I spent most of the night enduring stomach 'difficulties', and think I must have caught what Nadine had yesterday. So the solution was no food or drink until we get home to London. Either that or spend the flight in the loo.
The taxi we'd ordered for the airport came ten minutes early, at 0650, but we were ready anyway. The driver drove through the souk too, which was a novelty as nobody was about and the usual chaos of wares displayed and people everywhere had not yet happened. Actually, there were very few people about, and those that had ventured out were sitting outside cafes, drinking their morning tea.
Once checked in for our flight, we sat outside in the sunshine, watching newly arrived foreigners dealing with local taxi drivers as the latter tried to rip the former off for fares into town.
The bus goes straight to the main square but the taxi drivers are quite aggressive and launch into full on verbal assaults, hoping to bully people into submission. I watched one bloke have a real go at a young Japanese woman, jabbing his fingers close to her face and really having a go at her. I couldn't understand what he was saying of course, but his body language said it all. Her response was impressive though; she just stood there and looked at him, expressionless, said nothing, and when a bus arrived, stepped around him and got on it, leaving him surrounded by nothing and looking like a complete arse.
It is a real shock when you arrive somewhere like Morocco and are subjected to this full on treatment, but after a few days, you get used to it and learn how to fend them off. part of that is due to air travel though, in that there in no chance for gradual acclimatisation as there is with riding or driving.
The flight home was smooth and we landed 20 minutes earlier than scheduled.
However, Nadine was travelling on her Australian passport rather than her German one, which was not a problem on the way out, but it was getting back into the UK. She had nothing on her to prove that as a German passport holder, she had right of abode in the EU, and so was refused entry at Gatwick. Bugger. So there she was stuck on one side of the barrier, me on the other, and Gordon waiting in arrivals, expecting us at any minute. In the end, he had to drive home, collect the German passport then drive back to the airport with it. In the end, it only took two hours as we live only about 20 miles away. But the moral of the story is, if you have two passports, take them both with you. Always!!
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