Written on the 18th April 2012.
On Saturday after checking the surf early as usual and finding it still unsurfable, we entertained ourselves by playing 500 with each other
and relaxing in the sun on the rooftop of the Ocean Surf House where we were all staying again. Sunday was another day of flatness. We mooched around for most of the day. I operated on A.J.'s foot and got heaps more of the kina (urchin) spikes out of his foot including a really big one that was really painful. I love digging things out of people's feet!We decided to go for a drive in the afternoon to see if we could score a stormy. The surf was too terrible to go out so we decided to brave the wind and go to the beach to play platonk. On the way to finding a beach we drove down a little road and saw a man leap off his bike, ditch it in the ditch, snatch up a big rock and through it forcefully down on the ground and then repeat the process. We then saw what he was throwing the rocks at. It was a cobra! It was not that big – it must have been a baby, but it was still quite long – at least a metre. It took a lot of killing. The man had to through heaps of rocks at it. Then he smacked it a lot with a stick. Next he got more rocks to bash it with. It was pretty interesting to watch. After that display we drove on and decided to stop at the beach near Killer Point where many tourist go. I was going to take my bag with me but in the end we decided to leave our gear in the car to avoid it getting sandy as the wind was blowing the sand around badly. We hid the bag on the ground under a towel and also had the surfboards inside the car on top of it too. We thought it would be sweet there because there were so many people and cars around. Apparently we were wrong. We enjoyed the game on the beach and after 30mins headed back up the steep bank to the car. We were greeted by a smashed window and a bashed in lock in the boot. We checked to see what was missing and found that all our valuables were gone. Phones, cash, our iPods, iPod speaker, my new green top and both my camera's and bags– the waterproof one and my Digital SLR (that is the thing I am most gutted about losing.) At least I had downloaded all my photos the night before so I didn't loose any pictures. On the upside though they did not take our surfboards or wetties. Also they left my wallet (just took the money from inside.) And they left my day bag that all the stuff was in which would have been annoying to loose as it clips to my pack. We all felt so mad that we had been robbed and also annoyed that we had left the stuff in the car. It just goes to show that even in places you think look safe you are probably not. The next step was reporting the theft. We were not really sure how thorough the police would be but thought we better not touch anything until we had talked to them. Jeff and I waited with the car in the wind while Steve and A.J. headed off to call the police. They could find nowhere with a phone so they walked to Taghazout and got Mohamed (cool guy we rented the car off.) He drove them back to the car. In the meantime Jeff and I had been looking out for cops driving by and managed to hail one. They were not much help. They asked us a few questions. Said we should not have left the car there (duh, thanks we know that now!) and pretty much just stared at us with expressionless faces. Then they told us to drive the car to the police station at Taghazout. We tried to explain we were waiting for our 2 friends to come back who had gone to call the police. They said we didn't need to call the police, that they were the police. We said we knew that but we still had to wait for our friends. This conversation went around and around for a while. (There was a bit of a language barrier going on.) At that point the others turned up thankfully with Mohamed. So we all headed off to the police station. That was an interesting experience. It was very lucky we had Mohamed with us to help translate other wise it would have taken forever! As it was we had to wait around for quite a long time. We were eventually summoned in to write down what items had been stolen next to our names. (Which turned out to be a bit of a waste of time.) Then more waiting. During the next wait a man came running into the station and breathlessly exclaimed something to a policeman. The policeman listened (expressionlessly) and then followed the hurrying man (slowly!) out of the station. A few minutes later he came back dragging a fairly scrawny and intoxicated man. Following him were several woman and the breathless man who also sat down to wait. The hauled the man into a room (which I could see from the bench I was sitting on.) and began beating the shit out of him!!! They we punching him and kicking him and the blows were echoing around the cells and he was crying out in pain. It was pretty severe. Mohamed said that he was drunk and attacked a woman in her house. A while later he was wandering around the station. We had moved to wait outside in the doorway to make room on the benches for all the new arrivals. Next minute the guy walks out the door and makes a mad dash for it and is hastily persuaded by some of the coppers. After several minutes they dragged him back to the station. They slammed him in a cell and a great banging and crashing started up and the guy was calling out again and we were not sure if the police were smashing him again or he was whacking his head against the bars of they were pulling him into them over and over again or what was going on but it was very noisy and sounded decidedly painful. Finally after that show was complete our reports were given to us. But they did not have the right items on them that had gotten stolen. We got them to do it again and it was still not right but we did not want to try and explain again because it had taken SO long to even get them so we just took what we had and left cause we were STARVING since it had been hours. We got tea and then all watched a movie on A.J.'s laptop.
I did not sleep well. We do have insurance but I was gutted so much of my stuff got stolen. Plus we had pushed 2 single beds together and I end up sleeping in the crack most of the night.
Monday was a beautiful day but we were all a bit gutted about being robbed and there being no surf. We had a nice time sitting down near the water at a cafe though and admiring the views. (Though we were not all admiring the same things.) That night we watched another movie. The next morning we got up at 6 to take A.J. and Jeff to the airport. It was a bit sad saying good bye. You get quite attached to people when you hang out with them all the time. They were really fun to hang out with made our stay in Morocco much more enjoyable and entertaining. I will miss them. After dropping them off we went to Agadir to get breakfast and go to the Rip Curl shop to buy some shoes for us both and I bought a new hoodie. Yay! So sick of wearing my 2 cardies. And now our feet won't freeze off in Paris, hooray! Steve is a bit gutted though because we have shoes the same colour shoes – too matching for his tastes. When we got back to Taghazout Mohammed said “Oh, if you went with me they would have given you a 20% discount because the people who work there are my friends!” Don't you hate it when you get good information too late! It felt a bit strange being in Taghazout without Jeff and A.J. We just mooched around all day and in the evening it was Abdu's birthday surprise at Le Spot restaurant. We hung out there a bit and then went back to our room to finish packing. We got up at 5am this morning and now we are on the plane flying to Paris. Yay, where we get a brand new car and start the next part of our adventure. (And where it is 10 degrees and has thunderstorms, brrrr!) We are going to buy and tent and probably a new camera when we have figured out where to buy them from.
Bye, love Amy. xoxo
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