Morocco Day 7: Saffi - El Jadida - Casablanca - Rabat.

There's a lot of ground to cover today which leaves you time to think. I try to summarise the days in my mind as i ride down the road. As i went through the exercise today i realized that my recent experiences had normalised the extreme. There were still people riding tuktuks and scooters the wrong way down a dual carriageway. There was still horrendous and dangerous overtaking that forced you off the road, there were still starving horses, but it was now normal and not worth the telling.

Taking the Atlantic coastal path north from Essaouira the ocean is your backdrop for hundreds of kilometers. A strong wind blows all day and we see a lot more greenery and our first forest. It a small forest, and by that i mean not very tall, as the highest tree is little over two meters. It strikes you as odd having seen the mighty forests in Europe. Stopping later for a photo i befriend an elderly Frenchman taking his own photos and he shakes my hand eagerly and smiling. He didn't want anything.



Reaching Saffi we stop for a break and are served a months quota of sugar in one snack. The cappuccino comes served with hundreds and thousands on top and syrup below, the croissant is just as bad.

We pass enormous factories and chemical works spewing noctious gasses into the air, you can taste the chemicals as you pass by. They are walled in behind massive concrete fences topped with barbed wire. I can hear Jason's voice on the intercom saying "hmm, i really love what youve done with place!" i laugh and we press on...

Between Saffi and El Jadida we're back to smaller market towns with starving horses. One horse, pulling a cart and two men, starts to falter and then collapses in front of my bike, i swerve to miss the creatures head, now laying on the road.

At El jadida, we see a McDonalds and Jason states "I'm not stopping at McDonald's!" I agree and instead we eat at Moroconalds, it sold all the same crap food.

Moving on there are poles in the ocean holding a little platform. On some of the platforms, two or three fishermen a perched with rods. It looks odd seeing two men balancing on a single pole, but it clearly works.

Casablanca is next up, home to 3.3million people and is the country's economic hub. We didn't venture into it, just passed through fleetingly. There's so much traffic and we see a few crashes, women crying by the roadside, glass everywhere. On the coast the city open up a bit and massive brand new Mosque dominates the skyline. I muse that i havent seen a modern church built with such attention to detail Europe. The Mosque is impressive to see, marrying old and new building technique flawlessly.

We pass Ferrari and Porsche dealerships, but also massive ghetto's and total squalor on the same road. The gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' standing out in stark contrast.

We eventually reach Rabat, a city not on everyone's radar, its the countries capital and a cultural hub. I like it immediately, its got clean suburbs, beaches and a certain state of chill to it. We pitch up at cafe for a mint tea and another biker comes to talk to me, he wants nothing more than to chat and pass on information about the city. A welcome change from my new normal. Our hotel for the evening is the Belere, its really nice and the staff allow us to park the bikes on the pavement next to the main door and security guard. The staff all come to check the bikes out. As its getting late and we remain in the hotel for the evening.