16th June - Marbella

We, or I (Nicki), had an interesting night's sleep last night, as David was busy snoring away, and because he was feeling ill from eating a dodgy batch of nougat I did not want to wake him. So I slept on the seat in the truck (about 1m in length) till about 3am when David stopped snoring.

 

The decision was made to drive to Ceuta today and cross over to Spain. So we headed off about half nine as it was 90km away, and that was predicted to take about 3 hours in the truck. We delayed ourselves royally by doing a full loop of the town before finding signs to Ceuta, which took us back to a road about two roads away from the campsite. Oops! The scenery was equally impressive as yesterday, although without the fields of hash, and only one person offered us a joint. An improvement on yesterday's few hundred…

 

We followed the windy road and reached our destination in fairly good time. We passed through the Moroccan border with little hassle (far less than when David went the other way through the same border three months ago), so finally we were in the Spanish town of Ceuta. You can tell you have entered a European area immediately, from the standard of cars and infrastructure and the non-existent hassle. There were large supermarkets and Spanish people walking around. We could have been in and Spanish town!

 

While at customs we had a visitor into the truck, a police sniffer dog. He was very cute and jumped in the truck on the word go, sniffed around carefully and then hoped back out again. The only thing he hesitated at was the goat-skin covered drum! He probably does not come across many of them.

 

David bought the ferry tickets and we only had to wait ten minutes to board the ferry. Apparently last time he was at the port heading south it was manic, but it was very orderly and hassle-free today! I dived in the back and made tuna sandwiches for lunch before we left the truck to sit upstairs on the ferry, and we watched Africa fade into the distance and Europe fast-approaching. It almost signals the end of the trip, which is quite sad.

 

We landed and realised, thanks to Dad, that we were now the owners of a restricted currency. For those of you that do not know, some countries place restrictions on their currency preventing you from leaving the country with more than a few pounds equivalent. We did not realise Morocco was one of those countries, until Dad texted us to confirm it was! Oops! More to the point we had about £100 in Dirhams which is obviously no use. Luckily David dived into the ferry terminal in Spain and managed to change it to Euros (albeit at a lousy rate). Phew! That could have been messy.

 

Now we are parked up in a campsite in Marbella. We had a brief stop at McDonalds (I could not resist) in Puerto Banus, and David got quite excited about having a milkshake, as he doesn't partake in any other McDonalds products. However when I ordered one the cashier said they did not have any, and they were not even on the menu. McDonalds have thus dropped even further in David's estimations which, as you might gather as he is a vegetarian, are not that high anyway. I was sitting outside with my book but the sun has gone in and the wind has picked up a bit, so I am back inside the truck.

 

Point of interest: we are now one hour ahead of you, instead of one hour behind! (Caused me some confusion at the ferry terminal when I was checking we were in the right queue).