Like I said before, we were excited about eating dinner at the Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in Rabat.

We walked through the door, and Chris was greeted by the waiter rubbing his belly. OK, so that’s just a good-luck blessing. No big deal.
We’re shown to our table, have a seat. The waiter sort of stumbles in, and we ask him if he can get us some water. We ask in French. We ask in English. We ask in Arabic. He just stands there, not responding. Weird. He walks away, and we all just exchange an uncomfortable glance.

He returns again, still stoic. Another waiter eventually gets us some water and brings us some complimentary “sangria”. (It tasted like grape juice, at best.) Jill turns to ask him what he recommends. He starts talking, hiccups, and slurs, in French, “I… I rec…. I recommend…. the Chef.” Uh. Ok. He sort of stumbles out of the room. Everyone is pretty uncomfortable at this point.

Our star returns once again, this time Chris asks him a question about a dish. He turns his head away, covers his mouth and seems to wretch. He leaves through a service door next to our table. At this point we figure that he is either sick or drunk; either way we’re convinced he shouldn’t be serving us food. We discussed what we’d have done if this were America: it would include complimentary meals, walking out on the ticket, and speaking directly to the manager. But, It’s not America. And the customer is never right.

Everyone is generally uncomfortable. Robbie is shooting daggers with his eyes at this guy, who is aware enough to realize that something is amiss. When on the way to the restroom, Robbie witnesses the waiter nearly fall down the stairs. Robbie throws up his hands and looks to the head waiter for some sort of explanation, consolation, apology. The head waiter looks sympathetic, even slightly ashamed, but does nothing.

After our waiter’s most recent stumble past our table into the supply room to, presumably, wretch more, everyone at the table is uncomfortable to a new extreme. Robbie has been asking if we can leave since the waiter’s first appearance. But at this point, even Anna, the most accommodating and least-easily bothered member of our expedition, is asking if we can’t just leave. That’s when this picture was taken:

I decide to set up the video feature of my camera, hoping to catch just how uncomfortable we all were.
Notice his the slight swaying in his gait, the door he disappears into, and the general attempt of everyone at the table to pretend like nothing is wrong…

Unreal. So, we set the camera up for another clip. We couldn’t believe what happened next.
Notice the looks of terror on our various faces…

For the guy to pick out Robbie, the person among us who was most uncomfortable and was most upset/angry about the whole situation… wow.

We set out from the Kasbah towards Ouzoud, where we sought out a set of cascades.

At one point we got lost….

We checked into another beautiful Riyadh and walked down towards the falls.

And some fighting Barbary Apes:

After checking out the falls, we decided to go for a swim:

We woke up the next morning and did a bit more swimming in some of the pools further down. After a lunch of brochettes that we’re pretty sure they put back on the same plate they’d used for the raw meat, we left at 3:30 for what we thought was going to be a three-hour drive.

Not only did it turn out to be much longer (we finally arrived at Ras al-Ma at about 11), but our drive was certainly filled with adventures.

… Robbie got pulled over for “speeding”. The road shouldn’t have been a 60 kph zone, ultimately he was going like 43 miles per hour, and the guy gave him a penalty for doing 25 over, when he was only doing 15 over. The fine is double (which of course he had to pay in cash, one half to the Moroccan government, the other to Officer Ahmed’s already-plump belly.)

We then stopped for a “snack break” where we probably bought more junkfood than this establishment sells in any given year. We also managed to get lost, but eventually arrived at our Gite (guest house).

The next morning we found out that our Guest House host had a son who lived in Bouies Creek, NC. So, of course they think this is a perfect time to give him a call (keep in mind it would be 4am EST!) Because of the personal connection, he agreed to let us stay at the Gite another night. So we took a day trip to the sources of the biggest river in the country.
On the way we stopped to take some pictures by an old oak tree:

Narrowly averted catastrophe:

We got to the sources, but we couldn’t see anything. That’s because the banks had been lined with little huts selling tea, drinks, and snacks. So we sat down and had a coke, while dipping our feet in the cold water. Pretty refreshing on such a hot day!



We wanted to take a hike to find the oldest cedar tree in Morocco. We didn’t have time, but I sure hope this wasn’t it:

The next morning we headed back to Rabat. In what might have been my favorite driving maneuver of the trip, we parked the cars for the last time and waited for the rental guys to come pick them up. The cars successfully returned with all four panels on each side intact (c.f. our South Africa experience) we had a beer to celebrate. Then we took a walk through Rabat before Chris and Anna had to leave for the airport.

The wall of the old city:

Can you tell which one is John?

Afterwards, we went to a Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant. Chris and Anna were eager to eat some Asian food, something they can’t get in Mauritania too easily. You know what, I’m not even going to tell you what happens next. You’ll have to wait for the next post. I need to make sure you read this story. It has to be the greatest moment of our Morocco trip…