Monday, January 8, 2018

Maroc. 2

Day 2.

I turned the key and nothing worked. The battery was as dead as the African Queen. How the hell did that happen? I wondered.
I let it sit to see if the rising sun could coax into solar power in to refs it, just a little, but it was too late. Helgas’ battery was sound asleep. I phoned my insurance company, Dolmen, to ask for breakdown assistance, and that’s where I learnt the dreaded truth. My incurs covers damaged etc in Morocco, but there is not a breakdown element included. Probably because we’re outside the EU. anyway, I was able with google translate, some gesturing, and good fortune, to find a mechanic with a set of jump leads in his car. He was able to start us no problem, but decided he should go under the engine with two spanners and re emerge asking for 300 dirham. Around £25. Normally I would have queried this but we needed to move so I happily paid up and boogied.

Getting out of the port onto the road south is remarkably easy. The king must realise a good infrastructure is required if he’s going to draw in the much needed tourists. The toll road is £11.70 for driving the first 170 miles or so. Of blissful roads that afford very little road noise coming up.

Here’s the very important bit. Make sure your e maps are all up to date. Our sat nav doesn’t have Moroccan maps, and and Apple and Google need to be updated as well. Although we have a paper map, we found the Michelin one to be too large a scale to be useful, and here’s why. 

We got Campercontact to show us the route via Google maps, inputting coordinates. It pinpointed the location almost, but there were no roads, so for my wife the navigator, it wasn’t easy.
We found our way into two cities, this on a very busy Saturday afternoon. There had been torrential rain and strong winds all the way down, but a lot of the city streets were flooded, with filthy brown water. The taxi drivers were like dervishes, kamikazes in the extreme. Not a place to be shy and reserved, but we got out unscathed and found site number one.

Not so much a site, more an oasis in a sea of mayhem. We were shown into a parking lot, secure area, gated and fenced only to find we had no neighbours. Still, there was water, discosal, and electricity, all for free! 
We got Helga sorted, she was a beige brown colour from the ride through Rabat, in brown water up to a foot deep, she was a sorry sight, but not as sorry as some of the sights we saw. People so poor, they had only a sheet of polythene for a top coat, and those who had even less. 

Our world my friends, is poorly divid. 

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