casablanca and points beyond...

Starting this entry at 9:30pm ship time (6 hours ahead of Central time, 7 hours ahead of Mountain time, 8 hours ahead of Pacific), our position is:

Latitude: 27 degrees, 52.77 N

Longitude: 13 degrees 51.13 W

Course: 218 degrees

We passed the Canary Islands a couple of hours ago and got these photos. It was spectacular!

Our stay in Casablanca was very memorable. Many on the ship took trips to other places, including Marrakech, Berber villages in the High Atlas Mountains, Ourika Valley and Rabat, and hearing their stories when they returned was lots of fun. Since we had arrived a day late, our city orientation tour was moved to Wednesday, and many of those who had planned to participate had conflicts with overnight trips. Nonetheless, we went on a bus with a group of 24 and had a wonderful guide, a Muslim woman named Naima.

Naima explained there were four quarters in the city and proceeded to show us all of them. We drove around the French quarter first, where one can easily see in the buildings the influence of the days of French colonization. The administration quarter contains a beautiful city hall building that has tiles in the colors of Islam and beautiful stucco carving. The royal quarter has a palace for the use of current King Mohammed VI and his family when they are in Casablanca (the main palace is in nearby Rabat). And the old city is just that -- the original parts of the city that are close to the port. The port itself is huge -- John and I attempted to walk into the city from the ship when we first arrived, and it was an experience that we could have done without!

Naima talked about many Muslim traditions as the bus was taking us to see the grand Mosque Hassan II. The Mosque was magnificent and is able to accommodate 25,000 people on the inside and 80,000 on the plaza around the outside. It took only 6 years to build and was completed in 1993. (John and I were noting that it seems to have taken much longer than 6 years to extend the LRT in Calgary -- maybe we should suggest to the mayor where he might get some advice...) There is still work being done in the area on further buildings that will accommodate libraries. Two thirds of the Mosque has been built over the sea -- it is quite a sight!

And who could come to Casablanca and not see Rick's Cafe Americain? Of course, the scenes at Rick's in the movie were not filmed anywhere near Casablanca, but there is a restaurant here run by an American woman. (I understand there is one in Cape Town as well.) The website is http://www.rickscafe.ma/. Bob Balsley, one of our fellow travellers, is a jazz guitarist and had a gig there on Thursday afternoon. He said that in the evenings the owner will only allow a piano player, but she is a bit more flexible at lunchtime as long as the musician sticks to 40's music. So we enjoyed Bob's music and had a great chicken curry while sampling a local beer.

After our lunch at Rick's we had an unforgettable cab ride -- a really nice cab driver who asked if John was a teacher and asked him to "read my mind" when he learned John was a psychologist. We discussed the traffic, which is as bad as any I have ever seen in any European city. John commented that the lane markers seemed to be "suggestions" to the drivers. Our cab driver laughed and said that the reason it works is because everyone thinks alike. He pointed to the driver in front of us who had a right turn signal on. He said, "Look, he is signaling that he will go right, but he will go left." And sure enough...

We left Casablanca last night, and just as when we came into the port, we had to leave with the stabilizers up. This time the captain warned us twice that the ship would be rolling, that everything should be packed away, and that it was best to be seated during this time. We had been watching strong waves all afternoon. The rolling of the ship was frightening this time. I heard things falling and people shouting, but we fared pretty well -- our table fell over and we had a stack of books that fell (I really thought they were secure, but the table had been part of my plan). I heard an announcement "Code Blue in 5020" and recognized that as the room next to ours, so opened the door to learn that the fellow in the next room had hit his head and required stitches. We lost part of the power in our room for a time, and it was apparently related to the damage in his room. I learned this morning that a friend down the hall was thrown across her room with the chair in which she was sitting landing on top of her. Then the tv broke loose and flew over her and the chair and hit the door. Fortunately she escaped major injury. We heard other stories this morning of minor injuries and tv's and in some cases the small refrigerators breaking loose. The amazing thing -- John slept through the whole thing!

We did finally get through the worst of it, although it was rocky all night. We were all glad to see daylight today. Things are much calmer now. We are now headed for Dakar where we will refuel and not get off the ship, similar to our Gibraltar stop. Monday should be Neptune Day, when we cross the equator. We've heard there will be lots happening that day -- and no classes!