Ferry

A steady drive to a service station. Then, next day, another steady drive to the last service station before the port at Tanger Med. Not very much to be said about the motorway. It is just a motorway with many tollbooths. The cab window in Baloo is too high for most of the toll pay stations. I need to drive just past the machine, take off my seatbelt, open the door, lean down and poke my credit card out under the cab door to reach the card payment slot. It is a bit acrobatic and, on occasion, involves reading the instructions upside down. In French.

At the last station before Tanger we met the lovely Kim and Jan of Phoca Mobil https://www.phoca-mobil.be/en/ in their MAN truck called “Bakkie”. We have known of Phoca Mobil for several years and been following their blog. Our paths have nearly crossed many times. They were in Norway at the same time as us. It is about time we met up with them. Their truck is mostly self-built and they have made a terrific job of it. And they had washed it so Baloo was looking very scruffy when they were parked together.

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In the morning, we had time to kill. Ferry was not scheduled to sail until 10pm. With Phoca Mobil we drove a way up the coast past the port. Partly this was to go fill up with cheap Moroccan diesel but it was also a nice drive. We stopped for lunch high in the hills looking out of the Mediterranean. Europe was clearly visible in the distance. 2pm we got back to the port. Our tickets were checked and we were ushered into a car park. Plenty of time before the ferry. Things were looking pretty good.

By 10pm nothing much had happened. We investigated a queue at the end of the car park and discovered that we had to queue on foot to check in. Jan and I collected our documents and braved the queue. This turned out to be, by far, the worst queuing experience of my life. I am not a fan of the queue at the best of times. Seems to me that they only happen as a result of an organisational failure. However, they are a fact of life and sometimes you have to just get on with it. The problem here was two-fold. First of all the queue was long, disorganised and moving very slowly. Secondly, everyone was packed together and almost nobody was wearing masks. When I say packed, I mean properly sardine like. Within my 2m social distancing radius, there were probably about 12 people. It was genuinely concerning and I could see no way out of it. Given the state of the pandemic and the wide variety of people present the situation was genuinely dangerous. We tried, with very limited success, to ask people to keep their distance but it is just not the Moroccan way. There were port security officers around and police. They could have organised the queue but chose not to. My poor opinion of GNV (the ferry company), already lowered by the ticket cancellations and price increases, went down several more notches. I passed the time wondering whether, if I caught Covid-19 because of their awful queue, that could I sue them.

By 1am there were just two people in front of us. An hour earlier, it had been more like ten but it was hard to tell who was where in the queue. It was solid knot of people, shoulder to shoulder, jostling for position, squeezing past each other and talking loudly and expressively. One by one, in no obvious order except that of boisterousness, they cleared until an almost manageable two were left.  Then the man behind the ticket window vanished. He came back 15 minutes later. Then he carefully cleaned his glasses, arranged some bits of paper, talked to his colleagues, had a drink of water, went away again, came back and finally took some notice of the queue. At 1:30am I made it to the head of the queue. Passports and tickets were no problem. Then came a signed document stating why I was travelling to Italy and how I would pass through on my way to Germany. It was the correct form sent to me earlier by GNV. It was completed correctly and in Italian. One of my Italian friends had checked it for me (thanks Davide). It was typed up and printed out clearly and legibly. Despite this, the GNV man spent a good five minutes checking, tutting, asking questions and scribbling corrections all over it. I had been in the queue for well over two hours. I was hot, tired, my back was aching and I was sure I had caught Coronavirus. It was difficult to stay civil. I imagined leaping through the small window and strangling the pedantic, smarmy official. Sinking my fingernails deep into his throat until the blood flowed. Instead, I answered his questions then smiled and said thank you when I finally got our boarding passes. Jan fared less well. He was taken round the back into a small, crowded office and spent fifteen minutes filling in forms. Just after 2am we moved Baloo into a queue of vehicle trying to get out of the car park.

Then we queued for passport control. This was not so bad. At least I could sit in the cab and run the air conditioning. Then we queued for vehicle permits. Then the x-ray machine. Three lanes into one made for quite a lot of close quarters vehicle juggling and a few frayed tempers. A hairpin bend after the x-ray called for two shunts. This upset the cars trying to squeeze past me. It also upset a couple of officials. They clearly considered that the truck could not get round was because I was not turning the steering wheel enough.

Then we were searched. I was asked to open the steps. To do this you need to stand back and press the button for the electricly s on the outer edge of the door. Each time I tried this the officials pushed me back to steps and indicated I should open them.  and then they sent the dogs in. Well, one dog, a rather placid German Shepherd. It went in, sniffed at where Cent’s bowl is normally kept and then came out again. Along another road and the ship hove into view. At last, we were getting somewhere. Round lots of bollards, which made for a terrific manoeuvring course and involved a few more shunts. Then a very grumpy man checked our tickets again and we moved forward to almost within touching distance of the ferry. We could see the boarding ramp, smell the rust and heavy fuel oil, hear the clank of chains. “Please open all your lockers and drawers, inside and out, for inspection”. This was another half hour while several officials poked, prodded, checked under seats and generally made a mess. One guy explained that they were not looking for drugs but for illegal immigrants. He said this as he was peering into the cutlery draw. I just let them get on with it. It was 6am by now. I had a rotten headache and so tired that I could hardly string a sentence together. We boarded. At last. We ran round to find our cabin, take some luggage up, take the dog up and finally collapsed into bed.

The trip to Genova was three nights and two days long. We spent most of it hiding in our cabin living off the food and films we had brought with us. I needed to take Cent up on deck at regular intervals and other than that, a coffee in the morning was our only excursion. It was a shame. The voyage would have been more fun with some time at the bar and in the restaurant. Given the circumstances and how crowded the ship was, it did not seem worth the risk.

Saturday morning we docked about 7:30am and waited patiently to be allowed back to Baloo. Getting out of the port was mostly a matter of getting through passport control. This was a two hour queue. A brilliant bit of planning saw some six lanes of traffic being funnelled into a single lane controlled by a barrier. Every time the barrier opened, everyone tried to push forward. Inevitably, there were many minor collisions and a couple of fights broke out. A VW Golf drove into our front wheel. It did not damage Baloo at all but made a mess of the side of the car. The driver made a rude gesture at me implying that I should look where I was going. This struck me as ironic since he obviously could not spot a 20t truck. Five minutes later, I waved imploringly at a Mercedes trying to get down the other side. He made a point of not seeing me. It fascinates me when some drivers do that. You know they have seen you but they very pointedly look in every other direction. I let him past and he drove straight into the side of the white van in front.

At passport control, a duplicate copy our signed form was accepted with barely a glance and our passports were unopened. At customs control the border guards waved us through so we never actually stopped. That was it. After 260 days we were properly back in Europe.  

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Two days later we are at the Unicat workshop in Germany. Now we have to self-isolate for a couple of weeks. This is not so bad. We have a nice field to camp in. The weather is pleasant. Amazon deliver most days.

We did an interview for Unicat which you can see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ansfDYYkbHs