Day 3 in this country that we were getting to know and appreciate better every day. We spent the night in Settat, in a hotel that we will remember for a long time. We got to sleep, that’s what counts.
At the beginning of the vacation we had still hope to see a French Astride locomotive. After 2 days and some calculated guessing, we realized that they had all gone back to France. We were happy with the photos we had made though, and decided to explore the passenger line from Meknes to Oujda and Nador. There we were hoping to still see some Fench nez-cassé diesel locomotives.
First, some more time along the phosphate line though. This way we could do most of the travelling during the hottest hours of the day. Just as we made the last photo of a freight train, the owner of a house we stood nearby came to check what we were doing. We got to talk, in French, and it turned out his son works on the railroad. The connection was made, and not much later we were sitting in his living room with a delicious dish in front of us, that his wife had prepared on the spot. Neither one of us had ever experienced such great hospitality! This is one of the moments of this trip that I will never forget.

After the great meal, it was time to go. We had quite some kilometers to travel to our next destination. I had rather randomly picked a spot on the map where sun would be well positioned at the time we would arrive. Turned out positive and negative. The photo location was great, really great, but it was on top of a dump. The smell wasn’t inviting to stick around, neither were the people walking around there. One photo was enough, and we made some more photos around Meknes until the sun was down. This was early enough so that we still could spend some time and have dinner in Meknes, before heading to a riad for a great night of sleep.