Welcome to Africa - Morocco

Morocco would be the first country for both of us in which the main religion is the Islam. How do you prepare if you travel with dogs and have "different" looks? We searched the net and we learned beforehand things like:

• dogs are impure.
• people are afraid of dogs as they might bite.
• people might throw stones at dogs to keep them away.
• Koran says that you cannot pray if there lives a dog in the same house.
• Homosexuality is forbidden and punished.
• Sexual contact before marriage is forbidden and punished.
• Tattoos and earrings are considered a sign of homosexuality.
• Wearing flip-flops in public is like being in your underwear.
• Western females wearing a scarf is likely to cause more attention then without.
• Lonely females in mountain areas are not safe and they are not really safe anywhere alone.

And here we were. Skippy - a bold and beautiful lady with tattoos on her head, walking hand-in-hand with me and our three little girls. What a combination!

First break in Morocco

Finding our way

For the first 100km on the road, we made lots of people smile and laugh. We got many thumbs-up for the sidecar and for Skippy's Suzi. Many people who saw the dogs in the sidecar could not believe first what they saw. Many took pictures, others were finger pointing indicating surprise, astonishment, admiration and generally they seemed amused. So far so good.

And we arrived in Chefchaouen - the blue city...

Chefchaouen - a compact village in the mountains

The city in blue colors :)

Kasbah by night.

Our bikes directly in front of our apartment.

Enough is enough! Skippy rescued her companions from the little monsters.

Our apartment.

The medina is a labyrinth of small alleys and they have a big difference in height so I got sweaty ;)

The medina...

Olives, herbs and veggies

More veggies

OMG - light poles of plastic with construction foam inside!

Brutal way how to treat animals! Alive chickens tied up and in straight sun!

No supermarket - only street sales...

The "grand taxi" station - in a regular Mercedes fits the driver + 2 passengers in front + 4 in the back + luggage :D

Nice looking citrus trees.

Those little monsters - seriously they attacked our little girls and wanted to grab them! We demand: kids on lead!!!

Lyra peekabooing over the edge :)

Posing by the city walls of Chefchaouen and girls had their interest somewhere else...

This was the reason that girls were "occupied". About 10 weeks old puppy trying to get our attention, heart-breaking!

We also tasted some of such prickly pears.

Walking on the hills of Chefchaouen.

Delicious tangerines for Christmas dessert.

Always something small to install, fix, change...

We survived our first stay in Africa :)

In our flat we got about 300 TV channels in German - good for me. The food was cheap, a pizza costed 45DH (abt. 4EUR; 1EUR=11DH)), Couscous 30DH, Tagine 30DH, Bottle of water 15DH. We needed to get used to those pushy guys who tried to lure us into their restaurants. The weather was mostly sunny and warm with temperature about +8C in the night and +18C in day. In the sun it got almost hot, especially when walking the hills. There are no more streets in the upper part of the city and all the rest of the transport is done via donkeys.

I also needed to send a letter to Germany and we went to the post office. First I went to take a number only to realize that there are about 40-50 people ahead of me. OMG! But then I am a fast learner :) So I waved my letter around so that I got the attention from some other official-looking locals. They understood what I want and a few minutes later I had done my sending and could leave. There is no room to be shy, overly polite and just wait. A little pushy and "honking the horn" helps :D

~ Wolfi

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014!

Happy New Year 2014 and greetings from Morocco!

Happy New Year from all five of us!

and a few pics from our stormy New Year :D

~ Ilta & Wolfi

Details of the ferry from Spain to Morocco

We decided some time ago, that we would set over to Africa from Spain by ferry. Generally our aim is to have as short boat ride as possible since (a) this is no pleasure for girls and (b) I get very quickly sea-sick.

We found the following options (one-way):
Tarifa-Tanger - only by FRS
Algericas - Ceuta - by FRS, Balearia and Trasmediterranea
Algericas - Tangermed (at least FRS, but we did not look into this since this was the longest ferry ride with 1.5h)

All options were around 60-65EUR per person incl. motorbike (at least solo). The big difference came in the handling of dogs and travel time. We decided to go from Tarifa to Tanger with FRS, because:
- the ferry was a fast ferry and travel time is only 35min (I saw later that Algericas - Ceuta also needs only 35min)
- dogs were for free (other carriers charge 10EUR/dog)
- dogs could be in sidecar during the journey without any extra box
- sidecar was free of surcharge

FRS had a friendly and prompt reservation service. We did all the Q&A via email.

The check-in was not as organized as I am used to when compared traveling by ferry between Finland-Sweden, Finland-Germany or Finland-Estonia (Wolfi, come on and get real, you are in Spain... ok check-in was perfect). In any case, we got on to the ship. The solobike was put on mainstand and strapped with one belt over the seat which was fixed to the trailer of the neighbor car.

While waiting for embarkation, we filled in the white immigration papers which we received at the check-in. The immigration formalities are handled by a guy sitting in a corner besides the cafe bar. Be quick - the queue became pretty long!

As soon as we left the ship, all sorts of people came to us to give advice. My recommendation: drive to the (anyway closed) gate as much as you can into first position. On the way there, pick up your green and white paper for your vehicle declaration. I was not able to shake of the touts, they literally took those papers out of my hands. They then asked for passport as well as bike papers. I gave all the stuff to them and the guy disappeared giving those to some other tout. I found the new guy and we filled the papers together. It was maybe too demanding that a German has a bike from Finland! Anyway, he demanded tip and I gave him 5EUR which was obviously ok.

After a few minutes I got the passports and the bike papers back from the first tout and he explained me something that the bikes are now in the system. Furthermore he told me to go upstairs to some immigration office since this was our first visit to Morocco. He also wanted money. I told him that I already paid and looked where this "upstairs office" was.

I did not find this "upstairs" and so I went to the customs office, asked and somebody was so kind and showed me the way where I needed to go (did not understand what they told me in French). This guy had to open the locked gate, we left the customs area in order to get upstairs. There - in an almost hidden place - was sitting another official who typed our passport data into a computer. OK, 5 minutes later it was done, that was all and have a nice day.

A little confused now, I went downstairs and decided it is time to enter Morocco and ride through the now-halfway-open gate. I started my engine and obviously energized by the great sound, the first tout jumped to me and asked if I have my stamped green/white papers and since I declined, he jumped to the real officials, got our papers, gave those to us and the other officials at the gate a thumb-up and we were good to go.

And then we were in Morocco. Piece of cake.

On the left is the real border guard, on the right is the tout :)

 ~ Wolfi

p.s. nobody looked at our dogs. No interest to check anything whatsoever!