Tanger (Boukhalf)   GMTT

Date of Visit = July 1998

Pilot: = Chris Belton

e-mail = chris@yarboo.freeserve.co.uk

Field Report = Convenient as a stepping stone to Gibraltar but also worth a visit in its own right. Well, it’s different, isn’t it? None of the VFR flight guides seem to cover this area, so our information came from an RAF En Route supplement which we begged while stranded at Lyneham owing to bad weather on the way down. There is an airfield diagram in the IFR guides. They gave us their almost undivided attention, so we couldn’t possibly have gone wrong. Gibraltar Approach will steer you away from the Spanish Prohibited Areas on their side, and the only tricky airspace on the African side is a Restricted area over the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar

Photo: John Hardy

My insurers were unconcerned when I mentioned a possible stopover in North Africa. In fact the aeroplane was quite safe: the Moroccan Prime Minister was passing through. Even the resident stork had retreated to its nest on the communications mast. Inspite of the security we were greeted with “Welcome to Tangiers!” The immigration procedures were painless and the officials good-humoured. “Do you have any weapons, such as a gun, in your baggage?” “Do you need one? Sorry, I did not know...” How many British airports would have seen the funny side of this? We did get a telling off later, though only because I had some bananas in my bag: I was told I should have bought Moroccan ones, which are smaller and sweeter!

Photo: John Hardy

You can change money at the airport, and even buy stamps and post your postcards (look carefully for the “letter box”, which is a hole cut in a wooden wall with a jigsaw. The letters fall at the ‘postmaster’s’ feet).

There are two kinds of taxis. The ones at the airport don’t go right into the centre. For this you need a “petit taxi”, to negotiate the narrow streets. We compromised by going as far as the main bazaar, and walking from there (the casbah is right behind it).

Half an hour later we were trapped inside a taxi in the bazaar with a young lad and an old man in a white night-shirt fighting outside for the privilege of being our “friend for the day”. Eventually we escaped, and thereafter pretended to be Norwegian, to which one frustrated young hopeful replied: “You go talk to your husband. I no want talk to no silly baby what don’t speak English”! We made our way to the casbah, and stood looking across the straits of Gibraltar at Europe on the other side. It was a strange sensation.

It was in the casbah that I bought my only souvenir of the trip: a box containing 20 types of local minerals. We daren’t drink out of the glasses in the cafe, so we couldn’t try the local mint tea. Instead we made them fetch us sealed bottles of mineral water, which we drank from the bottles. I was told afterwards that this precaution was ‘over the top’ . I suppose I should at least have read a guide book on the subject.

Photo: John Hardy

The attentions of the Moroccan refuellers put their Gibraltarian counterparts to shame. We paid for the fuel in pesetas (it turned out to be much cheaper than Gibraltar) and handed over a note for a few hundred dirhams to cover the landing fee. “Go and have a cup of coffee”. “But the weather’s closing in on Gibraltar, we need to leave now”. “We have no change”! Eventually the girls dug deep into their handbags and came up with the necessary dirhams. I could take to Morocco. It is quite popular with French flyers, though perhaps partly because the Moroccans speak French. We wanted to try El Tetouan for a change on the way back from Gibraltar, but apparently they don’t do Avgas, and this would have left us short for the next leg, to Granada. Pity.