I wasn’t sure…
Exactly what to expect. As we made our way through the town heading south toward our destination, everything seemed pretty much the same as southern Spain. It was hot, the roads were hot and had seen better days but, aside from a few monster pot holes going through town, they weren’t particularly notable. Sadly, like many other countries I’ve driven through, there was litter strewn everywhere. At a large set of traffic lights, a small team of teenagers were hanging around and took a particular interest in the queue of lorries. Some of them disappeared behind the trailer but came out empty handed. They walked back to the shade on the corner shouting at us for being ahead of the game. Thanks Mr Dutchman I said to myself. I estimated it was about 4 hours to where we parking for the night. A steady pace and a break seemed like a good plan. I just kept following the herd, setting the CD player to shuffle and hoping the place where were headed was ok. I had no idea of what it was like and without Google, you couldn’t just type out a name and get a complete run down on somewhere. The road continued through the outskirts of the town going through areas that had long seen any infrastructure additions. Broken lamp posts, large pot holes and a general run down look for the next two miles or so. After a while, the road turned into a dual carriageway. It was Morocco’s M1 equivalent, to us it was a short by-pass type of highway.
There isn’t much to see in a desert. I know that sounds obvious but, until you actually drive through one, you have little idea of how vast and empty it is. Again, we were hardly exploring the moon for the first time but, it was the furthest south I’d ever driven and I found the emptiness rather menacing, it made me feel very small and insignificant. What would I do if I broke down out here on my own? I also found the mule powered carts on the carriageway, miles from anywhere an eye opener. What they were doing there was beyond me. They seemed happy enough clip clopping along as we all roared round them. One horsepower on one axle and 500 horsepower on six axles, quite the juxtaposition. Almost two hours passed by as we approached Rabat. Being a small town, there were some roads leading away from the main drag running south. As we got closer to a small over bridge, I saw a policeman getting out of his car and striding purposefully towards the carriageway. He stood proudly and in my opinion, quite bravely in lane one and raised his hand. As he did this, without a word between us, we all moved out to lane 2 and drove straight past him without even thinking about knocking off the cruise. As I passed him, he was just looking at the tarmac resigned to the fact that, yet again, he’d got out of his car for nothing. Not going to lie, I laughed my head off! As it was back then, the road ran around the town north to south with a small roundabout halfway. There were three choices, left into the desert, right into town or straight on to the south. Who needs maps I said to myself. We stopped about half an hour further on for a break but mainly to laugh about the hapless policeman we’d driven past. As much as I laughed, a small part of me felt he might suddenly appear with lights and sirens going and pull a gun on us all. He didn’t. Maybe he’d radio ahead and there’d be a roadblock waiting for us, there wasn’t. I felt like Billy the Kid, just hoped I wouldn’t end up going the same way.
After another couple of hours, the outskirts of Casablanca appeared. It’s a big town and somewhere in there was The United Seamans Services. For some reason, I had an idea it would be a large truck park, with 45 degree slots and allocated parking for 100 lorries. Oh how wrong I was about that. As the we drove into town and the traffic got busier and the driving style became less polished, I realised that if I couldn’t keep up, I’d be lost. My plan relied on being with everyone and else and being alone would be a great deal more stressful. As we got further in we, drove down a small hill with a large empty and dusty area to our left. I heard some shouting, I heard a few more shouts and then I saw some kids, maybe 12 to 16 years old running across the dust bowl towards us. As we crawled up to a set of traffic lights, children started to run past me in between vehicles. It was all very bizarre, what on earth was going on I thought? It soon became abundantly clear what was going on. Everyone had a fridge trailer, except for one of the owner drivers (the Romanian I think) who was pulling a tilt. The reason we’d got fridges became apparent. About 20 to 30 children, all of whom had knives, descended on the tilt trailer and started slashing their way in to it! I’d never seen anything like it and never since. They were all cutting holes and climbing in, obviously thinking we were loaded with gold bars. Despite seeing what was happening, I still couldn’t understand it and sat there frozen for a few seconds. There was a great deal of shouting and I started blowing my horn, which did absolutely nothing, they just kept coming. I got out, locked my doors and made my way towards the commotion. By this time there were bits of tilt all over the road and the trailer was almost in tatters. I grabbed one of these thieves and whirled him around, he shouted at me but backed off (if I’d have seen the small knife he had, I’d probably have just kicked him). Other drivers had got into the trailer and were physically throwing people back out and onto the road. The shouting and scuffling went on for about another minute and then it stopped when they realised the trailer contained wooden crates and short sections steel for a telephone mast. There was nothing they could easily carry and flog on later, so they all vanished as quickly as they’d appeared. I’m confident even the experienced drivers were shocked by it all, I know I was. They hadn’t stolen anything but they had almost destroyed the tilt. It lay in tatters with bits of it flapping around in the breeze and other large sections hanging from the trailer touching the road. I didn’t feel scared at the time but the adrenaline was wearing off now and I realised how close we’d all come to being injured or possibly being stabbed. We tidied up the trailer as best we could and went back to our lorries. I started up and locked my doors, I then double-checked I’d locked my doors and shoved it in gear.
Yeh, that took the fun out of it all.