We check out of our Riad at 7am and get on the road to Casablanca. Dominick and Said are chatting away about a constant stream of random topics, Brahim is focused on driving and I am just wishing he would turn the car around and drive back to the desert!
We stop at a service station before the airport and sit out in the warm morning sun drinking coffee. Before we get under way again we take a final round of photos with the trusty Land Cruiser that has served us so well on this trip.
This is Said (on the left) and Brahim. What a great pair of guys, we couldn't have wished for better traveling companions on this wonderful trip.
Said was the perfect guide for Dominick, talk about like minds! They both have a fascination for history and Said's English skills were quite remarkable. His endless patience with our often totally opposing requests (Dominick more historical sites, me more nature oriented!) was pretty amazing too! Dominick is a great one for the minutiae and Said was more than happy to accommodate his endless questions about which dynasty came from where and in what order and every other totally random question too!
And Brahim, what a wonderful person. Very quiet and a little shy, one of life's gentle souls but as we gradually got to know him we discovered a whole other person. His line of 'I am just a driver' proved to be very wide of the mark and an early indicator of his great sense of humour. He didn't have the same formal education as Said but his language skills and his ability to absorb knowledge was fabulous. If there was ever an occasion on the trip when things didn't go quite as planned and tempers got a little frayed he was always the one who stepped up and sorted things out and soothed the situation. By the end of the trip he had every single bird we had seen written down in English and Arabic, he had mastered the use of my binoculars and he was even getting enough confidence to start pointing birds out to me.
Photos done, we got on the road again to the airport. We checked in and sat and had a final cup of coffee together before saying our fond farewells and boarding our flight for London and then on again to the US.
Goodbye Morocco. I WILL be back!
Photo Credits - CJT, DominickV, Said & Brahim
