First few days in Morocco

Well I am finally in contact from Morocco where I have already been for a week.

I met up with Steve & Jan at Lidl in Algeciras and we bought our ferry tickets from Carlos and got the usual gift of a cake & bottle of cider. My ticket (190 Euros) was 10 Euro cheaper than theirs as I was only one passenger.

Next morning at the ferry terminal we found we had been given tickets for different ferry lines and mine was due to sail an hour later, so much for being on hand to help them on their first entry to Morocco. In the end both ferries were late and I arrived at the customs about 5 vehicles behind them at Tanger Med port and I was processed about 30 minutes after them.

We drove on to Asilah and arrived mid afternoon so had plenty of time time amble around the easy going town and have a meal and experience Moroccan life. Parking is on waste land next to the harbour with no facilities but the parking guardian wanted 50Dh,(5 Euros) or some items like alcohol or clothes to exchange, many campsites are cheaper!

We then headed to El Jadida on the motorway getting experience of mad Moroccan driving and unfortunately it started raining, many cars didn't have lights, some didn't even have windows that closed and they were weaving all over the road, luckily as the Motorways are toll road there isn't too much traffic but it's very tiring driving and checking the mirrors constantly is essential.

There was a very helpful man in the Maroc Telecom shop who spoke English and got our 3g dongles sorted out to connect to the internet and even set them up on our laptops. The only problem was the next time I turned my laptop on and connected Windows Vista came up with the Blue screen of death, showing a startup driver problem. I tried every trick I know, safe mode, restore from last successful connection point, but still no success. (Pacer.sys) seems to be the problem if anyone knows how to sort it out) I also have Linux operating system installed on the laptop and I could see all my data on the hard drive was still there. Unfortunately Linux could not see the 3g dongle as the install programme is written for Windows. As my Nexus android tablet is rooted I could connect the dongle and this worked ok for an evening but after that I couldn't get a connection. I had three frustrating days trying to get connected in different locations but no success.

El Jadida campsite is just the same, a good tree shaded site but poor basic facilities, squat toilets, open drain for toilet emptying and general neglect, but for 4 euros better value than parking at Asilah and the option to also pay extra for electric hookup if required.

We then headed to Essaouria on the inland road which was quite hectic for the first couple of hours mainly with buses & taxis trying to overtake everyone usually at the most dangerous point. There is often a solid white line down the centre of the road but it's mostly ignored. Whenever we passed through a town it was the usual chaos, pedestrians just cross without looking, carts, bikes, motorbikes all over the place but we survived intact.

Essaouria is always windy but when we arrived it was awful, sand blowing everywhere and stinging our eyes. Sadly the convenient campsite next to the lighthouse at the end of the promenade has been reduced in size as part of the land is having apartments being built on. We battled the wind walking into the town and had a quick look around the main attractions but it wasn't very comfortable, but I did stock up with 'the best buns in Morocco' from Gill's favourite cake shop. Unfortunately the good Italian restaurant we had found on our last visit hadn't opened but we found a good Moroccan place near the ramparts. Due to the weather we decided to continue on further South and headed towards Agadir on the coast road.

Aglou Plage camping has been my main first location to get settled for a week or two and we found a wonderful new dual carriageway from the South of Agadir almost all the way to Tiznit where we headed West to the coast. The site surprisingly wasn't full, though it is almost now.

The weather for the last 4 days has been very unsettled, stormy with heavy rain but very mild. Not like my dream of sitting basking in the sun and unwinding after the long drive down Morocco. I had a wind out awning fitted to the van in Seville but its not safe to leave it out unattended with the erratic weather.