Tea in the Sahara - with you

Morocco

The ferry trip to Tangier proved to be somewhat of a challenge. We had bought a ferry ticket from a guy in a booth at the port town. Only to discover that by the time we arrived at the ferry terminal (about a 5 minute walk) that the ferry was full and we would have to wait another 2 hours for the next one. So we waited... and waited... eventually our superfast ferry arrived and we boarded.

I reckon it must have taken about 30 minutes, just as we drew alongside the Rock of Gibralter, and things started to go bad. The port rests in a sheltered bay and as soon as we hit the swell outside thej bay, things started to change. Initially, the hundreds of kids on board got a little restless. The percentage of the population that are under the age of 15, in many developing countries is high, in Morocco it is really high. So we had kids running around shouting, spilling food and drinks and generally being pains in the but for about half an hour – which wouldn't have been a problem if

1.Our superfast ferry was superfast
2.They had continues to be peppy and up beat

Instead, they turned various shades of blue/green and crashed into nausea and vomiting, causing their parents to do the same. Within another hour we were on the set of some low budget hollywood sicko film about disease epidemics. It was truly gruesome.

Now, the distance between Spain and Morocco is small and superfast ferries can cover it in about 2 hours. I have told you that it took half an hour to leave the harbour, half an hour of yelling and screaming, and one more hour of chuck fest 2008. Here is where the story gets really fun.

We sat on the ferry for another 3 hours in rolling swell dry retching our way to the port of Tangier.
Superfast my arse!!

As we were leaving the ship of sick, we overheard a rather distressed woman concerned about the theft of her passport whilst on board – checking and rechecking our passports as we left the ferry, we braced ourselves for the shock of Tangier.

Tangiers from the beach