The Arrival:  Casablanca

We were cruising at 25,000 feet, the sky was very clear with only a few spotty clouds about.  We could see many cities towns and villages that dotted the brownish landscape. 
We could also see a bit of some of the mountains to the east and south. 

I was just so blown away by how beautiful it all looked that it took away some of the anxiety that I felt about being on this "piece of shit plane". 
It was only a short time later that we could see Casablanca.  This is one big ass city man.   From our approach altitude while looking out the windows on both sides of the plane, all you could see was the city.  I thought Toronto was big, but Casablanca is bigger, much bigger. 

Factoid - in 1975 Casablanca had a population of close to three million, and very few high rise buildings, so the city was spread over a vast area.
​In many of the older parts of the city the buildings are densely packed together; like sardines in a can.
    

                                                            A couple of shots of Casablanca from the plane

We landed at 3 pm their time, very tired from lack of sleep, and we're also now dealing with a 6 hour time shift.  We were also very hungry, we hadn't eaten since yesterday. 

​We went to baggage claim to get our backpacks which had been completely pulled apart, then had the contents just randomly stuffed back in.  In one of the side pockets of Mel's backpack he had these small round  pieces of charcoal that had one side slightly cupped. 
​These pieces when ignited would smolder,  you could then drop a piece of hash or drops of hash oil onto the cupped side and smoke it in. 
Obviously the customs people knew what these things were for so they broke them into small granular pieces, rendering them completely useless.  Mel was not pleased about that... 

Us guys went to the Exchange to transfer some travelers cheques into Moroccan currency.  Eve and Aileen went to get some information about where to go and what to see in and around Casablanca.  When we were all finished we went outside to catch the bus that would take us into the city.
   
We met a couple guys on the bus from Montreal that had been to Casablanca a few times before.  They told us to be careful about who you befriend as there are a lot of locals who will take complete advantage of unsuspecting tourists.  They said if we wanted to hang with them they would take us to a hotel that wouldn't rip us off; that sounded like a good idea. 

​At this point some Moroccan guy, we'll come him Mohammed started talking to Mel about where we could find a decent hotel for a cheap price. 
Mel asked him where he could get some decent hash for a cheap price.  The guy said he could hook us up with hash and hotel for cheap. 
Upon hearing this, it seemed to Mel that what the Montreal guys had just told us has now taken a back seat to what should have been one of the more important things to us,  such as who to trust and who not to trust.

                   The road from the airport to the city                                         A very small section of older  Casablanca                                                                                                                                                      

A half hour has now passed and we're now well into the city, a very seedy and slummy part of town.  During the ride the Mohammed dude kept Mel engaged about a hash deal. 
The bus comes to a stop at a traffic signal and Mohammed jumps off and indicates to Mel to get off as well.  Mel, with little on his mind but a hash deal gets off.  
Now what the fuck! do we do, he wasn't going to get back on the bus and we couldn't just leave without him and the light was about to change to green, so we all got off the bus.  

I was not pleased about this, I don't think anyone else was either.  I was thinking about what the Montreal guys had told us about all the assholes that prey on people just like us, and rip them off. 
At that moment my thought was, "we're going to be this guy's next ripoff";  and I wasn't wrong either.

Now, this is not a criticism of Mel, it's just an observation.  
Mel has a very strong alpha personality, very head strong when his focus was centered on a specific thought or idea, and the thought was to score some hash, that's what mattered most at that moment;  everything else was secondary at best. 
    


We're now following Mohammed through many narrow streets and alleyways with lots of corner turning. 
To find our way back would have been impossible;  like holy shit man, find our way back to where?  Our only point of reference was where we got off the bus and what fucking good is that going to do us.  
We're at this guys mercy and unable to do a damn thing about it, but only for the moment.

I believed this was all part of the Mohammad dudes' plan;  disorient and confuse us in order to keep us at his mercy for as long as he could. 
To me it seemed to be a well thought out and calculated move, and for sure not the first time he used it either;  or maybe I was just being overly dramatic, but no; I really don't think so.

​We're now going through what he called a Medina, basically it's just a marketplace, very big and quite slummy. 
I don't know how far we have walked or for how long, but it seemed to be taking a long time to get to where the fuck! we were going.
For all we knew, we could be walking toward our doom.

Along way through the narrow and dimly lit alleyways were several small groups of men wearing hooded djellabas lurking about and seemingly watching our every move;  it was all very unnerving but at the same time incredibly exciting.  
I felt the need to keep looking over my shoulder,  fearful that we might be followed;  but knowing very well I was only giving myself an unrealistic sense of security... 
​
We finally came into an open area with wide streets many cars and lots of people, and not as as dirty and run down as the area we had just come through. 
​We were still in an older part of the city, but probably in it's day where we are at the moment may have been their idea of an upper middle class neighbourhood.  
​
​Some of the architecture in this area dates back to the sixteenth century.
It was like experiencing five hundred years of history all at once from a single point.  All you had to do was turn your head from side to side and it was all there. 

​Seeing this as a first timer is blowing my mind, I didn't quite know how to wrap my head around it. 
This country is going to be a major culture shock for me.
    
   

A few photos of the area within the old section of the city where we stayed for the night. Eve took a picture of us in a palm grove on a wide boulevard.
​One shot of a alleyway going into  a
residential ghetto, the others are just the busy street life.

   
This Mohammed dude took us to a hotel, The Majestic, for a nights lodging.  
Entering this hotel was just like stepping back into a very early twentieth century black and white movie,  
complete with inlaid mosaic tile floors and walls, to the slow rotating fans suspended from the twelve foot high graying ceilings, and lots of rod iron railings throughout the lobby area.  
It was no five star Hotel, but it was such a totally cool looking place. 

When we registered, the clerk asked for our passports to hold at the desk.  We didn't like that idea at all, remembering one of the things the Montreal guys told us, "don't give up your passport, a person without a passport is a person without a country,"  That just kept going through my mind. 
Then Al, having traveled before, said, "this is just standard policy when dealing with foreigners".  
We needed rooms and this was the only way we were going to get them, so we gave the clerk our passports and hoped for the best.

As we were gathering up our backpacks to go to our rooms we saw a cleaning lady in the hall that began to speak to Al.  She spoke to him in broken French or whatever. 
Al being Italian, and spoke it fluently, and as lots of words and phrases in French, Italian and Spanish in their root are very similar. 
This enabled him to understand that she was telling him that this Mohammed dude was bad news and we should be very suspicious of him.   
Al told Mel what the cleaning lady said, but Mel at the moment was only interested in scoring some hash, and nothing else was going too matter until he got some hash.  

We got to our rooms, ours and Mel and Aileen's were adjoining, Al's was on an upper floor. The rooms were decorated much like you would expect to see in an old European stately manor from the eighteen hundreds, they were very ornate and absolutely beautiful.
    
Mel and Al were going out with Mohammed dude to get some hash;  they weren't going to be gone very long so I decided to stay at the hotel with the girls......

They've been gone for quite awhile, its now dark and we began to worry; but I was more pissed off than worried.  We were hungry and unable to get dinner at the hotel.   We didn't want to go out without Mel and Al, so we waited.  They finally got back after a couple of hours, and we just ripped into them for being gone for so long and causing us to worry so much.

They were really high when they got back, they scored well, so they said.  
Mel pulled a plastic wrapped chunk out of his pocket, it was a bit larger than a golf ball, this was the hash he bought.  
I looked at it, but it sure didn't look like any hash that I'd ever seen before, and I've seen lots.  He paid 200 Dirhams, which was approximately 50 dollars Canadian at that time.  

They wanted to start smoking some of this hash right away. 
As Mel was handling it, it was beginning to crumble, it just didn't look right, but he was convinced this was great hash; they started smoking some in a pipe.  
I took a closer look at this so called hash, and to me it looked like some kind of manure poorly held together with another substance. 
It didn't have the consistency of hash, It didn't look like hash, it didn't feel like hash, it didn't smell like hash.
There was no fucking way Eve and I were going to smoke this shit.  

And to this day I still think it may have been goat or camel shit mixed with some kind of binding agent, maybe henna.
I couldn't help getting a little smirk on my face and shaking my head and thinking;  "what the fuck are you doing Mel"? this ain't no hash, this is shit.
    
So now we're in a foreign country in possession of a substantial size chunk of what is supposed to be illegal drugs, and not wanting to be caught by the cops you need to find a place to stash it.  
For sure you're not going to throw it in your backpack or in your dresser drawer.  

Mel began running around the hallway looking for a place to stash his great deal ball of shit hash that was crumbling all over the floor.  He got it stashed somewhere finally, maybe behind a radiator, I'm not sure.  
When he got back to the room he said he thought they may have been followed back to the hotel and maybe we should all stick together that night.  
I think he may have been having just a little rush of paranoia.  

Al went to his room and brought his pack down to Mel's room so we would all be in two adjoining rooms,  with the adjoining door left open. 
The whole episode was kind of amusing, even though I was still a bit pissed off. 
Easy does it Mel, "paranoia will destroy ya"




I'm not quite sure, but I think we ate early yesterday,  we didn't eat today,  now it's too late and too dark for us to venture out into the streets to get something to eat;  even though we feel we have safety in numbers we ain't going out.  
Were hungry now and we're not going to get a chance to eat until tomorrow....bummer.
   
We saw a small sign on the back of one of the closet doors stating the room rates.  Upon reading it and doing the Dirham to dollar conversion as best we could, we figured they had ripped us off on the price of the rooms;  fucking bastards!.  
Ripped off for the rooms, ripped off for the hash, and we're hungry as hell.  Fuck! man, we've only been in town for a few hours and we're getting totally screwed over. 
This is not good, we gotta get the outta here.  This place is bad karma.  This fucking Mohammed dude is going to play us for everything he can get, we need to fire this motherfucker.
   
We went to bed hungry, stomachs grumbling.  We wanted to be up early.   We slept, got up early, packed our gear, got our passports, checked out and back on the street by 8 am.  

As best as I can recollect, Mel and Al were supposed to hook back up with this Mohammed dude at 9 am, for a hash related reason;  but no one wanted to have anything more to do with this fucking jerk. 
I have a vague recollection of when we started walking down the street away from the hotel this Mohammed dude was across the street waving his arms trying to get our attention. 
I think we responded with a, "fuck you asshole!", and we just kept on truckin' down the street.  

We walked around a few blocks trying to get our bearings, turned a corner and we ended up on one of the main boulevards.  But we still don't know where in the hell we are yet.

We went to a cafe for a coffee and a bun, it wasn't all that good, but we were so hungry we ate it.  
Somewhere along the way Mel came to the realization that what he believed was a great deal was just a rip off, so he ditched the - great deal ball of shit hash. 
Moving on from here is the first smart thing we've done.
    
Eve and I had to go to a travel agency to get our return flight plans verified. 
This was going to take a while so they let us leave our backpacks there and we went walking about to see what's up.  We killed off some time taking in the sites, looking in the shops, just generally soaking up some of the Casablanca atmosphere.

Under different circumstances it would have been great to hang out in Casablanca for a couple of days, but it just wasn't meant to be. 
The Mohammad dude experience kinda turned us off;  so very shortly we're leaving to find better places for fun times. 

Now it's back to the agency for our confirmations and backpacks. The agency people were really nice, they took care of the business end of our return flight and provided us with a pile of printed matter about points of interest around the country. 
Now we needed more money changed so they gave us directions to the Casablanca International Hotel, which was the closest Exchange to the agency. 
    
We got to the hotel but they wouldn't let us in because we had long hair and blue jeans.  This is a hotel that caters to political heads of state, world business leaders, celebrity types etc..,
The staff looked down their noses at us.  To them we were nothing but common rif-raf.  We explained that all we wanted was to change money.  
They finally let us in, but I think only one at a time so we wouldn't stand out. 
After we got our money changed they escorted us out to the street. 
    
We headed out looking for a decent restaurant, we wanted a real meal.  
We found this nice looking little "cafe la petit something or other".  It was decorated as a turn of the century
[twentieth century that is] French bistro.  

​They put us up in the balcony so we had a good overview, or maybe to hide us out of the way of their regular clientele, don't know, didn't care; for me at the moment it was all about a good meal;  that's all I gave a shit about.  
We had steaks and fries.  
I had no idea what the steaks were when they were still alive, but I didn't care.

After dinner we continued on our journey around the streets.  
Casablanca sure is a busy city, lots of automotive and human activity.  Now we're looking for a train station.  
We asked a half dozen locals if they could direct us to a the station; they either couldn't or wouldn't understand; some of them were also down right rude to us.  
Couldn't understand why so many people were being such dicks toward us.  We just said "fuck it" and quit asking and  just went off looking for a station on our own. 

Soon we were close to the waterfront, saw some train tracks, knew we couldn't be too far from a station. 
​We've been walking for quite awhile now and needed a cool break, its turned into a hot day. 
    
We came across a place that had an American flag on the front of the building.  Mel went in to see what's up.  He came back in a couple of minutes and said he found some friendlies.  I turned out to be an American merchant marine club, and we were all invited in. 

​Inside we met a couple of American seamen, John and George, {no Paul or Ringo} very nice guys.  They bought our beers, shared their air conditioning, which we really appreciated, and we a shot a few games of pool.  
This club was a really nice place, very nicely decorated, it had a beautiful courtyard garden in the back, a couple of game rooms, there was also sleeping quarters for several seamen. 
It also had a concession bar where you could buy lots of small personal items.  
Mel and I each bought a camel leather hat that cost us 10Dhm each, which was about $2.50 Canadian, what a bargain eh.

We hung out at the club for a couple of hours, met a few more seamen, all quite friendly;  which felt good after the shit we had been through in the last 24 hours.  
A couple of the guys got us high, and I'm pretty sure one of them even gave us a small chunk for the road.  
Now it's time to go. 
They told us the station was just a couple of blocks down the street.  We thanked them for all of their hospitality and the welcoming vibe, then said goodbye to all the seamen.  

I had said something to them earlier about them being sailors, and one of the guys stated, "we are merchant seamen, not sailors.  Sailors are in the navy, we are not.  So, seamen it is. Well goodbye seaman; we all got a good laugh out of that. 
     
We left the club and headed to the station and got our tickets. 
​After that we had a bit of time to kill so we went for a little walk.  We ended up on a really nice side street; it was absolutely beautiful. 
There were huge palm trees everywhere, very nice looking old buildings constructed of adobe brick and stone, all in great condition, this was a wealthy neighbourhood. 
​We hung out on this boulevard for a little while, took a couple of photos, probably smoked some of the chunk.  On the way back to the station we bought some bread and oranges for the trip to Marrakesh.......... 

          Just one of Casablanca's train station boarding                    platforms

           Wow, we're on the Marrakesh Express
         ...all aboard the train....                      

​

​If you've never seen the movie "Casablanca" take the time to watch it.  
Even though most of the interior shots were made in a studio, most of the street scenes and architecture we're seeing right here right now is just like it was in the movie.




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