Dire Straits

Rabat to Tangier, Friday 16 October

The phone went at 3.30am this morning with the daily wakeup call. We leave Rabat in the early morning mist to reach Tangier in time to get an early Ferry out of Morocco. There are two reasons for the early start: the first is we have a big day driving back up through Spain to Granada but the real reason is that we want to avoid as much as possible the teenagers attempting to stow away on the coaches to make the border crossing back into Spain.

Life in Europe offers far more opportunity for young and old alike than Morocco. The black market rate to smuggle a person from Morocco to Spain through Tangier, the most targeted Port, is E1200 (NZ$2400). If you don’t have that kind of money then I guess tactics depend on your level of desperation.

Our driver Jose (who by the way is fabulous) checks the coach firstly around 3am in Rabat where we are. It is the driver who is personally fined and who has to file a report if anyone illegal is found on board. We have left our suitcases on the coach overnight, packing just a small bag of what we need so the luggage doesn’t have to be unloaded providing more opportunity for stowaways. (Just writing that makes me feel like I am in a John Grisham novel).

When we reach Tangier, and after we disembark, the coach goes through a police check before it is loaded on the Ferry. While it is parked up a group of kids (stupidly in broad daylight) kick at the luggage doors presumably they think that will work to open the door. They are yelled at in Spanish and retreat but give our driver and guide a hard time. We haven’t even boarded yet.

The coach, and us, are loaded on the Ferry. We have a pleasant time enjoying decent coffee for the first time in days while we wait to depart. Jose meanwhile decides to check the coach a final time. He lifts the trapdoors to engines that are located in the aisle and under the second trapdoor finds a pair of big brown eyes looking back up at him. Two 15 year old kids had somehow managed to climb up under the coach and positioned themselves for the ride of their lives. They would have had to hold on for the duration of the Ferry ride, through customs and Police on the other side and then had to let go at some point…safely…to have made it into Spain. I only have visions of the ones that can’t hold on any longer.

The Police are called. They take the shoes of each boy and throw them into the sea before they march them away out of sight. We are delayed just 15 minutes and then head into the straits of Gibraltar for the last time and toward the very exclusive Costa del Sol.

Pic is the Ferry after arrival at Tangier. I was a bit late with this shot, we all disembark through through the garage, the cars and bus are still on board behind the middle door.