Day of Days

Landing on the African Continent brought excitement as well as a good bit of anxiety as I did not know exactly what to expect. Whereas South America was somewhat familiar territory (as a result of time previously spent in Brazil and Costa Rica) the African continent is completely unknown to me, from a first person perspective. On top of that, arriving in Casablanca I have been robbed of my ability to freely communicate as Arabic is a complete mystery, and though I can understand much of it, my beginner's French is basic to say the least. As such my day of arrival (yesterday)was a milestone among the many personal milestones of the past several months.

If you were to take a walk through my thoughts and experiences of Day 1 in Morocco (Casablanca and Marrakech), the first revelation would be the smell. It is as if, stepping off of the plane in Casablanca, I had just rid myself of some nasal congestion; I found myself suddenly bombarded by smells; good, bad and...interesting.

Receiving information from a credible source that there was not a great deal to see in Casablanca, hours after arriving by plane, I was on a train to Marrakech, 3 hours southeast of Morocco's famous city. Entering the train, I was immediately thrust into cultural immersion as I crammed myself into a small cabin with 7 (8 if you include the baby) other people. In between bouts of narcoleptic dozing (in which I was caught, on several occasions, drooling on myself) I took notice of the changing scenary; lush, rolling hills giving way to arid flatlands, which in turn would give way to tilled farmland. From time to time a mosque would reveal itself, far and away the most prominent and ornate structure in the vicinity; more frequently, collections of shacks and mini-stanty villages would seemingly spring out of nowhere, the small clusters looking more rundown than a lot of what I had seen in Brazil.

A line is forming behind me, here at the hostel's lone computer.

To be continued...