The Arrival:  Casablanca

We're cruising at about 20,000 feet, the sky was very clear with only a few spotty clouds about.  We could see many cities and towns that dotted the brownish landscape. 
We could also see a bit of the mountains to the east and south east. 

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 began to descend, and the size of Casablanca was coming into our view.  This is one big ass city man.   From our approach altitude and looking out the windows on both sides of the plane, all you could see was the city.  Toronto is big, but Casablanca is bigger, much bigger. 

Factoid - In 1975 it was estimated that Casablanca had a population of close to three million, and with so few high rise buildings the city was spread over a vast area.
​In the oldest parts of the city everything is densely packed together, like sardines in a can; which included people as well as buildings.
    

                                                            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 5 or 6 hour time shift.  We were also getting hungry and needed to find a place to eat 

​We went to baggage claim to get our backpacks which had been completely pulled apart, then they just randomly stuffed the contents 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 sure wasn't pleased about that... 

Us guys went to the Exchange to transfer some traveler 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 finished our business 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 many locals who will take complete advantage of unsuspecting tourists.  They said if we wanted to hang with them they would take us to their hotel where we wouldn't get ripped off; that sounded like a good idea. 

​At this point, a Moroccan guy named 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 the warning the Montreal guys had just told us about 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.
I'm not liking that Mel has completely disregarded the advice just given to us.  But I know he's going to do what he feels compelled to do; and he won't be stopped until he completes his task. 
​He's now very much in the leadership position, so it looks like we'll be going  with Mel's flow for the time being; but I'm not getting a good feel in my gut about it.

                   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 for Mel to get off also.  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; what the fuck.  Now the light was about to change to green, so we all got off the bus.  
I was not happy about this, not one fucking bit;  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.  And now one of us has walked willingly and blindly right into that exact scenario, with the rest of us in tow;  I never felt more like a fucking sheep in my entire life then I did at that moment.
At that moment my thought was, "we're going to be this guys next fucking score";  and as it would turn out, I wasn't wrong.

Now this is not a criticism of Mel, it's just an observation.
For as long as I’ve known Mel he has for the most part been a person quite willing to jump right into something with both feet, rather than test the water temperature first.
Mel has a very strong alpha personality, very head strong when his focus was centered on a specific thought or idea, and the thought at this very moment was to score some hash, that's what mattered the most, priority #1;  everything else was secondary at best; even our own safety it would appear. 
    
We're now following the Mohammed dude 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.

Of course 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 maneuver, and for sure not the first time he used it either;  maybe I was just being overly dramatic... but no; I really don't think so; this guy is out to fuck us too the max.

​We're now going through what he called a Medina, basically it's just a marketplace, just one of many throughout the city.  This one is very big, dirty, quite slummy and teeming with so many people.
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 I knew, we could be walking straight toward our doom.

Along the way we walked through many narrow and dimly lit alleyways, where in places there would be small groups of men wearing their hooded djellabas lurking about, and seemingly watching our every move as we passed through the area;  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 back 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 four 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.

   
The Mohammed dude took us to the Majestic Hotel 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 wrought 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 several times 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, a cleaning lady in the hall began to speak to Al. 
She spoke to him in broken French or whatever. 
Al being Italian, and spoke it fluently, and because many words and phrases in French, Italian and Spanish in their root are very similar, that he was able to understand most of what she was saying.
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 to 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 stately European manor from the eighteen hundreds, they were very ornate and absolutely beautiful.
    
Mel and Al were going out with the Mohammed dude to get some hash.  They weren't going to be gone for very long, but the girls didn't want to stay by themselves so I decided to stay at the hotel with the them; and I sure as hell didn't  want to go anywhere with this fucking Mohammed asshole anyway.

They've been gone for quite awhile, its 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 were too nervous 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.

They were really high when they got back, they said they scored well.  
Mel pulled a plastic wrapped chunk out of his pocket that 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 to me, but he was convinced this was great hash.  So out came the pipe and they started smoking.  

I took a closer look at this so called hash, to me it looked like some kind of manure, but it didn't smell like manure, and was poorly held together with another substance. 
It didn't have the look or the feel, and it didn't smell like hash either.
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, donkey 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; and you guys want to smoke this fucking crap, go ahead, knock yourselves out.
    
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 no one is going to throw it in their backpack or in their 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, maybe behind a radiator, I'm not sure and I didn't care.  
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 tonight.  
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.
But now with all of us together in adjoining rooms, one of us is going to feel a bit more safe and secure. 
So 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, we figured they had ripped us off on the price of the rooms;  motherfuckers.  
Ripped off for the rooms, ripped off for the hash, the fucking assholes; we've only been in town for a few hours and we're getting totally screwed over.  
This is not good man, as soon as we can we need get the fuck outta here.  This place is bad karma.  This fucking Mohammed dude is going to play us for everything he can get, we need to dump this motherfucker.

He fucked us twice but he ain't gonna get a chance to fuck us a third time. The bad feel I had in my gut about this guy was right on the money.
It's not very hard to tell by my choice of words and angry tone just how totally pissed off I was about the our current situation.  Sorry about that, but this is what the 'extreme language alert' warning was all about

We went to bed hungry, stomachs grumbling. We'll fix that first thing in the morning.  
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 the Mohammed dude at 9 am for another  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, the Mohammed dude was across the street waving his arms trying to get our attention. 
I'm pretty sure 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 very good but we were so hungry we ate it anyhow.  
Somewhere along the way Mel came to the realization that what he thought was a great deal was just a rip off, so he ditched the - great deal ball of shit hash.
I don't remember if we ever spoke of the matter again; I'm pretty sure I would have remembered if we had. 
Anyhow, moving on from here is certainly 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.

I was looking around hoping to see Humphrey Bogart; but nope, he wasn't to be found

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 has completely 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 an assortment 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 riff-raff.  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 off the hotel steps and 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 where 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 fried potatoes and steaks, and they were large portions. 
I had no idea what the steaks were when they were still alive, but I didn't care.
It just felt good to have a substantial meal, it had been awhile since our last one.
So now with a good meal in our bellies 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 about a dozen locals if they could direct us to a the station; they either couldn't or wouldn't understand what we were asking, some of them were also down right rude to us.  
We 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.  It 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 is very cool and nicely decorated, it had a beautiful courtyard vegetable garden in the back, a couple of game rooms, a lounge  a kitchen, and  large 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 think one of them may have given us a small chunk for the road.  
But now it's time for us to go.  One of the guys mentioned earlier the station was just a couple of blocks down the street; so now we're off.  
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; it's been good to know ya";
​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 rather upscale 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...but not the colorized version.  
Even though most of the interior scenes were shot 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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