Week 11 - Fes in Morocco to Cap Spartel in Morocco

Woke refreshed from a good nights sleep ready to explore Fes. We walked all through the town and the souk which is built on a really steep hill. We were shown the way to a leather shop where you could go up on the roof and look down over the tannery. It was facinating, it’s been there since the 13 hundreds and they still do all the processes by hand. Unfortunately due to an attack of numptyness I had forgotten the camera, but honestly is was great! We walked along the town walls past the gardens and through the clothes market several people told us the King was in Fes, but we didn’t see any sign of him.

Tuesday we left Fes heading up the N8 back in the direction of Tanger. It must have been the route the King was taking out of town because every 100 yards there was a set of flags and a policeman.

We ran into a huge traffic jam around Ain Kansera. When we got to the front of the queue there was a big party going on to welcome the King on his visit.

We would have stayed to see if we could join the party, but there were so many cars and trucks there was nowhere safe to leave the bike. Once we passed there the traffic thinned out and we started climbing again into the range of mountains known as the Rif. Scenery was amazing again, but the road was terrible and completely washed out in places, not a crash barrier in sight.

Started to get a bit worried when it got to 4 o’clock and we hadn’t got to the town we were expecting. It was really cold up in the mountains and I was imagining having to sleep in our survival bags at the side of the road! Eventually just as it was getting dark we came into a town we found a backstreet hotel above a café. It was just a room with 3 single beds, but it was vaguely warmer than outside although you could still see your breath. We later worked out why it was so cold, there was no roof on the toilets! We also discovered we were in Targuist which was miles away from where we thought we were.

Next day we got out of Targuist and back on to the N2 which was the road we should have been on before. As soon as we hit the main route back to Tanger everyone on the side of the road was trying to get us to pull over and buy their hashish! We were chased through the mountain roads by 2 cars one pulled over, but the other one chased us for miles. Ant pulled over eventually as the bike is too heavy for throwing around mountain roads like that. He asked us if we wanted hashish, a hotel, a restaurant or to go to his house and drink tea!!! We not very politely declined. We stopped for coffee and 4 different people tried to sell us hashish. We later learned that there is a big Marajuana farm on top of the mountain and the area is notorious for it. By this time we were getting a bit fed up so we didn’t stop again and carried on towards Sebta to see if there were any ferries we could get back to Europe.

We pulled up to a gate across the road to Sebta and a chap took us to the side and asked for our passports. We were confused, but it turns out Sebta is Spanish not Moroccan so you have to cross the border to go into the town. We were debating whether to go in when the border chap asked for 20 Euros for “stamping quickly” that made up our minds and we headed back down the coast to try and find somewhere to stay. Found a cheap hotel with internet and, after a bit of riding round the back streets, a garage to park the bike in. 10 mins after we checked in to the hotel their modem packed up. So much for trying to find cheap ferry deals, so we gave up and went to bed.

Thursday we called into an internet café on the way back to the bike. 1st time we had done that, but it was really easy apart from the odd Arabic keyboard. We must have spent 10 mins looking for the full stop key. Got prices for ferry to Italy. It was a bit pricey so decided to see if we could get anything cheaper at the port itself. Dropped down to Tanger Med port through some more spectacular scenery and went to the ticket offices. All the quotes we got were 100 Euro more expensive than the net, so headed off to find somewhere to stay with internet access.

Followed the coast road looking for a hotel or campsite, but there was nothing. The road was beautiful really hilly and twisty, but the wind was incredible and Ant was reduced to tiptoeing the bike round the bends to keep us upright. We passed one point where there were lots of people and some kind of winch. It looks like someone had driven off the road and down the drop. We didn’t hang around for fear of being blown over to join them. Followed the coast all the way and ended up back in Tanger not having passed a single hotel! Decided to cut our losses and head back to the campsite in Cap Spartel. Pitched up and went to McDonalds to use the internet. We had a choice of Saturday or Tuesday for the ferry. Couldn’t decide so we tossed a coin and it came out Tuesday, so we had a couple of days to sort ourselves out and pack the bike.

The next few days were spent repacking the bike so we had easy access to the stuff we would need on the ferry, tootling around Tanger, washing our clothes, tinkering with the bike and shopping. To keep the costs down we would try and cater for ourselves on the ferry so we spent a lot of time in Marjane supermarket trying to figure out what would still be edible after being in our cabin for two days. Whilst shopping we also decided to try, what we think was conger eel for tea. We BBQ’d it and it was lovely. Had the texture of lobster meet with a more fishy taste, unfortunately it was almost inedible due to the bones. By the time you had managed to extracate any meat you could eat it was cold!