Today, (05/11/13) 10.30 local time, we finally disembarked! My feelings are still mixed.

Not yet full of enthusiasm but also no feelings of fear! I’m feeling like in the film “Robocop”, when the hero could see in front of him thousands of images, without knowing what to do! It’s the same thing for me…From the comfort and security of my home, I found myself in the luxuries of Italy and then, traveling on a boat in silence…and suddenly the picture gets completely different! The moment we got off the boat, we were stopped for passport control, but luckily that finished in half an hour!

All the constructions around the port looked well maintained or new. Nothing prepared us for what was going to follow! On the GPS we had chosen the option to avoid any tolls and the route to Chefchaouen was already set. Our guide was the soft metallic voice of…Vangelas (the most “macho” voice we could select!). Chefchaouen had been finally decided as our first destination in Morocco after having changed our minds over and over again while on the ship! Now you can understand how well prepared we are for this journey!After 500 meters, the scenery changed completely! Everywhere around us lied an open air market! Every few meters someone was selling something…anything: it could be some grocery or hashish! Everyone was trying to stop us, greet us or talk to us…we felt so familiar in this environment…it was something forgotten those last few “European” years of our lives! But, this road? Are we lost? It’s not possible that we have taken the right route!

Trucks are passing full speed almost “touching” us, potholes where we almost dive with our little vespas and all those old Mercedes…taxis, ambulances, military vehicles…almost all vehicles we see are old Mercedes from the 1980s! Trucks and Mercedes everywhere around us! Vangelas, our “macho” GPS insisted that we are on the right way! And now pure surrealism: we came across brand new cars! New technology! Contradictions that we couldn’t expect to find and we’ve just got to Morocco! And because seeing is believing, take a look at the video we have from our first week:

I really loved the city of Chefchaouen! After my first “shock”, I soon got used to the lifestyle of the place and the first thing I told to Thanos was that I could easily stay here for ever…But this is something that you will hear me saying many times…or I hope I will, for many other places!

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For the four days we spent in this town, we didn’t do anything special. We were just walking around discovering its hidden corners, eating some street food, watching people passing by and taking some thousands of pictures trying to get used to the new world we were about to live in through our journey. We ‘re off to Rabat at this exact moment, from where we are going to get our visas to Mauritania. We ‘ll also stroll up on the Atlas mountains and if everything goes well, we ‘ll find our way to the south…

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We (Stergios & Alexandra) are traveling around the world 2-up on a Vespa scooter. For 6 years we've been traveling in Africa & South America and we're still rolling. Our book "Rice and Dirt: Across Africa on a Vespa" is now available.