Continued from Marrakesh Day 1.

Beautiful morning here in Marrakesh. Part of me wishes I could spend all day just chilling inside this riad and not set a foot out without feeling guilty. But, I don’t come to Morocco every day, so should go out and do something.

They had set up a nice table for us for breakfast in the courtyard.

Nice spread. Too much, we couldn’t possibly eat all of this. I feel bad because at all these places we’ve stayed in  Morocco, they are all small hotels or riads with only a few rooms and few guests, but they provide huge breakfast spreads. What do they do with all the leftover food? Thrown it out, or do the staff eat them? I hope someone eats them.

After breakfast, it’s time to get a taxi and head to a rental car agency. It’s about 9:20am, and I had reserved for a rental car to be pick up after 9am.

Making sure we are headed the right way.

The newer parts of Marrakesh.

The taxi drivers here aren’t very good about knowing where to go.

Here. I had reserved a car a couple of days ago. I had reserved a “Compact” car, which I looked up online as a small car, which would be easy to maneuver in these tight traffic conditions. Well, when the confirmation email came from Avis, it said that I had actually rented a compact minivan, and it’s basically a small work van. WTF, that’s not what the compact description said. So I cancelled that reservation and changed to an “Economy” car, which is also…a small car.

Then began the car rental fiasco. I showed up, they have my reservation. I showed them my license, they said that since it was renewed last year, it does not qualify. Their rule is that I need to have had my license for at least two years to be able to rent. They know I’ve had a license for longer, but because the license I have is a newer one, it doesn’t work. However, the workaround is that if I’ve got a copy of my previous license somewhere, then they can also use that. Well then, good thing I’ve got a photo of my old license on my phone!!! What a dumb rule. I asked them what happens when others run into this same issue, and they mentioned that somehow everyone always has a photo of their old license on their phone. Either way, wish I would have known about this before hand.

So far so good, then they show me the car that I’m going to get. A compact work minivan. WTF. I didn’t want that. I had reserved an “Economy” car (which costs more than a “Compact”) specifically to not have a small work van to drive. They claimed that they were both in the same class, to which I said, then why did I have to pay more for Economy when you are trying to give me a Compact? Finally, they relented and said they would charge me the price of a Compact since they are giving me a Compact. Well, I don’t want a van, I want a small hatchback, because that’s what I had reserved. Then they claimed that they were completely out of Economy cars and that they only had compact vans for me…WTF. I was very disappointed and frustrated at this point, so I told them to hold on, I’m going to check at a different car rental agency to see if they’ve got something else other than a small work van.

Fortunately, Hertz was just right across the street from Avis. We walked in, waited for the people ahead of us.

Success! They’ve got the car types that I want to rent. It would, however, take a little bit of time to get the car to us though. First, we need to fill out the rental agreement, and then they need to transport a car to this location from the airport which should take about 15min or so. Alright, I can wait….and wait…and wait…the whole process ended up taking much longer.

Finally the car arrives, hour and a half after I set foot into Hertz. While I was at Hertz, I asked RL to go across the street to Avis to cancel our reservation. Avis told us that since we never rented, our reservation would just cancel without charge…or so they claim. Can’t trust them at this point.

Our Kia CEED. We upgraded to a slightly larger hatchback than the smallest hatches that they rent out. It’ll be a little nicer and safer. It’s about the size of a GTI.

Looking across the street to Avis. That blue compact minivan is the type of car that Avis wanted to give me. Fuck that.

Oh, this is a very pleasant surprise for the upgraded car. It comes with Apple Carplay, so I can just look at the gps directions here instead of having RL hold my phone to my face. This upgraded car also has a dual clutch automatic instead of a manual transmission like most cars here in Morocco. I was hoping for a manual, but perhaps this is for the best. Driving in a foreign country in a foreign car, probably easier to not have to worry about shifting gears as well.

Upgraded car also means built in USB charging ports for our phones. Cool, I’m happy with this setup. As I was about to drive away, I noticed that the tire pressure warning light is on. I went inside to talk to Hertz staff, and they said to just ignore it and it just needs to be reset….sure…I guess I’ll reset it and see what happens.

First time driving in Africa! It’s much more hectic than it looks with all the small mopeds around.

Silently freaking out inside.

Oh yeah, also cyclists on top of the weaving mopeds and cars.

And of course, before we even make it out of Marrakesh, the tire pressure light comes on again. Fuck, I hope we don’t actually have a flat. Pulled into a gas station, and they very nicely pumped up all 4 tires for me. At least now we’ve got a baseline pressure, and I reset the tire pressure. If the light comes on again later, then I’ll know that we’ve got a leak. All 4 tires were also low on pressure, so this was a good call anyway. The steering felt noticeably sharper right after airing up to the correct pressure. Cool. I’ll keep my fingers crossed on the tire pressure.

Heading out of town. We are heading to Ait Benhaddou, a famous kasbah. It’ll be about 3 hours there, and 3 hours back. Since we got such a late start on our drive (11am), it’ll be quite the long day by the time we make it back. It is what it is.

A little tense, but not too bad. Dealing with this hectic traffic feels easier to me than driving in Ireland on the wrong side of the road.

Coffee makes me happy.

I didn’t bring my sunglass, so I borrowed RL’s sunglass that she got here in Morocco. I look cool.

Love the charging ports and love Carplay. It’s good for our marriage to not have to constantly ask RL to look for directions on my phone. I can just look on the screen myself since we’ve had to go through many many roundabouts.

Alright, starting to go into the mountains. We are driving through Tizi n’Tichka, a mountain pass through the high atlas mountains. This is a fun driving mountain road, and this is the reason why I didn’t want a small work minivan. I don’t need a sports car, but I couldn’t stand the idea of driving the worst handling car in a rental car fleet through all these fun curves.

3 lanes. I “think” those long dash lines means we can pass on this side and use the middle lane? But honestly, all driving rules are very loosely followed here. A lot of dangerous questionable blind passes are made by the other drivers. I do appreciate how there’s at least a middle lane for passing for a decent amount of this mountain pass.

Slow moving truck with animals.

Oh, a detour due to rock slide.

Another detour due to rock slide. A major rock slide. I think the detour is through the old parts of this road. Apparently when they straightened the road to make a new road, they just cut across the mountain and ignore reinforcing the mountain so that it wouldn’t have rockslides.

Getting higher and more arid. Since pumping up the tires, the low tire pressure light has stayed off. Keep my fingers crossed. Would not be a good spot to get a flat tire on this mountain pass.

Much of the road has no guardrails, and some of the guardrails have damage from cars running into it. The way many drivers are driving dangerously through this road, I can see why there are these guardrail damages.

Look at the map with all those turns. This would be a super fun road in a different car…and also if I wasn’t so worried about a car trying to pass on blind corners coming at me.

Road side sellers. They’ve got whole expresso machines in the back of cars selling coffee. Cool.

We see a lot of these vans/taxis packed with people and luggage on top. I know this is the way to visit the Sahara desert from Marrakesh. I wonder if those are all the tourists who took trips from Marrakesh to the desert and back? We could have hired a driver with a car for this drive, but I thought it would be more fun to drive it myself, and I’m glad I did. I’m enjoying this drive very much.

To be continued at Marrakesh Day 2 Part 2.