Entering Morocco
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| Our Ferry |
The Belearia ferry we took was very luxurious and there were 11 cars, 1 transport and us. And it does the Med. Tours out of Valencia a lot. 2 other ferries left at the same time, a Belearia Cat ferry, and an Acciona which had packed many transport trucks on, so why the difference?? We’re not sure how the ferry service can be run so inefficiently.
On board you have to fill out a declaration form with your info, and none of it has an English translation, you either do it in French or Arabic. A ‘police’ guy actually immigration officer onboard examines your passport and stamps it with an entry stamp, Spanish police had stamped it showing us leaving Europe by Ferry. You need to be sure this all happens because if it doesn’t you are the one having to explain how you are trying to re-enter Europe when they don’t show you leaving. Similarly it will be the same when we leave Morocco.
On arrival in Tanger Med port, and there are 2 ports now, the Med port is east of Tangers and is a new port for all the regular traffic you are met with security waving you thru. Then we get to the Customs guys where they pull everyone over since there was only 11 that’s not much, then I first fill out a green form that ends up being my temporary visa which is stamped officially by them, I then get sent to the Police check station where they enter the same info into their system along with a number the nifty guy on board the boat had entered without me seeing. Then the police guy tells me “Bye” but when I get back to the Customs guy he asks finally if I have anything to declare and then do I have a gun.
That done we are waved on to another check station where we show passports one last time then we are off, well not quite, we want to ensure we have our ferry to Genoa booked for the 11th so we stop at the Gare terminal and book our ferry tickets with room (outside) to Genoa. 3100 dirham. Much cheaper than driving back across Spain and France to get to Genoa. Now we are just finishing up loading the GPS map set for Morocco and we will be off, reversing this route as well so we hit the coast later when me might want to kick back.
As we head out of the terminal I talk with another gendarme and he tells me to go to Chefchouan go to Tetouan first. That is out of the way according to our map and GPS and even though I have selected fastest route I am directed to a route that is absolutely out of the stone age. This road has been driven back into the dirt by gravel trucks that are completing the super highway into Tanger that we were driving on. I hope that it improves as we drive away from the construction zone, but it doesn’t, it gets worse.
Now I’ve travelled about 15 kms nearly losing the bike a couple of times in pot holes so deep the Chinese can be seen smiling from the bottom up at us. I stop and check the rims on the Strom to make sure I haven’t bent anything. Everything is still in place so we soldier on. Another 15 kms or so the traffic in front of me goes right at an unmarked road Y so I follow and of course my GPS indicates that it is re-calculating, meaning that I have deviated from the planned route. It says ‘continue on unpaved road’. Well frankly I hadn’t noticed any difference, so I doubled back to the Y and took the route the GPS had first routed me on. So we drive approx 2 kms and I see this nice lake, actually a dammed up area in the La Riff mountains. The road begins to get worse if that’s possible, and then worse. Then as I am looking ahead I think I am seeing a mirage since it looks like the road is going into the lake. Yep, no mirage, the road does enter the lake and by the time I have deduced this I have to dirt ride the bike thru some field to turn around. OK, back to ‘continue on unpaved road’.
Many of you have seen some of the video footage we have of Mike and Ruby when they travelled the middle east. Well we are in exactly the same situation, going through Berber country high in the La Riff mountains, this is the area that is known to grown ½ of the world hashish crop. Nice company we keep eh?
Finally we reach, you guessed it Tetouan by the back route. Of course I didn’t want the superhighway officer.
We continue on and what was supposed to be 105 kms turns into 135 or so before we finally reach Chefchouan, known for its most intact and maintained medina ( old town centre).
So let me explain something. Medina’s are walled old cities built dating back some 1700 years ago. You know, before air conditioning. So they designed natural air conditioning by keeping the streets person and beast of burden wide only so they were always shaded. And by some twisted design strategy they made the streets into a maze so that invading armies got lost 2 or 3 streets into the medina, and turned around and left.
The place that Sandra had selected was in the old medina and I could only estimate the GPS waypoint of the closest parking area outside the walled medina. However when we arrived there the mapset did not have detailed info of Chefchouan, too small for it to provide detail, so we were on our own. I stopped near the hospital and within a minute there was a guy speaking English and welcoming us. When he asked if he could help us find where we were going we told him the Riad Dar Meziana and he said he could take us there. Now to this point we hadn’t found anyone who spoke English so this was a stroke of luck. Uh uh… not so.. He had us park our bike in a parking area pay a guy to keep it safe overnight ( normal here in Morocco), that parts cheap, but we didn’t ask him how much to take us to the hotel (on foot). Well it turned out to be $10.00, so we learned our first lesson very quickly and now we ask a price for everything first.
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| View they'd like you to remember (courtesy Dar Meziana) |
And part of the view that is not included in the foto/ paintbrushed out
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| Note the toilet on the L w/o a door (our pic, same place) |
You can tell it's the same location by the topography.
When we arrive at the hotel we enter a very quiet oasis high up in the medina overlooking the whole city. It was a very nice place and we were the only clients that night. They said that with the protests across Morocco and north Africa and the bombing in Marrakesh the tourism market has vanished. Well almost, we’re still here, except for one of those pot holes that nearly got us. We take the ½ board version that sends us to a Moroccan restaurant that is run by a relative. There we have some salads and a chicken and lemon tangine. Both of us wake up the next day making a lot of use of the toilet. Sandra recovered quicker than I but needless to say we are more cautious on what we are eating now. The breakfast at the hotel was very good though, and after having to find a place to change money to pay, and oh yeah, try to find our moto like one of those retreating armies we are off to Fes.
It’s only 214 kms to Fes but since we left about 11:30 am it’s about 2:30 pm by the time we get to Fes. We are told its 4 hrs to Fes. Today I have mounted the video helmet camera and get some great footage as we ride of all the action. From the Berber guys sitting having coffee in their hooded cloaks, to the crowded streets to nearly being run over. Here’s how that exciting event unfolded.
We’re travelling south and 3 old overloaded trucks are travelling north on this narrow 2 lane road we are on. Remember ‘continue on unpaved road’ from the day before?? Well it’s almost the same road. Fortunately it is a sweeping left corner and I can see all the way through and I notice some white breaking in between the gaps between the trucks. I suspect it to be a vehicle passing and it can’t see me because it is a reducing radius right turn for them and he is on their outside. I slow down and see this truck lumbering on the outside and I slow down more to almost a stop. I do want to keep moving though in case I have to take some evasive manoeuvre which fortunately I don’t. There is enough room ,just , and he swings right in front of us at the last second. Whew, at least there would have been video to prove what had happened.
The drive was similar in many respects to the day before. This may be countryside but every time you see a goat or sheep there is a herder sitting under a tree next to them. Also tons of people out in the fields working to hay fields by hand with a hand sickle not even a haying sickle. A lot of this work is done by Berber women and in one place there was a woman being almost crushed by the weight of camomile bush branches that were bundled and being carried on her back. Mules take up the weight of even heavier loads. But then I think, you know if the goats got into the marijuana fields and ate the profits they themselves would become like the brownies that hashish is baked into given the residual build up effect of the THC in hashish. Ruby had said about needing to take a pee one time and finding a herder pop out of the bushes and offer her tea, well now I understand.
On arrival in Fes we fill with gas just outside town at the only service station we had found that takes credit cards, so though I don’t need gas yet, I better take advantage of the opportunity. A couple of moments later we are greeted by a fellow speaking perfect English and welcoming us to Morocco. No, we got that welcome yesterday. He begins to soft sell, then a bit harder sell a hotel in Fes. We head off on the bike, and he eventually catches us ( on a moped) where traffic has caused us to stay trapped. We speed away again, only to find him in our rear view mirror a few minutes later. Once we enter Fes he says follow us and he thinks we re following him, but really I’m following the GPS route that is taking us to the IBIS Hotel, short of SOS for people in Morocco hounded by moped riders. We have our final confrontation out front of the IBIS and then I turn in and get security to put the bike into the guarded garage area, that moped rider 1 said they didn’t have. OK, hopefully it will get easier from here. After a brief discussion we talk with a Berber cloaked guide who has credentials to offer himself out as a tour guide and he offers to take us on a 3 hr tour of the medina sites in Fes, the worlds oldest and largest medina, starting at 10:00am tomorrow.
Today we wait around for him and get hustled by another more approachable but cocky young guide, who tells us Berber guide 1 isn’t coming today. After a talk with this guy we decide it’s not the right fit so we think we’ll try it on our own. So we head out and after taking a picture of some walled medina entry I go and lose our map. Now it’s a 1 ½ km walk back to the hotel to get another, or head into the Medina and hope to get another by finding the tourist office. As it turns out another fellow offered to direct us for free to the office, then offered to give us a tour himself for the same price we had been offered before. I jumped at the chance as he had a good connection with us and we ended up having a very informative day. And one we could not have had had we tried to do it ourselves.
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| Chefchouan in the Le Riff Mtns |
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| Two beasts of burden at Bab Suk |
When we arrive at the hotel we enter a very quiet oasis high up in the medina overlooking the whole city. It was a very nice place and we were the only clients that night. They said that with the protests across Morocco and north Africa and the bombing in Marrakesh the tourism market has vanished. Well almost, we’re still here, except for one of those pot holes that nearly got us. We take the ½ board version that sends us to a Moroccan restaurant that is run by a relative. There we have some salads and a chicken and lemon tangine. Both of us wake up the next day making a lot of use of the toilet. Sandra recovered quicker than I but needless to say we are more cautious on what we are eating now. The breakfast at the hotel was very good though, and after having to find a place to change money to pay, and oh yeah, try to find our moto like one of those retreating armies we are off to Fes.
It’s only 214 kms to Fes but since we left about 11:30 am it’s about 2:30 pm by the time we get to Fes. We are told its 4 hrs to Fes. Today I have mounted the video helmet camera and get some great footage as we ride of all the action. From the Berber guys sitting having coffee in their hooded cloaks, to the crowded streets to nearly being run over. Here’s how that exciting event unfolded.
We’re travelling south and 3 old overloaded trucks are travelling north on this narrow 2 lane road we are on. Remember ‘continue on unpaved road’ from the day before?? Well it’s almost the same road. Fortunately it is a sweeping left corner and I can see all the way through and I notice some white breaking in between the gaps between the trucks. I suspect it to be a vehicle passing and it can’t see me because it is a reducing radius right turn for them and he is on their outside. I slow down and see this truck lumbering on the outside and I slow down more to almost a stop. I do want to keep moving though in case I have to take some evasive manoeuvre which fortunately I don’t. There is enough room ,just , and he swings right in front of us at the last second. Whew, at least there would have been video to prove what had happened.
The drive was similar in many respects to the day before. This may be countryside but every time you see a goat or sheep there is a herder sitting under a tree next to them. Also tons of people out in the fields working to hay fields by hand with a hand sickle not even a haying sickle. A lot of this work is done by Berber women and in one place there was a woman being almost crushed by the weight of camomile bush branches that were bundled and being carried on her back. Mules take up the weight of even heavier loads. But then I think, you know if the goats got into the marijuana fields and ate the profits they themselves would become like the brownies that hashish is baked into given the residual build up effect of the THC in hashish. Ruby had said about needing to take a pee one time and finding a herder pop out of the bushes and offer her tea, well now I understand.
On arrival in Fes we fill with gas just outside town at the only service station we had found that takes credit cards, so though I don’t need gas yet, I better take advantage of the opportunity. A couple of moments later we are greeted by a fellow speaking perfect English and welcoming us to Morocco. No, we got that welcome yesterday. He begins to soft sell, then a bit harder sell a hotel in Fes. We head off on the bike, and he eventually catches us ( on a moped) where traffic has caused us to stay trapped. We speed away again, only to find him in our rear view mirror a few minutes later. Once we enter Fes he says follow us and he thinks we re following him, but really I’m following the GPS route that is taking us to the IBIS Hotel, short of SOS for people in Morocco hounded by moped riders. We have our final confrontation out front of the IBIS and then I turn in and get security to put the bike into the guarded garage area, that moped rider 1 said they didn’t have. OK, hopefully it will get easier from here. After a brief discussion we talk with a Berber cloaked guide who has credentials to offer himself out as a tour guide and he offers to take us on a 3 hr tour of the medina sites in Fes, the worlds oldest and largest medina, starting at 10:00am tomorrow.
Today we wait around for him and get hustled by another more approachable but cocky young guide, who tells us Berber guide 1 isn’t coming today. After a talk with this guy we decide it’s not the right fit so we think we’ll try it on our own. So we head out and after taking a picture of some walled medina entry I go and lose our map. Now it’s a 1 ½ km walk back to the hotel to get another, or head into the Medina and hope to get another by finding the tourist office. As it turns out another fellow offered to direct us for free to the office, then offered to give us a tour himself for the same price we had been offered before. I jumped at the chance as he had a good connection with us and we ended up having a very informative day. And one we could not have had had we tried to do it ourselves.
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