No trip is complete without a proverbial wrench thrown into your plans. The six weeks I spent in Taghazout had been going splendidly well, so it was only right that my phone was stolen before my departure. Instead of enjoying the waves and sun during my final days in the small Moroccan surf village, I went on a nearly 48-hour wild goose chase for an iPhone 12 mini.

When I returned to my car from a quick surf at Anchor Point I noticed something was amiss. I had stashed my key under the car bumper and when I reached to find it, I could tell that it was a few inches to the right of where I had left it. I assumed the worst.

While I was surfing someone found my ‘hidden’ key and carefully went through my car. They stole my money (about USD $50), my iPhone, and a waterproof watch with buttons so filled with wax that they refused to work anymore. I was half-amused to see how this thief had gone about their business. They removed my driver’s license and credit cards, seemingly aware of the major pain in the ass it would be to lose those items. They rifled through my stuffed surf sack enough to find my watch, then placed all the items back in the bag to save me the hassle of reorganizing it myself. What a funny thief. Where I come from they snatch everything and ask questions later. This thief was meticulous and took their sweet time.

Stashing your car key under the bumper while you surf is the oldest trick in the book — known by surfers and thieves alike. Usually, when I surf I tuck a surf key — just a plain copy of the key that can open the door but not start the car — in my wetsuit. That’s the best way. But in Morocco, my rental car doesn’t have such a key so before each surf session I scan my surroundings, make sure no one is looking, and quickly lean over and hide the key somewhere in the car’s undercarriage. It works great until it doesn’t.

I would never dare use this strategy in places like Brazil or Mexico, but I suppose I got lulled into a false sense of security in Taghazout. It’s very much a leave-your-front-door-unlocked type of village. My landlord hangs the key to his door right next to the door itself. Shop owners leave their businesses to attend prayer and simply place a broom across their open doorway to indicate that they’ll be gone for a few minutes. No one steals from the vacant stores. Taghazout felt safe.

But after getting my car broken into I learned that the town’s record is not as squeaky clean as it looks. The same day someone got their phone swiped off a table while eating at a restaurant. And other stories of petty crime were shared when I told my story to locals and travelers.

Once I realized that the phone was stolen I raced back home to check the ‘Find My’ app on my computer. The last ping was in a city about 15 minutes to the south. I enlisted the help of a Moroccan friend (who happens to be my French teacher) to provide translation and a hot spot and we went to the police station to explain my predicament. I was surprised that, upon hearing the situation, two officers were eager to go catch the guy. They decided that we would take my car and track this thief down immediately.

We drove to the location where the phone was pinging. It was on a busy street with a hotel, apartments, a cafe, buses, cars, and lots of pedestrians. The phone was on airplane mode — I think — so the location was not exact and would only update every 5-15 minutes or so. It was essentially helpless to figure out who had it, but it kept pinging in the general area, so the police started frisking people who they profiled as potential thieves. I slumped down in the back seat of my car not wanting to be associated with their quasi-random searches.

After about 30 minutes of searching, the ping started heading down the freeway to the next city to the south. It was pointless to try to pursue it at that point, so we thanked the police and headed home. I had pretty much given up on ever recovering the phone. I went to a restaurant to eat and started making plans to buy a new phone the next day. But when I checked my computer I saw the phone’s ping was now in a nearby village in the completely opposite direction that it had been before. Instead of a busy city, the phone had last pinged in a remote area with only about four to five houses within the ping radius. This would, in theory, be a much easier catch.

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I made this observation at a restaurant called ‘Cafe Yoba.’ Soon after my arrival in Taghazout six weeks prior, I decided that this would be my daily hangout spot. They had the best breakfast, the healthiest food options, and competitive pricing between $3 and $5. They serve a Moroccan-style omelette with tomatoes and spices cooked into the mix, the sweetest dates I’ve ever tasted, green and black olives, a banana, freshly-squeezed orange juice, your choice of mint tea or coffee, bread, and a plate of dips that include olive oil, honey, Nutella, and amlou (a type of Moroccan peanut butter). The cafe was conveniently located a mere 20 steps from my front door.

I soon became the Cafe Yoba local and struck up a rapport with the waiter, Yassine. Yassine looked to be in his forties with slicked-back, jet-black hair. He was missing several teeth, maybe a result of his chain-smoking habit, but didn’t hesitate to give full-fledged smiles when interacting with guests. He still had a charming smile and I admired that he was comfortable showing it.

As our encounters grew, I got to know Yassine better. First, he recognized me when I showed up. Then he learned my name. Eventually, Yassine would sit and have a chat when I showed up, constantly correcting my pronunciation of the headachingly difficult French vowel sounds. I learned that he was from Agadir, loves to play soccer, has four children between two ex-wives, and used to work at a fancier restaurant in town but left due to a stickler of a boss he had. His boss at Cafe Yoba, Med, was a much more reasonable guy.

Yassine started giving me VIP service. He’d bring me extra bread when he saw I had finished all of mine. He saved me an in-demand seat at the cafe while they played the Madrid versus Barcelona soccer match. And even though I didn’t ask for it, he confided in me that he would move my order to the front of the line whenever I came in.

So when Yassine learned what had happened to my phone, he sprang into action. Yassine and Med started asking around with other locals at the cafe and adjacent businesses. Soon I had a group of Moroccan men huddled around my computer looking at the Find My app and discussing the location. They were conversing in animated, rapid-fire Moroccan Arabic and placing phone calls. One of the men turned to me and said, “I know this village, I live there.” He called the neighbors and the ‘leader’ of the village to start an investigation.

I raced back to the police station to show them the new location. The eagerness that I was met with earlier had faded. The officers, while kind, were no longer interested in my wild goose chase. “Come back tomorrow at 3 p.m., our officers are busy with a car crash,” they told me.

I was indeed back there at 3 p.m. sharp the following afternoon. The fast-acting cop chase from the day before turned into an afternoon of bureaucratic paper-pushing. They said the new location was out of their jurisdiction, but I could drive 40 minutes north to another station to explain my plight. Even so, they insisted on giving me a stolen item report so I could collect insurance money. The thing is, I stopped paying for insurance on that phone a year or so ago because the accumulated monthly payments were approaching (or surpassing) the value of the nearly obsolete piece of metal. I learned the meaning of a Moroccan “five minutes,” as the police report dragged on for over an hour. I was growing impatient.

The phone was in a nearby village that the police didn’t want to visit. They also didn’t want to let me leave the station until they finished this unnecessary report. To find a way out of this jam, I knew there was one person to call: Yassine.

Yassine was about to do his afternoon nap between the morning and night shifts at the restaurant. Before I could even say “please” he was trekking up the steep hills above Taghazout to meet me at the police station. He walked in the door, huffing and puffing from the exertion of his smoker’s lungs, and started greeting all the police offers. They all also get their daily coffees at Cafe Yoba.

Yassine very gingerly asked the police chief if his officer could hurry up this process a bit so we could get on the road. Magically, the report appeared, handwritten in Arabic, and I signed off on it not being able to read a single word. I was free and Yassine wanted to do what the police did not: go to the village where the phone last pinged.

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I followed the GPS up a steep dirt road that precariously hugged the edge of a cliff with no safety barriers. Yassine and I pulled up to the house where the phone had last pinged. There was a driveway with a parked car and four basic cement houses all sharing walls. We walked up to one and knocked. No one was home, or so it seemed.

We stood around for a few minutes, ready to retreat, until an old woman emerged from one of the dwellings. She curiously looked at us through a face marked by traditional Berber tattoos. Lines and dots of black ink ran from her lower lip down to her chin. This region of Morocco is home to the Berber people, but in the melting pot village of Taghazout, it’s easy to not notice. The Berbers and their language are native to Morocco, pre-dating the Muslim/Arab conquests over a thousand years ago.

Yassine began conversing with the woman in his most respectful and careful tone of voice, not wanting to accuse anyone of stealing. The woman shook his hand and then kissed her hand. Yassine did the same. She walked over to me and extended a hand and I mimicked the action, kissing my hand.

Soon many people, young to old, started emerging from the surrounding houses to see who the visitors were. They certainly don’t get visitors often in this little village on a hilltop. Yassine did most of the talking in Berber, but a few of the men could speak some basic English and French, so I could chime in from time to time. We learned that they were all family — uncles, aunts, cousins, sons, daughters, grandparents — who lived in these adjacent houses.

Yassine explained my predicament and they intently listened, butting in from time to time to ask questions. It turns out that word of our arrival had beat us to the village. Due to all the guys helping me in Cafe Yoba the previous evening, everyone in the village was already aware that a stolen phone had been there. Apparently, this was the second time this had happened and they had some guesses about who the culprit might be.

I told them that my missing wallet had a Bluetooth card in it that could be rung if I got within range, maybe 30 feet. They walked me to the house of the potential suspect, but I wasn’t able to hear any ringing. The last time this happened, the thieves tossed the phone into an abandoned cement rectangle, they explained, so they took us to the previous site to check. No cigar.

Our entourage looped back around the village, and the family invited us into one of their rental houses. They gave me a tour and even pitched the idea of me renting the house. I already had plans to head out of town in a few days, but I couldn’t help but laugh at how funny it would be to move in next door to the potential phone thief. I told them I’d get back to them on that…

They insisted we stay for tea but Yassine was already late to his evening shift back at Cafe Yoba, even though Med the owner didn’t mind that Yassine was joining my phone search while on the clock. I officially gave up hope of ever finding the phone, but something about the search felt like an amalgamation of my Moroccan experiences to cap off my stay in Taghazout. Losing the phone obviously sucked. However, between leaning on the connections that I forged during a short six weeks in the town, navigating the police system, and exploring a new out-of-the-way village that I would have never visited for any other reason, it felt like the final test. Did I pass that test? I am down a cell phone, but aside from a few well-placed expletives, I came out with my mental health intact.

I originally thought I might completely avoid Taghazout as a whole, but I am glad that I decided to hole up in the town for a month and a half. Yes, the surfing is relatively crowded, but the village has an alluring charm born through the mingling of cultures: Moroccans, foreigners, and surfers. I’m happy with my choice to visit and I may be back sooner than later. Next time, I definitely won’t be stashing my key under the bumper at Anchor Point.