A First Timers’ Trip To Morocco

In a new article on GoNOMAD, writer Gabriel Forsyth describes a visit to Morocco for the first time, and the lessons he learned while he was there. Forsyth discusses the Do’s and Don’ts of traveling in the north African country. Here’s a selection.

My plane was the last one in for the night. The airport was practically empty save a few airport employees here and there. I walked around looking for my friends who had arrived a few days earlier and were supposed to be meeting me at the airport.

It was just past midnight and I was beginning to get worried. I didn’t know any French or Arabic and I had never been to Morocco before. I walked around the airport looking to see if maybe my friends had gone to the wrong terminal.

Luckily Casablanca’s airport is relatively small reassuring me that if I walked around for a bit, I wouldn’t miss my friends. Right as my internal tension about this new place was reaching its peak, my friends walked through the terminal’s glass doors.

“Come on” they said, “We’ve got to get on this bus going into the city, there will not be another one until tomorrow morning.” We hurried out the door and boarded the bus.

Once we arrived in Casablanca, we immediately jumped on another bus heading for Marrakech where the rest of our friends were waiting for us. As we were making our way out of the city, the bus driver and his assistant started yelling back and forth.

We had no clue what was going on at first. Then all of a sudden the bus driver stopped the bus on the side of the road. The bus driver’s assistant began checking everyone’s tickets. We soon picked up on the idea that we were carrying one too many passengers.

When one man couldn’t come up with proof that he belonged in a seat, he was quickly escorted off the bus to be left on the side of the road. I was genuinely relieved I had held on to my ticket.

There’s clearly a lot to keep in mind when traveling to Morocco. Read the rest of the article on GoNOMAD.com