Blogs from Morocco, Africa - page 194

My trip began on January 25th, 2008, a month after finishing college in upstate New York. I had, through several unfortunate and uncontrollable occurrences, failed to apply in time for the job I had been coveting and so decided to take the opportunity to travel for as long as I possibly could. The goal is to travel for a year, using up most of my savings, then return in time to apply for the JET program once again in November of 2008. I am accompanied by a Japanese friend named Yohei who I met in college, and weighed down with only a sparsely filled backpack (though quickly filled.) Thus begins my tale. My flight arrived in Casablanca after a day of waiting in the airport in Frankfurt (a 12 hour layover,) mostly spent sleeping on benches. ... read more

Pictures for this blog are found at http://picasaweb.google.com/Gyrkin/DublinToDakar/ for the moment, as I am on a by-the-minute internet connect, but wanted to catch y'all up a bit. I conceded to the prodding by a few good friends to not take the overland path, after the Paris-Dakar rally was canceled, for the first time ever, out of fear of terrorist threat. Instead, I gave Royal Air Maroc an obscene amount, about $550 all told, to go from Casablanca to Dakar instead. This required going from Agadir (you've seen one Moroccan tourist town, you've seen them all) to Casablanca by bus. Total fare? $28 or less, all told, in a comfortable bus, with a lunch break. Pictures are amongst those in the above link, and the Atlas mountains are stunning. THere in Casablanca I met Milkshake and Danny, ... read more

Geo: 31.6392, -8.00477Saturday was uneventful. We had to be up early to head to the airport. I wanted to take all the toys we had and give them to the children as we left but they were all sleeping. To much partying the night before. There was some heightened security around the airport. Apparently the King was flying out that day. We didn't have any problems at the airport. You just have to fill out another departure card before going through passport control. No worries. In the end, I am so happy we got the opportunity to visit this place. And I think Steve, Beth and Jim agree. Although very intimidating initially the Moroccan people are some of the nicest people I have ever met. Always welcoming you and joking with you. They are very friendly ... read more

After a few days of "taking care of business" in Casablanca, we were looking forward to heading south along what we anticipated would be the really scenic portion of Morocco's Atlantic coastline. The only big cities we expected to encounter along the way were Safi and Agadir, although we weren't sure just how far we would go past Agadir; the desert outposts along the coast seemed to diminish in appeal the farther south we looked on the map. Our first day's ride out of Casablanca to Azemmour started out less than auspiciously: besides getting a late start, we got thoroughly lost, since it wasn't as easy as we thought to "just take the coast road south" out of a vast sprawling city of 3 million people. While we somewhat enjoyed cruising through Casablanca's very affluent southern ... read more

Geo: 31.6392, -8.00477So we are off to Africa. I can't believe we are going. Steve checked a book out from the library so we could do some research. Based on the book I had imagined that Marrakech would be like Tijuana, Mexico. A poor place with a lot of haggling and begging. So I hoped I had the mindset to venture into this incredibly foreign place. We had to wake at an ungodly hour to head to the airport. We were flying Easyjet out of Gatwick. Easy enough. Gatwick is the closest airport besides Kent which flies limited passenger flights. Our flight departed at 7:30am so we needed to be there about 6ish. We picked Beth up in Canterbury along the way so we were all very groggy. The bonus if there could be one..... no ... read more