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Morocco - Hitchhikers guide to getting to Morocco

by Noam Harris

Noam Harris gives a first-hand account of a sponsored hitchhike from London to Morocco...

Last Easter Suhailah and I journeyed through France and Spain on the way to Morocco, taking part in the Morocco Hitch, coordinated through our university.

The hitch was the highlight of the trip. Morocco is a beautiful place, but it didn't compare to the magic that is hitching (which I've become unapologetically evangelical about). Contrary to warnings that we'd be picked up by axe-murders or sex pests, it turned out that hitchhiking enabled us to filter through to exceptionally generous, and open-minded people, who wanted nothing in return for their kindness (well, almost always. More of that later).

Our journey started early on Thursday morning after only after a few hours sleep - I'd stayed up pretty late packing, and at 3am had felt compelled to watch a movie I’d been recommended due to its hitchhiking cameo.

I hoped it would give us some hitching tips, but they largely revolved around wearing a short skirt, which neither I or Suhailah were keen on.

Su and I were driven by her mum's friend to South Mimms service station at the northern rim of the M25. After hassling truck drivers for a few hours, we decided to try our luck with regular motorists. We'd been told that our best hope would be to get lifts with lorry drivers - they drive long distance and apparently appreciate the company.

As it turned out, no truck picked us up for the duration of the trip. We scrawled 'SOUTH, A3' onto our large piece of laminated card, and stood by the exit of the service station building, and waited for people to pass us. Being lumbered down with enormous backpacks, wearing brightly coloured 'MOROCCO HITCH' t-shirts and carrying an A2 portable whiteboard, meant that most people took sizable detours so as not to walk past us. Not exactly confidence-inspiring.

A middle aged guy walked past, and we asked him, as we had the dozens who had already passed us, 'are you heading south?' he replied 'Well, I wasn't, but I guess I could!' We grabbed our bags, spluttered our thanks to him, and followed him to his car for the first lift of our trip.

As soon as we got in the car our driver opened up to us - he had recently divorced, had a lot of time on his hands, and had the day off today, so he thought: why not help out some hitchhikers? We wanted to go in the direction of Portsmouth, where our ferry was leaving at 11pm that night, so we asked if he could drop us off just off the M25 where we hoped we could procure another lift. He talked to us about his time in the army where he served in Northern Ireland, Kenya and Canada, and peppered us with questions about our views on everything from religion to politics.

By now we had gone much father than 'just off the M25'. So as we debated the pros and cons of the death penalty (his view: hang 'em up by their bollocks), immigration and vegetarianism, it turned out that we had talked our way into a lift all the way to Portsmouth.

Our generous and opinion-filled driver dropped us at the port, and as with most of the people we met, we acknowledged that we would almost definitely never see him again or have the opportunity to repay his kindness. So we thanked him profusely and wished each other well. Leg one complete!

At 8am the following day, our ferry arrived in misty, chilly Le Havre and we lugged our backpacks down the main street adjacent to the port. As I went to get some non-traditional breakfast (cake, tart, and fizzy drinks from the closest boulangerie) I left Su to hold up our newly-penned sign.

Shortly after I returned, an insurance broker in a smart, fast, perfumed car picked us up, driving us several miles down the highway to a convenient junction for our next destination, Le Mans. Our next stop involved several hours of standing on a junction next to a toll booth until a charmingly messy monoglot woman picked us up. She had to rearrange her car slightly so we could get in, as it seemed her vehicle doubled as a storage cupboard. Her possessions littered the car, and the rear-view mirror was stationed on the floor between my feet: quite a contrast to the previous driver's pristine car.

After a few stifled exchanges in French and a quick nap, we were dropped off just outside Le Mans, where we rewrote our sign, and waited a few hours until a bohemian-looking guy took us to the outside of Angers. After dinner at a Buffalo Grill we returned to the side of the road and waved our sign at oncoming drivers as the sun went down. As we were planning where to sleep if a lift didn't emerge before dark, a camper van pulled up. We were on our way to Nantes!

As we wound our way towards the most liveable city in Europe (according to Time magazine) our driver, Thomas, told us that he had quit his job and left his apartment that day. All his life and possessions were in the back of the van, and he seemed part excited, part stressed about his reliable-job-less future. He was on his way to visit his friends in Nantes for the weekend. When we asked if he knew of any hostels he suggested we stay with him at his friend's house. After phoning up his friend, who effectively told him 'any friends of yours are friends of mine', we realised we were in luck. We spent the evening with Thomas and his friends chilling, drinking and smoking. The more drunk and stoned his friends got, the more they practiced their English, and by 3am our inebriated host could barely stop speaking English.

Six hours later Thomas drove us to a good hitching spot, and soon after we were picked up by a French-Algerian guy who nattered away with Su in Arabic, and whisked us back to his house to feed us coffee, oranges and an incredible amount of toast. After dropping us at a service station, and being rejected by Slovakian truck drivers, a man who worked in the fishing industry, but didn't know where he was going, drove us a few miles down the motorway to a service station, where we were about to stumble on one of our most fortunate rides of the trip.

After repositioning ourselves at the very last exit of the service station, and failing to solicit a lift from some hotpot-cooking Slovakian, German and Portuguese truck drivers, an old BMW pulled up and helped us pile into their car. After a few minutes we were delighted to find out they were driving all the way to Spain that day. It turns out they were Romanians who worked and lived in Spain. They were in the middle of a non-stop journey which involved driving their friend from Spain to Le Havre's port, and then returning to Spain.

We spent the next twelve hours crammed into the back of their car, listening to Romanian music (very similar to Arabic and Mizrahi dance music), doing more passive smoking than I ever have or ever will, and practicing my pidgin Spanish. One of the three Romanians, Alin, could speak a little English (which he mainly exercised by asking us repeatedly if we would get him a job in England) but the others knew next to nothing.

Remarkably we managed to chat to them for most of the journey, despite our lack of a common language. The majority of conversations followed the pattern 'te gusta xyz? me gusta xyz'. After reaching the Spanish border we were stopped by the police as Vidio, one of the Romanians, only had ID papers, but no passport.

This resulted in me learning my favourite Spanish word: 'chapucera', a shoddy/slap-dash worker, which the Romanians delighted in calling the border police. The sun set and we drove in darkness through Barcelona, Valencia, and arrived at Alin's house, about 80 miles east of Madrid, in the early hours of Sunday morning. Alin vacated his room for us and told us he would wake us up in the morning to drive us to a service station. It was the very end of the third day and we were already two-thirds of the way to Morocco. Not bad!

Our Romanian companions left us at a rural petrol station, in what seemed to be one of the least busy corners of Spain. It was not the last we would hear from them. An hour later they came back to check up on us, and since we returned to England, I’ve had numerous phone calls from Alin asking if I’ve got him a job yet…

After a few hours, punctuated by chatter with a Moroccan shepherd - yes a real shepherd! - another BMW skidded to a halt and helped us into their car. Again, it was a car full of Romanians - who turned out to be friends of our previous lift givers. They were heading to Albacete, but without even thinking about it, took us all the way to Murcia, a few miles from the south-east coast. Again we were asked by a Romanian if we could find jobs in England, however this time the motivation was not higher wages and an escape from the Spanish brand of the credit crunch, 'La Crisis', but the desire to marry an English woman.

We were now 150km from Almeria, from where we would ferry to Morocco. However, it took us another two days to reach Africa, but it turned out to be well worth the wait.

After reaching Murcia that afternoon we stood by the side of the road, and after several hours were happy when a car pulled up - we had been warned that hitching in the south of Spain is pretty hard. The occupants of the vehicle told us that we were in the wrong place to hitch, so we foolishly took their advice and let them drive us to a slip road off the motorway, where we stood next to the crash barriers at the side of the road as cars, jeeps and trucks whizzed past at 60mph. This was definitely the most dangerous part of the trip.

After a couple of fruitless hours we gave up, ate, and camped on the roundabout where we had initially been dropped. The next day we met the nicest people of the trip (and after travelling the length of Spain, the first Spanish people we met). Maria and Lua were a lovely couple; they rescued us from the side of the road, and told us that though they had some stuff to do that day, they were willing to take us to Almeria in the evening, despite having no plans to do so prior to picking us up. Maria spoke English (and teaches it at school) so we could chat. We spent the afternoon eating, hanging out with their friends, playing football (Spanish girls are amazing at football. Not that they shouldn't be, but English girls certainly aren't, in my experience), and smoking.

The Spanish attitude to cannabis is very relaxed - people smoke in public and smoke a lot. We were told that everyone either smokes or used to smoke. I'm not sure how true that is, but it certainly felt like less of a big deal, and definitely more sociable than it does in England. Later on, Maria and Lua drove us to Almeria, and insisted on taking us to eat tapas in a bustling local bar. It was late and a few jugs of Tinto de Verano, a lovely wine cocktail, had been drunk, and Maria and Lua could not drive back to Murcia, so we embarked on a mission - via seeing the Semana Santa parade (a Spanish custom during Holy Week involving Klu Klux Klan-esque costumes, incense and candles) - to find somewhere to stay.

This involved asking every youngish person that walked past if they knew of a hostel or somewhere we could crash.

Amazingly, one guy offered us a place to stay at his house. We accompanied him and his friends to hang out on the beach, but after deciding that we didn’t want to wait until 5am to get to bed, we thanked him and left. Eventually we all found a hostel, which we were escorted to by two guys who we had just met. The next day we said our goodbyes to Maria and Lua and explored Almeria. The hitch was almost over - we just had to catch the midnight ferry to Mellila (a Spanish enclave within Morocco) and then cross the border (which after a lot of 'queueing' we did the following morning) and we would achieve our goal.

1,500 miles, six days, ten lifts, two ferries, one Englishman, six French persons, six Romanians, two Spaniards, zero kidnappings and zero uses of Facebook since leaving London, and we had made it to our destination!