Travellers to Morocco relieved to be back home
Kelowna couple were riding camels in Sahara Desert when they learned borders were being closed due to novel coronavirus
Marilyn and Jack Harris joke they now wake up every morning and kiss the ground outside their Kelowna home.
“We’re just so happy to be back in Canada after fearing we’d be trapped in Morocco during this whole coronavirus thing,” said Jack, a retired chartered accountant.
Morocco was actually Plan B for Jack and Marilyn, a painter.
Originally, they were going to journey to Australia. But, with the terrible wildfires there recently, they decided to revisit Morocco, where they had lived for two months 40 years ago.
They arrived on Feb. 20, when COVID-19 was in the news but was nowhere near the crisis it has become.
The Harrises spent the next 3 1/2 weeks, mostly unplugged, touring the north African country, ending up in the Sahara Desert near the border with Algeria. They were sleeping in a luxury tent camp, eating tagine and riding camels on the dunes.
On the morning of March 15, three Swiss tourists told them Moroccan King Mohammed VI was putting the country in COVID-19 shutdown.
The couple spent the rest of the day hopelessly trying to get flights out of the country.
On March 16, they decided to at least get out of the remote Sahara and drive their rental car over the Atlas Mountains to civilization.
The Swiss tourists told them of a Swiss woman who runs a bed and breakfast in Azrou, where they could stay and get reliable internet service.
At the B&B, the Harrises were able to contact their travel agent, Sara Mehta of Travel Masters in Kelowna.
She booked them on a flight, complete with boarding passes, from Marrakesh to Montreal.
Within an hour, the travel agent called back, saying the flight had been cancelled.
So, in an effort to at least get the couple out of Morocco, Mehta rushed to secure flights from Marrakesh to
London.
However, that routing also fell through.
With options running out, the Harrises decided to drive to
Marrakesh and try their luck directly at the airport.
Their Swiss B&B hostess said Marrakesh would be heaving with tourists, all trying to escape, and it would also be the centre of any novel coronavirus outbreak.
So, she suggested driving to the capital of Rabat and catching a flight out from there.
In Rabat, the Harrises booked into a hotel belonging to a big, international chain. Its restaurant was still open.
“We were practically the only people there,” said Marilyn.
“I thought at this point, for sure, we were going to be trapped in Morocco.”
On March 18, the couple went to the Canadian Embassy in Rabat to learn 4,700 Canadians were in Morocco, trying to get out.
“I was initially critical of the Canadian Embassy until I found out they were doing their best after being caught off guard, just like we were, by the news the country was closing,” said Marilyn.
“But the best they could tell us at that point was to stay put and wait to get booked on flights.”
McGill University students from Montreal they had run into in the Atlas Mountains had been given the same advice, and other Canadians they ran into on the street in Rabat had been told similar ideas.
On the evening of March 18, the Harrises again heard from their travel agent, who had booked them on another flight to London, but within an hour it too was cancelled.
Growing increasingly despondent, they heard of a rescue flight the French government was organizing for the next day to get citizens from
Marrakesh to Paris.
So, the couple ended up in
Marrakesh, which they’d been told to avoid, to get on the flight to the French capital.
On arrival in Paris, it was dark and the city resembled a ghost town, but a taxi driver found them a hotel that was open.
They tried to get online to get to work on finding flights home but could get no service because systems were overloaded.
Their travel agent came through again and found an emergency flight from Paris to Calgary with a connection to Kelowna on March 20.
“We thought the flight from Paris to Calgary would be packed, and so did the flight attendants, but it was halfempty because word wasn’t getting out in all the confusion,” said
Marilyn.
Now at home in 14-day quarantine, the Harrises are passing the time doing yard work, and Marilyn is painting a bit.
“Looking back, I wouldn’t say we were panicking, but we were definitely concerned,” said Marilyn.
“We couldn’t believe that 4,700 Canadians were trapped in Morocco and no one seemed to know about it or be doing anything about it.”