Saturday, October 4, 2014

10/3 -- Back to the USA

Our group at the Koutoubia Minaret. From left front:
Mary, Joel, Joan, Sheryl, me, Nancy, Dave. Back row:
Pam, Mike, Velma, Driss, Jim, Michelle

We got up early today to catch our early morning plane to Casablanca with a planned layover of 5.5 hours til our flight to JFK.  Actually, the layover was not ALL bad since the plane from Marrakech was about 45 minutes late and the time to go through security screening and customs was a bit longer than anticipated. In fact, dozens of people jumped the line, concerned about making a flight leaving in 45 minutes, and I could understand their concern.

Security is interesting here. I guess you are just supposed to know that the men go to the right hand line and women to the left. There are no signs and we discovered this at the last minute. Fortunately, other women in our group had started in the correct line by accident, so the men and women in the wrong lines joined their compatriots who had selected well. It turns out there is a reason for this. The screening is done by hand and is quite explicit. I have had my breasts validated on occasion in the past, but this time my crotch was checked twice. Jim had a similar experience on his side. What amazed me was that this occurred without any screening such as we had seen in the other countries that screened personally and by gender. We got to do it a second time as we were boarding our plane for JFK, where our hand baggage was opened and inspected and our bodies were verified again, this time in a screened off area. This time, only the women had this privilege.

Another couple on our trip, Joan and Joel, had an earlier flight out of Casablanca and left last night because their planned connection was less than an hour, which seemed too close. We actually saw them in line waiting to get on the plane, but only because their connecting flight was delayed too. I think if they had waited to leave with us, they might have worried a lot even though it would have worked out okay.

There is not much to do at the airport and money is kind of a problem. All the prices are listed in euros (which we had none of), which can be translated to dirhams (which we also had none of because dirhams are not supposed to leave the country so we had spent all of ours). When we got hungry, we doubted that we could spend enough to justify a credit card charge, so I found some fellow travelers with spare dirhams which I paid back in US $. Win - win: we got to eat, they got rid of dirhams. Too bad we weren't hungrier, because we only 'ate' about a quarter the value of the dirhams available.

While we were on the flight, we ate the last of the oranges and apples we had picked up along the way, and once again I was amazed at how flavorful and juicy the oranges were. Apparently, Morocco is still growing them for flavor and not for shelf life and transportability. 

The flight was uneventful and we got to JFK early, but taxied forever, erasing our time advantage. Immigration and Customs has implemented a kiosk system like the airport kiosk check-ins, which seems to be speeding the process of entering the country. We even got to Dan's house by 8pm despite fighting rush hour traffic. It feels good to be back in the states!

Morocco was very interesting -- we met more local people than we normally do and found them uniformly to be lovely and helpful. Most of the vendors were pretty restrained compared to places like Egypt and China. The country still has a lot of conservative views and dress by the women, but the attitude toward alcohol and the freedoms that women are gaining are quite different from some of the other Muslim countries we have seen. I did find it interesting that here non-Muslims are generally not allowed into mosques, while we were constantly being shown into them in Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan, which tended to be more conservative overall. The food was really good, though I think we both got kind of sick of the round bread loaves and the constant supply of olives, even at breakfast. I think I'll have to pick up a Moroccan cookbook!

No comments:

Post a Comment