We managed to fit quite a bit of sight-seeing of Marrakech’s old city in just two days. We’ve just started our actual ‘guided tour’ on a big bus, left Kech an hour ago, and are starting to wind our way into the Atlas mountains. They are lovely, reddish, and covered in small shrubbery, but of course, also somewhat repetitive, so perhaps I’ll be able to get some writing done now.

Our hotel of the past 3 days, Maison Arabe, was – like many traditional muslim riads – unimpressive from the outside (with the exception of one Arabesque street-facing wall that contained the door to – of course – the hotel gift shop) but luxurious on the inside. In order to enter the hotel itself you have to walk up a small alley, where we met our first examples of, I think, what we all agreed was the number one annoyance of Marrakesh – the mopeds. We’re in an alley probably 7 feet wide and riders will tear up and down the streets at 20 miles an hour, which seems slow when you’re driving on an actual road, but sure doesn’t when you’re leaping out of the way of an angry buzzing vehicle. This blog post could also be titled “I nightmare of approaching 2-stroke engine sound”

The street cat situation we saw in Essaouira was, of course, also present here. In that same small moped-filled alley an orange and white long-haired mama cat and her two kittens lived. Being exposed to luxury hotel tourists on a constant basis, Mamacat was extremely friendly, happy to come up to anyone, trilling sweetly, to rub up against legs in the hopes of snackums being provided. It seemed that the nearby residents were helping her out; an old man brought a dish to her filled with what looked like a puree of tuna or chicken, which she and her larger kitten happily gobbled down. A box with a hole cut into it, with a towel inside, was placed against the alley wall, safe from mopeds between two of the hotel’s large planter pots.

We all thought – except my veterinarian mother – that the two kittens were from different litters. One was a white-and-tabby bicolor almost as large as Mamacat and seemed strong and outgoing. The other was a tiny orange kitten, even smaller than Riba when we got her in Panama, who seemed to perversely enjoy sitting in the middle of the alley, sunning himself. “I think they’re littermates, and that’s the runt, ” said mom, a bit sadly. The kitten responded sweetly to pets and gentle scritches, squeaking weakly and gazing blearily up at us. Mamacat seemed not entirely trained in Mamahood, nursing her orange kitten but then jumping up and running over to tourists for pettings and snacks at the slightest provocation. Even on the second day of our stay, my dad mused that the little orange baby might not make it, as he seemed weaker and less outgoing compared to the first day. However, I ordered the kitten not to die while we were staying at the hotel, as it would make us sad, and I’m happy to report that he obeyed my command, and this morning ate several cat treats out of the bag that I had purchased for Betsy (at her request) to carry around and give to every cat she saw. Let’s all wish him luck, shall we?

The hotel itself was a tightly twisting maze of numerous individual properties and buildings that had been slowly purchased and built up over decades, walls knocked down and connected together. If you were to view it isometrically I’m sure it would be like an Escher, or Dr Seuss drawing. Jazz bar with a pianist every evening, two restaurants, free tea every afternoon, hammam/massage, that sort of thing. A team of smiling young staff nodding at your slightest request. Whatever the heck the purpose of a nightly “turn down service” is. You get the picture. I’m sure some people love that sort of thing, but I preferred the much more authentic feeling beauty and rustiscm of the previous Riad Chbanate where we were left alone a little more and had more space. Maison Arabe didn’t even have exterior-facing windows for my parents or my “standard” rooms, just windows that faced back into the ceilinged ‘courtyards’ of the hotel itself. Betsy in a ‘junior’ suite had two small exterior facing windows (each about 6×12 inches in size) and after Connie and Nicole checked in, a couple hours after us fresh from the airport, they had a ‘deluxe’ suite with a balcony overlooking a non-ceilinged courtyard that incoming guests were served their introductory tea in. A nice place to be sure, and very nice staff, just not really my thing.

We had two days for sightseeing, so we scheduled the morning of the first day to see a couple nearby modern attractions, the afternoon for a guided tour, and the second day to explore entirely on our own. The hotel frequently employed the services of a small, easy-going Berber man also named Rachid as a driver for its guests, and we’d be seeing quite a lot of him over the next couple days. He told us that he and his family were also from the Atlas mountains just an hour from the city and their ancestral home had been destroyed by October’s earthquake – but thankfully, they all got out in time and no one was injured. Needless to say, he was tipped generously by our group.

The first two stops were next to each other – Majorelle Gardens, and Yves Saint Laurent’s Museum. Apparently the latter had been a French clothes designer or some such, pretty popular, made women’s clothes from the 60’s to early 2000’s. His museum was small with just a couple of exhibits – Australian Aboriginal snake art in one as the traveling/rotating piece, and a permanent collection of hundreds of YSL’s sketches where his dresses, both somewhat normal looking and bizarrely weird, bubbled out of his mind. Some of the actual dresses were on display too. There are only two YSL museums, one in Paris and one here, but apparently he and his companion Pierre bought a maison in what became the Majorelle Gardens and over the second half of his life, he’d spend many months of the year in Marrakech, sketching his imagination. The gift shop was credit card only, even for my 10 dirham (about 90 US cent) postcard. I’m guessing that the Museum/shop was entirely an extension of the European versions of the same, and wanted as little hard currency to deal with as possible.

The garden was pretty, lots of cacti and cacti-esque plants from all over the world it seemed, including the American southwest (saguaro and prickly pear, perhaps?) but do you hear the uncertainty in my typing? My dad and I, both lovers of plaques and information panels, were somewhat disappointed/annoyed to find that almost nothing at all was labeled, in any way. What kind of plant is this? Is that? What type of fish are in this lovely reflecting pool? If you’re going to charge 30 euro to get in, why not have an employee spend a day putting up little tags with QR codes on the trees? They did do exactly that for a set of potted plants on a small tea table outside the YSL maison, and dad and I spent a happy 10-15 minutes scanning the QR codes, which all led to the Wikipedia pages for each species of plant we were seeing. YSL and Pierre’s old house was painted a rich, deep blue (almost purple) on the grounds, and a separate ticket purchase got entrance to it, which had been entirely converted into a Berber museum showcasing their ancient tools/art/religious artifacts, the typical clothing of various tribes throughout the country, their jewelry (lots of lovely, finely worked silver with huge heavy “gems” of amber and coral), and even a few bric-a-brac like some ornately carved ancient doors, rugs, and musical instruments. Everything was wonderfully labeled and lovers of information will rejoice that despite all the on-premise tags being only in Arabic and French, there was a QR at the door which led to PDFs in several other languages (obviously including English) that had exact translations of every single notecard in the building. Very nice. No photos allowed though.

We had lunch at the Amal Women’s Training Center (Amal means hope in Arabic) – more details on them and their mission here. After the earthquake, my mom had heard that they were making food for the displaced families, rescue workers, etc – we were happy to support them. The food was great too.

After a brief return to Maison Arabe, the second part of the day began when our effervescent guide, a woman about my age named Ouidad arrived to take us to part of the old city. Cracking jokes about her family, particularly mother and mother in law seemed second nature to her – a midwesterner might describe her as “a real hoot.” She gushed about King Mohammad the Sixth, in power since 1999, for his reformist attitude toward women and his subsidizing of and expanding the idea of cooperatives to better support local artisans and creators of Moroccan handicrafts. In particular, she mentioned that he legally codified the possibly less popular (with men at least) lines of the Qur’an that state that in order for a man to marry up to four wives, the preceding and incoming wives all have to be equally cared for. Men are not allowed (legally, at least – no idea about religiously) to marry another woman unless his preceding wives all officially sign off and agree to him adding more wives to his harem. Ouidad chuckled at this and said that her own husband was allowed to marry a beautiful, younger woman who would cook for him, bear him more children, and the like… but he’d better like being asleep for the rest of his life because it’d only be “in his dreams!” She was wearing a long, flowing black djellaba, with a black and white checked keffiyeh (i.e. traditionally Palestinian, vs the traditionally red Bedouin/Jordanian one I typically wear) pinned to her left shoulder. I also noticed her fingernails were painted with the Palestinian flag. We didn’t talk politics (although she, like Rachid before her) also mentioned with great pride the millennia-long history of cooperation and tolerance between Abrahamic religion in the kingom) but I had a pretty good guess of her feelings on the current goings-on in Gaza.

Morocco is a little over three times the size of Wisconsin, and if maps are to be trusted, mostly diagonal east to west. So when we touched down in the middle of Morocco after blissfully uneventful 8 hour, then 2 hour flights from Chicago, to Madrid, to Marrakesh, it was a relatively short drive westward to reach the lovely seaside town of Essaouira as our “intro” to the country.

Many hotels are referred to as “riads” in Morocco, and our Riad Chbanate had sent a driver to collect us from the airport in an SUV. With my background of “fly thrifty” I’m not used to having a checked bag at all but my trio of traveling companions each had a couple of bags, and we were fairly jam packed into the vehicle. Our driver Hamoudeh spoke enough English to be jovial and convivial but due to jet lag, we were surprisingly quiet on most of the drive as we each passed in and out of drooping sleep in turn.

We arrived outside the walled Old City of Essaouira by 5 or so, and a porter from the riad met us at the car to take our many bags. Cars are not allowed inside the city (although moped riders either are allowed, or no one cares enough to stop them). The old city is, surprisingly, not actually that old in the scheme of things, having only been built in the mid 1700’s. Still old enough though that the narrow, dim, winding streets would certainly not fit any modern 4-wheeled vehicles. Chbanate (the riad, and the street it’s named after that it’s situated on) is placed right along the easternmost wall of the old city, so it wasn’t a long walk.

After an hour to very briefly nap, we set out for dinner. Although we were no more than a kilometer from the ocean breaking along the fortress walls, the tall thick stone buildings absorbed almost every sound. The eastern part of the city seemed to be mostly residential and not very touristy at all. Small restaurants, little more than stands, would have little groups of local families clustered around them chatting quietly. As we continued westward for another five minutes, European looking tourists increased until finally we burst onto a well lit main street covered with souvenir stands and cats, lounging everywhere.

Speaking of cats, the culture – at least of Essaouira as I can’t yet speak for the rest of Morocco – seems to be similar to Istanbul, where cats are most beloved and found as endearing. A welcome change toward the relative antipathy the average Jordanian, at least in my neighborhood, had toward them. Over the past couple of days I’ve seen several men, managers of touristy trinket shops, dutifully shaking out plastic bags of kibble into beautifully painted bowls, surrounded by a dozen mewing kitties gently patting his leg and gazing soulfully up at him. The majority of the cats I attempted to interact with were curious and friendly, coming up to my outstretched hand and rubbing their faces up against it and trilling at me. My aunt in particular adores cats and is greatly enjoying this aspect of the trip.

Almost a decade ago, with memories of relatively recently departed Jordan fresh in my memory, my parents asked if I had any interest in going to Morocco. My old boss at Entity Green, Aaron, had done Peace Corps in Morocco before working with Philip and Wajih, and I’d heard many (mostly) pleasant stories about the country’s mix of Arab, Spanish, French, and Berber culture. There was a small Moroccan restaurant on the west side of Madison whose owner made annual trips to his home country to restock his spices and replace any ceramic dishware that had broken in the past year, and he often gave guided tours at the same time. We attended an informal ‘trip planning’ meeting with him to talk about potential itineraries, but a year later, I heard (via my parents) that the restaurant had closed, and no further progress was really made on any Morocco trip plans.

Over the years that followed, my parents developed an annual, sometimes even biannual hobby of international travel with my mother’s sister in law, my Aunt Betsy. While all three of them had traveled quite a bit throughout Europe and the USA, my parents’ visit to Jordan to see me in 2009 had awakened a hunger to see less touristed parts of the world, and Betsy was eager to do the same with some travel companions.

Every year since then, I’d hear about their trip to Tanzania, or Vietnam, or Cuba, or Croatia, or some other interesting area, and feel a little jealous that Christine and I couldn’t go with them. Unfortunately most of their travel would happen in the spring or the fall, exactly when Christine and her teaching schedule absolutely wouldn’t allow her to go anywhere.

But Morocco was always brought up, and I’d always (semi-jokingly) remind them that I was supposed to go with them on that trip, and we’d laugh, and they’d jet off somewhere else. But finally, as the effects of the pandemic started to wind down (at least for our demographic), my parents started talking about taking a big international trip again. And at long last, talks of Morocco turned from joking, to serious. And I said well, even if Christine can’t join me, I’d like to come along.

I never gave a second thought to what car to rent while traveling, or who to rent from. This past week’s trip to Portland, the Olympic National Park, and Seattle was no exception. We merely went on a price hunter website, found the lowest price for 7 days from a company we’d actually heard of before, and that was that. As usual, it was marketed as “Toyota Corolla or similar” – every rental company always seems to use the Corolla as their example. “Who hasn’t heard of a Corolla?” seems to be the unwritten assumption.

Of course, it’s very rarely a Corolla you’re actually given, particularly if your rental pickup is at an airport. It’s usually something cheaper – a Kia or Hyundai for instance. And Portland airport’s “Thrifty” car rental lived up to its name, handing me the keys to a 2021 Hyundai Sonata when we arrived at 12:30 in the morning this past Saturday. I thought nothing of it. I’d driven dozens of rental Hyundais, and despite sometimes feeling (and sounding) a bit like a riding lawn while climbing steep hills, they’d always been perfectly serviceable vehicles.

We picked up some tasty late-night Mexican on the way, got to our homestay by 2am, gobbled down our mole and burritos, and immediately passed out on the four-poster bed, excited to see Christine’s cousin and her family and begin our week of adventures in just a few short hours. Awaking at 8, I made coffee for the two of us and headed out to the car to warm up the engine (and cool down the air conditioning), which per the homestay host’s instructions, I’d parked on the quiet street in the quiet nondescript neighborhood, filled with large, somewhat dry trees (the Pacific Northwest is having a bit of a drought this year) and little ranch-style homes.

That’s odd, I thought to myself as I clicked the unlock button several times on the fob, walking toward the car. Maybe this one doesn’t beep or flash its lights when you unlock it. I got into the car, noticing a chunk of black plastic about the size of a quarter on the seat. I picked up, frowning at it. It looked like it had broken off something, and had the word “Kia” written on it – I had never bothered to look it up, but you’re probably not surprised to hear these two South Korean car companies, while independently operated, are both owned by Hyundai.

I was just starting to reach my hand out to put the key into the ignition when I realized that I could hear the outside traffic on the main Avenue, about 200 feet away, much more loudly than I should. That’s odd, I thought to myself yet again – did I leave the window open a crack last night? Poor, naive Zach. I finally turned around.

Please note I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on television. I’m just related to several of them, even though they’d rather be neutering cats than dealing with fickle, litigation-prone humans. That being said, this post is solely my personal experience and probably wasn’t a good idea in the first place.

At long last, it seems that the sun of post-pandemic life has broken through the hazy greenish clouds of COVID-19. Christine, laid up now for almost a year with chronic back and neck pain with a side of tinnitus since our wedding party and Türkiye trip last June, was feeling cautiously optimistic about being on airplane seats again, and our good friends Branden and Caitlin were also looking to travel. The two of them had never been to Mexico before, so with the additional of our friend Dan, we made a five-some plan to travel to Tulum, just a few hours south of Cancun where Christine and I had last been in December 2021, right after our wedding.

Everything seemed like it would be in good order until, a mere week before we were supposed to fly out of Chicago on March 20th – my left lung collapsed. Again. For the third time in four months. Christine and I had both (finally) had our first and hopefully only coronavirus cases in November 2022 and I was suspicious that lingering viral whatsits in my body were causing this new and frequent resurgent of collapses. Over the past decade of living with chronic pneumothorax, I’ve become accustomed to about one collapse a year. This was an irritating new pattern starting to emerge.

Not that my collapses are what I (at this point in my life) would call “a big deal.” A dull, mild ache in my back when I lie in certain positions, slightly shortness of breath. I’ve never been diagnosed with a total collapse, either, they’ve always just be in the 15-20% range. And ol’ righty has always been fine, carrying the load for his weaker partner. But all pneumothorax sufferers know that you’re not supposed to fly with a collapsed lung. It’s basically the first thing they tell you (that, and no SCUBA diving) when you join this happy, breathless club. (It’s brought up quite a bit on our subreddit.) How was I going to go to Mexico with my four fellows next week?

Well, I’ve got my trump card, I thought (triumphantly) to myself. I’ll just check myself into the hospital, get put on a pure oxygen nasal cannula overnight, the osmotic pressure of the heavier atmospheric air (nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and oxygen) vs the lighter oxygen in my lungs will cause the air outside my lungs, to get pulled back in, and I’ll be totally cured in a matter of days, and certainly by the 20th. Off to the doctor I go to get a referral!

….Except, the last time I had done this little fast-heal trick had been pre-pandemic. You might have heard there’s a slight oxygen shortage going on worldwide. My doctors apologetically reminded me of this and said that basically you needed to be having serious medical complications in order to be granted oxygen in this day and age. Well, nuts. Even three days after the collapse, I could tell I was on the mend – it was getting less awkward to sleep on my back each night.

At this point, my insurance and I (mostly I) were paying for new x-rays of my chest every couple of days. Finally, on the 20th itself, I had a meeting with a thoracic surgeon to discuss possibly redoing the pleurodesis surgery procedure I had gone through a decade earlier. The surgeon was sympathetic, and we had a good hour long discussion about why he didn’t have high-hopes for a second, similar surgery. It turns out that when your lung tissue is more-or-less glued onto the inside of your chest wall, which is how further pneumothoraxes are prevented, it’s kind of the surgical equivalent of collapsing the entrywide behind you. All of the post-pleurodesis collapses had all been, after all, near the top part of my lung, not my side – which is where the typical entry points for the procedure are (entering from the shoulder is far more complicated because of the greater number of nerves, tendons, and other stuff up there). For all we knew, the “glue” of the previous surgery was still holding strong in my side. If he were to go in again, the process of entering my chest cavity might badly damage my lungs. Not guaranteed, but it would certainly be more risky than the first time.

“So, doc, about flying – of course everyone knows we collapsey types aren’t supposed to fly when we’re having an episode – what’s the worst case scenario?”

He said that the worst case that could happen is that since airplanes are pressurized, and the atmospheric air “bubble” that is trapped in the pleural space between your lungs, and your chest wall, is not able to equalize with the lowered air pressure of the cabin that’s inside your lungs, it could start to swell in your chest, press against your heart, and cause a cardiac arrest situation while you’re on the airplane. That’s about the worst direct occurrence for flying in this condition.

“What if,” I said carefully, “I were to go on an airplane now, with my lung collapse percentage down to just 3-5% and I’m almost healed?”

Ah yes, he said, glancing at his notes. Your primary care provider did mention you had a vacation in Mexico coming up. Well… I won’t speak against official medical guidelines. You’re not supposed to travel with a pneumothorax, of any size, for at least a few days after an x-ray shows it has closed. However, that being said, based on your history of having these collapses, the small percentage it has left to close, and your general overall good health besides this condition, I do think that the likelihood of anything happening like I described… is very low.

“Good enough for me!” I thought.

By the time I was actually in the car with Christine, ten minutes away from the parking lot where we’d be catching the Chicago metro to the airport, though, I wasn’t feeling so confident. I popped a half xanax (and had Christine drive) and drifted peacefully through security. On the plane itself, I put on an inexpensive pulse oximeter I’d purchased a few days ago for the trip, and put it on my index finger briefly to get a baseline reading. 97%, not bad at all.

The plane took off. I squeezed Christine’s hand tightly, and she squeezed back.

With our wonderful wedding reception last weekend now in our rear-view mirror, Christine and I now turn our sights to some fun over in Western Asia, in the lovely resort town of Bodrum in Türkiye along the northeastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Her high school friend, Damla, is Turkish and lives with her family in the capitol city of Ankara, which Christine has visited a few times. The stars aligned this year though, as Damla and her family invited us to join them in their annual summer holiday in Bodrum.

The last time I was in Türkiye was in 2015, when the “Camel Family” consisting of my friends Branden, Caitlin, and Kate had a couple nights of layover in Istanbul on our way to Jordan. Beyond reserving an AirBnB for a couple nights, we didn’t even put any thought into that stop in our journey – we took for granted that we’d get a cheap visa at the airport (Visa on Arrival, or VOA) and be in and out without any fuss. It’s difficult to remember exactly but I think the visa was $30 per person.

That was seven years ago. As Christine was doing research on our trip last week, she told me that we’d “better get our e-Visas ahead of time, and it looks like people on the internet are saying it’s not an easy process.” Besides having laughably out-of-date information (the official Turkish FAQ website on e-Visas quotes prices from 2014 in the form of a downloadable PDF – who is running their I.T. department???) we repeatedly had issues even getting the site to load in several browsers.

I finally had some luck getting the site to function long enough to input all the relevant information, receive the confirmation email with a link to the payment site and… that’s when the real trouble started. Every credit card we had, we tried putting into the payment site, the little “attempting to process payment” window showed up, but within a minute, it would error out with one word: “Sorry” appearing on the screen. Verbose error messages from a government e-Visa website? Of course not, don’t be silly.

Immediately, of course, we started doing web searches for any way around this problem. Almost like it was waiting for us to search for the phrase “turkish evisa payment not working”, we got a link to this company’s blog post, Atlys.com, which has a totally real and not at all paid-off sounding writer saying how he and his wife were frustrated with the same problem as us, but in the end, Atlys.com was the “easy way” to get their Turkish visas.

Of course, the totally real author, “Andrew” doesn’t mention that Atlys will, of course, charge you a service fee of $15 per visa for their part. So, if

• paying a service fee that equates to almost an extra third of the cost of the visa itself
  
• needing to make another account, and being forced to install a smartphone app just to get a visa rather than using a desktop website

doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, then read no further – I’m sure Atlys would love to have your money!

But I’m an I.T. guy. Both of those bullet points left me nonplussed. We fix problems, and we try to do it as cheaply as possible. (it keeps the bosses happy when we save them money, after all!). So what’s a “free” way (i.e. – no service fees. You’ll still have to pay for your actual visas themselves, of course) to deal with this e-Visa website?