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| Views crossing from Spain to Morocco |
After a nice break in Tarifa Spain, we headed to the Spanish port of Algeciras to catch a car ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar, to Morocco.
On the boat we met a campervanning couple from Slovenia. They were on their 2nd visit to Morocco and shared their insights about Morocco with us.
About 2 hours later, we disembarked at Tangier-Med in Morocco, and drove off the boat, and straight to passport control. All straightforward.
However, before we could leave, we were flagged to the customs queue, along with our Slovenian friends, and had to wait around 40 mins in the heat before any action came our way.
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| Marg on the Ferry to Morocco |
We then had to explain why our Italian made
motorhome was purchased in Germany, then registered to a Czech person, and
driven by a Kiwi and Aussie.
The problem was that we had no proof from our
Czech registered owner that we had authority to drive the motorhome – eeek!
Finally, after some tense moments with paper
work and translation into broken French by the Slovenian chappie (French is the
2nd language of Morocco), we cleared customs and were finally on our way, and
out onto Moroccan roads.
We headed east along a good coastal road
through Findeq.
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| Findeq beach on the Mediterranean |
En-route, we were amazed at the number of
flags flying and armed police on every corner. Apparently, the King lives in this area - we
didn’t see him.
We regularly encountered armed Police and army
people on the roads throughout the time we were in Morocco.
At one stage, we asked directions from a
police person and as he turned to respond to us, we saw he had a machine gun
held across his chest – gulp.
However, without exception, when we asked for
directions from Police (and we did this a lot as we have no GPS for Morocco.)
they were unfailingly polite and helpful.
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| Road block and spikes |
There were roadblocks at the entry to most towns, and you had to slow down to 10 km. At these roadblocks they have spikes laid out across the road, so that if you drive on without being waved on, your tyres are slashed.
After several of these, we eventually arrived
in Tétouan
While stopped at traffic lights there, a
motorcycle pulled up on our inside and a man said:
“welcome to Morocco. Is
this your first time here?”
Leigh opened the window to be polite and talk
while the lights were red, and he was charming and offered to show us Tétouan.
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| Marg in the Tétouan Souk (UNESCO) |
He then told us about a Berber market in town only for that day; which of course he wanted to show us. So we received a guided tour of the ancient medina and souk (old town and market), both full of amazingly small and narrow winding streets – albeit dirty and dusty.
It was great, and we learned that Tétouan is 2000+ years old, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We were involved, despite all our best intentions not to be lured by touts, but we loved it.
A bonus was that he found a place where we could safely park our motorhome Vanni while we looked around, so we were quite happy.
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| Tétouan medina (UNESCO) |
It was a wonderful introduction to one of Morocco's mystical souks with its small plastered stone houses and shops.
We managed not to buy anything (after all, where would we put a 1200 cm x 600 cm carpet in a motorhome??).
Eventually, we told our guide that we had to get on with our journey - which we did, after providing him with quite a few of our newly acquired Dirhams (1 Dirham is about 13 NZ cents), for his guiding.
Moving on, we drove away from the coast to Chefchaouen, which is a small and attractively blue town in the Rif Mountains.
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| Leigh in blue Chefchaouen |
After we’d sorted out our campground for the night, we walked around the town and could see why Chefchaouen is nicknamed ‘The Blue Pearl’.
But first the campground – we got lost, after navigating though the town following camping signs.
Luckily two young varsity students offered help and jumped into Vanni. It was great to talk with them about life in Morocco.
They refused our offer of payment, and their help was typical of our experience with Moroccans so far - very lovely people.
We found the camp owned by an Englishman called Paul, and that night, we caught a local taxi into town.
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| Marg and Leigh in Chefchaouen |
After wandering around a bit, we had a lovely tagine meal at Paul's recommended favourite restaurant, which quickly became our favourite too.
Then we strolled around the beautiful blue medina. It was lit up for the night and we felt very safe.
Chefchaouen dates back to 1471 and is painted blue after the tradition of the Jews who fled there escaping the Spanish inquisition.
After a few hours, we managed to find a taxi to return us to the camp, and our air-conditioned motorhome - the night was stiflingly hot.
A few days later, we continued on with our travels. Our next stop was Fes.
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| Fes street (UNESCO) |
Fes was founded in 808 AD - crikey, that's old. It's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The streets are full of atmosphere and history.
But again, a campground eluded us. While looking for our first-choice campground, we were approached by a man on a motor scooter again. He offered to guide us to the camp which, he said, was across town.
As Fes is such a big city and as we had seen no camping signs, we decided to go with him.
Delivering us to the camp, he didn’t want payment, saying it was a city initiative for tourists - but he did offer us a guide for Fes the next day – SOLD!
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| Leigh in Fes (UNESCO) |
So our guide Hassan, picked us up and took us into the centre of this ancient city with its maze of tiny, winding, dirty, and interesting streets, and timeless Islamic architecture. We visited the medina, ancient mosques, palaces and more.
Later, he left us at a family restaurant for lunch where we consumed a huge and delicious traditional meal.
It was a wonderful day. The souks were divided into different areas according to what is sold there. For example, carpet makers were all in the carpet souk.
We visited the carpet area, as well as the metal souk, jewellery souk, headscarf souk, leather souk, and several others.
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| Fes leather tannery (UNESCO) |
The leather tanning area was smelly but fascinating, and we were shown how the leather is processed, dyed and finished.
Despite the fact that we had told our guide we did not want to buy leather or carpets etc we don’t think he really believed us. He appeared to become a little despairing as we moved on without purchasing.
Finally, when we bought some of Morocco's famous Argan Oil, he began to smile again.
We liked Fes and its ancient winding magical medina and souks. Regardless of the extremely hot weather, we'd had a wonderful time there, and Hassan seemed very proud to share his city with us.
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| Middle Atlas village |
Moving on, we had a long drive over the amazing mountainous area of the Middle Atlas Mountains, with its small villages.
We drove amid the hubbub of market days, people selling vegetables and wares, filling their water jugs at the local well, and loaded donkeys.
This was the picture right through Morocco in the rural areas, and the picture of Morocco that we loved the most.
Our next stop was at a camp in Meski, at the source of the Blue Meski Spring. The camping ground at the Spring was very, very dusty, but interesting in many ways.
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| Collecting water at a local well |
We arrived late in the day when a lot of the locals were leaving after spending the day swimming there.
This meant that we had some difficulty driving into the very narrow access road, as everyone else was driving out.
While there, we were invited into the owner’s house for a mint tea (mint tea is traditional in Morocco and the tea is usually very sweet).
Then the hard sell came on, and they wanted us to buy or to ‘swap’ something. Papa didn’t quite believe that we had bought nothing to swap and became quite agitated.
Eventually we left, but it felt like an escape.
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| Vanni at Blue Meski Springs campsite |
Quite a few locals also stayed overnight in their tents there. Most had lots of additional colourful sheets hung about their tent site for privacy - it was interesting being a part of their holiday scene.
Later, we were both very unwell with a violent tummy bug. The water in our mint tea seemed like it had been boiled as it was pretty hot. So we think that our tummy bug most probably came from unclean glasses – yuck.
Believe us; travelling in such extreme heat with a very upset stomach and diarrhoea is no fun. Thank goodness we have an on-board toilet.
We moved on from the Spring in the morning very thankful to be escaping the dust.
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Our route took us through small communes, and past the occasional Berber tent pitched in the middle of a flat space. It was interesting seeing the types of accommodation used in this area.
The desert terrain was spectacular with very dry rocky land, dry riverbeds, sparse greenery and wilted palmeries.
We drove through Erfoud, admiring its beautiful city gate, through yet another market spread across the road, past people on donkeys, and people walking seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and onwards.
But we were not well. Thank goodness that we had appropriate pharmaceuticals and lots of bottled water on board as our illness persevered for over a week.
Our next stop is in the Sahara Desert, at the village of Merzouga.
This blog describes part of our 6
month motorhome trip around western Europe, which began in Prague.