I left sleepy Chaouen very early the other morning and trudged 12 hours south to Marakech kind of on a whim. It was the Thursday before the end of Eid Al Adha and the owner of the guesthouse said if I want to move on it was either early thursday or then monday. I took the 1st bus south which was headed to Rabat, Morocco's semi modern capital. A Catalan stoner named Kiki was insisting that the Mauritanian visa be obtained in Rabat contrary to everything I had read about getting it in Casablanca....

When I arrived in Rabat, I realized the Embassy would already be closed, so I powered though down to Marakech on a whim crossing my fingers it was true that the visa could be obtained at the border. I woke up to a quiet friday morning as friday in the Islamic world is like sunday in the Christian world. I decided to tour the ramparts and mosques of the anciènne citè by cruising it on my board. The streets were suprisingly smooth and traffic sparse. I felt I needed to make up for the little skating I got done in Barca (which was the original idea for this trip). It was the fusion of the things that have always driven me, skating, history, and Islamic architecture. I realized when I got back to the budget hotel covered in dust, with all of it's silent French couples roaming about, that I had just spent the day skateboarding in one of Africa's great cities. All in all, a perfect jour.