Off to Morocco
Life of a Guide
11th - 12th November | 2022
Last week called my friend Didier if I could guide his group of "Estrada" through Morocco. WHAT?!?! I would love to go to Morocco as is such a lovely versatile country, already on another continent. He said we would be a group of 6 (well with me 7) bikes. After a night of thinking, I confirmed and we met some days later so that he can show me the route and discuss some minor things. One worry for me is knowing places of interest to stop and lunch. We agreed that our Marroquin guide will reserve already lunch on the way so that we do not have to search and negotiate prices. A local person will get a better price than me European tourist on a BMW ;-)
So Friday morning it was time to meet at the shop Motoglobo (www.motoglobo.pt). Until then it was a bit of a hectic week, as I needed desperately changing my chain and tyres, extending my insurance for Marocco and whatever suddenly came to my mind! The chain I changed myself under the supervision of James (and his helping hands!). Tyres (I still had a used set of Michelin Anakee III in my storage) and insurance were all resolved last minuter the day before!
This trip will be two groups, me guiding the "road" and Didier the "offroad" group. So we all will stay at the same hotel during the night, but the routes will be different.
Once the remaining offroad bikes were loaded up, we all had lunch and then I headed down to Algeciras in Spain with 4 of the motorcycles = 5 people. The other 2 motorcycles = 3 people we will meet in the hotel. It was nice riding, a bit congested around Seville, but we managed to stay together :-D We arrived at about 19h00 in Algeciras at the hotel, already in the dark. All went well - so 1st day ticked off!
This morning's breakfast was for 7h30 to be ready to leave at 8h00 - NOT my time ;-) especially after another night of bad sleep. Entering the ferry from Algeciras to Ceuta was pretty straightforward, but the journey over was VERY rocky! The staff came even around to hand out vomit bags! I went out for some fresh air early enough to settle my stomach!
The border crossing from Ceuta into Morocco took nearly 3 hours!! It felt like nothing was moving forward, even though we were with the bikes pretty much waved through to the front. Once it was our turn it went pretty fast forward per person. Once all were in Morocco, we could already head to the meeting point, which was a cafe/restaurant. As we had to wait for the cars with the remaining offroad bikes and our luggage, we decided to have our lunch there.
At 15h00 we finally left and went along the coast to Tetouan and then along the coast until we had to turn off to Chefchaouen. Half way my phone with Osmand ran out of battery as I had forgotten to put it on a charge while driving. Thankfully I had the other phone ready, but I couldn't find the track, at least I could see the map for orientation.
On the way to Chefchaouen, I stopped various times for the group to take pictures, but at the same time, we had to push on a bit to not arrive in the dark. We arrived in Chefchaouen when it was just getting dark. In the hotel, I helped our driver Marco to sort out the room occupation. It took us 1 hour between 3 adults until we got it working out!
By that time the group from the offroad arrived and shortly after everybody had been refreshed we went through the town to a nice restaurant for some yummy typical Marroquin food.
At midnight we were all back at the hotel and tomorrow will be another long day - 450km! So stay tuned, for the next section of my guiding skills here in Morocco. And I hope there will be more pictures, as being a guide there are not many options and times to take pictures. I hope you will like the blog the same, as it gives you a bit of an insight, into being a guide in a country that you do not know much about.
Places | Cities:
SPAIN:
Seville, Algeciras, Ceuta
MOROCCO:
Tetouan, Chefchaouen
Driven km | Trip:
Total | Steffi: 590 km
Maintenance | Breakdown:
./.
Health issues:
./.
Special thanks to:
Didier Frederico to trust me to be a guide for the Morrocco Adventure Tour of MotoGlobo (www.motoglobo.pt)