So that’s that! After a cold night in not very comfortable conditions, this morning it was time to analyze the situation and see if we could figure out a solution. I had looked at some better lodging options in Essaouira, and found some available places. But I really was ‘done’ with Essaouira and ready to move on. Dave had booked a pretty nice place back in Casablanca for the days after Naomi and I would be on our way home. And a nice(r) place in Casablanca sounded like a good option to me. So instead of taking a 6-hour bus ride to Casablanca on our second-LAST day in Morocco, why not leave Essaouira TODAY, and have 3 nights and 3 days to ENJOY Casablanca before we head home!

I looked at some options on the Airbnb app — and Dave showed me which area of the city he had booked. Dave managed to add 3 nights to the beginning of his original booking. I found a couple of options in the same neighbourhood and quickly booked the next 3 nights in one of them. When the bookings were done, the four of us went out for a walk. We needed to book our bus tickets to Casablanca, and Dave was quite sure there was a good breakfast place right close to the CTM bus ticket office. And Dave was right. So while the women got a table at the restaurant, Dave and I went next door and bought bus tickets, leaving for Casablanca at 11:45am. And then we joined the women for a VERY delicious breakfast.

We so enjoyed our breakfast that before we knew it, it was 10:30. We had better hurry back to our apartment and back our bags and get back here to the bus station! Which we did.

Although the bus we rode was the same company, the same ‘quality’, the same kind of bus we’d been on yesterday, it turned out that there was VERY LITTLE in common between the two journeys. Today’s ride was just over 6 hours. A couple of SHORT stops along the way (we never got out of our seats at any of the stops today). The bus was not even half full, and the passengers sat quietly in their seats. The driver drove the bus SAFELY, never taking chances to overtake vehicles when the road ahead wasn’t visibly clear. Today’s ride was enjoyable. And the scenery was most interesting:

We got into Casablanca and I was following the route the bus was going on Google Maps. The bus made a stop at a CTM ticket office and many of the people on the bus got off there rather than at the big bus depot about 10 minutes ahead. I looked at the map and saw that if we got off at this point we’d be virtually the same distance from our apartment as if we’d go all the way to the bus depot. So we hurriedly grabbed our bags and got off the bus. We were getting ready to walk to our place, or hail a taxi to take us, when a kind young man who worked at this bus station asked us where we were from and where we wanted to go. In no time he’d asked a ‘friend of his’ to drive his car to our side of the road so we could load our baggage into the car and he would take us to our apartment! Which we did, and which the driver did. So that was pretty slick. Saved us the extra time to get to the end of the ride plus hailing a taxi to take us a few miles BACK.

We checked in with the security at the entrance, filled in our names and passport numbers on his forms, and off we went to our respective apartments. We got in and were quite happy with our room. I took a quick shower and then we went to knock on the Driedgers door. From there the four of us walked the short 5-minute walk to a nearby Thai restaurant. Excellent! Very nice food and a lovely place. It had been a long time since we’d had breakfast, our last meal, and so a shower, change of clothes, and a plate of delicious food went a long way to make us feel so much better than how we’d felt last night or even this morning.