Retro-blogging Morocco Part 1: A Bumpy Start

From Thursday, February 25, 2010


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CAIRO AIRPORT, around 7PM local time. It's raining in Cairo -- lightly at the moment, but enough throughout the day to give the runways a slick, unsettling sheen. For today, I'm only here to change flights between Doha and Casablanca. Once in Morocco, I don't really know where I'll end up. Our plane just took off, so the wet runways aren't such a problem anymore, but instead it's the streaks of lighting flashing across the sky. They're in view outside the window, crackling just beyond the wingtip.

Normally I love flying.


CASABLANCA, past midnight local time. Morocco is three hours behind Qatar. The Moroccan dirham (MAD) trades at roughly 8 dirham to tfhe US dollar, or $12 for every 100 dirham. I'm staying in a 90 dirham room, somewhere in the middle of -- well, I'll find out the neighborhood tomorrow.

Without success, I did try to plan out one thing for this trip ahead of time -- the hotel or hostel where I'd stay for the first night. Yesterday morning, I thought it could be a good idea to make an advance booking, so I googled the cheapest hostel I could find and dialed them up:

"Yes, hello," said a gruff voice on the other end.

"Hi, is this the Casablanca Youth Hostel?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a bed for tomorrow night?"

"Yes."

"Could I make a reservation for tomorrow night, then?"

"Yes. We will have a bed for you." He hung up.

I landed in Casablanca around 11PM today -- too late to catch a train from the airport, so the only other alternative was a taxi from the airport.

There are two types of taxis in Morocco: grand taxis and petit taxis, generally used to cover inter-city and intra-city distances, respectively. The former was the only type parked outside the terminal. The cars are old boxy Mercedes that cost 300 dirham a car from the airport, shared amongst whoever is riding. Not able to find anyone at this hour going to the same part of town as me, I sucked it up and paid for a whole car.

As we pulled away from the airport, I gave the driver the phone number of the place where I was staying. He called them up, and some unexpected arguing in Arabic ensued. He then handed the phone off to me:

"Do you have a reservation?" said the man in the phone.

"Yes, I called yesterday."

"That was over the phone ... did you make a reservation over internet?"

"I called, asked to make a reservation, and you said you'd have a bed for me."

"Yes, but that doesn't count! There is a group here tonight, and no beds left!" Hung up again.

For a minute, I sat there in the taxi, which was by then zooming down a highway into the city, wondering if I'd end up finding a place tonight. Having heard everything, the driver he said he could drop me off in town, and then a petit taxi could take me around until I found a hotel -- he knew of a few places, but not their rates. More taxi fare! Talk about an expensive ride from the airport. There wasn't much I could do at this point, though.

The driver flagged down the first petit taxi he saw and told the new driver my dilemma. I unloaded my backpack from one backseat and tossed it into the next, and we were off again. Let me say now that Casablanca looks super seedy at night -- the tiny red car that I was now riding in turned off the main road and into a grungy, poorly-lit section of town, each turn taking me onto a road literally shadier than the last.

The first hotel we stopped at was 450 dirham a night -- next. The second, no vacancies. After 10 minutes of trying hotels that were like these -- either out of my budget or completely booked -- we finally found the "Hotel Touring," where I am now. The room was a little musty but good enough, so I paid the driver for putting up with me and he sped off. The man working the hotel desk was friendly and helpful -- he also hoped I could translate a Japanese entry in his guestbook for him, and was a little disappointed when he found out I couldn't. Anyway, I was exhausted by then, so I said good night and went up to my room, where I'm about to crash.

Bumpy start today, but inshallah this week is going to be an adventure.