigh), as a second dialectal Arabic, as a third French, and Classical Arabic as a fourth language. I usually speak in French, and randomly in the Classical Arabic that I know, which is always funny because it sounds so formal and stuck-up. I am, more importantly, extremely open to speaking in any language that I know, including mixes of them all, or helping people with their developing language skills. I’ve also come to enjoy simply listening to the locals speak in Berber. I love the way the language sounds, its full of Z’s and Ch’s and Mm’s, and how I can pick out a random word or two in Arabic or French. Really, I feel totally free with language, as if its only rule were that of utility.

Bisco, one of the best surfers in Mirleft

Tiznit, the bigger town 30km north of Mirleft

Our French language skills are usually the same, and I feel like we both speak the same post-colonial French, a language that I learned in Martinique and Tunisia. I remember a time when my friend Selena, who is basically French-American, came to Tunisia and spoke with her very proper Parisian French. Many people didn’t understand, and from time to time I found myself “translating” into this post-colonial French. We always thought this was funny. Here in Morocco, the same thing has happened with a few French Canadians that I’ve met, who, even when they tone-down their accent quebequois, still find it hard to make themselves understood by the Moroccans.

La Grande Maree Base

Mohammed harvesting mussels and running away from the waves

Mirleft is a town of about 5000 inhabitants on the southern coast of Morocco, about an 11 hour bus ride south of Casablanca, and the buzz on the street was that today was going to be la grande marée base, or what I’d translate as the big-ass low tide. Everybody was talking about what they were going to harvest, from mussels to clams to octopus to sole to this random mollusk I don’t know what is called in English, but in French it seems to be pousepille and in Spanish it is percebes. Yesterday the folks went out in the morning, and in the evening there were mythological tales being told of what was harvested from the sea. All were ready for today, where the tide was going to be even lower than the day before, exposing the rocks and small tidal pools where the biggest mussels are and the octopus have their dens. Last night I was invited to go out with numerous people to experience this grand event, but when it came time to fix an hour and a place to meet this morning, the best that I could get was an insha allah I’ll see you at your house (I’m actually renting a small apartment with two French Canadians that I randomly met, and it’s great to have a kitchen). So this morning I woke up at 5:22 am with the first call to prayer, turned on the porch light, packed my bag, opened the front door, and waited drinking tea.

The low tide scene from above and from below

Mohammed was the first person to arrive. He came with a faint and timid knock that I only heard because I was actively listening for it. We left with two others, whom I knew from before but am having a difficult time remembering their names (I’ve been meeting a lot of people during my time in Mirleft). There was a calm and heavy air extending over an empty plateau of desert shrubs, deserted plastic bags, and red rocks, which blended with the blue-grey Atlantic horizon ahead. You could see the faint silhouettes of others wandering towards the shore; their walk seemed so peaceful amongst this pastel backdrop of the first light that it could have been a pilgrimage.

Mussels and more mussels!

After descending the path down the cliff and to the beach, we took off whatever top layer we had on, grabbed some burlap bags, and head out towards the rocks at the edge of the sea. The dress code of the day was as follows, from top to bottom: any old short-sleeve t-shirt, preferably wide and stretched out (you’ll understand why in a second) and usually with some random logo of an American sports team or an 80‘s promotion for roller-skating, a pair of shorts, often board shorts but many times long denim or canvas shorts, and now for the best of all, long socks pulled up and over the calves with cheap plastic sandals on top.

Check out those feet

It was quite the scene. People; mothers, children, young men, old men, grandmothers and fathers, backs bent over and arms outstretched holding chisels, all over the rocks, scavenging the fruits of the sea. They were mostly collecting mussels, and would chisel them off of the rocks, and holding the end of their tee-shirt in their teeth to create a nice pouch, they would stash the bounty. When they had collected enough mussels to either fill their tee-shirt pouch, or enough weight to hurt their teeth, they would transfer the mussels to their burlap bag, and continue on with their work.

The morning crew, returning with the bounty

My job was to help Mohammed, and also to enjoy the scene. I carried a plastic bag that Mohammed would put the mussels in, and I would then transfer them to a burlap bag we had stashed on some higher rocks behind us. In such a way, we were able to work off of the furthest seaward rocks, or the place where from time to time big waves would roll in and over the rocks (and anything else, including human or burlap). We made a good team, or probably the only team, because it seemed like most everybody else worked alone.





The morning continued as such, with people slowly leaving as their burlap bags reached maximum capacity and the tide rolled in. We all retreated to the back of the beach, admiring our bounty as we loaded the bags onto donkeys. Mothers escorted the donkeys and men carried long poles with hooks on the end, used to pry octopus out of their dens, and plastic canvas bags with the octopus inside.

Nur Dean and Mohammed

I walked through the front door with three octopus, each one hanging by their heads on the index, middle, and pointer finger of my left hand, ending the morning of la grande marée base. We arrived at my house followed closely behind by the mothers, and there was a moment as we were saying good-bye and making plans to see each other at the beach in the next hour or so, that the mothers with the donkeys stopped to go around us. The women in the south, especially the older women, are very traditional, usually wearing the full head scarf and loose clothing that covers all, and usually stay at home. Now, they were in clothes, wet from the sea, sleeves and pants rolled up from the intense harvesting of mussels, hair held back by small handkerchiefs, and I could sense their modesty as they looked bashfully towards me and the ground. I finished saying good-bye to the men and I said that I would only take the octopus and other fruits de la mer if they came over for dinner tonight. For now, I’m off to the beach to catch some waves after an awesome morning with la grande marée base.

And the awesome dinner of fruits de la mer

Running Away from Casablanca

View of agricultural plots and the beach Imil Tourga in Mirleft, looking down the dry river basin

I ran away from Casablanca yesterday, traveling through the night to the south of Morocco. It shouldn’t have been hard to leave, but it was. Feelings of failure and that I was simply giving up made the trip to the bus station longer that it was, a nervous sweat poured down my forehead accumulating particles of pollution that floated from the streets, and I kept turning my head to look behind me for a sign of what to do. Waiting in line to buy my ticket seemed like an eternity and I continued the round-about process of self-questioning followed by unsatisfying answers until someone tapped me on the shoulder to let me know that I was next in line. This actually surprised me, because most any other Casablancan would have simply cut you in line if you weren’t paying enough attention to realize that you were next, or at least this is what I would have expected from my experience in the city thus far. Yet despite this random act of kindness at the queue, I didn’t change the affirmative decision I had recently made, and I pursued my purchase of a ticket for an 11 hour night bus ride towards the southern coast.

View from my hotel room in Casablanca

I had come to Casablanca with a purpose. I wanted to accomplish something, and yet soon found out that I was only another one of the many people trying to do the same. The city was full of people with grand ideas who had come from all over Morocco with the dream of finding good work , and throughout my time there, I didn’t meet one person that was actually from the city. I was told that anybody who was actually born and raised in Casablanca left when the French did, and those that have come to fill the old French colonial buildings have done so out of an obligation to find work and fulfil their moneymaking dreams. There was no sense of patriotism for the city, no hint that people actually liked where they lived, only that they were there to work and send money home to their families. Understanding this made it easier to explain the general grudge that most people seemed to carry with them. It was a grudge against anybody that has had better luck than them in the city. A grudge that makes it almost impossible for one person to help another- unless it is for money, of course.

Looking for the path. View from the top of the hill in Mirleft

The idea was to work with the Moroccan National Swimming Federation on what I had hoped to be a continuation of the general enthusiasm and support for the international Gibraltar team I was trying to put together. I wasn’t really asking the Federation for that much, simply to be put in contact with some swim teams in Casablanca so that I could find swimmers, train with a swim team, and make some friends in that big city. They played with me as if I were a dog, or so I felt, although I may have poorly interpreted our interaction due to cultural misunderstanding, because I am further learning the pace of how things work in Morocco, which is, compared to the U.S. or even Spain, is slow. Basically, my meeting with the Federation started by them telling me to come to their office on a certain date and time - normal, right? When I arrived they made me wait a while, only to tell me to return later that day. And when I did, I was given five minutes of time with a man who had his briefcase packed and sunglasses on his head as if he were already out the door. I had only been in Casablanca for one day, but had already had a string of unpleasant experiences that made me desperate to begin to find some kind people, or I should say find nice people that weren’t only nice because they wanted money. This together with my experience at the Federation, which as I have described was highly unproductive (I came out of it with a phone number and an email that were written in such a sloppy and rushed print that I can’t even read them), made me immediately feel like I needed to leave that city. But I, like the other three million people that walk those streets, had come to Casablanca with a dream, and I didn’t want to simply give up.

La Grande Mosquee de Hasan II in Casablanca. Very big, but with little warmth

What began to drive me crazy about Casablanca were the number of beggars on the streets. It wasn’t a normal kind of begging, where people sit with their hand out. The type of begging here followed you as you were walking ,or was a small child that clung to your leg, or were hands in your face or fingers on your shoulder. It was a begging that was abundant and overwhelming- it was something that I didn’t know how to deal with. I’ve experienced countries more poor than Morocco, places like Yemen or Bolivia, and consider myself somewhat accustomed to poverty. Now I don’t think that this is a good thing, and by accustomed it is not that I don’t have a problem with, and definitely not that I accept poverty, only that I know that in places where real poverty exists, I always walk around with my pockets full of small change to give away. This, I feel, is the only way to be somewhat comfortable as a tourist in a place where people beg (and even this level of comfort I have a problem with). But it wasn’t enough in Casablanca, because not only did people consistently beg persistently, but the city was also full of people asking me for money because they had given me directions or showed me a restaurant- people being nice and then asking you for money because of it.

Imil Tourga. The beach at Mirleft

The Senegalese soothsayer who had followed me around my first day in the city, attempting to coerce me into becoming his business partner in a fucked-up plan that he had which included creating some type of magic perfume out of herbs unique to Morocco, but which was really just an attempt at getting me to give him a lump sum of money for his “start-up costs“, found me after my great meeting with the Federation. It was Saturday and I had arrived in Casablanca on Thursday morning. By that point I was so jaded by the city that I found the soothsayer as a stroke of comic relief from the desperation that plagued me. He found me on my way to the coastal section of Casablanca, where the beaches and boardwalk are, and invited himself to come along. Then came the first hints of another scheme. On the bus ride towards the water, he said numerous times “Il faut que je te dis quelque chose”, but every time that I said “Vas-y, dites-moi”, he would just shake his head in some pitiful attempt to look sorrowful. At the beach he finally told me that he was really sick and needed money for antibiotics. He held is side in pain and shook is head in that sorrowful, but really pitiful way. 300 Dirhams. I ran into the water when we got to the beach, and stayed there until I had my head together, for at that point I was about to go crazy. The thought crossed my mind that he may steal my stuff as he sat on the sand waiting for me, but I only had with me my clothes and enough money for the bus ride and maybe some food, and possibly could have cared less if he left me stranded at the beach in my board shorts, and not going for a swim was simply not an option.

Legzira Plage. Awesome arches descending into the sea

Mansour was his name, and I invited him to tea after I got out of the water (only because I wanted to stay near the ocean to watch the sunset, otherwise I would have returned to the hotel to get rid of him). The complaints about whatever illness he had invented had slowly faded and we began to share stories of Senegal and Califonria, making me think, obviously a bit to optimistically, that he had left the antibiotic story behind and in the sand where it belongs. But when we returned to the centre of town and were walking down the streets towards my hostel, he began with that same story, the same side-holding and head shaking stance followed by an I need 300 Dirhams, please. This on top of all the other begging I had experienced drove me momentarily crazy, not that crazy, but I did yell and curse enough for him to look scared and walk away. I haven’t seen him since.

Main street, Mirleft. Vew from the hill

I think that I would have tried to make things work with the Swimming Federation if it weren’t for the desperation I felt in the streets of Casablanca. My project seemed futile, or without purpose compared to this begging. Neither did I feel like I could live a healthy and active life there, and I began to question what my project actually was. In sum, I questioned, and obviously continue to do so, whether I should live my life for an ultimate goal (which in this case is the organization of an international team of swimmers and a traverse of Gibraltar in relay fashion), or do I simply follow what feels right and live where I feel most healthy and alive? I should have prefaced this by saying that prior to arriving in Casablanca I had spent five amazing days in Mirleft, a southern town on the coast, where I passed the time swimming in the ocean and playing in the waves with the locals, feeling extremely good but not really thinking about the project. Thus going to the bus station and buying a ticket out of Casablanca and south to Mirleft, was, for me, filled with these existential thoughts of how to live my life.

Hakim, aBoubakar and Max

I came to the decision that my project must be an expression of my immediate goals, but always taking into account the fact that I have already paved a path in life to become a doctor. Thus for my project to have true meaning and value, for me to feel like through it I am living a good life, I either need to be doing something that benefits the community around me (and the swim didn’t seem to have any purpose in Casablanca), or I must be cultivating my individual potential for this later purpose. So I’ve decided to return to Mirleft, where the ocean seems to be a healing force for my body and spirit; the beach here is one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen and the waves are perfect for body surfing.

The souk scene at Marrakesh

I still don’t know where the project of an international Gibraltar team and swim is headed, although it may still have a chance amongst these Surfing Bebers. I didn’t leave to forget the desperate chaos of Casablanca, or because it was simply easier to give up on my project. I left because I want to feel great in my life right now and not struggle to find meaning in the big city- I‘ve done a lot of that type of thinking in my life, and believe that I‘ve found my own answer.

Small town in the Ourika Valley, outside of Marrakesh

I’ll have to return to Casablanca on my way back to Spain, and I’m sure to use the pockets of coins strategy to survive. I’m very curious to know whether I’ll bump into Mansour once again, and what type of story he’ll come up with this time. I’m going to the ocean right now, there are bunch of people waiting for me in the waves. They are crazy about my waterproof camera and all want me to take video of them surfing. I obviously will want to body-surf on my own without the camera, but I’ve got the whole afternoon to do it all.

Ourika Valley

Leaving Madrid

The beautiful pool at Pio XII: Madrid

The first signs of fall have arrived in Madrid: the outdoor pools are now all closed and the air is crisp and fresh. People are wearing pants and coats, and the city is back to the routine of work and school, a grand transformation after the summer vacation. I’ve been in Madrid for the past week or so, staying with Marga and recuperating after swimming the Strait of Gibraltar. The day after the Strait, when I was back in Madrid, I felt as though a truck had run me over, or something. I hadn’t slept the two nights prior to the swim, nerves and excitement kept me awake, which only added to the fatigue of swimming 20km in cold and choppy waters. I felt a tired from within my bones that manifested itself in corporal pain, which at times I imagined was just an aurora of energy that was trying to find a way out of my body. What really hurt were by neck, upper back and shoulders. These muscles were so tight that to the touch some of them seemed like bones. It must have been because of the ocean chop and how I had to lift my neck to breath by anchoring my arms in the ocean to raise my upper torso out of the water. This for 3.5 hours, but it felt magical the whole way. I remember riding the ocean chop at times, or loving the way that the lip of a small wave in the middle of the ocean would fold over and crash a cool turbulence of white over my back!

Another outing with Angelon before leaving Spain

Now, a week after the Strait, a week in Madrid sleeping and recuperating, my body feels whole again, stronger than before and with a newfound confidence in what I am able to accomplish with my body. I’ve also spent this past week contacting the cultural affairs department of the U.S. and the Moroccan embassies here in Spain. I’m looking to get formal, if not financial support for a project I hope to organize for next June/July 2010. My goal is to collect a team of swimmers from Morocco, Spain, and the U.S. to complete a round trip traverse of the Strait of Gibraltar as a relay. I’m thinking two swimmers from each country, meaning that each swimmer would swim around 6km, or if I can raise enough money, then maybe there could be more than one team. These meetings have been very successful and so far I have felt nothing but support from both U.S. and Moroccan officials. The first thing that has to be done, however, is to find some Moroccan swimmers that are interested in the cause, and to do this, I’m off to Morocco in two days. I haven’t made any formal contacts as of yet , and am not sure what I will encounter, but I am excited to pack my bags and head out on a new adventure.

Heather Evans! Grade-school friend from California

I will miss Spain and the people that I’ve become close to. Nacho and Marga. Angelon and all of those lifeguards from Toledo and Guadalajara. Luis Palen. Gonzalo, Xavier and David. Pilar. Siguenza as a whole. Madrid as well. The family of Marga. Amparo, the beautiful mother of Nacho. El Ruso, or Don Emilio. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. Nacho’s mother, Amparo, told me that I was very fortunate to be having such a wonderful experience here in Spain. Yes, I do feel very fortunate. But when she told me this I had an instinctual reaction to say that I would return all the good that has come my way when I am a doctor. In the meantime I hope that I can at least give back to the karma pot through cultural exchange and organizing this international relay of swimmers that will swim from Europe to Africa and back. Hasta luego España, y muchísimas gracias.

View from La Casa del Campo

Swimming the Strait of Gibraltar: Part I - details

I woke up to a sky filled with pink nimbus clouds that stretched far across the ocean and into the waters beyond. Then again, because don’t think that I slept at all that night, I should simply say that the sunrise on the morning Sunday September 20th was beautiful. It was the last day of summer, and the day that I was set to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar, something that I have been consciously thinking and talking about since I arrived in Spain, two months ago. The swim, which at first seemed like an incredible feat of athleticism, had come to mean something very different for me. While the physical challenge of swimming the Strait and battling the currents and cold waters was still on my mind, and my fear of getting cold tortured me during the days before the swim, swimming the Strait of Gibraltar, more importantly, was the way that I experienced Spain. It had become my identity since I arrived; it was the answer that I gave when people asked me what I was doing here, it was why people over fed me in their homes, or invited me to swim with them…or at least I imagined that my experience here was so shaped by this goal. Moreover, the strange thing about it all is that I hadn’t even swum the Strait. It was as if something, which had never existed, could define who I was. So when the time came for me to traverse Gibraltar, I had to question why I was doing it, for my experience had already been determined by the traverse and the physical challenge no longer seemed all that relevant. It also costs a lot of money to swim the Strait of Gibraltar, around $2,000, and on Saturday, the day before I did my swim, a boat of Moroccan/African immigrants had capsized just off of the Moroccan coast directly in front (to the south) of Tarifa, where the traverse begins. I was actually on the support boat for an American and a Croatian swimmer who were swimming the Strait together. Spanish and Moroccan officials were in the process of recovering bodies and ordered the two swimmers out of the water; otherwise, they would have swum directly through the recovery zone. This also added to me questioning why I was going to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar.

In the end, I swum Gibraltar for a few reasons, none of which seemed all that clear to me at the time (although I am sure that there were what pushed me to do the swim), but mostly I was stuck debating the use of a wetsuit. The reasons for swimming the Strait, however, have all come to light during this post Gibraltar week in Madrid, and I couldn‘t be happier about my decision to swim the Strait. The first reason was that I had been planning to do it since I arrived in Spain, and had been training intensely since I got here, something which has taken a lot of focus and determination. The second, and for me the most important reason, is that I wanted to complete the swim in recognition of the kindness and support that has come my way from the newfound friends in Spain, the people who fed me and helped me to train and encouraged me along the way- I actually felt obliged to do the swim. I also simply wanted to have the luxury of swimming for a really long time in the open ocean, to swim for so long that I could forget about time and even space and just feel the cool expanse of the waters around (and also feel protected by the support boat that accompanied me). And the final reason for swimming across Gibraltar is that I hope to organize a team of Moroccan, Spanish, and American (U.S.) swimmers, and complete a round trip traverse of the Strait as a relay in July of 2010. Completing the swim on my own has given me the confidence and the expertise to organize this swim.

The Strait of Gibraltar is not only the tiny piece of water that separates the European and African continents (as well as the wealth of each country), but it is also the confluence of the waters of the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. The tides and currents in the Strait are, in blunt, gnarly. Standing on any hill in Tarifa that overlooks Gibraltar, one can clearly see the waters moving via strong currents. Distinct zones within the Strait are visible, defined by what looks like a river of white caps flowing past a body of calm water. Interestingly enough, I was told that the passages of calm waters are actually, where the lateral currents are strongest: the white caps are formed by the wicked winds that persist in the Strait, and the currents can be so strong that they actually tear the white caps apart and calm the waters.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Strait_of_gibraltar.jpg)

To swim across Gibraltar requires a keen knowledge of the tides and currents of the region. The shortest distance between the point at Tarifa and the African continent is 15km- to Point Cires on the Moroccan coastline (although I’ve heard that it is only 14km or that it is actually 16km). Ideally, you would land at this point, but the currents and the tides are such that this doesn’t happen all that often. The worst place to land would be in Ceuta, which is about 8km to the east of Point Cires and is actually part of Spain; a small Spanish enclave on the African continent. Either if the current pushes you far enough east, because you aren’t swimming fast enough to battle the currents, or because the currents are particularly strong that day, you can potentially end up in Ceuta. Arriving in Cueta is really the last chance to hit land, because if you miss Ceuta, the coastline turns sharply south and you'll never reach the coast, and so the support boat has to take you out of the water. The basic strategy, or the strategy that is most often employed, and that which we used for my swim, was to time the swim for the end of the high tide to take place during the middle of my traverse. This allows for a period of no tidal movement as the high tide recedes into low tide. When the tide is building, lateral currents generally move strongly to the east. When the tide is at bay, there is a period of relatively weak lateral currents. And when the tide is going down, the lateral currents are said to move to the west. Thus, if the changing of the tides takes place at the middle of the traverse, during the first part of the swim the currents would push you to the east, during the mid part you could make good forward progress with relatively weak lateral currents, and during the last part (with the tide going out), the currents would push you back west. Thus, the ultimate trajectory of the swim would be a straight line south from Tarifa to Point Cires, although you would have swim in a sideways V. These are all general patterns, and in large part due to the heavy winds of the region, the Strait of Gibraltar is known to have very erratic currents that defy these patterns.

(http://encarta.msn.com/map_701516790/gibraltar_strait_of.html)

Swimming the Strait of Gibraltar: Part II - swim

I was in the water by 9:30am. The conditions were good, not great, but not bad enough for the captain to call off the swim, and neither am I sure that they would say the conditions in the Strait are ever “good” for swimming, only that they are not “too bad”. I had finally decided to attempt the swim without a wetsuit, a decision that I couldn’t actually make until that very morning. People who know me, especially my swim mer friends, know how cold I can get in the water and may understand my concern. In any case, I attempted to protect myself from the cold with a thick layer of makeshift blubber, consisting of those kilo jugs of lanoline and Vaseline. I basically used the entire mix, meaning that I had about 1.7 kilos of that shit all over my body. Marga and I each put a glove on, and on the small dock of the port in Tarifa with the pink clouds given way to a blue sky, we smothered my body with this magic goo.

I wore three swim caps, a pair of clear Swedish goggles with the bungee-cord strap, and a blue soon to be retired speedo swimsuit. The first two, one green and thin and the other orange of the think latex caps, were given to me during two separate 2.5km swim competitions I had completed, one in Santander and the other in Guadalajara. The third, and most awesome swim cap, was a fading black cap with a giant white B on either side, aka a Bowdoin College swim cap, my alma mater. The blue swimsuit, which is now officially retired, is a suit I picked up in the lost and found pile at Bowdoin and have been wearing for the past 5 months to the point that acquired an awesome hole on each side where the fabric stitched together.

There were two support boats. I left the port of Tarifa in the first boat, captained by Antonio, who's job it was to stay in contact with maritime officials and make sure that we weren’t going to cross paths with any of those huge tankers. This was also the boat that helped me to navigate the currents and chart my path- it was the boat that stayed 200m ahead of me and what I followed through the Strait. The second boat, captained by Charley, was the support boat that stayed close by and gave me food and water whenever I asked. Marga rode in this boat, throwing me food and telling me to keep swimming. Now check this, amazingly enough, Martina Welke, a friend from Bowdoin College who happened to be traveling in Spain during that time, came for the ride on the other navigating boat, along with her travel companion Britta. It was awesome.

Antonio told me to hop off the boat and swim to Point Tarifa- I had to start the swim by touching the European continent first. The water was cold, but felt fresh and not shocking, and I could sense that that layer of blubber was doing some good. I touched the rock, raised my hand to the sky, put my face in the water, and st arted to swim. And from then on out, nothing really changed. I simply swam, and swam, and swam some more until I hit land on the other side of the Strait.

The water temperature changed dramatically throughout the swim, something that I had been warned of by the American swimmer who traversed the day before. The first 5km or so from the Spanish coast towards the Moroccan, the water was really cold, about 16-17 degrees C or about 62 degrees F. I basically sprinted through this region and was very thankful to have been warned of the changing water temperature beforehand- it really helped me to plan my swim. Suddenly, however, without warning or a gradual change, the water temperature rose dramatically to about 20-21degrees C, or 69 degrees F, which made a huge difference. Arriving at the Moroccan coast, the water temperature dropped to what it was leaving Spain, but I was so close to land that I wasn’t at all fazed by the cold.

I listened attentively to my body throughout the swim, making sure that my body temperature didn’t drop too low. My concern was that if it did, even if I put the wetsuit on I wouldn’t be able to get warm swimming. At times, I felt like I would need to put the wetsuit on, but then I would just keep on swimming, and swimming. I only stopped a few times, each for no more than a minute. At first Marga would tell me how far I had swum, and then started to tell me how many kilometers were left. I drank water each time, and tried to eat some dates and bananas, but didn’t feel hungry and the sweet fruits mixed with the salty sea didn’t help my lack of an appetite.



Fatigue wasn’t a huge issue during the swim. Of course, I was tired by the end, but I never felt like my arms were heavy or that my muscles were cramping. I think that I trained well. The swell and ocean chop are what I remember feeling most during the swim, and at times the warm sun on my back and face. It was amazing how much the character of the ocean changed throughout the Strait. Leaving Spain, the ocean was rough with large rounded swells that picked me up to catch a glimpse of the land, water and boats around, and than dropped me into the abyss of only the sea. Other times, which were few, the ocean was as calm as a lake and I could feel myself gliding through the water, breathing tranquilly to both sides and enjoying the peace. And when the wind picked up about half way through the swim, the water turned to a mix of medium swell and a choppy white cap filled ocean that kept with me until I landed. What I loved most when the oce an behaved as this, was how the white caps would often crash over my body and I could feel the bubbles of white wash over my sky, in the middle of the ocean.

There were a few incredibly powerful visual moments during the swim. One was watching the Moroccan coast become ever clearer in the horizon, as the faded browns turned to defined shapes of hillsides and rocks. Another was seeing the huge cargo ships or oil tankers in the water around me. I never got too close to them, but seeing the boats from the waters view reminded me of the oceans expanse. It was as if I had to see something so much bigger than me to be reminded of the profundity of the ocean. And a much more subtle but more constant image that I will always retain from the swim are the colors of the waters below me, and how I was mystified when I saw the turquoise wate r so familiar to the coast reappear as a jaunting reminder of what I had just crossed.

It took me 3.5 hours to swim across the Strait of Gibraltar. In the end, the currents didn’t play out as projected, and I landed at Perejil, a rock formation between Point Cires and Ceuta, covering a distance from Tarifa of about 19km. What happened was that instead of the current changing direction from the east to the west when the tide began to go out, it continued to push east. What I find most funny about my traverse is that Perejil, or la Isla de Perejil, actually belongs to Spain. It is a giant rock that I’ve been told is connected to Morocco during low tide. There was a small war between Spain and Morocco about 10 years ago over possession of the island- it was historically Spanish, and then Morocco put their flag on the island, and so Spain had to come and do something about it. Nobody lives there; it is nothing but a large rock. When I arrived, hundreds of gulls took to the sky and squawked the familiar squawk of gulls on the move. I imagined, however, that there were squawking “Welcome to Morocco”, or maybe they said Spain.

Anyways, if you take notice in the video below, as soon as I arrived on the rock, I was told to get off. I think of Perejil as a no-mans-land, neither Moroccan or Spanish, and by no-man I mean that nobody is really allowed there, I guess the exception would be if you swum there, but even then I only had a about 3 minutes of glory before I jumped back into the water, swam to the support boat and got a ride to Tarifa.

Madrid to Gibraltar

I left Madrid sprinting through the red light district carrying a plastic bag with a kilo tub of lanoline and another of Vaseline, listening to the fading hisses of prostitutes behind me. It was my last preparatory stop as I left the capital for about a week of travels that I was hoping would culminate in me swimming across the Strait of Gibraltar. I had spent the previous week in Madrid, swimming my ass off at this amazing 50m pool called Pio XII in the north of the city. The pool was relatively empty for most of the late morning and I was able to perfect the 8000meter freestyle set I’ve come to call The Aztec Pyramid. During the evening, I would go with Margarita and others to a different pool, Las Rozas, that was cold and 25m long. It was nice to do a smaller set at night and get back into the water after the mornings of hard training. I was also trying to stuff the final reserve calories into my body that I believed would help to keep me warm while swimming across Gibraltar, and found myself buying boxes of ice-cream sticks and eating them all, or blocks of cheese, tons of cured meats, bread and whatever else I could get my hands on- I was an amazing gourmand. I pieced together a few other things as well, and Margarita and I left Madrid on Friday the 11th with her red Peugot station wagon packed full.

We traveled to the north of Spain before we went to the south, as if a long road-trip through Spain was an essential prelude to swimming across the Strait. We wanted to spend some time amongst the waves, cool waters, and green countryside of northern Spain, and compete in a 2.5km swim across the bay of Santander. Northern Spain reminded me a lot of Humboldt County by how the conifers touch the very lips of the cliffs and the ocean churns below, and in fact the geography of Spain reminds me a lot of California as a whole: green and rainy in the north, and hot and dry in the south. We both finished eighth in the competition, I finished eighth overall and Margarita finished eighth out of the females, but were both swimming really fast. I, at least, felt like I was sprinting a whole 2.5km, but didn’t finish as well as I did in the competitions in Guadalajara, nor did Margarita. The level of open water swimming was higher in the north of Spain than in central Spain, we decided.

I hid the tubs of Vaseline and lanoline behind the drivers seat and tried to forget my fear of getting cold while swimming across the Strait. But every time we unpacked the car to move from one campsite to another, or searched the vehicle for our goggles or towel as we disembarked to another beautiful beach, I would instinctually pick up the tubs of grease to make sure that they were still there, open them, even smell them, and question whether these mixed together would create that layer of blubber I have always dreamt of. Marga would catch me and remind me to no pensarlo, but this great unknown and deep fear of swimming the Strait without a wetsuit and getting too cold to continue kept resurfacing, and not only with those tubs of grease, but every time I thought of the swim. I wasn’t sure how I would do the swim, either in a wetsuit or without, until the very morning that I set off to swim towards Morocco.

We drove from the Cantabria Sea of northern Spain to Seville, the capital of Andalusia, on Tuesday the 15th. Everybody told us that it would be such a long drive, but it was much shorter than any of the many times I’ve traversed the length of California either on a Greyhound bus or with some member of my family. I was reminded, again, that the American conception of space is much different than the European. You can drive across Spain in a 8 hours and in California you’ll only get from San Diego to San Francisco. And for Americans, spending 8 hours in a car is somewhat of a normal road trip, while in Spain it would be excessive or a paliza.

Margarita’s aunt Incarnacion and her uncle Ignacio welcomed us into their home that night and showed us around Seville the next day. The city was beautifully vibrant and full of orange trees and jasmine vines and reminded me of Tunis. I saw myself there for more than the day we spent, and it seems like I’ll be returning there to talk with officials in Andalusia about the possibility of getting financial and media support from them for the swim I’m trying to put together for next year; the Moroccan, Spanish and American team of swimmers that will cross the Strait of Gibraltar twice as a relay.

Arriving in Tarifa, the southern most town of peninsular Spain, I took a big sigh of relief to be in the place that I had been imagining for so long. Tarifa looks directly onto to the Strait of Gibraltar, with the Mediterranean on one side and the Atlantic on the other. Strong winds prevail in this region, which make it the mecca of kite and wind surfing. Tarifa is actually a strange, but vibrant, mix of surf culture and a town lost between two places- like a gas station in the middle of the Arizona desert, flashing bright neon lights out of the expanse of red rock. They say that the winds are so strong in Tarifa that the people from there have been driven slightly crazy. I found that the people there very nice and not crazy.

We stayed at a nice camping center right on the coast about 6km north of Tarifa, secluded from the winds my a grove of coastal pines scattered throughout the campsite. The site was really nice, with hot showers and clean bathrooms, and also very close to town. We had arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and on Thursday morning I met with Rafael, the owner/director of Associacion Cruce a Nado Estrecho del Gibraltar. Rafael is a busy man that, alongside organizing this international swim, he also runs a whale watching service. Our meeting was brief, and he basically said that the conditions to swim the strait were not very good and that the earliest possible day to swim the strait was Saturday, however there was an American and a Croatian swimmer that were waiting to cross, and if they went on Saturday, then I would swim on Sunday. So Margarita and I spent the next few days touring the region, going on long walks along the Atlantic coast amongst shore bound algae and the ever present sight of Morocco across those waters. It was crazy and intense to have the African continent on that horizon and to be thinking constantly that I would be swimming there in just a few days. At times the shore seemed close and assessable, but when the winds picked up in the late afternoon, the horizon filled with a faint cloud layer that made the shore look infinitely far away. In the end, I was thinking about the swim too much. I was worried that I wouldn’t complete it because I felt like I had all of Spain supporting me and didn’t want to fail. Swimming in the windblown waters helped to cool my nerves.