We stood outside of the bus not five miles outside of Essaouria and I counted how many buses have broken down on us on this trip. One in Nepal, one in India, and now this one in Morocco? That’s it? It sure feels like there were more… But here we stood, on the side of the road facing another broken down bus.
It was pulled over after a strong gas smell filled the back of the bus (where we were sitting). We climbed out. We waited. We were told to climb back on. We waited some more. Then another bus pulled up and we were told to get on the other bus. Eight hours or so later we pulled into a station in Casablanca.
We made our way back to our first couchsurfer hosts in Morocco- at least we made our way back to their apartment. We kinda fell in love with them our first weekend in Morocco. They made breakfast for us, allowed us to crash their dinner parties, and even took us around the black market. So as if that wasn’t enough straight up goodness- when we let them know we were coming back in town for two nights before our flight(s) down to Uganda, they let us stay in their place even though they had volunteered to go on a school field trip for the weekend.
Obviously, it should go without saying that we were disappointed we wouldn’t get to hang out with them some more before we left Morocco… But after the LONG day getting back into town, we were elated to have a place to crash. One that we were familiar with. One that had a bathroom that I didn’t have to put shoes on to go into… One that had a kitchen.
It was glorious. They were/are glorious. Sometimes it’s easy to get frustrated with the travel- with the cultural differences- with the cab drivers. But when we meet people like Catherine and Brian, it totally restores my faith in not only travel, but humanity as well. Now we just have to time it out correctly to run into them again in Europe this summer when we’ll all be galavanting around the same continent!
