We Shipped Our Van to Africa // S04E01.

Everything about life on the road as full-time nomads is about to change. I can't believe that we are driving to Africa. We are taking a leap into the unknown and about to start a huge new adventure as we are shipping our tiny home to Africa. We've been driving around the world for many years now through many different places and each has its own speciality and interesting things to discover and we can't wait to see what van life in Morocco is like. We really have no idea what to expect. What exactly is involved in shipping your van to Africa and how much do we need to prepare for this new land? One thing for sure is that whatever it takes to get there we know that it will be worth it and we can't hardly wait to discover the Moroccan culture and see where this adventure takes us. It's me and Boomerang against the Moroccan desert. Of course you guys are invited along too. We've made it to the port in Spain and Africa is just over there. It's so close you can swim to it. I can't believe that that is the African continent. This has got to be the easiest relocation across continents ever. It's only a couple of hundred euros and we get a boat to an entirely different continent. Africa! It's flippin' Africa! We just did a bit clean of the Kombi and took everything out that we shouldn't have. We're not allowed to take too much alcohol. Yeah we cleared out some alcohol and also Alaska's been cleared so we got her paperwork checked at customs before we got into the port. Ben said they kind of just skimmed through it quickly and said it was fine. Checked with the aduanas behind me and everything is good. She's all good to go and come back into into Europe. Being full-time nomads we've crossed many international borders and one thing that we've learnt is that no matter how much you prepare you can never guarantee what will happen. At this stage it's a bit nerve-wracking for all of us. We've got our passport stamps in Arabic. Pretty simple process. Get on the boat, give them your passport. I think it's actually three months Leo. Three months now which won't be enough so it will be in Morocco a little longer than that but we'll figure that out when we get there. Maybe we just drive south all the way to South Africa. What do you reckon? The excitement for an upcoming adventure and the moments of anticipation before exploring a new land is one of the best feelings. What will we discover and how will we be welcomed in this foreign land and who will we meet? This curiosity is what fuels our wanderlust and love for nomadic living. So I'm just waiting in the car inside customs and Ben has gone off to get some insurance, car insurance, which is across the border here. We read that you can get car insurance from Morocco at the border and in this particular port especially so that's why we came here. It was all good they let us go through or they let Ben go through to get the insurance. We had our van checked which was all good. They checked us for firearms and for alcohol. They asked us if we had water in here for some reason. They didn't really check Alaska's papers here. Checked for also a drone that they checked all our camera equipment to see if we had a drone as well so I'm glad we got rid of that when we could. Done. Drones on their way to Portugal. We're sending them to Miguel. So yeah just still waiting for Ben to come back with insurance and then we're off to go I think. I think everything's good. Here comes the insurance lady. Pass us the keys babes. Bonjour. She wants to check there's a house in here. That is beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's not right is it? 200? Is it all good? Yeah. All good. You're there for ages. I know because we had a disagreement about what a van was. She was like what kind of vehicle have you got? I was like a van? She's like it was like 500 euros for insurance. I was like what? You've got to be kidding me there's way too much money. She was like nothing I can do it's 500 euros and then I was like but it's my house and she's like it's a house? She dropped the price by half. Oh wow. So apparently vans, she thought it was like a commercial van we were coming to load up on Moroccan goods and go back with. So I don't know they get a piece of that or something. Yeah. So yeah don't say you've got a van when you come to Morocco because the insurance is astronomical. Good to know. We're in Morocco! Woo! Finally! Gosh that was stressful. That was actually one of the most easy border crossings. But I was stressed when they were looking for the alcohol and stuff. I know he pulls out the the bottle of oil in the back. I was like what's that? Oil. First stop is a sim card. There was a guy trying to sell sim cards at the customs there. But I think we're going to go to a phone store and get ourselves a sim card. We have internet so we can navigate. It's a combi in Morocco. So you've been here two minutes and there's already a combi. So much to take in when you first arrive into a new country like especially when it's so different from the last country that you've just spent a lot of time in. Yeah it's a lot to take in. So we're in the middle of the city, Ben's gone to get a sim card and I'm just looking after the car. We've had quite a lot of people looking into the car and just being nosy and checking it out and I've just been sitting here watching this guy in the bright orange vest try to help people parking. So he's like running up and down the streets here just trying to help people parallel park and he's really good at it. It's really interesting. It's really fun to see him do it and obviously like some people tip him some people don't. I also saw him save a little kitten from So it's been interesting sitting here trying to take everything in the streets here in Morocco. There you are. I looked everywhere for you. I knew you'd get lost. All these streets look the same. Back in the safety of the combi. How'd you go? I think I'm being followed. No I'm just kidding. The internet's super cheap here. It's like 60 gigabytes a month. Is that enough? I was like what if it wasn't? He's like well you could have 90. Compared to like Europe where we were like 15 gigabytes. Yeah. Having to update it every few days so we could upload videos. This should be much easier. So it's 90 a month and then it expires. Yeah for like under 30 US dollars. It's pretty good. That's pretty good. All right so um. Now we go explore Morocco. Yeah. Driving in Morocco is an experience. Like you definitely have to have your wits about you doing this. Definitely kind of got that whole developing country vibe going on. There's like no real rules. No real lane discipline. Which is okay. I'm used to it. It's just been a while so I have to kind of like get back into the flow of things and just have people. You just really got to pay attention. And not talk to the camera. Personally I'll be uh English letters bologna. Thoughts on Morocco so far. People are really friendly. Like we've had so many people like beat their horns and like wave at us. And the roads are really good. And the streets clean. And it's freaking it's a nice place so far. See how long this lasts. I hope it goes for the whole time we're here. Just stopped on the side of the road because there are lots of prickly pears on the side of the road here. So we're going to go get some to eat. The little hairs they're so fine you can't even feel that they're in you. They're not like thorns getting like prickled by a cactus. There's like eight little tiny hairs and they're like tarantula hairs. They're just oh they're so itchy. Not worth it. Holy what the... Did you see the size of that truck? Like he had... it was twice his size with hay. Oh what are these guys selling? What are these? Pumpkin? Whoa Leo you're missing all of them. Pumpkin town. The roads here are gnarly. Let me tell you. Moroccan mountain roads, gnarly. Absolutely insane. Aliya just asked me to pull over and pick something up from this roadside stop. It's 100 dirham. No. All right back on the road. We are not getting honey right? That was honey she was selling? Yeah. There was bee farms on the side of the road. Looked like it would be nice. But she said ten dollars basically. So ten dollars for the big one and then I says they're small and she goes ten dollars and like it's too much and then she said five. 50 dirham. So look long story short we're basically still trying to figure out our Moroccan haggling techniques. Haggling is absolutely necessary in a country like this. So um we went to 20 and then that was just no. She's like see you later. I was like okay thank you. So 20 is too low. Maybe next time we try 40 percent. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is 40 anyways. But they always let us through though. They just want to look at us long enough to see that we're not Moroccan and they're like yeah you can go. Yeah the um so driving through the mountains the roads here are really dodgy. Like really bad. They're and people drive on the other side of the road too. Like they're either not looking or they just drive stupidly. So um yeah literally a bus came around the corner in the mountain on the wrong side of the road. Like I know you see that all the time and you think oh he was a bit on my lane. He was literally like on the wrong side of the road. Yeah. So gotta be really careful driving. Like we said when we're coming in here we don't want to be driving at night. Like the one thing that we heard from people about Morocco is to not drive at night time. Now seeing the roads and how people drive it's just not worth the risk. We really would advise not driving at night in Morocco. The road conditions here are quite challenging and it always takes longer to reach a destination than the distance would have you believe. On this occasion we pushed on later than we would have liked to reach a campsite in the mountains. Last night we drove until it was night time and we really wanted to get to this spot here. We're in Chefchouan which most of you would know it from it being that famous blue city of Morocco. You've probably seen Instagram photos of it. It looks gorgeous. So we came here last night. We didn't know where to stay so we found a campsite just up here and yeah we're going to explore the town today. I think we're in the Rif mountains so we're driving across that last night and it was really a lovely view before it got dark. But it's really beautiful here in the mountains and yeah the town looks gorgeous so let's go check it out. As you can probably tell Chefchouan is a place most Moroccans and tourists alike want to visit. It is gorgeous and as it's perched in the infamous Rif mountains it is also where they grow the cannabis. You may know that Morocco is Europe's largest supplier of illegal hashish so if you're visiting this region expect to be offered it frequently. I don't know whose idea it was to paint this whole town blue but it was a good idea. It's so cute all of these little... I mean I'd love to have seen the evolution of this town how it all got built up upon each other. The streets are just crazy. So many playful kids around here too. Alaska's been dog napped already. Where are you going guys? So much cool stuff. This is the point where you really wish you didn't live in a tiny house because I could fill a regular size house with a lot of this stuff. Got some fresh mint from a lady for 50 cents. I'm sure we got ripped off but we weren't going to bargain about 50 cents. Yeah a lot of mint for mint tea later. We've had to protect Alaska from cats all day today. The whole city is full of cats and they're a bit scared of her and some are quite brave and are trying to attack her like they're hunting her down the street and trying to pounce on her all day. We're a bit more paranoid with cats and dogs in Morocco because it's a high rabies country so we're a bit more paranoid about her getting attacked. You can see why so many people come here to do Instagram pictures, Instagram shoots. Every corner is just super photogenic. So from here Leah? Oh yes we're going to meet up with a few people that we met in Portugal when we were camping at the beach and they said they were going to come to Morocco as well and they are actually here today in the same town as us. They just crossed the border like we did yesterday and we're going to meet up with them and do some camping with them. Yeah van life, Morocco style. Yeah they're from Spain I think all of them. That's right. So yeah we're going to meet up with them now somehow. I don't know where they are, they're somewhere here in one of these blue alleyways. I think we found the guys that we're meeting up with. They're in town but we found their vans parked outside of the town so we're just going to go and park next to them until they come out. I can't believe we found their van. That's a bit stalkerish isn't it? Just going parking next to like some people. They know we're here right? In town. I think we should surprise them. There are more people than you think traveling independently and living the van life in Morocco so there are plenty of opportunities to connect with other travel loving and curious minded souls. Sitting down around a campfire and sharing stories from the past and dreams for the future is in our opinion the best way to get to know people. These three nomads are from Catalan in Spain. Kyle, Dave and Ina are currently traveling in their newly self-converted vans. They, like us, are here to discover Morocco and get a taste of this unique African nation. So we are joining forces and going exploring together for a while. We're still finding our feet in Morocco. None of us know exactly what it's like to live the van life in this very different nation but from our first impressions we are absolutely loving it. There is something so special about this stage of a new adventure. Having seemingly endless possibilities in front of you, trying to figure out where you'll go and having no idea what you'll discover when you get there. It's all part of the adventure and you guys are welcome to join us for the ride. So until next time, happy travels. Thanks for watching the video guys. We just wanted to give you a real-time update that we are still stuck in Morocco and we're not going to be leaving for quite a while it seems. But a reminder to you that these videos, the next few videos coming out in this Moroccan series, was filmed before this whole coronavirus outbreak happened. So we hope that you're at home and can watch these videos and take your mind off everything for a bit. I hope you guys are feeling well as well. Thanks so much to our patrons who have helped us make this video. We really appreciate your support. We wouldn't be able to make this series without you guys. For those of you that are not patrons, we often release content on Patreon which we don't put on the YouTube channel and we've just put a bonus question and answer video which is actually free to watch for all of you. We know you need something to watch right now. So if you want to watch a video and join us for our last drive in a convey before we were quarantined, we will link that below so go check that out. Otherwise we'll see you next Thursday for some more distraction. Until then, happy hand washing!