The only direct flight from Miami to Morocco takes you to Casablanca. From there you can get on a high speed train to Tangier.

You whizz by the capital, Rabat, up along the Atlantic coast.

That’s 183 miles per hour. Makes the USA train system seem obsolete. We were met by our friend Mohammed Abound who took us to our apartment up in the near hills back from the bay. We will be staying in the same apartment building that we stayed in 5 years ago. Actually in the apartment right next to the one we stayed in last time on the 6th floor. We live away from the tourist area, which we love.

From our roof. Moon over Morocco. If you ever get a chance to listen to the radio drama by that name from ZBS media, you will be enchanted and maybe more. Many times a day (and night) there are the loudspeakers doing a call to prayer. In our minds we call it a ‘call to be present’, and we welcome it.

About a ten minute walk down hill takes us to the beach. The land across the bay is still Morocco. However, on a clear day you can see across the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain. There are even high places in Tangier where you can see the Rock of Gibraltar.

We experimented with seeing if we can have things shipped from the USA to Morocco and found things got here from FedEx in just a week or so. Expensive. But we had an urgent need for these t-shirts. It was that time of year.

Everywhere we go we feed the stray animals. Mostly cats, but dogs, birds, horses and anything else that seems in need. We aren’t the only ones. We ran into at least two or three others doing the same thing.

There are a lot of architectural views that gives this place that special ‘Moroccan’ feel.

Morocco is one of the few places you will get this view!

We typically give everyone who asks for money, something. But we got talking to this gentleman and eventually learned he had a major health issue as he could barely walk. He showed us his leg which was an infected mess! We gave him all the money he needed for medicine and then some. Help us wish him well.

In September every year there is a day celebrated as an International Day of Peace. It deserves to spread to include the entire year.

We walk a lot every day – several miles – greeting everyone, usually in French, here. We come down to the ocean and then one day go left and the next day we go right. When we go left, this is what part of the route looks like. At the far end of this route we sit on a seawall and feed the cats in the rocks below as well as some seagulls and watch fishermen. We also watch boats. We usually catch sight of one of the ferries going to or from Spain.

One of the things we love about Tangier is the richness of languages spoken here. Our friend Mohammed says at home they speak the local Berber language that isn’t taught in the schools. Then there are two versions af Arabic spoken – a high, formal version and the local one with more slang. After that, French is spoken by many people as this was once a French colony. After that you hear Spanish. After all we are just a thirty minute ferry ride away from Spain. And finally there are the rare ducks that speak English. They speak English in Gibraltar which you can almost see from here. (Actually people say in Gibraltar they don’t speak English, they speak Spanglish!)

I mentioned about all the animals we feed. Here Charlotte has rescued a worm that was roasting on the sidewalk. She found it some nice cool grass and is giving it a nice dose of water to start rehydrating.

Here we are on a nice drive south of Tangier. Mohammad is taking us to lunch in a beautiful restaurant overlooking the Atlantic. The Tangier airport is way back there in the valley. Nice to get out of the city and we drove through some really beautiful forests on the way.

Feeding the pigeons. It’s quite a rush when they notice you are giving them some food and a few hundred of them fly at you.

Our last week in Morocco was an intense cat rescue. This part siamese gal was hanging around outside our apartment. She was very pregnant and very tiny. We took her to a vet that confirmed that this was not going to end well. We paid to have her pregnancy ended, got her neutered. Got her some antibiotics, deworming medicine and a shot of vitamins. We turned our apartment into a recovery room for her and tried to find her a home.

After she recovered a day or so from the surgery, we found she really loved affection. A day or so later she quickly learned how to use a litter box.

We’ve been talking to the two animal sanctuaries here in Tangier, but they are both overrun with stray animals, particularly cats. She’s sitting on a towel on the couch next to me maybe wondering about what her fate will be. I hope we can find her a home.