Taken Hostage in Morocco…

I kid you not, this actually happened. Furthermore is that we Hitchhiked from London to Marrakech. Imagine that, having the audacity & bravery to Hitchhike to another continent, only to be shoved in a blacked out van for 6 hours just outside the Sahara Desert.

This is that story…

So lets start at the beginning, around the circumstances as to why I found myself Hitchhiking to Morocco. I’m self aware enough to know that this isn’t a usual thing to do & even for someone as adventurous as myself, took me by surprise in what I had agreed to do.

This was in 2013, I was 23 & studying Film at University. For even more context I was quite depressed, constantly questioning my life decisions, whether I fit in socially & just generally felt lost with low self-esteem. This perhaps was bought on by the diagnosis of my Dad’s cancer. I felt incredibly mortal & vulnerable, it made me feel that if I wasn’t enjoying something, why on earth would I continue to do it. This subsequently planted the seed, which would see me leave University at the end of the year…

In short, I was in a bad place & needed to detatch myself from reality in the only way I know how….A bat-shit crazy adventure! I thought of a time when I was at my most confident & content. This was back in 2008, when at the age of 17 I was travelling around South America. Quickly followed by doing work experience in New York. The South America trip in particular changed my life, in terms of teaching me about the world. More so that there is an alternative way to live, a polar opposite towards the conventional 9-5 in an office working for a company you despise. But ultimately they pay you enough to keep you loyal to a cause you pretend to be invested in.

Mini rant over & back in 2013 now, I basically figured out I needed a sense of adventure to give me perspective & a fresh positive mindset. Coincidentally we were also struggling for ideas in our latest university documentary film project. Our intitial ideas had fell through & all the other groups had a solid plan in place. The combination of needing an adventure & also needing a documentary to film was a blessing. I had recently spoken to a travel friend of mine who had undertook Hitchhiking across Europe with no money to raise funds for a charity. He would get sponsors & donations for reaching his target & reward donors depending on how much they had pledged.

BINGO! The perfect resolution to making a short documentary & in essence saving my sanity. We would Hithhike to a certain place, raise money for charity & have a documentary film at the end to send to our patrons & donors. It ticked all the boxes & we soon went about planning out this adventure. We had got permission from the university, found a charity to represent & had set up a donation page. We decided at this point our destination would be Marrakech, Morocco. Based on the fact that we all thought it would be more impressive to Hithhike to another continent. Another crucial aspect is that we had stupidly decided to rent out very expensive & rather large filming equipment. Not only would this prove unbearably awkward to carry, but would ultimately lead to us being taken hostage…

I appreciate this may very well be a bit tedious to go through every single detail, so I’ll do my best to skim over to get to the juicy bits. I’ll more than likely do a full podcast explaining everything we endured. But until then you find myself & cameraman Nicky getting a lift to Portsmouth from London, courtesy of a nice chap heading that way.

Our adventure had officially begun with the mission of documenting ‘whether or not we could hithchike to Morocco?’ With the tagline, “Does kindness still exist in Europe”. Arriving in Portsmouth we had managed to blag a free ferry to Le Harve, many thanks to P&O cruises for that, although this would immediately prove problematic.

The Ferry in question was more of a cargo ship than a passenger ferry. It was our plan to ask people while on board if they might be able to give us a lift further south. Most of the ship was full of lorry drivers who although nice enough, were no longer allowed to have passengers in their cab. ‘Thank you French authorities!’ So we came up with plan B, which was to leave the ship as soon as we docked & then stick our thumbs out to the cars exiting the Ferry. This plan was made immediately redundant when we found out that all the cars would depart before the passengers…Brilliant! To make it a 3rd strike, turns out Le Harve is a shit hole. Unlike Calais (where we could have gone) Le Harve was not full of bustling tourists who might be likely to give us a lift. Reminiscent of Stockport, Le Harve was grey & empty.

We trekked to a petrol station & after about 2 hours managed to get a young French drug dealer to give us a lift in his shag-carpet van. It dawned on us quite quickly that this was going to be very difficult & that most of Hithhiking consisted of waiting around for hours on end & being lucky. As you’ll find out ‘luck’ would have a big part to play in this story. It also became quickly apparent that we had to contend with lots of toll roads, something in the UK we are not really a custom to. The toll roads were the most direct route to head south, but people were unlikely to stop & as we later found out, it was Illegal to hithhike or walk along the side of these roads. The French Police ended up moving us on multiple times…

Our drug dealing friend, had took us to a toll bridge with numerous roads heading in all different directions around Europe. Its because of these toll roads I presume hitchhiking has in some way died out, along with truckers now no longer allowed to pick people up…Bloody capitalism! This was realised not only by us, but by a lovely Frenchman who pulled over to confirm our suspicions. He kindly agreed to take us to some quieter roads, where it was legal & we’d be more likely to get picked up. He gave us a lift to somewhere just outside Lens, where once again we were moved on by the Police. We decided to go back on ourselves & head further North to Caen, because we assumed there would be more cars by the city’s ring road. But by the time we got there, it was night time. We pitched our tent at a service station & had a massive rant about the French authorities in what felt like a wasted day. To add wood to the fire, it was also -5…Really wish we actually had wood & a fire…

With nearly 36 hours on the clock & disappointed in our progress, we were desperate to get out of cold northern France & head to the more liberal & warmer climates of Spain. But this was a far-cry with our experiences so far…We decided that if we were to have any chance of getting to Africa, we needed to get out of our comfort zones. Not only relying on sticking our thumbs out, but asking people at service stations & sweet talking locals for advice or roads to take. With this new approach, our luck immediately changed. At the very same service station we had spent a cold night in a broken tent, we managed to talk our way into a lift all the way to Bordeaux. A journey that was over 350 miles & courtesy of English teacher, Natalie. She had never given people a lift before, but took pity on us as she had children our age. She was also very keen on English culture & even planned to move there in the future.

This was the first time we felt like the mission was achievable. We travelled almost the length of the country in 5 hours & if this luck continued, we’d be in Morocco for dinner. Obviously thas was impossible, but we were in optimistic spirits. So much so, we treated ourselves to a hostel in Bordeaux.

We looked back at the footage & couldn’t help but laugh at how miserable we were in our initial first 2 days. It was transpiring that we were giving an honest detail in how hard mentally hitchhiking was. In the same sort of theme as Karl Pilkington in ‘An Idiot Abroad’ we were not glossing anything over. We purposefully wanted to be sincere & not manufacture an envrionment of false storytelling. Much like you see nowadays with pretentious Instagram posts of people finding themselves in Bali…No, never we wanted a raw & instinctive diary of our emotions rather than pretend we were having the time of our lives…

After being well rested in the hostel, we made tracks early the next morning. Quickly managing to get a lift to the small town of Bayonne just outside Bordeaux, which crucially was the last road before you hit Spain. So within hours of being awake, we were within striking distance of another country.

We were once again quickly reminded of the grimness of border towns. Convincing a chap to give us a ride across into Spain we found ourselves in San Sebastian, on the fringes of Basque country & the border itself. It seemed pretty sketchy & before long started raining heavily. From the elation of success the day before, it all became quite depressing a bit too quickly for my liking. Wandering around San Sebastian we were getting funny looks & it was looking more unlikely in the rain that people would stop to pick us up. Sheltering under a flyover like a couple of unlikely high-end prostitutes, a family MPV stopped to check if we were ok. After explaining that we were attempting to hitchhike further South, they offered us a lift to the next town despite their bewilderment.

What happened next I am pretty sure was some form of miracle. Or in hitchhiking terms, we struck gold or even won the lottery. It came to fruition that Samika our saviour in a Green Citroen Berlingo, was half Moroccan. Furthermore she was travelling to Malaga to her holiday home the next day, which is essentially the southern tip of Spain (as the diagram above shows). She said that if we were willing to hang around in her home town of ‘Ellorio’ until 2am, she would be willing to take us the whole way to Malaga…

This was a grand total of over 600 miles going down through the centre of Spain. Why on earth she offered this to us, I still have no idea…In all honesty we smelt pretty bad & probably didn’t offer the most valuable of conversations. Nonetheless we were keen to take her up on her offer & hung around the small Basque town of Elorrio just outside Bilbao. Slightly nervous with anticipation we waited at a bus stop, where we had arranged to meet Samika. Having not slept we were delirious, which wasn’t helped by Samika turning up at 3:30 am…Not that we could complain, she was taking us the length of a country after all. After a short spell of thinking she wasn’t going to turn up, our next task was how we could make small talk for the next 9 hours. It wasn’t easy…

Now what happened next, we could never have predicted, unless our Spanish was a tiny bit better. Turns out that the reason she was happy to take us the long distance to Malaga was because she thought that I had agreed to drive the second half of the journey from Madrid. So when she pulled over to re-fuel & handed me the keys, I was in shock, as If I’d seen Michael Jackson casually shopping in Primark. By the time I had processed the situation she was already in the back seat with her child trying to get to sleep. What happened 10 minutes later, I am not proud of…

Having not driven abroad before, let alone in a left-hand drive car, with no sleep. It’s safe to say I wasn’t prepared for this endeavour. I won’t bullshit you here, within a few minutes of driving I basically drove the wrong way down a flyover junction & narrowly missed colliding with an oncoming car, which would have certainly killed Me, Nicky, Samika & her 3 year old child. Yeah…..Wasn’t a great period in time for me. However to Samika’s credit after screaming like the world was going to end, she still agreed to take us to Malaga. So she swiftly kicked me out of the driver’s seat & the next few hours of awkward silence ensued.

So, lets fast forward a bit then, we made it to Malaga many thanks to the patience & understanding of Samika. Now on the southern coast of Spain in a warmer climate & within touching distance of Northern Africa, spirits were high. Even higher because we had managed to get a lift into Marbella, but despite it being mid-afternoon we needed to find somewhere to sleep. Having been awake for 30+ hours we found a guest house to retire in, where within seconds of my head hitting the pillow I fell asleep for 12 hours. We were both flat out like a badger on a bypass, in obvious need of rest. Having awoke from our hibernation we had one goal in mind, Morocco!

The guest house owner Jorge gave us a lift to Tarifa, the smaller port opposed to Algeciras where we had arranged with a company to get the hydrofoil ferry across to Tangier. This ladies & gentlemen is where we are about to have one of the more surreal experiences of my life & its a great example of why meeting & speaking to new people can sometimes be a vital lifeline.

After about 2-3 hours of waiting to board the late Ferry, we had made friends with a man named Rob Oram. He was a half Afghan & half American, ex special forces veteran who now worked as a military consultant. He was travelling to Marrakech to open a burger shop of all things. This unexpected encounter would end up saving our skins as you’re about to find out. As we disembarked in Tangier we were elated to make it to Morocco & were so close to succeeding our mission, furthermore we had raised £2k for charity thus far. We said our goodbye’s to Rob & decided to trek to the outskirts of Tangier where we wouldn’t be hassled & may have a chance of a lift further south to Rabat, the capital.

This would prove to be a critical error & we would fall victim to opportunistic criminals. On the outskirts of Tangier we were encouraged into the back of a commercial van. The man seemed nice enough, but through the language barrier we hadn’t quite deciphered exactly where we wanted to go. We were hoping he saw our sign that said ‘Rabat’ & roughly knew the direction we were heading. Slightly desperate for a lift & wanting to reach our end goal, we kind of just went with the flow. Oddly he locked us both in the back & every now & then would stop. We coudn’t really see in the back & had no water or food, we would occasionally hear the driver shouting on the phone.

After a few hours of not knowing where we were & with no internet on our phones, we decided to knock on the van’s divider between front & back with hope of him stopping, so at least we could get some water. He didn’t stop, so the knocking turned into banging. It became apparent he was deliberately ignoring us & after 45 minutes of trying to get him to stop. It was at this point we had figured out, that we were being held captive in the back of this van. We must have been, realistically he never asked where we even wanted to go & we were hoping he just knew. Shit really did hit the fan…

All sorts of emotions were running around our minds, but weirdly much like losing my passport in Iraq, I was in Hysteria. I was just in disbelief, but never felt in danger. Maybe this was the adrenalin kicking in. For just under 7 hours we were locked in the back of this random man’s van, would he rob us, kill us or take us into the desert?

In the most surreal situation, just as we realised we were hostages of sort, we got a phone call from an English number…In what must be the most bizarre juxtaposition of my life, it was BBC Radio Surrey. Unbeknown to us, our fellow film team back in the UK had got us a Radio interview to promote the Charity.

So there we were, hostages in the back of a van live on BBC Radio. In what can only be described as a Monty Python-esque sketch whereby two captive slaves try & pretend everything is fine, it was probably the worst interview of all time. True to form we acted as if everything was going really well, but still exclaimed we had struggled at times. Bear in mind we were captive at this point, you can hear the panic in our voices despite us saying largely positive things. It was truly a surreal situation to be put in…

Not long after the most cringe worthy radio interview of all time, the van stopped again. But this time he let us out into a vast area of what looked like desert. He shouted at us to hurry up & get out! We were angry, tired, confused & were waiting for some sort of explanation as he chucked our belongings & us out of the van. He then sped off in his van & left us in the middle of nowhere without even an ounce of remorse or explanation.

To this day, I can only speculate as to what happened. I imagine that being in the dodgy end of Tangier was not a great start to our journey in Morocco. As mentioned earlier we also had thousands of pounds worth of equipment in quite visible view. What I imagined happened was that he was planning to rob us & was going to take us to his friends. This would explain the many shouting matches he had on the phone during the 8 hours we were held in the van. However Moroco’s economy relies heavily on tourism, so the punishments for crime against tourists can be very severe. So we can only imagine that he bitten off more than he could chew with two 6ft plus British guys. Then he got angry with no one willing to help him rob us & kicked us out onto the deserted road. Again I can only speculate & now after 8 years this is still the only narrative that makes any sense.

Now after this ordeal had unfolded we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere in what looked like a small village on the edge of the Sahara. We walked into the Village where we found a shop & asked to use their phone. Luckily the ex special forces man we had met on the ferry, Rob had written down his number in case we needed anything. Well turns out we did need something, a pretty big something. Conversing with the owner of the shop, Rob was able to figure out where we were (between Rabat & Fes) & within an hour had a military style 4x4 pick us up & take us to Marrakech.

So there we have it, a very mixed message about how strangers are both the nicest people in the world & can also take you hostage in a back of the van…But it was ultimately making friends with people that made this extreme ambition possible & saved us from starving to death in the desert. We set out on this journey to determine whether kindness still existed & to raise some money for education in Africa. I’d say for my money the mission was a success & if nothing else gave me a pretty kick ass story…

(If I find the BBC interview file, I’ll upload it so we can cringe together).