Weather: 16C-30C, Sunny

We caught the ferry from Algeciras, Spain to Ceuta Morocco on Friday 1st, October passing close by the Rock of Gibraltar. The trip takes about 1½ hours and set us back about 186 Euro for we two Aussies and the camper. There was nowhere to camp at Algeciras Port the night we arrived prior to departure so we found a 24hr car park and took a room at the Marine Victoria Hotel across the road. A big mistake!

Why is it that when you look at a hotel room to size it up, your new neighbours are out at the pub getting liquored up? I could just about smell the breath of the people in the next room when they returned the walls were so thin. To say they had an active and vocal sex life would be an understatement, and to make matters worse the bloke was so drained by his part in the performance he started to rattle the walls with his snoring. At a very late hour I retreated to the car park across the road, climbed into the camper and passed out. Two hours sleep, I think, is all I clocked up for the night! To make matters worse, when we docked in Morocco we found we had to put our clocks back two hours making for a very, very long day. We have vowed never to desert the camper again for a hotel room!

Morocco is how I remember Africa but with the mystery of Islam thrown into the mix for a bit of excitement. The first impression when leaving the ferry is one of comparative order but that soon evaporates when you leave the Spanish enclave that is the Port of Ceuta. We had decided to use the services of a local, as recommended in the guidebooks, to smooth the process of the border crossing. We picked a crook! Within sight of the border this enterprising barstard conned us out of 15 euro for doing a stage managed performance that achieved b***** all that amounted to anything when we reached the actual border. The real fixer said most part with far more loot, up to 100 Euro, and many lose their passports as well. Gael was the only reason we didn't get fleeced for more. I'm so bad at judging people I was about to give the p****the car keys and let him drive the truck across the border for us!

Our first night camping in Morocco was at the town of Asilan, south of Tangier. Well, at least there was no one shagging in the next room, but the Moroccan nightclub about 500mtrs up the road did prove a little taxing when it kicked open its doors at 1am. I will leave it up to your imagination as to what a Moroccan nightclub might sound like. But one thing that a Moroccan night club does not produce is a musical note.

Moroccan camping grounds resemble those that you find elsewhere in the world in name only. Nothing much in terms of new infrastructure has happened here since the French left in the nineteen fifties. Dunnies out of order, no hot water, and plugging into an electrical outlet could be an end of life experience. We were also about to find out that camping grounds in Morocco are about as scarce as Dirhams in a Moroccans wallet, and as a consequence we have stayed in a couple of hotels with the well healed on two occasions. Staying in these hotels is an experience as far removed from the real Morocco as landing on the moon would be, but we had run out of options in Fez and Tetouan after finding all the campgrounds listed in the area had their gates padlocked.

Our forced night's accommodation in Tetouan coincided with the hotel's restaurant being closed. We had the option of having a cook up of Spam in the camper down in the hotel car park or eating locally. Well you guessed it, the Spam should have been our choice, as there is a favorite saying of those who travel in Africa. "Happiness is a dry ****".

Driving a large slug like vehicle in a large Moroccan city signposted in Arabic, at peak hour, is about as pleasant as having your finger nails pulled out. But that's where they build hotels (in large cities). We also arrived in Morocco on the previous weekend so it wasn't possible to get our vehicle third party insurance at the border. The border man told us to drive very carefully and to buy our insurance at the first opportunity, but with our Arabic language skills stretching to moo moo for milk, buying insurance 'on the road', was not going to happen.

As a consequence of our time spent driving here in Morocco the shipping of our camper down to Southern Africa is looking more like our preferred option. The thought of driving through the centre of Cairo, Egypt (another Arabic speaking country), at any time of the day starts my anus pulsing uncontrollably.

The camper continues to meet its design specifications, much to the amazement of its designer and builder (me). The Land Rover itself continues to perform like the truck it is. The air conditioner has started working again, and the driver's side indicator has started behaving itself (although intermittently). The only fly in the ointment is a wheel nut that has failed to rematerialize since vibrating free from the main moving mass of the vehicle somewhere in Portugal (I think). I still hold out hope that Mary Mac Killop may get around to making it a miracle (number three I think it is), further down the track!

In terms of the bigger picture, pollution and destruction of the environment are the number one issues that fail to get any attention here. Plastics waste, to name but one very visible pollutant, is out of control! Although I only have my experience of Zambia to go by, and that was eighteen years ago, I don't remember the rubbish being this bad in that part of Africa. I guess there have been a lot of profits made by the plastics industry from the production of plastic bags in that time. You can't blame the dirt poor locals, but an industry that has the capacity to produce a product that is biodegradable should be forced to do so.