Half a day in Morocco and we’re already in love with the place.
We left Athens in the early hours of the morning and caught a plane to Gibraltar (via London). We tried a new tactic and put our bikes in bags (i.e. wrapped in clear plastic that we sourced from a gardening supply store) rather than in boxes. The bikes arrived in tact, and it made the whole process about a thousand times easier (boxes are a pain to find and an even bigger pain to transport). It even meant that we could leave both wheels on the bikes, seriously cutting down the time it takes to get moving after we land.
We caught the ferry from Algeciras in Spain, just across from Gibraltar, with the rock dominating the skyline. We met an older Moroccan guy on the Ferry when he approached me and wanted to know where we were from. I had read a lot about Moroccan’s hassling tourists and so I had some trepidation at first, and was waiting for the hard sell (“you must stay in my hotel in Tetuane!”), but he was absolutely lovely, only interested in chatting, and gave us all sorts of tips for travelling through Morocco.
Our first glimpse of the African continent was the small Spanish enclave of Ceuta. It’s tiny, and bit like Gibraltar (but with Spanish rather than British influence).
As we approached the border crossing though, things started to change rapidly. From a distance we could see the beginning of a 2km long line of honking cars, bicycles and people. Luckily, we avoided waiting with the cars and were able to ride along the pedestrian strip, battling for space with prams, wheelbarrows and hawkers. We eventually made it to the border crossing, and crossed quickly and without a hitch. We’re still not sure though what was causing the chaos, or the incredible delays for cars attempting to cross into Morocco. Incredibly, the Moroccan side of the border was actually less chaotic.
Once across, everything seemed to become wondrously beautiful. The sky was dazzlingly blue, the sun was glistening on the water, the high Rif mountains were looming in the background and exotic Moroccan architecture was all around. Not only that we soon found ourselves on a bike lane on a rather well made highway with relatively little traffic!
So far, we’ve found that the Moroccans seem to love blue and white. We passed mosques, bus shelters, pedestrian crossings, concrete verges, taxis, lamp posts, sidewalk tiles, and numerous other building all done up in luminescent blue and white. It’s beautiful and makes everything look really bright, fresh and happy! It’s is a welcome relief after the grey European winter.
We initially had some trouble finding a campsite. The first two we had planned to stay at (marked on our OsmAnd map) were closed and the coast was way too built up for us to wild camp. We’d spent such a long time out of the tent, though, that we were determined to camp. We eventually found an open campsite in Martil, a small, but rapidly growing beachside town. It was basically a garden set between high rises, but it felt great to be back in our tent, with our own smelly sheets and cooking properly for ourselves. It was even warm enough to sit outside without a million layers of clothing on!
4ks an hour 