179. Hitch hikers

Tanger-Med, Morocco 

Back to the injured party at 0800, as agreed, only to find them hale and hearty with no damage but a torn bike cover. Insurance not involved and they were happy with fifty pounds - phew

Realised during the night that I hadn't tried unplugging the microwave. Discovered the drain had come of the kitchen sink and flooded behind the kitchen units and filling up the microwave socket. An easy fix indeed and an apology to Jac for not acting when she suggested that the sink was leaking.. While I was at it I finally installed the pressure switch so that the internal tank pump doesn't over pressurise the system.

Children reunited with Squeaky the cat and the same conversations prevailed as to whether we could keep her.

A little out of focus,
wasn't prepared to get any closer
for fear of running him over.

In one of his leaps for the ladder,
the boy broke the tail light.
At least he wasn't hurt

By the time I had done all that it was again midday and we were off for Tanger-Med though for some reason went via Tangier which was great but did add to the trip. As we got within twenty minutes of Tanger-Med things got exciting. On exiting the motorway we needed to pay tolls which means coming to a stop at the automatic pay booth. I noticed a ten year old boy loitering and couldn't see him as I started. Passing cars started tooting and pointing so I knew we had a stow-away. A hundred meters on there was a lay-by so I pulled over to evict. As I ran to the back the boy ran away however when I went to run back to the car he ran back to the caravan. A refrigerated articulated truck slowed in the right hand land shouting and waving "move move" and I glanced back at the kiosk and I could see half a dozen older boys and men running toward the Giantavan so I ran to the Disco, slammed it into gear (something I never do (apologies to Robbie who built the engine)) and sped onto the motorway, with wide eyed children within the Disco. On catching the truck, now doing about seventy kilometres per hour we could see the little boy standing on the bumper bar, holding on to the lock bar of the rear door and the corner of the unit - very precarious. We caught up the driver who rolled his eyes and slowed to about thirty I guess and headed for the next service. It is a rotten world that children, or anybody, has to take desperate risks like this. Made for quite a conversation in the Disco.

Arrived about five thirty and found our new friends that we hit at the campsite the night before still waiting, having arrived ten thirty this morning. The ferries run a crazy system. The two boats during the day had refused all campers but the eight pm sailing was to be all campers. Brilliant luck, a short wait for us. I got to the kiosk in good time and immediately had about twenty people join behind me. Processing was unbelievably slow considering they had everyones tickets and were doing boarding passes. When I got to the window I was told that the boat was full so no more campers! The next ferry was not to two am. Without any choice I plumbed for that however the answer was that I needed to reapply two hours before sailing at midnight. The upshot being that one could miss out indefinitely.

Walkie-talkie receipt

At ten, neighbours who I had chatted to said the ticket booth was open. A short while later we were, finishing dinner, tidying up, tickets in hand knowing that getting through customs etc. can take a long time and we still had to collect our confiscated walkie talkies.

Looking back down the line.
X-ray truck on right

We soon ran into the queue for the mega x-ray that blasts car and trailer looking for stow-aways. After about half an hour queuing about six vehicles parked on a raised ramp and a huge Mercedes electric truck crawled along the side with a huge boom right over the vehicles to below the ramp on the far side. It must be an powerful device to penetrate steel trucks and probably not very healthy for stow-aways but needs-must, I guess.

After a couple of misdirections I found the pound, next to a huge open car port where traders heading for Africa were having to empty their grossly overloaded cars, vans and trucks for inspection. I had some trouble to get anyones attention but was eventually lead to a decrepit shed piled to the gunnels with confiscated junk. The man took my receipt and wandered around, occasionally poking around in a box. We came to a refrigerator and he opened the door and it was full of radios, mostly hard wired CB radios from trucks I guess and he poked around in that. He then talked to another man who left and the first told me to wait.  All the while more junk was arriving, wheeled by a youth with a ancient shopping trolly. He had three loads of hundreds of second hand restaurant trays with work flowered patterns. The were hundreds of them which he haphazardly stacked on top of sacks of something like plaster. You could barely walk around. I wandered out to see if anything was happening and found the official who had gone off to "check the document" sitting with three others drinking tea. I realised that I was never going to see the four £120 radios again so headed for the car.

Midnight so end of today's post. To be continued.........