Our Morocco Motorhome Adventure Has Finally Started

Our Morocco Motorhome Adventure Has Finally Started

Good morning, it is Friday morning. We left you last time with our tire situation. If you are new to our channel, we are trying to make it to Morocco. And in the previous video, we made our way from around Valencia. And we saw some friends, we had some nice chats with fellow travelers.

We had a couple of interesting days. We had torrential downpours in Spain, something we haven’t seen. Last minute decision to change the tires definitely threw a bit of a spanner into the works. We were planning on crossing today and I’m very grateful that we aren’t because the wind is howling

And I would hate to be out at sea today. So we’re leaving our parking and we’re going back to Los Barrios. We’re actually going to take a chance and go past the infamous Carlos. Now if you don’t know who Carlos is, you obviously never went to Morocco. We’ll tell you about that

Later, so let’s just hit the road. Welcome to our channel. We’re Andre and Lisa, a married South African Italian couple, who have been traveling together for 20 years, exploring more than 50 countries. Since 2018, we’ve been full-time nomads with our goal being to make travel a sustainable long-term way of life.

For the past three years, we’ve been winding our way around Europe with our 21-year-old motorhome, Milli. We’re starting 2024 with an exciting adventure to Morocco. And although our plans for the year might change, we’re hoping to visit Sardinia for the first time, get back to Denmark for summer, then make our way via

Eastern Europe to Greece for the winter. So hit that subscribe button and join our adventure. It actually says “Carlos”. This guy’s well known. So if you’re thinking about going to Morocco and you join like the Morocco Facebook group, this guy’s name pops up over and over again.

The reason for that is because it’s super convenient. He always makes it a one-stop shop. He’ll sell you an open-ended ticket return. At pretty much the best price you’ll find. And also, you will be able to exchange some Dirhams and even get a local sim card.

But we’re not going to go in right now. We’re going to run down to the hardware store. Might not sound like an emergency, but it is. Our large CO2 canister, which we use for making SodaStream, in case you were wondering, is about to run out. And we last filled it in the

Netherlands and that was a few months ago. It generally lasts about four, five months, six months sometimes. And to have it refilled in random countries is sometimes tricky. But let’s go see. We didn’t come right here, but they have told us of a place which is fairly nearby.

Definitely does not look like an industrial area. Well, hopefully the guy’s not going to put dry powder into the cylinder. That’s why I did tell him we are using it to make soda water. Five minutes, these guys. I know nobody else is looking for it, but if he needs CO2, anywhere near Algeciras

These are the guys. One thing ticked, now we’re going to go get these tires. Okay, the good news is the tires are here. Bad news is the workshop’s busy, so we’re waiting in anticipation. And obviously, I’m not allowed in the workshop and there’s no way I’m leaving my motor home alone.

So, I’ll be hanging around here. Hopefully it doesn’t rain. It makes me so nervous, hey. Look, look at Milli’s mean tires. Where is this year thing? So, there’s a number here somewhere. 49, 23. So, it was manufactured in 2023 44th week as of the 23rd year.

So, with lots and lots of small amounts, it adds up very quickly into a total of 858. So, that was 740 for the tires and 112 was for the oil change, including the oil and the filters. Alright, sounds like a good deal. It’s expensive.. Let’s go to Morocco.

But let’s go to Morocco. Thanks Quinton. Okay, so one thing we have to do is we have to stock up on bacon. So, maybe we’ll pop through the shop quickly. We’re back at Carlos’ Agencia de Viajes. Cueta. Carlos Gutierrez. And we’re going to get those tickets, yes. Yes. Delicious snacks. Courtesy of Carlos.

Thank you. You got everything? Almost. SIM cards. It’s scew man! It’s not. Okay, that was it. Carlos done dusted. Tickets. And we actually got two SIM cards from him as well. The price is about the same if you get the SIM cards on the other side. At least you got them in hand.

On the other side, hopefully we’re going to try and get unlimited data from INWI. But we’ll see how that goes. Bit of a wind here. But we got snacks. Thank you, Carlos. And all the friendly ladies there. And we got some cash as well. So, the exchange rate is ten to one here.

Which is okay, I suppose. All and all a very good one-stop shop, I have to say. Very convenient for sure. It’s getting dark it’s 7pm. Let’s go find a place to park. We got our ferry tickets from Carlos. We’ve got our Dirhams. We’ve got our SIM cards.

So, seeing as it’s our last night in Spain, I will make for tonight a… I want to call it a… I know you’re going to call it a rice with things. And that’s just to avoid all the comments that we might get that say, “This is not a paella.”

But in our campervan, this is a paella. That’s what you call “bold words.” Now, before the purest jump on my head, I know a paella is not a paella. If it doesn’t have this or that or whatever. And it’s not Sunday and I’m not cooking it for lunch. Oopsie!

And it takes a long time. You have to do it over a fire or something. In a big pan. I’m not doing that. So, it’s not paella, okay? If you’re in Valencia, you have to add rabbit and snails. If you’re in the south, you must add seafood.

And if you add chorizo, oh my god, then you… No! Paella, must have chorizo! Apparently, I don’t know. I’m not an expert. So, don’t do what I do. Anyway, so I’m going to use paella rice, I think. Some stock. I’m going to put some pork belly, some chorizo And some

Some, some peas or something that sounds like a paella Yummy, yummy, yummy paella and for the last time, some Cava. Cheers. And this is my favorite one. Might have to hold that thought for a couple of months until we’re back in Spain to enjoy Cava again. Thank you, Spain.

Thanks for all your goodies and we appreciate you very much. We love you. We’ll see you next time. Tomorrow morning, very early, we’re going to pack up this show and we’re going to head to the port and we’re going to get ourselves hopefully onto a ferry. So, we’ll see you tomorrow morning.

We’re going to Morocco. We’re going to Morocco. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Okay, okay enough. Wakey, wakey. All right, time to go. It’s super early for this time of the year. It’s like quarter to seven and we’ve got about a half an hour’s drive to the port. We actually have to be there about

Two hours before the ferry depart. So, we’re good. Maybe stop for LPG refill along the way. Just got to get Lisa out of the bed. Come lazy. Quick stop for LPG. Just to top up. We’re going to try and get a cylinder in Morocco but

We’ve got to go with as much as we can. Next stop, the port. It’s two minutes to eight. We’re good. All right, now this is what you call hurry-up-and-wait. We’re in the port. It’s pretty straightforward. We just followed the signs to Tangier and we showed the first booth.

We showed our ticket, which is not really a boarding pass yet. We’re just going to get our boarding pass. when we pass the boom. We’ve still got a way to go. So, maybe we’ll fix some snacks for later and have a coffee. Anyway, filling up behind us, around us, we’re

Definitely in the right queue area. Everybody’s wearing Balearic vests. That’s very, very official. Everybody’s wearing Balearic vests. That’s very, very official. Oh, he just want to get them ready. Ah okay. Okay. What? What? That sounds very shady. I don’t see them walk away with them. Lisa’s spidey senses just went berserk here.

A guy in a Balearic vest rocks up, asks for our ticket. Checks our passports and then quickly walks away with it. AndLisa’s like, “Ah, freaking hell, Andre.” “Why did you?” But I ran after him and he disappeared. Literally, he’s just gone. And there was a vests lying over the fence.

There was a vests lying over there. I freaked out. Okay. Rumor has it that it’s sort of common practice that they actually get the boarding tickets or the boarding passes for you. So, it’s ready for you when you arrive at the booth. We’ll see. Otherwise, we’ll go back to Spain.

Made it through passport control. We get to go in front. Okay, we’re through passport control through, got our ticket, boarding passes. And we’re in the line to wait. And everything is going very smoothly. It’s nine o’clock. I’m hoping that we’re actually going to board this ferry

Get in there, go in, go in guys, go in. Get in there, get in there, guys. I definitely need to get another jacket. Where are we going to go? Oh Milli! Oh Milli, Milli! Feel the grip on those new tires. We’re going to the belly of the beast. I don’t like this.

Ar all! Now I’m glad we got new tires. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. This is so terrible. We’ll definitely not be getting off first. Let’s just see if we can get Lisa out of the camper. Upon boarding the ship. We got issued with a little immigration card.

And then we’re going to proceed to passport control in the restaurant. So bring your passports inside. And everything is so much more organized than I expected. Oh, what do you expect? What some people make it out to be.. Some people say it’s absolute chaos. It’s not. It’s a port.

There’s going to be a little bit of this and that. But it’s very organized, in my opinion. Let me put it this way. You go try out any Italian port. Italian ferry ports. Oh, my. Not only is there less chaos. People speak more languages here as well, which is very helpful.

I want to say easy peasy, but it took a while to get through that line. It smells a bit like gas out here. Apparently this is a LPG powered boat. We’ll go to the top. Adios, Espana. Hasta luego. Unfortunately, no time lapse this time.

I was about to put my baby camera on the railing. And do a time lapse of departure and the magnetic grip came off. The camera fell straight off the boat into the ocean. It’s a sad day. This Morocco trip is getting expensive. We’re not even there yet.

Lisa’s staying quiet because it’s better that way. Hey babe. Let’s say it’s better that way. Better that way. Now, while we were at Carlos the other day, we also got some sim cards. They sell these. Maroc Telecom. Apparently, they call it preactivated sim cards. It’s quite convenient. So this is like 7.5 gig.

Valid for 30 days. So normally you would pay 50 Dirham for a 5 Gb recharge voucher So it’s almost 1 Euro per gigabyte of data. And the card itself will cost you about 30 Dirham So you would expect to pay about 80 Dirham for the card. They sell these for 10 euro.

But they give you 7.5 gigs of data. Whether there’s actually 7.5 gigs of data. We don’t know. We’ll check it out. But we each got a sim like this. And you can buy top up scratch cards or whatever. We’re probably going to try and get a unlimited INWI

Data sim when we get there later this week. We’ll see how that goes. And in case you’re wondering, we also left out drone in Spain. You have to. So if you’re thinking of bringing a drone to Spain, don’t. It’s not illegal to have a drone with you. But you need a permit.

And if you get caught with a drone without a permit nevermind flying it. It could be considered an act of terrorism. And you could actually face jail time of up to 10 years. I don’t know what the fines are. So it’s best not to bring it.

If you buy your tickets from Carlos, they actually will keep your drone securely. And what they do is they put in a sealed package. Make a label and they give you a copy of the label. And you have to present it upon your return to retrieve your drone. So that’s actually quite nice.

If you don’t want to do that, you have to get a locker. The cheapest locker I could find was a one square meter locker. Starting at one euro per day. So seeing it, we can easily spend 60 euros on that locker space for two months.

Maybe if I pay a few euros more for the ticket from Carlos that was a good buy. Remember when I said it’s going to take a while to get out of here? Well, it’s only been 45 minutes while we’re sitting inside this car. People are already losing it around us.

The waiting is not that bad. I mean, besides the fact that we’ve now been waiting for almost as long as the ferry crossing. But the worst thing is actually the fact that it’s just the fumes in here. I don’t understand that this is not a safety hazard. We’re like right in the belly

Of the boat, right at the bottom. We literally stuck against this wall. So I think we’re going to be last. But nobody’s moving around us yet. It’s only been 45 minutes. But we’ve got our little sim cards working. Sort of sees where we are.

We’re gonna take the main road from Tanger Med towards Cueta and then go via Tetouan Take the N2 down to Chefchaouen. 130 kilometers and it says two and a half hours. Wow. I guess… Let’s see how it goes. First we’ve got to get to customs though. There’s always a distinct possibility.

They ask us to unpack the whole van and then we have to rethink our strategy for where to go. Okay Milli! Ah, go Milli, go new tires! Okay, hour later. So we finally got out of the mole tunnels. It felt so strange getting out. I can’t see. Our passport was quickly

Checked again as we exited the boat. That’s probably what’s causing a bit of a bottleneck there. Now we’re following a whole bunch of campers on our way to customs. Okay, so we don’t really know what’s going on. We got to a point where everybody stopped and turned around to go through the scanner.

And then everybody disappeared. And then suddenly we were presented by nobody directing anything. But all the points are completely blocked. Okay, wait, I think the angry guy is coming. Angry guy? Okay, the boss guy is coming. I’m going to switch off. He’s coming here. Meow.

No, you’re going to have to get used to. Oh, look at the kitty cat Wow. Wow. It’s quite amazing actually sitting here, watching the chaos unfold. We sort of wonder what’s going on. Because there’s cars packed 3 meters high with taped up, bagged up goods. And we can’t figure out

Are these people that are selling stuff? I don’t know. It’s crazy. But anyway, we’ve been sitting at this customs zone for a while. So the gentleman stepped into the van. He was obviously interested to know whether we have a drone and also firearms, alcohol. He wasn’t too bothered with the alcohol situation.

He was keen to see what’s inside the fridge. He wanted to see where the beer was from. He wanted to know if it’s Italian beer. He said, “I’ll bring your papers.” And that’s the TIP, temporary import permit. So everything is electronic now. Apparently you need this. I don’t know when you depart again.

So we can’t just drive through without it. And he’s got your passport because your name is on the paper. Okay, I think we’re officially in Morocco. We got quite lucky. So we’re passing actually to our left here where you can actually overnight. People do. It’s a bit noisy.

Apparently there’s like music blaring 24 hours a day. But we’re pushing on, it’s not even two o’clock. I think we’re going to take the main road, the toll road towards… Tet? Tetouan In 200 meters. Turn left. And see if we can make it to Chefchaouen today. One more gate in front of us.

And hopefully nobidy’s going to ask for anything. So let’s see. One thing you have to be really mindful of in Morocco is watching your speed. Speeds are super low even on high quality roads like this. We just went through a 40 zone on this double lane road. And there was a cop sitting

There with his radar in hand. Still a 40 zone actually. We haven’t seen another sign. Still a 40 zone technically. So we’ve heard reports that people get pulled over allegedly crossing solid lines. Or overtaking on lines. Obviously speeding is a real issue. So mind your speed. And don’t just think that you can

Follow others and do what the locals do. Because you might be the only one who gets pulled over. So just obey the rules. It is quite cool to suddenly feel like you’re in a foreign country. Yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve sort of pushed our boundaries a little bit.

The Western Balkans was a nice little taster last year. But this is going to be different. Now if you don’t know we’re actually from Cape Town, South Africa. So we’re back on our home continent. We’ve travelled Southern Africa quite a bit. We’re no stranger to Africa so to speak.

In the same sense I think one’s got to be careful that you don’t sort of close yourself off to new experiences. Because we are more used to, I don’t want to say the words “third world”, but it is something we’ve been exposed to. We’ve also travelled a lot of Asia.

So we have seen a little bit more than just Europe. That’s true. And it’s always exciting to be in a different place where the norms are different, cultures are different. It’s going to be different, it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be exciting. And it’s warm already so.

I know, I’m way too hot. I’m happy. So far we’re enjoying this drive, hey? So far I can report. The roads are really excellent if you’re on the main road and the toll road. We’re covering distance a lot faster than I would have expected. Don’t make assumptions when you drive here.

People treat roundabouts, traffic circles differently, right of way seems… How can I say, not obvious. a roll of the dice. So just take it slowly, watch your speed and you’ll be okay. But hey, day one. I may have spoken too soon. No. The excellent, excellent roads in Morocco.

Well, now you know why their excellent! Because only part of it is finished. Those ones are brand new, they were built last month. And they only went this far. Well, we still got a section here. Yeah, definitely found a bit of roadworks here. This is supposed to be a good road.

This is supposed to be the good road. That’s going to be. Yeah, come back in a year. Okay, maybe a few months. I don’t know. Might be a while. Might be a year. Well, we stopped here at Camping Azila in Chefchaouen. It’s actually the only campsite here. And it’s quite full.

I will tell you that. So we’re going to see if we can find a spot to squeeze in here for the night. Maybe two nights so we can go check out the old town tomorrow. Some rain coming in. Quite a bit of a challenge to get into this place.

But this is an amazing spot that we managed to grab. So I’m very chuffed. This is quite different. It’s quite a lot of people. Okay, so this is Camp Azila. But like tomorrow, we.. I think we’re going to stop this video here. Yes, we are done.

It’s 95 Dirham for the two of us in a camping car without electricity. But I think we’ll give you all those details. We’ll show you the campsite. And of course, we’re going to go and visit Chefchaouen. But for that, you’ll have to make sure that you subscribe.

And stay tuned for next week’s video. Well, it might be sooner than next week. So subscribe if you like this video. Smash that like button. And as always, thanks for watching. And we’ll see you next time in Morocco. One more thing. Who did not think that we would make it to Morocco?

Because to be honest, I’m actually quite surprised that we are really here. Oh, you of little faith. Maybe we’re not really in Morocco. We’re just faking it. Okay, I’ll have a shave next time. Cheers, guys.

Getting on the ferry was the easy part.
It had to wait until we could source new tires to fit at the last minute to our motorhome!

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ABOUT US:
Welcome! We’re Andre and Lisa. A married South African couple who has been traveling together for almost 20 years, to more than 50 countries. In 2017 we took stock of our life and made the decision to ‘retire early’. We gave up our professional careers and all our personal possessions to explore the world as full-time nomads. Over the past three years, we have been traveling through Europe with our 21-year-old Motorhome. Please subscribe to follow along and join us on our adventure!

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