Banjul Challange – Chefchaouen – 1/17/2023
Jan 22nd, 2023 by rallyadmin
We’re up at 6:30 and at the car at 7:00. It’s still dark but weather has come in over night and it’s raining and quite windy. Now, in addition to wondering if the car will start (we expect it to since it’s cooled overnight), we’re wondering if the 9:00 ferry to Tangier will run. The 6:00 ferry did depart but the weather is expected to deteriorate as the day goes on. Ah, the joys of adventure travel.
The car does start. We pack up and follow into a small convoy of fellow travelers on the way to the Tarifa ferry port. The road to the center of Tarifa follows the hills up then down into the center. It dark. There’s not much traffic but the road is very twisty and, in some places, quite slippy. Down the other side into town. Follow the map on the phone to the port and get in line.
We’re there at 7:30 and we expect boarding to start at 8 – 8:15. We wait in the wind and the rain. We try to start the car again. No luck. Grrrr. Alan, Alex and some others quickly descend on the car to try to force the engine into submission. A bit of fooling with wires doesn’t do it. Out comes the quick start spray and after a bit of coaxing the engine starts and finally stays running. We won’t shut it off until we get on the ferry. If fit doesn’t start, we’re confident that we’ll get off the ferry somehow.
When we finally get boarded, we have the car parked downhill at the top of the ferr. Alan, Alex, and others descend on the car again and start battling with the engine again. They had put in a switch to bypass the fuel pump relay but that hasn’t worked. The relay isn’t the problem.
In an apparent burst of divine intervention,Alan fiddles with the electrical connector to the high pressure pump and the car starts. He fiddles again and it doesn’t. He does still again and the cars starts. It appears that the connector is the issue. We get ready to dis-embark from the ferry, the car starts. Off the ferry into Morocco.
We had already cleared Moroccan immigration on the ferry. But next is the fun part: customs or the please take everything out of the car so that we can check for drugs, contraband, immigrants (you must be kidding – who sneaks south across the Med?) or anything we might like to declare illegal and confiscate for ourselves. (It happens.)
They take a decent look at the car and our bags but then they way us on. (“You sure you have no drones?”) Back into the car and out to a parking area to change money and get insurance.
By far the biggest difficulty when driving a vehicle anywhere outside the US, Canada and the EU is getting auto insurance. You can easily get personal medical insurance, insurance for your possessions, even rescue insurance for all kinds of disasters from Covid to terrorist events. Auto insurance, not so easy.
We park the car and a few other cars have already gotten their little chores done and they point us to the building where we car buy the car insurance. There’s already a small line of people waiting for the lone woman who is issuing the insurance for 64 euro. The insurance is only good in Morocco and Western Sahara (we’ll have to do this exercise at every border crossing along the way.) Hopefully, we’ll never need to find to if or what the insurance covers other than to satisfy the police at a document check.
Then out to the money exchange. The current exchange is about €10 to 100 dirhan. Since we don’t really know how much we’ll need we exchange several hundred euro to cover rooms, meals and fuel. Fortunately we can exchange to dirhan that we don’t use to Mauritanian currency when we leave Morocco.
Finally, we’re back on the road.; Or, more accurately we are trying to get on the road. Tangier is a large, modern city that was built on an ancient city. Tiny side streets open into expressways and expressways dump traffic into the ubiquitous round-abouts which are one of the sure signs than you are no longer in Kansas, Dorothy.
The rest of the day is driving south on the autostrada tollway. We do 120 kph and make good time going south but the rid is boring and will stay boring until we get off the tollway. Stops for food and fuel and we just drive on.
We’re in Africa. The car starts. Money exchanged. Insurance purchased. The adventure has truly begun.
Obi
