Lost on the Way: Adventures in 40,000 Miles of Hitchhiking

By Ronald Dane

Financed by nothing but a whim while bouncing from one European country to another, author Ronald Dane eventually finds himself in Gibraltar, where he and a friend decide to visit the continent across the Strait. This trip, however, was almost his last.

In this travel memoir, Dane narrates the story of his hitchhiking adventures in the early 1970s when, as a young man, he hitched 40,000 miles through twenty-some countries over a seven-year period. Lost on the Way tells of his arrival in Africa, where he grew sick and increasingly feverish. Alone, Dane decides to hitchhike from Tangiers to Tunis and eventually boards a train heading in the wrong direction. Over the next few weeks, his fever increases, and the possibility that he will never make it out of Africa alive becomes frighteningly probable.

Insightful and humorous, Lost on the Way details Danes journey as he makes his way along a circuitous route crossing Morocco. Meet the people he meets along the way, including the doctors who assure him he is going to die, the border official who tries to prevent him from crossing, and the individuals who help him when he needs help the most.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 15, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462044320

Ronald Dane

Ronald Dane taught foreign languages in public schools until his retirement in 2005. He currently lives near Chicago with his daughter and his son, a little doggie, a black cat, a grey rabbit, two Dexter cows, and a gaggle of horses.

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Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Ronald Dane.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-4353-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-4432-0 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/08/2011

To our little Pommerdoodle, Buddy, who was by my side every word of the way. May doggie heaven be an all-inclusive cruise with unlimited paper towels to shred at the captain’s table.

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I open my eyes and find myself lying on a short, slatted park bench in a darkened room.

From somewhere, very close, comes a persistent pounding, like a maniacal blacksmith swinging a sledge. Each strike is followed by a dull echo, then a short pause, as metal grinds on metal and the hammer slides back across the anvil to prepare for the next strike.

My head feels like it’s going to explode; throbbing painfully, mercilessly, in time with the blacksmith’s beat. Where am I? I squeeze my eyes tight and try to concentrate, but my thoughts are in shreds and focus is impossible.

I become aware of an idling engine. Then, a sudden, sharp hissing.

Air brakes.... I’m in a train car.

The train is stopped but vibrating, as if trying to shake itself loose, filled with adrenaline and wanting to take off again. More sharp bursts of air follow and then a deafening whistle shoots through the night like a screaming arrow. Then silence.

But the pounding remains, steady, unrelenting. Like a beating heart.

My legs are propped up on the window sill, feet disappearing through coarse burlap curtains. No glass. From outside, beyond the paneless window, a single bulb aims a ray of light through the loosely woven cloth. The lone beam pierces my eyes, sharp as a needle.

Everyone else must be asleep in the car. Deep, slow breathing from the seat behind mine escalates to a snore befitting a dragon. Illuminated dust particles hovering in the air above me are slowly sucked back by a steady but roaring inhale, then sent scurrying by the rumbling exhale. My left hand slips off my stomach and grabs one of the resonating aluminum bars of my backpack frame to make sure it’s still there.

I brace myself up with a straight arm to the seat and push the curtain aside. A few old men in hooded djellabas are sitting on stools in front of the station, deep in thought with their eyes closed. The moonlight ricochets off hundreds of ornamental tiles on the station walls; sparkling reflections dance lightly on the sleeping faces before vanishing in tangled beards.

Over the roof of the station, a horseshoe-shaped gate marks a passageway through massive adobe fortifications. High atop the towering walls sit toothed silhouettes like those of a fort. At the base of the gate stand two donkeys munching on a small stack of hay.

I have to find out where I am.

"Oú sommes-nous maintenant?" I call out in the darkness, maybe a little louder than necessary. I’m not sure how many people are with me in the car, but I hear no other voices―no answer.

I strain to listen above the pounding; waiting and hoping for a response, but the hammer strikes, as always, grinding ever louder as it slides across the anvil. Then up for the next swing and down hard, closer, as if it’s part of me. I lie back on the bench, covering my eyes to control the pain.

I hear someone start walking slowly toward me down the aisle—every step echoes in my skull like heavy boots in an empty gymnasium. One heavy step, then dragging. A heavy boot, then dragging, sliding across the floor almost as an afterthought—step, then sliding, a step, then sliding, the steps matching the blacksmith’s beats. And now faster, the speed increasing with every beat, every step—faster, then faster still—running straight for me down the aisle, stepping, pounding, getting nearer, louder, quicker—a step, then dragging, a beat, then sliding.

I hear a scream then open my eyes.

I’m looking straight up into the darkness. My clothes are completely soaked with sweat and I’m panting, trying to catch my breath. I can make out the irregular outline of someone standing above me in the aisle, looking down. A concerned but slightly muffled female voice finally answers my question with a single word.

Marrakech.

At that moment, a light comes on overhead. The darkness quickly darts to the side and hides in the shadows. The car is full. Partially veiled faces and turbaned heads lean into the aisle, all staring at me as if it were I who had screamed. I see a man seated nearby—thin moustache and light-colored business suit with matching turban, very neat hair graying on the temples. As I meet his eyes, he averts his gaze and looks nervously toward the window, studying the invisible night through the opaque curtain.

I try to make out the face of the mystery voice but she eclipses the light bulb. A halo outlines her head. Then the vision dissolves as she takes a seat next to the nervous businessman. He makes no move to allow space, but she manages, nevertheless. She then gazes at me as if I were her child, compassionate eyes barely visible above her face scarf.

Pressure builds from within like steam and my brain strikes like a piston with every beat of my heart—stomping, pounding, banging like a hammer on steel. A strike, then an echo, then another strike, then down again. I press the sides of my skull to keep it from blowing open. Droplets of sweat stream across my forehead and burn my eyes.

Marrakech...? What the hell am I doing in Marrakech?

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In the early 1970s, the cheapest way to travel by train in Morocco was to go fourth class, also called classe économique. The range of accommodations available to the traveler included first, second, and fourth class. The mysterious lack of a third class struck me as curious, but, as it turned out, curiously obvious to everyone else. When I asked the attendant for an explanation, the answer I received seemed so commonsensical I could only attribute my lack of comprehension to not having paid close enough attention.

But, monsieur, he responded, speaking to me slowly as if he suspected my mind wouldn’t adjust to a rapid exchange of ideas, fourth class is not good enough to be called third class.

This should have been my first clue that things were not going to turn out very well, but as my fever increased and the ability to make sound judgments decreased, all that was clear to me was that I could save two dollars if I traveled fourth class, and that I had a headache that was vengefully pounding me unlike anything I had ever known.

Each carriage of classe économique was generously equipped with everything you could dream of, unless of course you thought you had the right to be comfortable, in which case you were simply out of luck. One puzzling attribute of each seat was that the slats were angled and protruded like the surface of a dull cheese grater―constant reminders to me and my butt that riding was not meant to be a pleasant experience.

One furnishing, however, present in fourth class, but unavailable to better-heeled clientele, was the spacious stall at the end of each car, liberally strewn with straw to make the ride cozy and inviting for vacationing farm animals. Thus outfitted, the stalls were often more appealing than the park bench seating, a situation that was confirmed by the occasional travelers choosing to sit on the straw for the duration of their trip. Even so, I decided to drag my backpack back to the benches when I saw that those who chose to hang out with the animals were often indistinguishable from their four-legged stall mates.

To be fair, since the 70s, the Moroccan railway system has made noteworthy moves in the direction of modernity. Fourth class is no longer offered even to travelers trying to pinch every penny, and the modern facilities show noticeably less consideration for our barnyard friends. All the animal stalls are gone. While this may be good for most tourists, who usually prefer to ride sans animaux, it puts a snag in the plans of farmers who enjoy traveling long distances with their favorite goat, a practice that was all the rage when I was there.

According to the route maps I saw in Tangier, Pennsylvania-sized Morocco offers tourists the opportunity to see the entire country by rail—well, okay, not the entire country—what you want to see has to be within eyeshot of only two rail lines. The north-south route hugs the Atlantic coast from Tangier, passes through Rabat and Casablanca, and then on to Marrakech. The east-west route runs across the middle of the country from Rabat through the imperial cities of Meknès and Fez, and follows the Taza Valley toward Algeria. The north-south rails connect with the east-west rails at Rabat, forming a capital T tipped on its side.

As long as all of your destinations lie along one of these two routes, then you’re in luck. In fact, I saw potential passengers standing alongside the track, no station in sight, the train nonetheless obliging by stopping to pick them up. Many thus have access to a mode of transport that permits a few more possibilities than the donkey cart of their daily lives, thereby giving them a chance to visit larger cities and partake of current advances in modernity in this, the poorest country in Northern Africa. On the other hand, if you are born and raised in a village far from the beaten track, two rail lines for an entire country are not much help, and you may never even get the opportunity to see a train. In this case, the most significant technological innovation you experience during your lifetime may very well be glass.

My destination, Oujda, lay at the very bottom of the sideways T, therefore in the far east of Morocco near the border with Algeria, 600 kilometers from my starting point, Tangier. I guessed my journey, therefore, should have been a quick trip of no more than two or three days at most. If this sounds slow to you, keep in mind that it’s an achievement worth note in a country where they only recently came to the realization that departure and arrival times should accurately reflect hours and minutes, not just month.

Unfortunately for me, the timetables for all routes were written in an amazing mixture of French and Arabic. Faced with this problem, I used my linguistic prowess and some intelligent guessing to fill in the voids where the Arabic made it impossible for me to tell important information from coffee stains. Armed with this intelligence, I ended up boarding the wrong train.

As the days passed, it became increasingly clear to me that I should have done a lot more intelligent and a lot less guessing. I figure that my little error at the train station in Tangier nearly doubled the distance I had to travel before reaching my intended destination; 400 additional miles on a train that seemed mostly interested in preventing me from getting there. But the increasingly troublesome fever, plus a dab of inherent stubbornness, kept me from asking for help at the ticket counter in Tangier and from concentrating on anything other than the bare minimum necessary to keep moving. Perhaps I could have rejoiced in the fact that I had, at least, boarded a train, but the consequences of selecting this particular one had wrestled with my dreams since I first woke up in Marrakech and realized my mistake.

By then, it was too late.

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I couldn’t help but look upon my arrival in Marrakech as an unfortunate turn of events. This detour had already taken me days to accomplish and I had merely traveled along the Atlantic Coast and crossed the top of the T. Consequently, Oujda was now further away than before. The sad reality that I had been traveling in the wrong direction gave my headache free reign to inflict whatever punishment it deemed appropriate. If I continued at this pace I would end up staying in Morocco forever, a possibility that added power to the hammer that struck my head. "Marrakech...."

Once again, I pulled back the curtain, this time witnessing some activity on the boarding platform—apparently a midnight personnel change. Three men walked slowly toward the station, all in loose Arabic garb. Two tread silently in heel-less babouches, one in a baseball cap probably identifying him as our engineer. The third sported brilliant white, high-top sport shoes that cast ghostly streaks of striding luminescence onto the polished cobblestone platform. A tiny flash near the waist belt of one of the men and I imagined they were carrying daggers beneath their djellabas.

Before I had a chance to worry, the background vibration increased to a pleasant hum, the connections between the cars clanked, the metal frame screeched a deafening kreeeeet, and we were off, creeping away from the station in the direction from which we just came, retracing half of my misguided trail. Inside the darkened carriage I saw only blurs, colored by a kindergartner who couldn’t stay within the lines.

The sleeping men on the platform in front of the station stirred to life as we left, eyes following the movement of the train. I thought they looked suspicious, but one thing was becoming all too obvious to me―I no longer understood what was happening, no longer trusted my ability to distinguish what was real from what was not.

I tried to control my breathing in hopes that my headache would fall in line and yield to reason. Cold sweat rolled down my forehead over previously dried sweat and I wiped my eyes with the hood of my sweatshirt. Swaying curtains told me that a little wind was passing by, so I plunged my head out the window to capture a little natural air-conditioning. The breeze stuck to my moist forehead and blew no further.

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I heard a rattle and a click. Realizing I had dozed off and dropped my pen, I picked it up and inserted it into the silver coil binding of my diary. I glanced over the last half-dozen entries and guessed that maybe a day had already passed since leaving Marrakech. I read—

Once again, we are dashing across the landscape at a snail’s pace, but this time, at least, in the right direction. The realization that I hopped on the wrong train in Tangier is hard to come to grips with. My hope has shut itself in a closet, afraid to come out. I sleep, dream, awake, and then sleep some more—all in an endless cycle, resigned to my fate throughout what seems like an eternity.

Ever present is the rhythmic sound of steel wheels clanking on steel rails, the rhythm synchronized to my pulsating head. Sometime, both seem to be throbbing steadily to the same beat, but just like car turn signals at a stop light, the synchrony is only apparent for a few seconds before each beat finds a different drummer. Yet the beat helps me pass the time, and, when you are only going fifteen miles an hour, there’s a lot of time to pass. My head jams to a slow blues, as my heart keeps rhythm. I try to imagine some Chicago harmonica riffs, anything to keep the pain from overpowering me.

I kept my eyes shut most of the time, even during the day. When darkness finally came, I rarely noticed a difference, except all the night noises seemed to be magnified ten-fold, as if someone had strapped a megaphone to my skull. I once had the urge to take out my Marine Band harmonica to accompany my pulsating rhythm section, but I nearly blew my brains out with the first puff.

My greatest wish was to lie down and stretch out like a large cat, but the train seat expressly prohibited comfortable positions. The best I could do was lie on my back, legs up with both feet sticking through the window. The problem with this was that my head ended up hanging over the armrest and into the aisle, causing even more blood to rush to my head with a brilliant and unrelenting increase in pain. Equally discomforting, while lying in this position, were visions of Gibraltar’s one-eyed 8th century conqueror—Tariq ibn Ziyad—high on hashish with scimitar raised above my exposed neck.

We were sometimes only a few miles from the Atlantic and the weather was cool and moist, not at all what I expected in Africa. I was wearing my all-time-favorite article of clothing—a blue, hooded and zippered sweatshirt. I had had the same one for years. The hood was comfortable and soft, taking most of the bite out of damp air and belligerent armrests, perfect for moderately cool temperatures, and just stretchy enough to accommodate layers of shirts during Illinois winters.

My backpack was my constant companion, my biggest comfort. I never let it out of my sight and rarely out of my grasp. I alternatively used it as a table, a chair, and an emergency pillow, and one night in upstate New York by Lake Champlain an umbrella, but I slipped and the weight of the pack smashed my face into the mud. I didn’t use it as an umbrella after that.

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I didn’t remember becoming sick; it all happened so gradually. How long ago was it? I flew from Montreal to Paris and went to see some friends I knew from my last trip to the French capital. I loved walking around Paris and wanted to stay longer, but my favorite city was less than hospitable in an icy cold February, so I stuck out my thumb and headed south.

I decided to head straight for the French Rivera where I assumed it would be warmer and where there would be oodles of girls who might like to help me bone up on my French. These plans fell apart because I could never head straight to anywhere. Instead, I got sidetracked and wound up strolling for a week from castle to castle along the Loire River. I hitched whenever I felt like it and threw my sleeping bag in the grass whenever it happened to be dark.

Rarely did I meet with any resistance to my choice of sleeping arrangements, with the exception of the very first night out of Paris in the forest at Chambourg. Two uniformed protectors of the forest rode up on horses.

Monsieur! What ees eet zat you are doing here?

Well, I’m … uh … gonna sleep…. If you don’t mind.

Oui, monsieur! We do mind zis. You are not to sleep here.

Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know it was private property.

Eet ees a national forest, monsieur, and sleeping ees not permitted. What eef everyone was sleeping here? The officer said this very seriously. He and his partner relayed the information as a teacher would to a trusted student, apparently confident that I would learn the appropriate way to not sleep in zee woods. That was their mistake. I apologized and waited till they rode off before dragging my sleeping bag deeper into zee woods.

After having seen my fill of castles, I once again headed for the French-girl-filled Riviera but got sidetracked once more when my ride turned off the main autopiste, a few hours later depositing me in Lourdes on the northern slopes of the Pyrennees. You know Lourdes. That’s where a smiling Virgin Mary appeared several times to Bernadette in a nearby grotto―grotto is more convincing than cave when you’re petitioning for sainthood. Bernadette thus become a saint and the town now sells little plastic bottles of blessed cave water to tourists and other pilgrims to put on dining room shelves to gather dust in far away countries, an activity guaranteed to place those involved in the process one drop closer to heaven.

I spent a few leisurely days in a $2-a-night bed and breakfast reading Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours, and sitting in front of the cathedral listening to recordings of mass translated into a dozen languages and amplified loud enough to turn Martians Catholic.

Lourdes has other water as well as cave water. The Gave de Pau is the river that crashes through the town. It’s formed from glacier runoff and sprints thirty miles downhill from the Pyrenees while losing some 7000 feet of elevation, then dashes and splashes through Lourdes, fighting among boulders and hurling itself under bridges before gushing onward toward the Bay of Biscay.

As far as I recall, I still had no symptoms of a fever as I entered Spain at Irún and headed south. As soon as I saw San Sebastian, the first town I came to, I decided to stay awhile. This was my first time in Spain. I got a hotel room for less than a dollar and set out to explore the city with its unbelievably gorgeous bay complete with a clean, sandy beach, a floating raft, and a castle guarding the bay’s entrance. The city also offered taverns with bite-sized chunks of toothpicked food perfectly suited to my budget.

Returned to the hotel, unpacked, and went down for dinner at 6 p.m. to a completely bare dining room. Went back up to my room, read some more Le Tour du Monde, and came back at 10. Almost every chair was occupied. I sat at a table with the owner and discussed differences in customs, speaking spatterings of Spanish and German. You never really know how well you speak a foreign language until you have to talk with someone who doesn’t know a word of English.

Went to bed at midnight with my diary and wrote my first poem, a piece of work so carefully crafted, so charged with feeling and insight, I’ve decided not to include it here.

The next morning I was sitting on a bench watching the ebb and flow of traffic. More precisely, I was watching