Hundred Days. TWO-THOUSAND-FOUR-HUNDRED hours. That’s how long we’ve now been stuck in this campground in Marrakech. If all goes well, we will not stick around much longer, so we thought it’s time to start blogging again.
CAMP LIFE SINCE OUR LAST POST
Over the last weeks, we led a regular life on the campground with all its ups and downs. Across language barriers and age gaps we formed new friendships and despite some repetition in the conversational topics (weather and lockdown rumours are high on the list), we had some great days and evenings. Most of the time we kept our camera in the van but we hope some of the pictures give you a better insight into what happens in Camping Le Relais in lockdown.
During Ramadan, the management of the campground invited to a Ftour. The Ftour is the traditional meal at the end of the day during Ramadan. We and around 50 other people enjoyed this routine breaking event and relished the chance to learn a bit about the culture. Due to the number of guests, the traditional aspects got a bit lost but nonetheless, it was a good experience.
In general, the camp staff continues to be great. In May some other tourists arrived from a campground further south and their stories reminded us about our luck to be stuck here. Before managing to get to Marrakech they were stuck in a shitty place where they were locked in by the drunk campground owner and the heat there was even worse. In contrast, here in Le Relais at least 3 gardeners are making our campground a lush garden and whenever you cross the staffs’ path the have a genuinely friendly vibe. So it took 40°+ weather as well as our first sandstorm to brutally remind us, that despite all these nice things this continues to be an oasis in the middle of a dessert. During these hot days, we tend to just lay around and limit our movement outside of the pool as much as possible. Trying to optimize the amount of shadow for our campervan Thierry shifted the tarps at least a dozen times by now.
Over time we participated twice in the Petanque (Boccia, Boule) tournament. A lot of the French play daily therefore we knew we wouldn’t stand a chance. Our first attempt was quickly over as we were eliminated after losing two rounds. So for the next time, we made it our goal to at least win once. Surprisingly we made it to the small final after winning some nail-bitingly close games!
One morning Manuela from a Swiss family (Manuela and Jyri with their kids Ilma and Alvar) mentioned, that she was thinking about doing a little book project. Having already thought of similar things we quickly agreed to join forces. The idea was to create a nice souvenir for everybody by creating sort of a yearbook of all the people stuck here. This gave us something to do and it was much fun setting it all up, approaching the people, doing the photoshoots and finally putting it all together. Language barriers sometimes persisted, but some of the old lessons in French resurfaced as we continued to talk a lot to the French people.
HOW ABOUT SOME TRAVELLING?
So you might ask how has the lockdown-situation developed? Morocco continues to have much fewer cases than in Europe. Therefore, we hoped that the lockdown will be eased once Ramadan has passed. Unfortunately, and hard for us to comprehend, the lockdown has been prolonged at 23:30 on the last day of the previous decree. This time the prolongation was set for three weeks and most of the days also passed by without any official statements regarding a deconfinement. This was properly disappointing and we had a few days where we felt a bit depressed.
Still clinging to the hope that we can afterwards continue our travel in Morocco, we decided to wait nonetheless. Meanwhile, foreign embassies started to organize a new wave of repatriation ferries. As a result, the campground got more empty week after week. First, after a chaotic and messy organization, the Brits left on May 20. Then, in the first week of June, several ferries for the French departed. This resulted in a week full of goodbye-apéros and dinners and farewells in the mornings. And now there are only 18 campervans left and we have a lot of space.
On the 10th of June Morocco prolonged the health emergency state for another month. Another blow to our hopes of exploring Morocco a bit more. A few days later they announced their plan for ending the lockdown. Essentially, Morocco has been categorized into Zone 1 and Zone 2 (or as you might say the good zone and bad zone). Not surprisingly we are in the bad zone. This means that travel restrictions are still in place and we can’t leave Marrakech without official papers. The government will regularly evaluate the allocation of the zones but we expect that Marrakech will be one of the last cities to change the category.
Hence, we have finally considered options to leave the country. The Swiss embassy is currently organizing a ferry together with the Italian but it all seems very unclear. As we heard about another boat being organized by the French we signed up for their list, hoping they would also give us a spot on the boat. As of now, we have not received any confirmation, so we wait. Timing wouldn’t be too bad as that ferry would depart on June 30 enabling us to cross over to Portugal because the border between Spain and Portugal is supposed to open on July 1. We’re keen on leaving Marrakech as another heatwave is upon us.
CONCLUSION
It’s time to travel. After such a long time we’ve arranged our self very well, but containment starts to wear people down. Let us explore, please!
