Day 12 – Assilah
Its strange how you can lay awake and worry about the smallest things like how to get a quart into a pint pot. I am referring to, of course, how we are going to manage with our ablutions in the morning with an almost overflowing toilet cassette. Luckily with a little thought and a lot of luck we seemed to manage it. I won’t go into detail.
After breakfast Tina & I walked across to Carrefour just as it was opening at 9:00am. I wanted to draw out some more euros in readiness for changing the money into Dirhams, the local currency in Morocco. At around 9:25am we all decided it was time to leave for the port. Turn the key and nothing happened…. Flat battery. Disaster. Terry had tucked away some long jump leads which he duly found and started to attach whilst it seemed everyone else stood around and made helpful suggestions. All the men loved it….an opportunity to get their hands on something mechanical. Luckily after a few attempts it started. I had not been doing anything different to cause this so the conclusion has to be the battery is on its last legs…..it is the original 2010 battery so nearing the end of its life.
Drove down to the port and started the long process of getting on to the boat. Daren’t turn the engine off just in case it wouldn’t start again. After maybe two hours from arriving we are driving onto the boat. This is not a “Roll on-Roll off” ferry. They had been loading the lorries by getting them to back on to the ship. We are now loaded and leave at around midday local time. We were told it was the fast ferry but later found out that it was faster but not quite as fast as we expected.
We land in Tangier Med and reset our timepieces back an hour … the same time as in the UK. Drive around to the entry point where passports and documents will be checked. “The computers are down” comes the message so everything is being done long handed and taking an exceptionally long time. Whilst we are waiting I spot someone empting their cassette in the public loos. What a good idea so off I trot. What a relief? Strange how the littlest things give pleasure. Some hours latter we are released into Morocco. Two of our group are still being processed and insurance needed to be purchased so Terry elected to stay back and escort them to our overnight stop whilst I take four vans on down the motorway. Took it steady because I remember our first trip and how it was good to take the new sights in slowly.
After the stop at the fuel station and filled up to the brim (diesel was 56p a litre) we continued to our overnight stop at Assilah. Terry arrived within maybe 5 minutes with his group. Our next adventure was to get everyone sorted with internet. Last year this process took 5 hours. We all wandered up to the Maroc shop (the BT of Morocco). Purchased the sim cards and recharge vouchers and was out in maybe 90 mins. Then it was my job to get all of the MIFI’s working. There were a variety of makes and after a lot of perseverance the job was achieved. Two of our group bought the D-link model in Spain. It was showing Meditel (another service provider in Morocco) even though it had a Maroc sim card installed. That had me scratching my head but in the end I had to ignore it. The procession of people sitting in the van finished at around 8:30pm and Tina and I could sit and have our meal.
Tina was tired and took herself off to bed whist I visited Terry to sort out where we would be heading for in the morning. I had already decided and I think most of our group will be tagging along with us for at least the next few days.
The adventure is now quickening and gathering pace …. happy days. Oh and the temperature today was 18ºC Lovely !!