Change of plans...

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We landed in Marrakech at about 8am. We made our way through the small airport over to the car rental agencies. There was no one at the counter but we were finally able to find someone to help us after just a few minutes. They had us fill out a bunch of paperwork, and said our reservation was all set except for a deposit that we owed them. He said it was 1,000 Dirham. We were trying to ask the guy if we would get the money back when we returned the car and that’s when it all went downhill...
Suddenly the story began to change. Our reservation was now mysteriously cancelled. But he had the money still and could get us a car. Then they had our reservation but no payment and we needed to pay again. Then they changed the deposit amount from 1,000 to 10,000, and we still were not sure if they would refund the money at the end... Basically we had paid $500 and they wanted another $2,000 from us. We obviously could not afford that. While we were arguing this out with them one of our 3 car rental guys went across to another car rental agency and started pulling another guy over to our booth. I have no idea what the conversation was about because it was carried out in Arabic but next thing we know people are screaming and shoving each other. Fists were being thrown and blood was splattering the floor! Our car rental guy was in an all out fist fight with the neighboring car rental guys! The airport Security didn’t come over, but more car rental workers did began to arrive and tried pulling people apart. It was chaos in true Arabic world style(which really cannot be properly explained till you have spent a good chunk of time in their world). After the fight had subdued a guy on a machine came over and cleaned the blood off the floor. Not till that was done did security come over to see what happened. While they were trying to explain what went on (in Arabic) they started fighting again, the security guy didn’t even do anything about it when they started back up!
As the fighting commenced again Alex and I walked away. We got online and looked for when the next cheapest flight to London was. We were obviously not going to be able to afford to rent a car and therefore we were not going to be able to see Morocco how we wanted to see it. We didn't want to spend 9 days in just Marrakesh and so we decided we would head back to London early.
We found a cheap flight leaving the next night. That worked just fine for us. It was still early in the day. We could wonder around and see things for the rest of the day and all of the next before flying out in the evening. We picked out a small bed and breakfast type place and headed out. We were driven through the city and dropped off at our little place for the night. It was quite far out of the center of town but was a beautiful little place. We were surrounded by open fields and orange groves, the sun was shining and there were beautiful flowers in bloom all over.
We walked around the gardens and had a fresh picked orange. Then we had lunch which was a traditional Moroccan meal with chicken and curry spices it was super yummy. Once the sun went down the temperature really dropped. Alex and I climbed into bed for an early night and to warm up! We got up early the next day and packed our bags quickly. We took a bus into town and wondered around for the rest of the day. When it was time to head back we realized that we did not know where to catch our bus at... After walking back and forth in the same area and having a hard time finding anyone who spoke English we picked a spot and hoped the one we needed would show up. And it did! After an hour we saw our bus coming, we stuck our hands out to flag it down like you do in England and it drove on right past us. It stopped just a little way up the street. We ran as fast as we could across a busy intersection trying not to get run over! We made it 😊 Thankfully(sort of) there was a fight on the bus and therefore a line waiting for it to subside so they could get on! We would not have gotten to the bus in time had there not been a fight on board. We also ended up getting off the bus a little too soon, but walked in the general direction of where we needed to go and were lucky to find the little bed and breakfast we had stayed at. The French lady who owned the place drove us to the bus stop to get back to the airport. The flight seemed to drag on forever even though it was only 3 hours.
Once again boarder control into London questioned me for a while but the guy was nice about it. We landed at midnight. The taxi stand wanted to charge us 100 Pounds to get back to Alex's Grandma's house. We walked over to where the bus schedule was... The next bus/train that we could take was not for 2 hours... A guy walked over and asked us if we were looking for a car. He offered to take us for 80 Pounds. We decided to do it. We were too tired to wait around for 2 hours and it would not have saved us that much money to do so. After getting to Alex's grandma's house and scarring "the wits" out of her, the 3 of us sat up till 3am talking and having tea.

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Comments

[Colin]

As always, I truly enjoy your postings and updates.