On January 12th, I caught the first metro to the Dubai airport and quickly passed through immigration, and boarded my early Emirates flight to Casablanca. It was a quick passage through Moroccan Immigration. I loaded up with 2000 Dirham at the nearest ATM and then found my way to the train downtown.
It was a 45-minute ride to the Casa Port train terminal and then a 20-minute walk through the nearby Medina to the Central Hotel where I would stay for two days. It was about 50-degrees both outside and inside the hotel. The only heat in the hotel came from a portable heater in my room. I took in the view on the rooftop as I warmed up in the sun along with two Australians who had come in search of Moroccan surf.
I wandered through the Medina until I came to the largest mosque in Morocco that was along the sea and the only one in Morocco open to the public.
On the way back I had lunch at Rick’s Cafe, made famous by the “Casablanca” movie. They even ran a loop of the movie in the upstairs bar area.
I then made my way back to the hotel and saw a wedding party while I was getting a fresh-squeezed orange juice from a street vendor.
After two cold nights at the Central Hotel, I moved on to the Hotel Guynemer near Marche Central. Again the lobby and hallways of the hotel were unheated. The rooms had been stylishly remodeled and the heater worked to cut the chill.
I had gotten a cold so I picked up some decongestants at the local pharmacy and hunkered down to recover.
I made it out to the Marche Central for a seafood lunch of sole and calamari and toured the market before returning to the hotel.
On the 16th I took the sleek metro from the UN Plaza to the metro stop by the Intrepid tour hotel, Al Wahid which was in a much better part of town next to the Casa Voyageur Train Station.
Shortly after checking in, I met the Morocco Intrepid Tour group. Our leader is Khalad, and we have 8 tourists in our group. Two are from the UK—LeAnn and Andrea, and the other five are Australians. My roommate for the journey is Liam from Western Australia. The others include a couple—Cian and Max, Cian’s sister, Keely, who currently lives in Scotland, and Jessica.
Me, Cian, Jessica, Liam, Andrea, Keely, Leann, and Max
After a brief orientation, we went out for dinner at a nearby restaurant where we enjoyed a mix of Moroccan food and the universal pizza. I have recently uploaded all of my travel videos to YouTube now that they allow longer uploads and you may want to see my travel adventures there. That link is
https://www.youtube.com/c/huntforgold.
If you do go there, please subscribe to my video channel since it will help me eventually get some income there and help with my future travels. Fewer people are using DVDs so I am transitioning to streaming my travels on my YouTube channel.
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