The impression I will always have of Moroccan airports is total chaos.

We all arrived at Casablanca Airport from Dubai and lined up at the luggage carousel to collect our suitcases. Eventually there were eight tour members and one other woman left waiting and no more suitcases. With the help of Our Fearless Leader we found that our cases were still in Dubai and that they would be on the next plane from there, which arrived in 24 hours - and in the meantime would we please look at a black and white photocopied page which showed a variety of numbered suitcases and select the one most like ours. We had to then fill in a form stating the designated number of the case we had selected and the colour of our case. I could not, for the life of me remember what colour mine was and opted for blue (when it finally arrived I discovered that it was black and grey). There was nowhere on the form to mention that my name, in yellow duct tape, was stuck across the top to make identification easy. And we had to hand in our boarding pass which had the luggage receipt stuck to it. NOTE: when flying to or from Morocco never discard your boarding pass.

I had no small change and so had to photograph these musicians from behind

As promised, the cases all arrived 24 hours later and were waiting for us at the hotel when we returned from the day’s outing in Rabat.

Worse was to come …

Wedding furniture for sale in a medina.

We finished the tour in Marrakesh but the International Airport is Casablanca so we had to take a short internal flight which left at some ungodly hour in the morning which meant that our cases had to be out by 4.30am. When we got to the airport the place was packed with people all lining up to check in their luggage. One couple in our group were, for some reason, on a different flight and they were told that it had been cancelled. Our guide had to leave the rest of us to our fate while he sorted that out. Our Fearless Leader, who had left Morocco the evening before, had told us that as the Marrakesh airport’s computers did not ‘talk’ to the Emirates computers we would have to collect our cases when we reached Casablanca and re-check them in for the flight to Dubai and onwards to our final destinations. So that was OK.

Long Johns in many colours

When we reached Casablanca we were not allowed through to the luggage carousel; we were told that our exit visas had already been stamped and we had to stay in the transit area. Vainly we tried to explain that we had to get our luggage but none of us spoke good enough French and none of the airport officials spoke English. Eventually an English speaking official was found and we were told that our luggage had been checked right through to our final destinations. This was scary as the airport personnel at Marrakesh had booked us to Casablanca with an internal flight ticket for Royal Air Moroc which showed no final destination, only that we were travelling to Casablanca.

A water seller. I had some small change that day.

The system, we were eventually told, was to queue up (yet again) at an obscure desk manned by one harassed official, which they increased to two just for us, and once again we handed in our luggage receipts. Someone then had to go and extract our cases and, since this desk was where we were given our boarding passes through to our final destinations, would check our luggage through and send it on its way.

These people were from 'out of town'
Dressed in traditional clothing

The incredible thing was that this system worked. My luggage was waiting for me in Perth when I arrived and from the emails which I received, so had everyone else’s.

The women dressed very conservatively and we were asked not to try to photograph them

... but what they wore underneath was displayed for all to see.

And here I would like to iterate: When flying to, from or within Morocco NEVER lose your boarding pass.