My stomach woke me shortly before the alarm went off; I don't think the beer the night before agreed with me. A few minutes later room service came with breakfast: a card full of juice, coffee and mini croissants.

We made it out the door at 7am, where Ibrahim was waiting already. The drive to the airport was quick, with little traffic to slow us down. Ibrahim dropped us off at the terminal, and we bid him farewell.

We quickly found out that we were at the domestic terminal, and that to get to the international terminal we would have to take a shuttle. There we no signs for the shuttle, so we wandered around for a bit until I flagged down a gendarme and got him to show us the way.

The shuttle was a large tour bus, and when we walked up a man ran across the street to us. We gave him our bags to put in the hold, and boarded the bus. On board was an English couple, disgruntled at already having waited 20 minutes on the bus. We waited another ten minutes until the driver and the porter hopped on and the bus got under way.

A few minutes later, the bus pulled up to the international terminal, a run down low-slung building on the far side of the airport. We got off the bus, and the porter handed us our bags. Except Clare's, which was nowhere to be found.

The porter insisted that Clare never gave him a bag, and Clare was completely at a loss for what to do. She thought someone had stolen her bag, with over a thousand dollars of climbing gear, and all of her souvenirs inside.

Hilarity ensued. Not really.

The porter and the driver kept trying to get Clare to go back to the other terminal with them to look for the bag, but she didn't want to go alone with two strange men who may have just stolen from her.

Tip: If you're in a situation where something's missing, never accuse anyone of theft. They immediately go on the defensive, and all productive conversation stops. Add in a language and culture barrier, and things get worse.

Clare didn't make any direct accusations, repeatedly saying "someone stole my bag, what do I do?", but at one point Barry prodded the ported on the chest and called him a thief. The porter immediately ran off to get an officer.

Eventually, I broke down and said I'd got, leaving Barry and Clare to check in for our flight, which was scheduled to leave in two hours.

On the ride back to the domestic terminal, I tried to get the guys names, but they refused. As we pulled up to the terminal, there was an office standing next to one of the barrier poles, with Clare's back leaning against it.

Well, that solved one problem. And created another.

The porter and driver were now very pissed off, and understandably so. Now that the porter had been accused of theft, he was likely to lose his job, which would be quite the hardship given Morocco's unemployment rate. They wanted me to get off the bus and go file a report with the police. I know that would take more time than I had, so I refused, holding my ground in the door of the bus.

I stood there, arguing with the guys for several minutes, until one of the three gendarmes asked to see my passport and motioned me off the bus. I complied and the six of us moved over to the side.

We worked it out that the police would take down my information, so that if something later happened, they could find me. I apologized to the men for the false accusations, and we reboarded the bus, with one of the officers coming along.

My best guess is that the bag was loaded on the edge of the cargo bay and that, as the bus pulled away from the terminal, the bag fell out before the automatic bay doors could close. We'll never know for sure, since I think the gendarme may have moved the bag before we got there.

Arriving back at the international terminal, the hilarity continued. They demanded that I explain the situation to the porter's boss, which I found reasonable. The porter carried Clare's bag into the terminal; I had to open it up at the security check point to show the guard the climbing equipment.

I checked in, to discover that the flight was delayed over two hours (big suprise there). When we got to the customs entrance, we were greeted by the porter and his boss. He asked Clare why she said that he stole her bag. I repeated the story, explaining that it was a misunderstanding, which he seemed satisfied with.

Customs was easy; we got waved through without a word spoken. The terminal was somewhat decrepit, but generally clean. I used my left over dirhams to buy some shirts, a soda, and an hour of Internet access.

With the delay, I wasn't sure if I would make my connecting flight in New York. It was scheduled to leave at 4:45pm, and they said the plane would land at 4pm, giving me 45 minutes to go through customs and get over to the domestic terminal. Delta's web site was crapping out, so I couldn't find out if there were any later flights to Seattle.

The plane took off at 1:30pm, over three hours late, with an estimated arrival time of 4:41pm, only 4 minutes before my flight to Seattle departed. That arrival time was shortly updated to 4:50pm, dashing any hope of making the connection.

6 hours later, the interior of the plane resembled the streets of the Medina, with garbage littered everywhere. The bathrooms were completely foul, with one rendered entirely inoperative. These people have no notion of cleanliness or order. Sad, really.

We landed at JFK and went through customs, again easy sailing. As our bags came off the conveyor, we each ran off; Clare still had a chance of making her connection. Exiting customs I got a boarding pass for my rebooked connection; there was a brief panic as the agent told me that my flight was 6pm the next day, but I read the boarding pass and saw that it was for the current day.

I got over to the domestic terminal, running into Barry going through security. I had 15 minutes until boarding, so I grabbed some food from Burger King and scarfed it down, relishing the complete lack of spices.

The flight was uneventful, landing around 9pm. I grabbed my bags, hopped in a cab, and went home, where I soon fell asleep in Jiji's arms.