Adventures in Africa: Casablanca, Morocco

When I first planned to come to Morocco, I figured I would visit the Sahara Desert from either Fes or Marrakech.  Now, instead, I am going to visit it in Dakhla, the only city in the southern portion of Western Sahara.  To get there, I will be flying from Casablanca, which is why I took the train here from Fes this morning.  The train ride was excellent, and for about half the trip I had my pod of four seats to myself.

My flight is later this evening, and I arrived at the Casa Voyageurs station just before 13:00, so I had the afternoon to explore the city.

People say there is only one thing to see in Casa, the Hassan II Mosque, one of the world's largest.  The last mosque tour of the day is at 14:00, so I had an hour.  I walked outside the train station and caught the tram to Place des Nations Unies.  The tram is pretty new and the city seems proud of it.  It is a slick system, especially when you consider it is in Africa.

Once at my stop I bought a shwarma for lunch, then caught a cab to the mosque.  As in Fes, the cabs are really cheap--so much so that I wonder why people bother with the tram!  My tram ticket was 7 dirham and my cab ride was 8, for more or less the same distance traveled.

The mosque is massive, with room for 25,000 inside (20,000 men; 5,000 women), and another 80,000 in the square around it.  

There are several tours a day in between prayer times, but the tour costs a surprising 120 dirham (i.e., more than my train ticket from Fes to Casablanca).  Anyway, I joined the 14:00 English tour and we were led inside.

We were shown the prayer hall (including the ladies galleries above the main floor).

A cool thing about the mosque is that it has a retractable roof, which they open when it is well attended so as to improve ventilation.  Today, however, there were only about twenty of us, so the roof stayed closed.

From the main floor we were led downstairs to the special-occasion ablutions hall.  Here 5,000 men can do their ablutions all at once.

Finally, we were shown the hammams, or baths.  The mosque has a Moroccan style hammam and a Turkish style hammam.

And that was where our tour ended.  Frankly, the mosque is overrated, because other than being freaking huge it is not all that special.  The tour, however, was what really made my visit disappointing, because it was full of propaganda about Islam and Morocco, etc. that really grew tiresome.  Moreover, our guide was a bit sleazy both in terms of asking for tips and interacting with women, so I was glad to be rid of him.  I most certainly did not tip him.

After the mosque I stayed in the square long enough to hear the 15:10 call to prayer, as well as view the Atlantic.

Then I caught a cab back to Place des Nations Unies.  This time the cabbies right by the mosque did not want to use the meter/wanted me to take a tour of the medina and such with them, so I had to walk a couple blocks for a reasonable guy.

Now I had a bit of a headache, and I realized I had not had a coffee yet today, so I went to a coffee shop for a glass and sat outside watching Casa's bustle go by.  Tourists might feel there is only one thing worth seeing in Casa (and I'm not so sure I would even suggest it is worth visiting), but the city itself seems interesting enough to me.  One thing I found intriguing while sitting with my coffee is that minibuses were parked nearby that have come up from Dakar, Senegal (more than 3,000 kilometres), so there were various parties of black Africans walking around shopping and such.  

After coffee I went over to the post office to buy stamps (I had seen postcards at the train station, so I figured I would get stamps here now).

Then I caught the tram again back to Casa Voyageurs.

I bought my postcards and addressed them in the square outside.

At 17:13 I caught the train to the airport, where I am now awaiting my flight to Dakhla.