12/08 Casablanca, Morocco to Gibraltar
The ride from Casablanca was sadly quite dull, being mostly long, straight dual carriageway North past Rabat and for the greater part of the 220 miles before Tanger and the ferry back to Europe. Passing through Casablanca city proper was quite hair-raising with no real form of roadmanship, and with the horn being used much in favour of mirrors or indicators. A large proportion of the traffic was made up of “Petit Taxis”, most of which were beaten up looking Peugeout 205’s or Fiat Punto’s painted red and with large roof-racks on top. Almost all of these little cabs bore the scars of many a previous encounter with some clearly larger and tougher vehicles.
Along the motorway were host of interesting and amusing vehicle to take our mind off the monotony of what were distressingly straight roads. There were the ubuiquitous white Taxi cabs, usually decripit old Mercedes’s, which seemed to stop where ever there was a stray person on the roadside, who would then cram in amongst whoever was already there. There were the Moroccan holiday makers returning home to France, Belgium, or Holland with their vehicles fully loaded and yet another load quite literally on top of that perched perilously on a roof-rack and generally covered in a brightly coloured flapping tarpaulin or canvas.
Then there were the cattle trucks. You see cattle trucks in the UK from time to time, and the animal lovers amongst you probably tut and tsk at the horrendous conditions at which the cows, sheep or pigs are being subjected to. Imagine then, if you will, a heavily loaded and rather beaten up old Ford Transit van, with an oversized roof-rack and half a dozen dazed looking cows aboard, cruising down the motorway. By that I mean standing broadside on top of the van! No time for animal rights here it seems. The beasts were lashed by their noses to the rack and presumably, though we never ventured to that side of the vehicle, by their posterior quarters too. At one stage we saw a man sitting, legs dangling over the motorway, atop a speeding truck full of such beasts, with seemingly no care for falling to his death on the motorway below.
Arriving at the gates of Tanger Port we were immediately directed by a badged and uniformed man into a siding before we had chance to purchase our tickets. Aware that we had the choice of several ferry companies, a couple of possible routes and a fast or slow service we had been keen to secure ourselves the best possible price for our ticket. We were haranged into parking where we didn’t really want topark, whisked along with the badged “official” into a ticket office, processed, charged and dispatched on the opposite side within a few minutes. Non of the advertisements in the office seemed to display our chosen route of Tanger-Algeciras however, and our “official”, who had yet to actually hand over the tickets we’d just bought, seemed to me to be keeping them from our gaze. The ad and everything else I could see all pointed to the ferry going to Tarifa, which while only 20 miles down the coast wasn’t where we wanted to be. I smelled a rat.
We were whisked back out of the office and instructed to follow our “official” down to passport control, where I caught a glimpse of the tickets which definitely appeared to say “Tarifa”, a point which I raised with the “official”. After much discussion and arm waving and the “official” telling me “No no no, Tarifa is the name of the boat”, Steve was left in the Passport stamping queue, and I was taken back to the ticket office where the official babbled something to the guy we’d bought the tickets from and our tickets were duly stamped “Algeciras”. I still wasn’t entirely happy, all the ads in the office had pointed to a ferry to Tarifa and a coach connection to Algeciras, but we had a stamp and the ticket office guy spoke good English and he had confirmed several times now that Algeciras was our destination.
Walking back up to the passport stamping queue our “official” said to me “Now you give me good tip and I go”, something we had become used to in Morocco even after our brief stay. I politely declined several times before he took on a look of being hugely ill done by and shrunk off into the crowd. We waited almost an hour for the passport stamping procedure, then proceeded to board the ferry. By far the poshest we had encountered so far, it was a huge trimaran that would make the crossing in just 35 minutes we were promised, though exactly to where we weren’t sure. There was some commotion in the vehicle queue as we were ushered to the front for “priority boarding”, almost resulting in fisticuffs as one particularly irate Moroccan leapt out of his car to confront the ferry worker who’d let us squeeze to the front.
Once on the ferry we got our customary refreshment of one Coke, one water each and retired to the aft deck to watch Africa slip away behind us and Europe appear off the Port bow. Chatting to an English couple on deck it became immediately clear that my fears were true and we’d been sold a duff ticket, as they expected to be returning to Tarifa where they had left their car that morning! Arse. However, Tarifa itself was a lovely place, once we’d cleared Customs and Passport Control where I received thourough going over by a sniffer dog and for the first time had to remove and open my panniers and top-box. My jar of Marmite sailed cleanly through however.
The road from Tarifa to Gibraltar was the first time in a couple of days that we’d actually had to go round any corners so it was quite refreshing despite my fuming that we’d been sent 30 miles down the coast from where we actually wanted to be. Passing into Gibraltar however was quick and painless and proved to be something of a culture shock after Morocco. The traffic lights and street signs looked huge. Not because they were actually oversized, but simply because we didn’t have to stare and squint at them as we had done for the past weeks to glean the information we needed. Everything was in English, all information clear and easy to read. Our brains had become accustomed to dissecting every sign and trying to pick out relevant information from it but there was no need here. It was all far too easy.
We stopped outside a Natwest Bank, Steve withdrew some £ Sterling and I called home. My mum and dad had offered to put us up in Gibraltar for the night. I’d been keen to find our own camping, but on getting here a hotel bed for the night now seemed like an increasingly good option and there were no campsites signed anywhere. Arriving at The Rock Hotel Gibraltar, we felt very out of place. Tucked beneath, well, the rock, it was an imposing and quite posh looking place.
Climbing the marble steps to the reception, our dusty boots and bike gear seemed totally incongruous with the surroundings. The first smart receptionist directed us to the second, when I said my father had been in contact. The second receptionist was on the phone. After a few seconds we realised he was on the phone to my Dad! We waited and chatted to one of what was by now one of the customary observers that always seemed to gather around the bikes wherever we stop. An Ex-Army chap, he asked us our route and before we had finished explaining, launched into details of his own trip “back in ’74, hitch hiking through Portugal” whereupon any further explanation of our trip seemed irrelevant. We stood for a while while he told us of his near death experiences, unable to get a word in edgeways. He drifted off and we checked in to the very lap of luxury.
By any standards a 4 Star Hotel might be considered luxurious, but after 6 weeks on the road, sleeping under canvas and the last 4 nights in Morocco, this was almost too much. The room, air-conditioned naturally, was large and spacious, there was a bright white-tiled bathroom, power shower, sit-down toilet as opposed to the “squat and drop” style that had been prevalent (with paper and not just a tap or half filled plastic water bottle) and soft, clean white towels. Not to mention the monogrammed robes. The balcony, or maybe sun terrace would be a better description, was as large or larger than the space where we’d erected 2 tents and parked 2 large motorcycles on several occasions, and with a commanding view over the large natural harbour and the Straits of Gibraltar. As luck would have it we arrived late in the evening and so caught a great sunset over the myriad of ships coming and going. Steve, on arrival, immediately stripped and donned his capacious white robe and strutted onto the terrace sporting a large cigar and glass of whisky to celebrate the birth of his first nephew, Henry Thomas, born that day in the early hours while we toiled and sweated through Africa.
Walking through Gibraltar town that evening was almost like stepping back in time. Well, I imagine so anyway, never having actually done it of course. Its what I imagine middle England to have been like in the 50’s or 60’s, kind of like Heartbeat but without Nick Berry. It was also pretty much deserted as we arrived at the first Pub en-route just before 10pm. Just in the nick of time we ordered pie and chips and a pint of (almost) proper beer to wash it down, then a few more to wash those down too. We happened upon a few more lively bars before we felt the need to make use of our comfortable room.
We strolled back towards our humble accommodation with a policeman. Not just any policeman mind, but a proper Bobby on the beat. A Scouser, he had the arduous task of patrolling almost 400 yards of closed souvenir shops along cobbled streets, protecting the Gibraltese (?) populous from the scurge of every modern town… a plague of Fruit Machine robbers who’d been taking extra advantage of the £2,500 Jackpot on some of the machines. However, on our leisurely stroll back along the beat we saw no evidence of these bandits – one armed or otherwise.
