Maroc
We take the ferry over to Spanish owned Ceuta in Africa and 10 days after leaving home we’ve arrived! The campsite is pretty arid and getting the pegs in is murder. But it’s great to sleep in something resembling a bed. We have a bottle of red before hitting the sack turns out to be the last alcohol for a while. Wandering around Ceuta we meet up with three Moroccan lads who have been working or studying in Europe and are on their way home. Very friendly although Simon and I are a bit hesitant at first wondering if they’re just out to get money like quite a few others in Ceuta. As many were in Barcelona as well to be fair. Anyways the guys, two Mustafas and a Gamel, share food with us and the universal human bond involving offering and acceptance is made. One Mustafa and Gamel have been working in Germany if I remember rightly Gemel sporting an Espana 82 World Cup shirt.
Mustafa, Mustafa, Gamel, Simon
They both seem pretty street wise and sort out our places on a bus to take us to the border village. The other Mustafa has been studying somewhere in Scandanavia and is glad to be getting back to somewhere warm. He’s fairly quiet but can’t do enough to help us. So we all pile into the bus and after a short journey, comparatively, we get off at the border village. The place is packed and as the guys are gagging for some decent Arabic food we wander round the myriad food stalls with the three of them buying crazy amounts of olives, lamb kebabs, couscous dishes and pastries insisting that Simon and I eat eat eat. Our stomachs soon fill following 10 days of bread cheese and the occasional sardine. The power of smell must be the strongest scent, decades on whenever I smell lamb cooking on an open flame my mind is transported back to that village as if it’s reality. Thinking we’ll be stuck just outside Morocco for the next two weeks simply eating Simon tentatively suggests we find the bus to take us into Morocco proper and on to Tangiers. The guys look at each other oddly and I think he’s made a faux pas asking them to stop eating. But then they give us the sort of grins that make your heart sink. Then laugh. The kind hearted student Mustafa puts us out of our misery and explains. There is no bus but we have to get a taxi for a couple of miles to the border a short walk from the nearest Moroccan village. Hmm. Sounds easy enough and not much to laugh about.
We make our way to a central point which is rammed with Moroccans and heaving with massive bags of European loot. The form seems to be that a taxi pulls up and barely before the occupants have got out a number of people jump in to claim it. Problem is that the number of people are from different travelling groups and then start arguing about who got in first. Eventually by some esoteric and completely unfathomable way someone wins out and the rest of that person’s party climb aboard strapping luggage onto the groaning roof racks. The losers depart to immediately jump into another taxi. As our party enthusiastically jump into taxis, argue, jump out and start again Simon and I stand there gobsmacked thinking if it was up to us we definitely would be spending the rest of our holiday stranded in a Spanish Moroccan food market. Eventually one of the wide boys bag a taxi by rather unchivilrously fighting off a plump dame who’d packed her bag into the taxi but was edged out. So all five of us in an ageing saloon with luggage teetering above for a very short journey to the border and then surprisingly easy customs check seeing as leaving England and entering France and Spain have caused officials to frisk us both. As the only Europeans around we thought the officials here would at least be interested in what we packed but maybe decades of unpacking smelly hippy undergarments have made them think better of it. We are now in Morocco...