Arriving in Casablanca, I knew the direction of my riad and also that it stood in the shadow of the world's tallest mosque. Confident I could find it, I pushed through the men hawking hotels and cab rides outside the train station, quickly walking in peace only one street away.

My confidence quickly eroded though, as I didn't come to the shore and I unexpectedly stood amongst tall buildings. Seeing as the day was running out, I hailed a confused cabbie who didn't know my riad, yet he still found my Soviet-style housing block accommodations 10 minutes later. Out front there was a cafe busy with men watching soccer, but the entrance looked to be along the side and with girls currently exiting, I rushed over to enter the building without getting buzzed up.

The interior of the 10-story building was poorly lit and as I wandered up dark wooden stairs, it felt like a scary movie or crime drama, where one slowly picks their way up and up into a silent housing tower.

Considering the feeling of this place, I thought the roof door may be open and it was actually wide open, appearing as if it didn't even shut right. When booking this place I hadn't even thought of roofing possibilities, but to be this high up, alone with just the cool and light breeze, in maybe the closest tall building near the breathtaking Hassan II Mosque - the icon of Morocco - was simply unbelievable.

As much as you may think I'm pretty much Anthony Bourdain now, I still found Casablanca overwhelming and it was fascinating to look down at all the ruckus, the people, and the half-completed puzzle of buildings jammed together.

A view to the south, showing the Casablanca International Fair exhibition centre.

It was a shame I had things to do as I wanted to stay up here all day.

Scoring these funky accommodations on Booking.com, I never found out what the deal was with palms getting greased, or if the housing block owner doesn't know about the rental, or whatever, but I was loving this all the same.

Leaving in the morning, I would knock on the door belonging to the owner of this "riad", but it was instead some Asian girl who rented a room just like me, except hers was in this other apartment along with a bunch of bunk beds sold as a group room. She offered to take my key and give it to the owner. Uh, okay?

And since I never got charged for a late checkout or a lost key, shout out to that girl!

If you want to stay at the same place for $42 CAD ($31 USD), here you go.

Rewinding to the previous evening in Casablanca, I rushed to get my bike together and hit the streets.

Pedalling past the Hassan II Mosque, it was something else to cruise alongside such a daunting and impressive structure. There also wasn't all that much traffic, so I was getting lost in my thoughts and appreciating what stood beside me.

I hadn't even thought about visiting the magnificent interior prior to this trip, but I was now regretting that as I headed along the shoreline to my eventual destination.

My friend Richard was posting a lot of video clips riding his bike on Jersey barriers lately and I thought of him while laughing at the sight of Moroccan Jersey barriers.

I hit one for him, but it was just a bit rougher than good ol' Canadian or American ones.

Continuing past the mosque, there was another significant stop up ahead in the El Hank Lighthouse. Built in 1919, it stands as Morocco's tallest traditional lighthouse.

Reading Google Reviews later, it sounds like one of the lightkeepers is an entrepreneur who charges tourists a handsome sum to go up top, although I saw no one who looked like a lightkeeper while standing around and admiring this fine sentinel. Below my feet it looked like there were the ruins of a fort or something, while all around me were modest 1-story housing blocks with the odd fancy restaurant sprinkled in.

Peering out from El Hank, it was cool to see some tilted, coarse-grained rock like I'd see back in Newfoundland. Up until to this point all I'd seen were sandy beaches.

Continuing to cruise down the coastline, I loved getting away from the downtown and the hubbub of the mosque. I passed high-rise housing estates with kids playing soccer, plus boulevards with a mix of old housing, traffic islands and cafes. Just like in Essaouira, I was loving manualling and bunnyhopping past it all, although I was realizing it's not so much fun to ride a BMX this far distance-wise anymore.

I finally came to the whole reason I stayed in this area of Casablanca: this unbelievable rail in Parc Dawliz. Having watched Moroccan BMX and skateboarding videos prior to this trip, I stumbled on an instagram clip of this handrail and I had to find it and have it. And after a couple hours of Googling, I had the coordinates and the realization there wasn't much for nearby riads, as this is the area of Casablanca home to the boujee Four Seasons. I was left to cycle my bike about 4km (2.5mi) each way.

For all of my dreams of hitting this & plans for this trick and that trick, I got about 3 runs in before a pair of tweenage girls decided to sit on the steps and take Snapchats of each other. I couldn't believe it as they wandered up in the little window where I was catching my breath.

Okay, I was going to be patient and wait this out, but they were also doing that thing where social media people take a photo, then look at the photo, then delete said photo, then change it by 1%, then repeat, over and over until their eventual demise. I plopped my bike down and waited.

About 45 minutes would pass. This is a case where I thought about being forward, but I'm not about to approach young girls in a park, especially in a country where I don't speak the language and can't explain my honest intentions. Instead I gave up and rolled down to the skatepark at the foot of the stairs.

Jumping on the first skatepark handrail I saw, the top was dented and flattened because they must've cheaped out on the rail thickness. I'd never such a thing before. Also, there was a boy who was really excited that I could air the quarterpipe, so I aired the big quarter a few times before getting on my way back to the riad.

Riding back home was fun, especially as I passed the El Hank Lighthouse in the darkness.

Speaking of darkness, the riad/apartment block was still pitch black inside as I picked my way back up to my room. Following a shower, it was back out into the Casablanca night in what appeared to be a rougher area than anything back in Marrakech.

I decided to head out in the direction of Rick's Cafe Americain, not because I've seen the movie Casablanca or hold any nostalgia for it, but rather because it'd been a long day & I'd enjoy a Manhattan. Along the way I came across an old fort and funny enough, this is the exact same fort my friend Nailhed went out of his way to visit during his time in Casablanca. Small world.

The only difference is that nailhed.com failed to give you much detail, while the superior research of brnation.net will tell you that this fort is part of 4km of fortifications facing the sea and guarding the urbanized and developed part of the city. Following the Portuguese abandonment of the area following a 1755 earthquake, Sultan Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah decided to rebuild "dar el-Beida" or the White House in Arabic, to fill in the gap of his Atlantic defense between Rabat and Mogador (Essaouira).

The name for this fort today, although I'm unsure if its always had this name, is La Sqala. This comes from a latin word used by seamen, which became the ladders in French, then eventually the stopover. The fort represented a place along the coast that was a safe shelter, protecting the medina and threatening hostile ships out at sea.

And yeah, this small tidbit of information came from a giant French signboard that I took a picture of while visiting. I can't believe I transcribed all this French into Google Translate just to give Nailhed a hard time. No wonder I'm 21 months behind in these updates.

This fort was actually revived because of the private restaurant that wanted to open within its quarters. While my food wasn't the best, I liked the unique and gorgeous setting. It seemed like a great place to take a date.

As for Rick's Cafe Americain, it's why I was so open to eating at the Le Sqala restaurant. At Rick's, I went in and was scoffed at for not having a reservation, while lots of old white tourists were dressed to the 9's and loving reenacting the atmosphere of this supposedly classic movie. I mean, c'mon people, this isn't Albuquerque's Desert Sands Motel. Anyway, the waiter eventually allowed me to take a seat at the bar where I was handed a menu with astronomical drink prices (and also disregarded by the bartender). Since I was here, I had invested enough to get one of these drinks to say I've had a fancy drink at Rick's Cafe Americain, but after the bartender didn't return for 10 minutes I said shag this and walked right back out into the night.

Following dinner, I remembered the rough direction of a drinking establishment and headed that way. It's here that I discovered Casablanca also had a confusing medina just like Essaouira and Marrakech. I dived right in without realizing.

Keeping my pace and moving along through dark streets with a mix of crumbling concrete and ornate stone buildings, I ducked out of the medina, but there were still so many disorienting Y-intersections and angled corners. It was also street after street of residences and closed buildings, without anything looking like the lights of a restaurant or cafe up ahead. And then when I'd see a promising looking bit of lights, I'd go that way and find something useless like a park or a school.

It didn't take long to note that I was completely lost and turned around. Things were also growing more rundown and poorly-lit, and I wondered if I was heading towards a worrisome part of town. It was beyond time to nondescriptly grab a cab, continuing to walk like I had purpose, but also peering over my shoulder to try and spot oncoming taxis.

Eventually, thankfully, a cab came along and actually stopped. My belief that I couldn't get lost because I had the world's tallest mosque as a beacon was completely debunked. Such ideas don't work in this part of Casablanca, where there's no open space and the only horizon you can see is the narrow slot created by the road up ahead.

As best as I could tell, I was south and/or east of where I wanted to go in the northwest of the city. I was really happy and drained as I got back to my weird room in the Rêve Nord Africain 北非梦 riad.

I didn't have much time the next morning before my flight, but after putting all this effort into that handrail, I had to go get something done on it.

Racing through the quiet streets at dawn, I arrived at the rail and went towards the skatepark for a few warmup laps. That is, until I realized the skatepark apparently has a guard dog?!

Skidding sideways as the canine barked his head off at the front gate, it looked like there would be no warming up. This was one way of making sure people only ride the skatepark when the attendants are there.

No problem though, as the trick I had in mind wasn't really going to be that hard. Where I can ride down a single circular rail, I can easily get on and stay on a rail made of two pipes. The only problem was getting my timing and speed right, since the rail was downhill even in its kinks & I picked up a lot of speed before trying to skid to a stop to avoid the skatepark fence.

You can see the lines from my tires in the dewey grass on the left. I was getting a feel for it though & it was time to film this and catch my flight.

The next attempt went fine. I landed on the grass again and ran into the fence but only at a light speed. Popping right back up those stairs, I then heard a noise and turned around only to witness the damn skatepark dog wiggle underneath the fence like Jim Carrey emerging from the rhino's butt in Ace Ventura. You have to be kidding me.

Now that I was committed and figured I could land this, the dog was annoying me even more. He only stood there and looked at me, but I wasn't about to find out his reaction to bikes while I was riding on a handrail. We'd reached an impasse.

Soon realizing that the dog was interested in me and would follow to some extent, I noticed a nearby bus stop that had a few people heading off to work. If I could lead the dog over there, maybe someone would have food or scratches or something more interesting to a dog than a bicycle.

The plan worked perfectly, except that now my will to ride this rail had diminished. But while I may have walked away in Canada or America where I'd be back sometime, I had to get this done. Setting up my cell phone camera again, I tried to stick on the rail until the last possible moment where I'd still have time to react and stop.

Not riding right to the end and it not counting as landed, I still had little time to react as I careened straight into the fence. As my front tire wedged into the bottom, I didn't get my feet out in front of the pedals like I should have, and instead my shin was right behind the left pedal which smashed and push upwards with its little teeth. This didn't feel good.

Rolling up my pant leg and with the experience of getting stitches four different times, I knew this looked like I should get a couple, but it also wasn't that bad. I was tempted to give it another try with 20 minutes left, but I also didn't want to hit the same spot and open it up to the point that I would absolutely have to go to the hospital in Morocco. As it stood, I could gamble with skipping the stitches and simply having another shin scar.

I let the setup win. The funny thing was that if the skatepark fence wasn't there, there were the skatepark ledges with huge drops on the side, surrounding a narrow embankment and a long 13-stair that would push the biggest stair I've ever jumped. I think I almost preferred running into the fence to running into a long 13-stair at speed.

The next problem was getting this leg cleaned up, while also getting my bike apart and making it to the Casablanca Airport.

I didn't have a first aid kit or bandages, but I assumed a nearby shop would have some. Except it was early. The only open shop I could find was the type that only sold newspapers and soft drinks, although the guy was very nice in telling me about his sister who was in Philadelphia. Seeing as my mind was in another place, I didn't think to turn around and point to the Locust Bar Philadelphia t-shirt I just happened to be wearing. Meanwhile, two cute little girls were laughing (snickering) at the apparently posh way I say Snickers, mocking my "can I get a Snick-errrrs" while I asked and learned that there were no nearby pharmacies open.

No problem though, airports have pharmacies or at least convenience stores that will have items that travellers need. I hailed a cab and we were off from this dead zone of traffic towards the train station.

There was also a little shop inside the train station, but they didn't have any bandages either. They only had a cat sitting atop their newspapers. I would buy some tissues from one of the women who stand outside train stations in Morocco selling travellers packs of tissues, but I also needed things like peroxide and wraps.

I'm not sure if Casablanca or Addis Ababa or Johannesburg is the biggest airport in Africa, but Casablanca is up there and it doesn't have a pharmacy. In fact, judging by people's reaction, it seemed like a silly thing to expect in an airport.

I briefly considered seeing if there was first aid service, but I also didn't want to set off some big incident. This really wasn't that big of deal.

So I sat down in the Spanish destinations area, with so many people that we were sitting on stairs and in hallways. It wasn't the most comfortable way to be sitting, but soon enough I'd be in the Canary Islands and at a pharmacy (or so I thought).

I totally missed the announcement for Tenerife, sitting there and wondering why they had moved on to other destinations and a bunch of people had disappeared. Asking the Air Maroc lady at the counter, she was very polite although confused, and simply got on the horn for another passenger bus to come by and pick me up.

After those uncomfortable stairs, I now had a whole bus to myself as the only dumbass who missed the first bus, this second one bringing me over to the plane's location on the tarmac.

My plane was slightly delayed by a woman trying to bring a whole fish wrapped in paper aboard, but eventually we pulled up and above the dry lands around Casablanca. As we continued down the coast of Morocco and then over the Atlantic, everything seemed like it would be alright as we cut west around the border of Morocco and Western Sahara, out towards Spain's Canary Islands.

I think I napped or read a book or something, but soon enough we were approaching and landing...in Las Palmas?

Now here's a free Canary Islands geography lesson for you: Las Palmas is not Tenerife. Apparently the weather was so bad in Tenerife that we needed to land here instead and that was exactly all that we were being told.

I'd read that Tenerife North was an airport in a crappy location that has since been mostly replaced by Tenerife South, but now I was experiencing the effects of that location choice. Isy had already landed in Tenerife South after leaving England this afternoon, while I was here sitting in this plane having chose Tenerife North. I could also feel blood breaking loose and trickling down my leg in regular intervals.

It was 4:15 when we landed in Las Palmas and you know how vocal and entitled delayed plane passengers can be. Around 5 o'clock, we were told the offer was now that Tenerife South had a slight break in the weather and we would try to land there - the only problem was that if we couldn't land in Tenerife South, then we'd go straight back to Casablanca. The other option? We were free to simply get off the plane here in Las Palmas and sort out our own travels.

Getting off in Las Palmas might work for a bachelor as a fun twist of fate, but I didn't know how pleased my girlfriend would be with my decision making after not seeing her for these couple of months during her English sojourn. Las Palmas was also a funny option because who amongst us knew what flight options there were between the Canary Islands? Or for that matter, flights home from Las Palmas?

There were a few people that got off in Las Palmas, but not many.

In fact, many more people got on the plane, as some partnering airline must've been flying between the islands and I guess Air Maroc decided to pick them up?

I was getting pretty annoyed with being uninformed and cramped in a plane by now, but I was still polite when some clueless girls got on the plane and said I was sitting in their seats. I knew the fact that they should be on another plane with seat 18F empty, but I simply moved and waited for them to figure out the situation from all of the distraught people. Soon after I heard them apologize to the flight attendant for asking "some guy" to move, haha.

If there was any consolation to all this, Casablanca was my 50th airport except I didn't want to post about Casablanca as #50 because I wanted to wait for a milestone number at a fun airport like El Paso or Columbus. At least Las Palmas was one more airport on my way to #75.

Still sitting on the runway around 6:45, it was announced that the original plan was out the door and Tenerife North had opened just enough weatherwise that we were good to go. Everyone started into a mad dash of fastening seatbelts and putting away luggage.

With wheels up in incredible time, my nervous ass wasn't the biggest fan of taking weather chances between volcanic isles out in the Atlantic. It was a nervewracking, short flight with the plane shaking and wobbling, but I could have kissed the pilot after we touched down at Tenerife North (#52).

The girlfriend was admittedly confused and worried after I was supposed to arrive at the hotel before her. I was now over 4 hours late but the joy in seeing each other dispelled all that nonsense in short order. The only real negative is that I booked grimy accommodations in Santa Cruz de Tenerife based on the fact that I was supposed to get there first, but this instead left her waiting in a dim, cramped and shitty room.

We headed off to a pharmacy, got cleaned up, then hit a nice open-air pub with cold beers that overlooked a park, getting some much needed food into my system.

It was now time for a few days in the Canary Islands.

Continue to the next installment...