Heavy rain overnight – what a welcome to Morocco! In fact it
rained all day long with just a few breaks.
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| View from the van |
First job today was to get internet access sorted out – with the costs of phone calls and texts, this was the way we were going to try to stay in touch. But after breakfast we heard that the queue in the Maroc Telecom shop was at least an hour long so decided to hang on for a bit. However once we’d got the van sorted it seemed that as the shop was on the way out, we’d drive up and park outside while Terry got it sorted. The queue was still long but they had two guys on now and after sorting out many problems, by the time I got to the front they knew exactly what I needed and my transaction took around 3 minutes!
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| Local haulage company! |
So back to the van and on our way. The motorways are so
good, and the tolls ridiculously cheap even compared to Spain that it was a
no-brainer to use them. Through frequent showers we observed a wide variety of
landscape: cultivated fields alternated with scrubland populated by small
flocks of sheep and herds of cattle, all with one or two people looking after
them (e.g. making sure they didn’t
wander onto the road!), acres of plastic greenhouses which looked like they
were growing bananas as well as, to our surprise, quite lush forests. It was
all so remarkably green.
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| Fields of plastic |
On the other hand we also passed villages and small towns
lining the road and it was here the greatest culture difference was apparent.
Often, little more than half-built houses, rickety sheds and dwellings that
appeared to have been thrown together using whatever was lying around seemed to
be the norm. And yet though shabby and
run down, it didn’t appear to be dirty – some effort had been made in places to
brighten things up, although using whatever colour paint they could find!
Obviously away from the cities it was a very poor, to our standards,
population.
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| One of many roadside villages |
In contrast we also passed areas in and near the cities that
had expensive and attractive housing. A brand new university complex with
attractive blocks of accommodation on the edge of Rabat looked to have had a
lot of money spent on it.
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| Roadsigns took some reading |
However time was pressing but as luck would have it, our attempt to return us to the motorway led us onto the coast road to Mohammedia so we followed that instead. We were intrigued by a large, very posh walled estate, the entrances to which were all guarded by police and the military. We believe this may well have been one of the Royal Palaces.
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| Another local haulage company |
With clear signposting – well we missed one – and a
diversion due to a closed road, we arrived at Ocean Bleue, a proper campsite with full facilities
which had been contacted by the group leader to warn about the arrival of
around 15 English motorhomes. As it happened, we had met 4 of these at the
motorway service area, to be told that most of the group had decided to stay at
Asilah for another night! Probably just as well because the site was very busy
and there were not many pitches left. We got ourselves settled and then the
other four vans turned up, and were given pitches right on the other side of
the site!
Never mind, it was almost dark and with frequent showers we
were going nowhere tonight.
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