Moroccan Discovery - our Travellers group set off for Adventure

At last the 18th April had arrived and our Travellers met at the train station in high spirits and ready for adventure. Sadly one couple were late cancellations so our number was down to seventeen. We had seats on the reduced size train thus avoiding a bus trip, the transition to the airport was seamless and we had plenty of time to check in and relax.

But some things just don't go smoothly, as we were about to discover! The Emirates flight was of the usual high standard but as soon as we arrived in Dubai at 5.15 am we realized there were problems. Dubai in the United Arab Emirates had suffered a horrendous storm several days earlier. 25 cm or 10 inches of rain had fallen in 48 hours, in one day they had more than twice their annual rainfall. The runway had been under water and many flights were cancelled. Dubai is the world's second busiest airport and there was chaos with large numbers of passengers stranded for days.

These photos were before we realized what was ahead. Our leader Margot showing the way.

We arrived at our gate for the onward flight to Morocco to be met by what looked like hundreds of Muslim people trying to get home. Ramadan had recently concluded and we discovered that most of them had been on pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and had large amounts of excess baggage (read, shopping!)

As the crowds built, time for departure grew close and no check-in was happening, the crowd grew tense - much pushing and shoving, high pitched noise, heat and pointy elbows in action, not at all fun. The staff had no control and we feared things were going to become more unpleasant as fighting and arguing started. We discovered that many of these people had boarding passes for previous days so their behaviour and emotions were understandable.

Finally they started to let people with passes for that day to go through.  Understandably our group of seventeen was no longer 'a group' and it was a great relief when we finally all got through. We arrived at out seats to find an old woman curled up asleep on them.

The plane was due to depart at 7.30 am and finally left at 11.30. Of course that meant a very late arrival into Casablanca, Morocco. And that is where the next nightmare experience began. After waiting an age for luggage at the carousel it was announced that no more was coming today and we needed to go and report our lost luggage. That meant 11 of our people were without luggage.

The totally chaotic process of claiming and the strong minding and argumentative women ahead of us meant that after more that two hours of trying to hold our positions in the melee, we escaped with one claim form for all our luggage. I am sore and bruised from the pushing and shoving. Australians certainly don't have elbow skills ... either using or dodging them.

We did eventually get out of the airport building where a massive crowd was gathered with floral arrangements and gifts to welcome back the pilgrims. We found the rest of our group and our tour leader Driss and then collapsed onto the coach where we could barely keep awake to listen to the plans. At 10.30 pm we arrived at our very smart hotel.

It has been a long two days.