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| Road to Marrakech |
It is 0400 hours and it is raining very hard in Algeciras. My journey to the truck parking place is not very long but when I reach the truck, I am soaking wet. A quick change of clothes and then I hang my wet clothes around the inside of the truck. With the heating system on high, my cab starts to resemble a hot and damp laundry. Myself and the other 7 trucks that are with me drive through the maze of roads in the port and we stop in front of the ferry. The chief boat loader signals me to drive onto the boat and then indicates that I should drive up a very steep ramp, to an upper deck. I tell him that you cant do this with a race trailer that sits so low to the road. He consults another man and a sensible decision is made and I should now drive onto onto a lower deck. Once we are on the boat, we complete an immigration card and go and get our passports stamped.
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| The trucks are parked very close together on the ferry to Morocco |
The weather is making the sea quite rough and when the ferry arrives in Tangiers and the ramp is lowered onto the quayside, I can see the ferry is rising and falling approximately 2 metres due to the waves. Driving off safely involves timing your journey, down the ramp, at just the right moment when it is level and not at an acute angle. Unfortunately, one the trucks sustains some damage to one of the trailer landing legs. There is little we can do to make it any easier for us to drive off. I have mentioned before in my blog that these race trailers are not designed for all sort of driving conditions.They are designed to look good and to carry the cars and equipment. The skills that we have as drivers of these sort of race trailers can only be learnt through experience and talking to other Truckies. There is no book of instructions.
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| A damaged trailer landing leg which happened as the truck drove off the ferry |
Once we were off the ferry, we parked up and waited for our shipping agent to collect our paperwork. In previous years we have had to wait many hours but this time, we waited only 2 hours. We then collected a piece of paper which has a barcode printed on it. This allows us to exit the parking area and drive to the customs area. We did have a delay due to the high numbers of trucks in the customs area but we were soon driving through the port.
The customs area is the same area that we use when we re-enter the port. I will tell you more about this when we leave Morocco.
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| And here is its foot. |
I can only describe the activity in this area as CHAOS.
There are trucks being turned around, by the customs men, in such confined conditions and I personally had another trailer being moved about 2cm away from my trailer. My heart stopped as I could only hope that the other truck driver did not scratch the side of my race trailer. The port is huge so I do not know why they insist on trying to process all of the trucks in such a small space.
I was directed to try and park next to a fence and a customs man asked to look inside the trailer. When he was inside, he had a look at my carnet and then proceeded to ask me questions in French. I do not know how he understood what was written on the carnet as it was all in English !!!!
I shut and locked the trailer and with a little Moroccan wave of the hand by a policeman, I WAS FREE TO LEAVE THE PORT.
Total time from the ferry to getting on the road to Marrakech was 4 hours. UNBELIEVABLE.
Why this has not happened in previous years I do not know, but I was much, much happier.
The long drive to Marrakech is always easy as there is no real bad traffic. The only dangers are the many trucks and cars that have had a breakdown and then block one of the traffic lanes while they are being repaired.
I shall leave you with some more pictures from inside the port.
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| The customs men take a look at a BMW |
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| The random chaos that is the Tangiers customs area |
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| Honda truck being checked by customs |
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| I know the way to Marrakech and also I know which direction Mecca is now |
