To Morocco for a Penny
If you could fly to Morocco for a penny, would you book a holiday right now?
Nathan Richards, a self-diagnosed sufferer of CBD (Compulsive Backpacking Disorder), did. True to form, Nathan took the opportunity to travel to Morocco at a bargain price. Together with his girlfriend Lauren, he has been trekking around Morocco since early September.
Travelblogs caught up with him earlier this week to find out a little more about Morocco, travel writing and future plans.
Tell me a little about your current trip. Why Morocco?
Well, for one reason because it’s a place I haven’t been to before but had heard so much about – good and bad - and the other reason is because Ryan Air had a 1 penny flight bonanza on a little while ago. For quite a while we had wanted to check Morocco out and now, with the flights, it seemed the perfect opportunity. They had flights on offer to Jerez De La Frontera, Spain literally for a penny – and at a time when we also had a few coins in the bank. And since we hadn’t been away in a few months we decided there and then to get it booked and just take it from there. Neither of us had any deep pre-trip fascination with Morocco, but it did strike us as somewhere that could prove to be pretty interesting. We could have just as easily gone somewhere else, but thought we’d give North Africa a spin for something a little different – and it’s certainly turned out to be just that
How much longer do you have in Morocco before heading home?
Unfortunately, not long - in fact, I may start to make my way back this week. At one point I was toying with the idea of crossing back into Europe, hitching my way up through Spain and taking the ferry across from Santander to Plymouth, my hometown, but unfortunately the ferry tickets cost a small fortune compared to flying, so I may just end up getting another budget flight back. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and see what the internet turns up on that one. Still, I can think of worse places to be in the meantime!
You’ve done quite a bit of freelance writing. Are you at a point where your writing can sustain your travelling?
Ha Ha. Absolutely not, but I wish it did. I guess that until it does I shall have to continue trafficking small children, stealing from other people’s daysacks, and rescuing half-smoked cigarette butts from ash trays. Maybe one day my writing may generate more than beer money, but, to be honest, I’m not doing it for the fame, fortune or big cash prize. I write because I enjoy writing, just as I do reading. I put them both in the same category. My main goal as far as the writing is concerned is to continue having work published, and to increase the number of outlets where that work can be shared.
Do you write in order to travel? Or do you travel in order to write?
Well, after the last question, I think we can safely assume that I don’t write to travel, but curiously though, I don’t travel to write, either. The writing seems to come more as a by product of the wandering, it’s
more of a pastime, it’s more like something to do during my time on the road. As I see it, you’ve got to have something to fill in the gaps between climbing volcanoes, diving reefs and being chased by old men
wielding sticks. And the writing drops in there quite nicely.
Who are some of the inspirations for your writing?
When it comes to authors, I’m just an unrefined, mainstream pleb, really. I thoroughly enjoy reading Bill Bryson’s dispatches, anything created by Dave Barry of Miami Herald fame (I think) and most of the random,
bilious twaddle that seeps from Jeremy Clarkson’s typewriter, too. But basically I’ll carry on reading anything by anyone just so long as it’s not too heavy.
I like my authors – whoever they may be - to tell it how it is, and I like them to be droll. I like them to share with me trivia and generally useless, but nevertheless interesting, snippets of info, and I like them to have a slightly warped sense of humour also - and they’ve got to be dry, the drier the better, in fact.
I don’t know why, but I don’t seem to enjoy classic travel literature as much as I feel that I should. I still read them, but the deeper a book goes, the more disinterested I become. Bertrand Russell once said something about the two main motives for reading a book: one, to enjoy it, the other to boast about it. I’m definitely more the silent type! Personally, I prefer the literary equivalent of easy listening music and generally just keep quiet about that fact - apart from in a setting such as this, clearly. The best way I can put it is by sharing with you one of my more shameful admissions: I enjoy Reader’s Digest. I guess I’m just shallow and proud. Haha. I’m quite unlike the proverbial onion as you really can tell what I’m all about just as soon the first layer rots away of its own accord. You can safely say that there’s no unravelling required.
Do you have any more trips in the pipeline after Morocco?
Now that’s a question and a half. How much time have you got? I plan on wandering until I wake up one day and say to myself “That’s enough of that. What’s next?” but I hope that day doesn’t come any time soon. You could spend your whole lifetime wandering the globe and still croak having only scratched the surface. It’s an incredibly overwhelming concept.
In the immediate future, my trips will take on much the same form as the current one. I suppose they will be to a Round the World Trip as infomercials are to a feature length film. The thing is that whilst I still have my lovely girlfriend, who I would rather like to keep, and a semi-permanent base in the UK, I must acquiesce to consuming the world in bite size chunks. But I hope, like I’ve found so far with Morocco, that that too can be just as much fun.
The next planned trips include a month or two in Egypt – with the aim of finding work as a Divemaster – and possibly another few months back in Indonesia. I love that place, its just nuts. Ideally, I’d want to start in northern Sumatra and loaf and lounge my way across to East Timor. But, like many of my trips, it’ll probably all boil down to the price of the flights at the time my feet are at their itchiest. If a penny flight pops up to Afghanistan, then the next Ubertramp post will be on cheap eats in Downtown Kabul!
You can find out whether Nathan scores a cheap flight to Afghanistan by following him on his blog, Ubertramp.
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Posted by Eric Daams on October 2nd, 2007 in Interviews.
