Crossing the Mediterranean Sea - first day in Maroc

After Marseille I spent two really windy days on the road to drive from Marseille to Perpignan and after a short break at a Couchsurfing couple having some Apero & dinner - continuing to Barcelona.

Well equipped with a lot of food and water, a new adventure started.

Already in the harbour of Barcelona (where I stayed for about 6 hours waiting), I could notice, that I would probably be one of the few persons on the boat not going home for holidays, as all the cars where highly packed with stuff (in the car and on the roof with adventerous techniques of load safety), people where bringing home to Maroc to their from Europe.

My motorbike felt suddenly really small.

pole position for the three motorbikes on the ferry while waiting for boarding

The ferry was obviously mostly equipped for marocan travellers, which makes sense, as 95% of travellers seemed to be marocan. The consequence of this was noticable at all places. The (far to loud) entertainment program was completely in arabic, all announcements were made firstly in arab, afterwards spanish, french and english (whereas the last two languages were barely understandable).

The boat was equipped with praying rooms for men & women, and one interesting thing I hadn't seen in a long while, was the procedure of preparing to pray. Therefore many men where washing their feet in the bathroom, which the bathrooms were obviously not prepared for and flooded the floor over and over again ..

Over all, the trip was alright - but a 30 hours stay with a lot of strangers in a small area with limited options of stuff to do is always a challenge I guess.. [nevertheless I was able to sleep not to bad the first night for about 6 hours, and read about 400 pages :D ]

calm sea and some sun during the daytime of the traverse

 

*Zeitsprung*

*readers of Marc-Uwe Klings Känguru Chroniken know this Kunstgriff.*

Thanks to the delay of about 4 hours - I needed to make a little 40km drive in the dark in the middle of the night, on a new continent without internet or any Dirhams in my pocket.

Surprisingly, the drive was really pleasant & beautiful as the temperature was still warm and it took me about an hour to drive carefully in the dark to Tanger where I luckily found the receptionist still awake and letting me into the hostel, where I took a (really needed) shower and went straight to bed at 4am.

three-lanes road in the middle of the night empty for a stop and short picture

The first real day in Maroc, I spent mostly with wandering around the old Medina, getting a little acclimatised and used to new money, new languages, new habits and a new surrounding.

sunny day - before a rainy & stormy night

Most of the people I had direct contact with were nice and friendly, nevertheless, about half of the people having contact with me were (partly aggressively) trying to drag me somewhere, sell me stuff or keeff, show me some directions to somewhere I didn't wanna know and all the other scams that are reported on pages like wikitravel. This is a little frustrating, as I can be classified straight away as a tourist and therefore as a potential target, but I guess a few days more and I will be feeling comfortable again and being able to say 'La Shukran' in a convicing way ;-)

old medina - easy to get lost in all these little paths

   

deluxe-parking

Motto of the day: You're not lost when you have no goal :)

All after all I am happy, that I made it through Europe without any major problems, and now keen on the new adventures that are waiting for me here :)

Medina from top of the hostel