Yussaf a nice young man, picked us up at our hotel “Opera Plaza” around noon, singing after getting all our luggage into the vehicle, “Let’s hit the road Jack” to one near the airport in Casablanca. Crazy traffic. I heard it all night…that and sirens. Lots of ladies on smallish motorcycles. Economic capital is Casablanca but Marrakech is tourism capital (it’s beautiful) with about 1 million people.

Lots of check points. When asked what their checking for, Yussaf said beside licence, if your caught (as a Moroccan ) with your girlfriend you can be fined but if you are caught in hotel you can be thrown in jail for 3 months. But… if they are going to fine you $700 and you give the policeman $200, he will go away.

Yussaf rents his own 1 bedroom apartment….for about $150 US/ month but that does not include any appliances.

We arrive in Casablanca about 2.5 hours later passing through what could be anywhere in the prairies. The parts that had not been planted looked like nothing would grow in “that” soil but it must be fertile…. it just takes water.

We could not believe how unbelievably slow they were at the hotel (it was really quite nice) trying to check us in even though a reservation was made that they couldn’t find ….. well over an hour. Later we sat outside on the terrace, had some “good” wine and shared a pizza and off to bed cuz it was an alarm at 4:30 am (actually it was 9:30 pm the night before in Victoria).

OMG…. Paris’ CDG airport is a nightmare for having to change planes, especially if you use 2 different carriers. Note to self:-make sure that I use same carrier so that luggage can be checked right through. If we hadn’t asked for assistance, we would have surely missed our flight….. wheelchairs, back door entrances, around 8 elevators, buses, shuttle, queue jumping lines….. you would not have believed it. It took probably 2+ hours.

We returned home after close to 24 hours…… in one piece along with all our luggage. It is so, so nice to be home.

I will be checking to see what pictures (from East Africa….Kenya, Uganda & Rwanda) I was unable to post because of sketchy wifi. Stay tuned.