Hello from Africa!

This evening we flew into Casablanca airport at about 7pm and by the time we caught a train then taxi to our hotel, it was pretty late, so we called it a night with the first day of our tour ahead tomorrow (though not before catching a bit of jaws 3 with Arabic subtitles. Turns out its as terrible in Morocco as it was in Australia; what was Dennis Quad thinking? Anyway...)

The next morning at breakfast we had our first experience of one of the random elements of Moroccan culture... Freshly squeezed orange juice is EVERYWHERE! Not that we were complaining, as it is really refreshing in the heat and complimented our breakfast of jams and breads, which included some really good roti bread!

After meeting 2 Aussies in the dining room of the hotel (there really isn't anywhere in the world Aussies don't make it to!) who turned out to be on an identical tour to us with a different company, we departed from our hotel for the meeting point of our tour, which was an amazingly decorated hotel called Moroccan House.

At 6pm that night we met our group and leader at a briefing. Everyone seemed nice and our leader who was called Noureddine (we just called him Nord) was very informative and funny. We had a good chat after with the other Aussies in the group; Brooke from the gold coast, and Goia (pronounced Joya) and Celeste (incidentally her last name was Minge... hehehe) from Adelaide.

The whole group then went out for dinner together to a nearby restaurant where we got to know Brooke and an Irish couple called Sean and Claire over delicious lamb tagines! After we called it a night with a big first day of the tour ahead tomorrow!