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When they headed south, Marlene, Dan and their three kids did not expect their first African trip to end the way it did. While travelling across Europe, the American globetrotting family decided to go for Morocco, discover the country and mostly surf.
By the second week of February, the family boarded a ferry and took their van from Spain to Morocco. «We sailed from Algeciras to Tanger-Med», Dan and Marlene told Yabiladi. «We are from California, we spent most of our time by the coast and we have heard a lot about surfing in Morocco. We thought we would spend the 90 days just surfing», the couple recalled.
However, the pandemic ruined the family’s plan. While documenting their travels through a Youtube channel, the family visited several cities and roamed around the Kingdom before realizing that the country was not really sheltered from the pandemic. «For the first four weeks in Morocco, our plan went very well, we went to Chefchaouen, Fes, Azrou, Merzouga and then to Tafraout», Dan said.
While Tafraout looked like a safe place, the family had to leave for another location because of a rescue mission. «We were on the road one day and saw a cardboard box in the desert with one-day-old puppies inside», Dan remembered sadly. The couple decided to leave the small town and get the puppies to an animal shelter near Agadir after they realized that they didn’t have the supplies needed to take care of them.
Heading north
While trying to do so, they were told by a German camper that the health situation was going south and that the German embassy was asking its nationals to leave the country. As the fellow camper left for Ceuta and easily crossed the border towards Europe, the family decided to halt their trip in Morocco and leave for Croatia, Marlene’s country of origin.
«We don’t have any friends or family in Morocco who would take care of our children if both of us got hospitalized (…) so, we decided to go», they said. The family was also particularly interested in the fact that the border with Ceuta was opened for cars leaving for Europe. The fact that Marlene and the kids have Croatian citizenship made it a lot easier.
«We decided to head north. The same morning, intercity travel within Morocco became illegal. When we were trying to leave Agadir we went through multiple police controls», Dan said, adding that while the first two checkpoints granted them passage, a third one denied it.
After finding another path out of the city, they went all the way to the border with Ceuta. «The drive was easy and fast», said Dan who brought his family in one day to the border crossings, only to find 500 other vehicles lining there.
The queue was the longest they had ever seen and getting through was ultimately not possible since the border would close by midnight. «We realized that it was going to be a problem for us because they could not process 500 vehicles in 3 hours. We also thought that we couldn’t go back to camping lots because there were other people quarantined there», they regretted.
A plan B around Ceuta
And just like other drivers who couldn’t make it to Ceuta that night, the family parked by the side of the road waiting for a plan B. After getting in contact with the Croatian embassy, the couple were told that they were the only people with Croatian citizenship trying to cross that border.
«It was pretty crazy over there and a lot of people were not prepared for that», Dan recalled. «They did not have enough food, water and some people became so crazy that they started emptying their toilets on the ground, which pushed others to act aggressive towards people», he added.
After spending three nights in that line, vehicles were told to go to a parking lot that was specially set up by the Moroccan authorities for them near the Tanger-Med port. It was a relief for the family, which found there a better spot while waiting for a repatriation plan.
«It is amazing that the area was well equipped, it had running water, portable toilets, electricity, a portable bakery and a small grocery shop, it really felt sustainable», Dani explained. While the family felt pretty comfortable in that parking lot, staying there with a lot of people around made them feel uneasy.
The family quickly realized that «a lot of people who were there were not really practicing social distancing». «They were having meals together and walking around together», they said. Thankfully, four days later, Dan, Marlene and their children were allowed to leave the country safely.
They boarded a ferry to France then drove 2,300 kilometers across Germany, Austria, Slovenia before they were finally able to reach Croatia. Although their first trip to Morocco and Africa was marked by the outbreak and its inconveniences, the family promised to return to the country next summer to resume the adventure they started before all of this happened.
While Marlene and Dan were lucky enough to leave the country amid this crisis, thousands of foreigners and dual nationals remain stuck, awaiting a repatriation plan.
