Flashback to my first attempt at visiting the Kingdom!

Picture me, casually passing the uninspiring travel ads on my way to and from the office. I’d glance at the day trip offers, day in and day out. Then one morning, after grinding through a night shift, I decided to pop into the travel agency and see what they had on offer. Having done numerous day tours on previous visits to Gibraltar, I was no stranger to enduring long bus rides. But then, the travel agent pitched a one-day cultural tour to Tetuan & Tangier, and I was sold. I thought, “Why not?” I raised the visa question due to my Antigua & Barbuda passport, and the response was a reassuring “No you don’t need one”. With a ticket booked for the next day, I headed home for some well-deserved rest after that exhausting night shift. Little did I know, the next day would be even longer – I was set to join a Moroccan tour group at 8:30 am, right after my shift ended.

As the night shift rolled on, my excitement built. With the dawn breaking, I geared up, logged out, and made my way to the designated pickup point. Our journey took us from Gibraltar to the ferry port in Algeciras. We hopped onto a ferry, and just as it pulled away from the port, the Moroccan immigration officer got busy collecting passports for immigration checks. Handing over mine, the officer, he opened it, looked at me, looked at it again, and said, “No” I asked, “What do you mean” He then looked at me again and said something in Arabic, which I didn’t understand. The tour guide turned to me and said, “You can’t go; you need a visa!” I replied, “Your agent told me I didn’t need one” to which he said, “Sorry, you just can’t go. We’re going back to the port, and someone will pick you up to take you back”

Believe it or not, they actually did a full-on U-turn with the ferry, unceremoniously dumping me off! I wondered through the terminal completely lost, clueless about my next move and pissed off with the agency, to the point where I was muttering to myself. The Guardia Civil, Spain’s paramilitary police, eyed me up, possibly suspecting that I was an illegal immigrant attempting to enter Spanish territory and started questioning me. Back then, I didn’t know any Spanish and they didn’t speak English. There was a lady who spoke both English and Spanish; she asked me what happened, and after I explained, she refused to help with translating what I said to the Guardia Civil and told me I should learn Spanish. To this day, I still hold out hope that that woman slipped and broke an ankle for not helping me when she could have.

Eventually, after some back-and-forth, I managed to convince them that I was just a tourist and they allowed me to leave the terminal. The problems got worse when I got outside the terminal and found that no one was there waiting to take me back to Gibraltar.

Imagine my frustration – I got in a taxi and headed towards the La Linea/Gibraltar border, stomped across the runway, and marched right onto Main Street. I was fuming and stormed into the travel agency, then all hell broke loose. I was, demanding a refund and compensation for my time wasted. At first, they refused, but I’ve got a big mouth and my voice carries and I persisted. After shouting a few more times, a full refund was given, and an apology followed.

Fast forward 18 years, and I decided to give Morocco another shot, this time with my mates. This time, I knew visas weren’t a hurdle (I was 10000% sure).

We planned separate weekends in Tangier & Chefchaouen and took the ferry from Algeciras to Tangiers, where our taxi was waiting to shuttle us around. Chefchaouen, known as the Blue Pearl of Morocco, is a city 110 km away from Tangier, up in the mountains, and is known for its traditional houses painted in blue and white. Despite it being only 110 km, it took 2.5 hours to get there, not because the roads were bad, but because there were checkpoints every 15-20 km, and the taxi driver had to pay the police for us to pass. We rented a pretty cool Airbnb from this guy. What we didn’t realize was that it was literally next door to a mosque! That became apparent when the 5 am call to prayer scared the shit out of me.

The city is amazing; every house is covered with blue paint that gives it an iridescent look as the sunlight hits and reflects off the white walls. Tiny alleyways lead to other alleys, all seemingly endless, but dotted with brightly coloured spice and fabric shops, rooftop bars, and random eateries. Chaouen, as the locals refer to it, is a wonderful little city that is truly worth visiting if you’re in northern Morocco.

From Chaouen, we headed to Tangiers for a weekend. Tangier is the gateway to Europe from Africa, and the city sits on the Mediterranean coast just 17 km away Tarifa on the Spanish mainland.

Like any border city, Tangier is a hodgepodge of modern and old, bustling with thousands of people moving about their lives without a care in the world. In some parts, the streets are crowded, the bazaars are cramped and packed with ‘fake’ merchandise, sold at a fraction of the price of the originals. Some of the merchandises are obviously fake, but others would require a very well-trained eye to spot the differences between the real product and the knockoff. My attempts at buying fake trainers failed, not due to a lack of trying by the stall owners, but because of the size of my extra-large feet. I did manage to stock up on some spices though.

Walking through the market brought back memories of my youth—fresh fish and meat just laid out on unrefrigerated stone slabs in an open-air market, with hundreds of people walking around buying what they needed for dinner. The smells lit up the air while the flies buzzed around like the obnoxious pricks they are.

After walking around and doing a mini-tour of the city, it was time to head back to the ferry port and mainland Europe.

It’s incredible to think that a short 35-minute ferry ride can transport you from one continent to another, where cultures clash. From an open, liberal society to a more conservative, reserved one. I’ve had conversations with friends who have harboured nothing but ill feelings towards Morocco, some speaking negatively about the country without ever visiting. But I’m happy that even after the semi-traumatic experience of my first attempt at visiting Morocco 18 years prior, that I finally made it, and I enjoyed everything about the visit. There’s still a lot to explore, and I plan on doing more exploring soon.