my first day in Morocco

I’ve had better days… It started well enough with a pleasant breakfast of onion, bacon, bratwurst and tomato in French bread, cooked by me and shared with a German fellow biker (who supplied the bratwurst!). I was all packed, showered and ready to roll by 8.30. Having checked on line for the price of the crossing to Tangier Med and got a price of 145 euro, I thought I chance my luck at one of the many kiosks that line thae road to the port. I usually wait until I get to the port and get the tickets there, it has always worked out OK, but I have never been convinced that I was getting much of a deal. Anyway the first kiosk I stopped at came up with a price of 80 euro for an open return which seemed fair considering the internet price. So after a bit of very feeble haggling and getting nowhere I parted with my folding stuff and headed for the port. So far so good!

I had a bit of a wait for the ferry but nothing out of the ordinary and I had a good chuckle at the antics of the Spanish and Moroccan drivers trying desperately (but in vain) to gain the tiniest of advantage in the disorderly scrummage that passed for the boarding queue. The guys at Portsmouth or Dover would have a fit; to make matters even worse, once the HGV’s had loaded they just sort of gave up and let anarchy rule. it really was great fun to watch and dare I say, even tbetter o be a part of, although I guess, not for the faint hearted! The crossing itself was smooth and fast with the Moroccan coast looming into sight almost before I had managed to get my passport stamped; yes, the Tangier Med crossing has now adopted the sensible idea from the old Tangier route of taking the immigration forms and stamping your passport whilst enroute.  Once the loading doors opened I did a quick shimmy to starboard and ducked out between two huge HGVs, which made me first non-HGV to disembark and roll up to the customs post…That’ll teach ‘em to mess with a biker !!!

Customs , on entering Morocco at Tangier med is always a fairly straight forward and civilised affair and today was no exception. Although the customs officer did ask me to open one pannier and also asked if I had any pistols !!!! Apparently satisfied that my laughter meant no, I was soon on my way with the requisite pieces of paper ,and as it was only 12 o’clock I decided to make the run for Rabat and the notorious Mauritanian Embassy. At a distance of a little over 250km I was sure to make it before they shut at 4pm… but of course I hadn’t reckoned on the obstructive, lazy, indolent and just downright awkward, idiot hiding behind the wooden screen in the visa office. You could easily be forgiven for thinking that Mauritania doesn’t want or even like tourists and their dollars, euros, pounds or whatever currency, and who knows, perhaps they don’t, but every time I visit this visa office I vow that I will never do it again! And this time I will stick with it, Brussels is a far more civilised (if colder!) place to obtain the said stamp in you passport, even if it does mean hanging around for the best part of a week.

 I have to be back at the embassy at 9am in the morning just to hand over the papers and money that he was too idle to accept this afternoon! So with this in mind and remembering that the main reason for this trip is to recce routes for the forthcoming Scoots trip, I back tracked to a camp site at Kenitra about 40km north of Rabat… and now wish I hadn’t bothered! From the number of French wobbly boxes here you would think it was wobbly box heaven… but for proper camping in a TENT it is crap, with hardly a blade of grass to be seen, a derelict swimming pool plus various other derelict buildings and huts making it feel more like Colditz than a holiday complex. After slowly circling the site a few times,  I finally found a spot on the far side of the swimming pool that wasn’t too rocky and to be fair it is still way better than the site we have used at Dhaklar (which is a bit like a corporation car park!). The saving grace is that it has a bar serving ice cold beer and descent food, so at least I will go to bed with a full stomach, and with a few beers inside me I hopefully won’t notice the stony ground too much. Lets just hope the guy at the visa office doesn’t take too much umbrage at my tirade this afternoon and make me wait until Monday to collect my Visa otherwise my trip may end up being more than a little curtailed… either that or I’ll end up in a Moroccan  jail! Now that is definitely not a nice thought…..