Day 23 Assilah
After a cold night and not using our precious LPG to heat the van we woke early. We needed to set off for the port at around 8:30am for a 10:30am crossing on the ferry. We bought the tickets yesterday from Carlos for the AML ferry at a cost of €310 which seems to be the going rate. We left the overnight parking by the Mercadonna supermarket on time.
When we arrived at the port some 15 mins later there was already many vans waiting to be processed. It was much more organised that I remember. We were organised into lines and one of the staff came around and collected the tickets and passports. A little time later the passports and boarding pass together with return voucher for coming back to Spain were given back to us. Next passport control where we made sure our passports were stamped to show we were leaving Europe.
Now we lined up waiting for our turn to drive on to the ferry. After the lorries backed on we were asked to also back on. It\’s a good job that there was an experienced loader helping us. The journey seemed to pass well whilst we chatted with our companions and we drank the purchased coffee.
Now on dry land we next had to queue for the X-ray machine which loaded 2 vehicles at a time. We had never had to go through this machine on entry to the country only on exit. This process worked well but there were a lot of vans to screen. Next was the time for importing the van into Morocco which was similar to the process we experienced last time we were here 7 years before. However they seem to be efficient in doing this. Now we were the other side of the border entry and changing our Euros in to local currency. We got 10.50 MAD (Morocco Dirhams) for 1 Euro.
We had agreed with Eric & Annie we would stop at the fuel station and top off the tank on our route to Assilah. We arrived at the chosen campsite after first turning into the alternative site. Chairs our in the warm sunshine and ate a little lunch. Later in the afternoon both Eric and I walked up to the Maroc Telecom shop to purchase our SIM cards. Probably about an hour later we walked out satisfied with our purchase.
Long and tiring day but we are finally here in the warm sunshine. Great !!