The gut feeling was not too far off, boat of July 13 has become July 15, that is not too bad. We take it easy until Tuesday 14 July, then we set off for the North. On the 14th of July the day starts at 5 am, at 6 am we leave Aourir just North of Agadir. The first 40 km are still a secondary road, but from then on it is motorway driving for the next 790 km. In total, we drive 830 km to the last parking lot of the motorway, which is also almost a full toll track. For the toll you should not leave it all together 60 euros approximately … .. We sleep that night on the last parking of this highway together with 8 other campers and 1 overlander the BALOO of Simon and Diane. Very friendly people that we already follow via facebook and then finally meet.
Then on the 15th around noon we drive together with BALOOtowards the harbor with another 60 km detour to refuel. The price difference with the European diesel is too great not to do it. We can still add 220 liters, which is a number of liters less that we should refuel in Europe. We arrive at the port of Tanger Med around 1 pm. After checking tickets we are allowed to enter the port area, this is the first confirmation that we are sailing today. Before that it was always under the motto, no news is good news. We drive onto the parking lot and install ourselves for the next few hours. Normally, the ferry would leave the port at 10:30 PM. However, the departure is for later.
First you have to wait without any information of how or what. After hours of seeing a crowd of people at the tickets office, we find out that we also have to pick up our tickets here. The situation is unheard of, hundreds of people are packed together like sardines drumming, especially without putting on mouth masks. We decide to wait until this mass has dissolved a little. In order not to go into too much detail at 2:00 am, we have our board documents.
Yes departure was at 10:30 PM, all without any information from the company. We follow the cars that have already started to move, because there are only 4 campers that take this ferry. To make an even longer story shorter. After police, customs, another police, the scanner and then a manual check. At 05:00 AM drives Bakkie on the ferry M / V MAJESTIC from shipping company GNV. We are tired and crawl into our bed before sailing…. The ferry departs at 06:00 AM with a delay of 7:30 hours……
De middag erop worden wij wakker op zee en gaan The following afternoon we wake up at sea and we explore the ferry, looking for food and drinks. This is wrong on board, people sit, hang out in groups or groups everywhere. At the bar and around the closed pool really large groups sit together without mouth masks, kissing, hugging… .. Also in the corridors almost nobody walks around with a mouth mask, this is really wrong. We already decide to leave our cabin as little as possible. We are on it and we have to go through it.
And then we arrive in Genoa, they announce that we have arrived. With this message everyone goes to the entrance hall. Once on deck 6 we see that access back up is blocked and we are trapped like rats, there is only 1 solution waiting outside. Around 1,000 passengers are held on 1 deck pending disembarkation. This is so wrong knowing that GNV is an Italian shipping company. A shipping company from the country that was hit so hard by COVID-19. We decide very quickly that we will be very careful with contacts in France for the next 2 weeks. There we are going to forget the lockdown with good wine and food …… Whether or not we are infected with COVID-19 on M / V MAJESTIC from shipping company GNV, That i would like to tell you in our next blog post.
