You really…
Couldn’t put a customs area in a worse place. The local fish market and the local sewage works joined forces to produce the most godawful stench I’ve ever had the misfortune to be parked for five days in. All day the stink of rotting fish and who knows what in the sewage works, hung around like a mugger in a poorly lit car park. Every time you got out of the cab, it was there, instantly reminding you of it’s presence. I found that visiting the toilet facilities, which were below average even for North Africa, was a breath of fresh air. I assumed I’d get used to it like the locals seemed to have done but, I didn’t. If I’m ever hypnotised and asked for the most memorable things in my life, I think that smell might be the first thing I recall.
The North African Virgins wandered off to customs with our bundles of paperwork which were quite substantial in numbers of papers and complexity. Having found the offices which were hot, disorganised and full of people who said a great deal very loudly but in reality did very little. We stood there and watched as everything we handed over either, disappeared, was dropped on the floor, had coffee cups put on it or, was tossed back at us. My passport went for a walk which made me nervous. I asked about it and was completely ignored, we were both completely ignored. Every single one of them looked like a crook. If Hollywood wanted to cast a crook, these people were the exact framework they’d base it on. Having stood there for a long time being ignored we decided to go, hoping that tomorrow we’d get it all back and we could crack on. How wrong we were on that assumption. Long story short, five days later, we were all cleared. Not just me but, the other Ralph Davies drivers, some STS drivers from Southampton and a couple of owner drivers, one of which was from Romania and the other from Ireland. We all had various parts of the mobile phone network jigsaw destined for Casablanca. You have to admire STS, they were the kind of firm that appeared in the most unexpected locations. Once right down the very bottom of Italy I passed one who was parked up in the middle of nowhere and again, another in Denmark. It was almost as if they were inflatables left randomly around Europe by a very imaginative marketing team. If you look very very closely at some of the moon landing photos, you can just see one of their tilts in the background.
‘5 days in Tangier port’ would never be a holiday destination advertising slogan for good reason. Despite the compound being customs secure, every Tom ■■■■ and Harry seemed to be able to wander in and out at will. This became nothing more than a business opportunity for anyone who fancied selling carved wooden elephants, ornate wooden tables, rugs, various tupperware items that they’d found on the pavement and if you asked, pretty much anything you wanted. Literally every time you got out, someone was there trying to sell you something. The casual ‘not interested mate’ seemed to mean ‘please try and sell me all that crap you’ve got there in that dirty bucket’ in the local dialect. They were relentless and it became tedious. There’d be regular shouting matches from drivers with them and the occasional scuffle because they wanted to be left alone. The following day, the same hustlers would be back and carry on like they’d never seen you before. I avoided most of this by spending large parts of the day in the lorry running the engine for long periods to keep the A/C running to keep the smell out and stay reasonably cool. This didn’t deter the door knockers of course. They’d just knock on the door waving what ever tat they’d found in the local rubbish bins or stolen from someone else and try and flog you that. They made life a misery to be honest. If they weren’t doing sales, they’d wander around your lorry looking and sometimes touching the pallet boxes. I’m confident that given 25 minutes and a screwdriver, they’d have your engine and gearbox out and sold for cash or a large handful of dates. Oh, I forgot to mention the local mosque just behind the compound with its daily call to prayer going off at regular intervals. I’m confident that they are worse to places to be stuck in than the Port of Tangier but none come to mind.
That leaves a large group of lorry drivers with nothing much to do for a few days in a busy port town. The experienced Morocco drivers weren’t really interested in coming out, but they pointed out where they thought the best restaurants were, as well as telling us not waste our time in the local souk (market) because that’s where all the hustlers from the port went to get their items from to sell to us. A group of us went out later that evening and had a meal in town. I recognised most of the menu items, drinks, sundries and ordered a steak with frites. It then became apparent that the whole table was infested with cockroaches. We didn’t see them at first but gradually they made their presence known by crawling over your shoes, up your leg, over the table and around the ketchup bottle. I was surprised when most of the team seemed to find it funny and started coming up with ways to kill them that over time, got more and more ugly for the roaches. I did finish my meal, I did not enjoy my meal. It was then agreed that we’d go to a place that would serve us beer. It wasn’t very clear to me then and it still isn’t now but Morocco does serve alcohol I think. I know we got beer and started to have a bit of a night out. Incredibly, someone copped off with a local girl and vanished. That shocked me, despite him coming back later, anything could have happened to him and his wallet. The ride home in the taxi (taxi’s were cheap to us but, pricey to the locals) was an eye opener. The night time brought out some real degenerates and we saw two real nasty fights on the street. The only thing that lifted the mood was me asking the driver to drive like ‘Michael Shcumacher’, I have never been so scared in all my life. We went up pavements, through red lights and along the main drag so fast I thought the bearings would melt. Another lesson learned, never bet a nutter with rudimentary driving skills to drive like an F1 legend.
I like the Dutch. I’ve got a lot of time for the Dutch.