Rabat

 After another terrible night of sleep we dragged ourselves out of bed about 6:30 to start our day.

After breakfast we headed out to an ATM to get money from my EQ Mastercard, only to be informed I had reached a daily amount limit already and couldn’t get anything (must be on a revolving 24 hour cycle- not a calendar day). While at the ATM I tried both the ATB credit card and ATB debit card-but got nothing! (At least this time my ATB debit card on-line showed  a reversal of the withdrawal, unlike yesterday)

At 9 AM Rashid showed up for our trip to Rabat, at which point he informed us that the fellow in the car was not his father (like he told us yesterday it would be) but a friend of his father’s, and not only that, he, Rashid was not coming with us like he stated he would be. That threw me off a lot (feeling VERY uncomfortable about the situation) and we had to make a quick decision if it was safe to go or not. We decided to go for it!

The hour long drive went smoothly and we got to Morocco’s capital city Rabat shortly after 10 AM. Abdul took us first to an archeological site within the city called Sala. It was extremely beautiful!

We spent a bit of time in there before heading back out to Abdul and his car. 

He took us through the city, which is amazing; so green and clean. Of course the king lives there and it is the capital so it is well kept up.

As I look back at the photos on my cell I realize that I never took that many. We stopped at a couple of spots including one overlooking the river joining the sea. There were lots of people on the beaches, lots of boats on the river and it really was nice.

As I write this it is 5 PM and I can hear the “call to prayer” from the nearby mosque. It happens five times a day however it doesn’t bother me, in fact Caro wants to see a mosque and people arriving for prayer at some point on the trip. Interestingly as we were driving earlier in the day Abdul’s phone (which “chirped”every time there was a speed camera or a police stop and otherwise was silent), suddenly started blaring out a call to prayer. I saw Abdul make a few motions with his hands as he drove us. Interesting!

One other observation we have made is seeing the large number of cats on the streets and virtually no dogs. Very different from other places we have been.

We decided not to get a tour of the Royal Palace and with that we were finished with the city sites. Because we had plenty of time to get back, Abdul drove us via the coastal highway which has a 60 km/hr speed limit but allowed us to see many kilometres of the wild coast line (with occasional beaches). There were beautiful house on the way, especially on the Rabat side (rich politicians I guess). Closer to  Casablanca there were many apartment buildings and honestly the construction going on in the area was significant.

Incidentally even though Rashid had told us that Abdul spoke English we reverted to using Google Translate into Arabic so we could communicate efficiently. We have certainly found this app to be important as we travel around to various countries.

Upon return to “home” we headed down the street to a money exchange hole in the wall where we exchanged all our Canadian dollars for Dirham ($135 Canadian).

Tonight we met up with our group for orientation and information.There are 11 of us in total and 7 were at the meeting. Afterward we walked quite a bit a ways to a nice restaurant and started talking to our fellow travellers.,

After the meal I was able to get some money off my EQ credit card  YES!!!!