Disillusioned already at our night on the town, we caught a taxi and decided to head straight to Kamra, a district of Rabat which housed the bus station: we would sit in a café there until our coach was ready to go. I loved the Rabat coach station. It was dark and peopled with bizarre characters shouting at everyone, trying to sell tickets on behalf of their respective coach companies, and accosting foreigners with a barrage of loud, ill-judged sales pitch. Simon hated it and thought it was dangerous for about the same reasons that I liked it, but we sat in a café opposite the station and bided our time. We were huddled in an alcove at the back, and we ordered some food as a bit of sustenance for the journey.

When we'd finished, we walked over the road to recheck the times and buy our tickets. As soon as we approached, half a dozen touts made their way towards us with urgent murmurs of, 'Deutsche? English? Manchester United, yes? Where you go? Agadir? Marrakech? Come, this way, I show you...' We picked our way expertly between them all, waving them away in a preoccupied manner and telling them we already had tickets, heading for the CTM counter. CTM was the national, state-funded coach network, and we had found it by far the best way to travel if you didn't want to spend six hours on a rigid wooden seat with a fat woman plucking live chickens one side of you and a flatulent goat the other side (which, now and again, we liked to do).

The ticket man was the same one I had talked to yesterday when I was finding out the bus times. 'Hi,' I said and he nodded fractionally at me. 'Can we have two tickets for the two o'clock bus to Casablanca, please?'

'No buses to Casa,' the man said bluntly.

'No buses? Why not?'

He shrugged, as if this kind of philosophical question were beyond him. I looked at Simon, who was visibly restraining himself.

'Look,' I said, 'I was here yesterday, and you told me there was a bus every hour until three o'clock.' The man shrugged expressively again, recognising that we had a problem but indicating his lack of ability or inclination to do anything about it. I turned to Simon again, 'We'll have to get the train.'

'No trains,' the man said, overhearing and understanding me.

'Why not?' I yelled at him. He gave me some detailed answer which I didn't understand, but I suspected it had something to do with Ramadan; Morocco was bad enough under normal circumstances, with ridiculous opening times, but now the whole fucking country was shutting down around us. 'We have to get to Essaouira,' I told him.

He just laughed: 'It's impossible.'

Seeing my face, he lamely suggested a taxi.