Agadir to Tangiers

We were lucky to have the talented young Sandra Bouza singing at our hotel bar in Agadir,  who was ecstatic to find a half dozen Canadians drop into her Moroccan gig.  I requested some Pixies and they nailed it.  Being rather dark, I couldn't really see what the hotel had on offer to drink so I pointed to a bottle and headed back to my seat.  The bartender brought something rather delicious, but as we went to pay the bill sometime later, I was shocked to see my little drink was some 860 MAD, or about $125 Canadian!  I may have sipped it a little slower had I known.  Sandra wanders back to our Canadian table slightly annoyed at the folks she was visiting with, as apparently their opening line was "we were drinking with Jay Z the other weekend" and she rolls her eyes.  I show her my exorbitant drink bill and she laughs; "Well, hell with Jay Z, I've drank with Darcy Hoover!"

A fews days later, permits sorted, or so we thought, we cruised up the coast bucking a head wind today, strong enough to convince us we had no hope of going straight to Tangiers, so we dropped into busy Casablanca for a drop of fuel.  I actually detest going through Casablanca as a passenger,  as its a common hub for West Africa travel, and it's terminal is one of the most disorganized that I've been through, but it was fine as a fuel stop when I'm the guy flying.

Unfortunately the VFR low level routing further North was brutal with tons of restricted airspaces to avoid, and we'd spend most of our fuel just reprogramming numerous waypoints into our GPS, so we filed IFR and headed high up into the skies and direct.  It was easy but not nearly as pleasurable as the previous flight, watching the gorgeous Moroccan scenery pass by.  Settling into Tangiers, we were approached by a cop yielding....yes...more landing cards, and more cops with even more bizarre requests for paperwork we didn't even know we had.   We may even be delayed getting out tomorrow for permit issues.  I think everyone preferred sub-Sahara Africa's money grab compared to the mind numbing bureaucracy of Morocco, but it's all par for the course.

We had a late dinner in the old part of Tangiers, looking for William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg haunts.  I wouldn't mind spending some time here....