6th to 11th of December, 2017.
After a few minutes on the road, a nice couple stops. The husband does not speak English but the wife speaks very well. She is very kind and we talk a lot. Unfortunately they are going just until Casablanca though. They leave me in a tool and after a couple of minutes holding my warn, I’m starting to get concerned.
It is when it happen: A green Jeep, which almost passed by, suddenly stops. I meet Jean-Claude. Looks like a simple old guy and he tells me being going to Marrakesh and be able to drop me there. I cannot believe how luck I am and I have no idea what is about to come.
We have a nice conversation. Jean-Claude looks like those guys who have a long experience in life, with a lots of stories, knowing a lot about history and basically everything.
At some point he asks me about some coffee and I agree. It became a whole full meal, with a big salad and a vegetable tagliatelle.
We keep our travel and I am paying attention in everything he keeps telling me. When I explain my situation, that I have to wait for my CS until 10 p.m., when he would leave his work, Jean-Claude kindly offer to me wait at his house. I agree.
When we arrive, still outside of the house, on the street, I realize how huge the house might be. Walking in, I see a path that looks like will never finish. But there are so much more…
It is a palace! The inside is spectacular! This amazingly beautiful two rooms, incredible well decorated with big comfortable sofas (about six or seven of them); beautiful big pictures (most of them about Morocco and Africa); one of those courtyard gardens, so common in Morocco, but which I just had seen in Andalusia; a huge room that the Arabs use to reunion some friends, full of sofa place and with the ceiling like the Temple Mohamed V in Rabat; the kitchen is also huge and divided in two parts; there are four or five bedrooms in the other side of the house (and I stay in one of them) and the master suite is upstairs; the garden is something incredible, enormous, with a lot of trees and free space to walk around; a big swimming pool end the palace where I staid for five days. After our arrival, Jean Claude offer me to stay with him instead of going to the other guy’s house. I thought a lot about because Hassam lived far away from the centre and I would have to spend money or a lot of time to come there every day. So I decide to think about me first just for once and accepted to stay with him after I warned Hassam.
Every morning me and Jean-Claude have breakfast together, then I go to town, we have lunch together, I spend more time at the town, and at night I eat something (he usually not) while we have a pleasure conversation where I always learn a lot from him.
One of those days he tells me about when Julia Roberts spent over a month on his house. They were filming “Charlie Wilson’s War” and she needed a safe place to stay. So a friend of Jean-Claude asked him about it and he said yes. I can see the picture of her on the courtyard garden with some employees. When I ask about how was she, Jean-Claude in his humble discrete way, just answer “She was nice” and affirm that he prefer not get to much into those “star” people’s life.
Then he takes the opportunity to tell me about what the movie was and gives me a huge history class, that I will never forget, about how the whole 9/11 thing started almost 15 years before and how U.S. knows how to do the war but do not know how to do peace. I watched the movie later and would not look that good if was not by Jean-Claude explanation.
Within those five days I ate pretty well. Jean-Claude took me to really nice restaurants and for the first time in Morocco, I tasted the cus-cus. He also gave some money which save me one time, allowed me going to two beautiful places (The Bahia Palace and The Marajalle Gardens) and to Essaouira by bus (but unfortunately, it rained the whole day and I just could see a little bit of the city, what I personally think it was some kind of punishment for I had been so spoiled and have not hitchhiked over there) where I have a good talk with Nico, a guy from Argentina who also was going to Mauritania soon.
I also met one of the CS that could not host me, Mohamed, and we went to the Marina’s Garden: a beautiful huge place with a great view of The Atlas Mountains. He was a really nice guy, full of nice dreams and will of travelling and we have some good few hours together.
That same day I tried to meet Hassam but we simply could not find each other and unfortunately I left Marrakesh without meet him.
In my last night at Jean-Claude’s house, I prepared what supposed to be a simply pão pizza but he liked so much that asked to the man who works over there with his wife (two really nice people) to make it again. I felt so good for bring at least one thing which might had made a difference to him in exchange of everything that he offered me.
In my last day, we have lunch together and then he left me on the road to Agadir. I will never forget how luck I was for have had him in my life.
