Hi Mick & Maren,
Tangier tries to live too much on its Beat past. It's a romantic dream and a promotional ploy to sell Tangier into the international tourist market. The new port of Tanger Mediteranée (52 km from Tangier, free shuttle bus) was initially supposed to handle only freight truck traffic from Algeciras and that was the official line for many years, during the construction of the new port - but at the last minute, the authorities decided to load ALL boats from Algeciras to the new port and to keep the old port for arrivals only for fast ferries from day trippers from Tarifa - a big mistake in, not only, my opinion, but the opinion of many seasoned professionals on the subject of Tangier. People used to LOVE approaching the landscape of Tangier by ship - and all of that has now been taken away from them.
It started in a big way in 2004 when the new Mayor arrived. He ripped out the character of Tangier, barring street traders, closing down the Ville Nouvelle to traffic and generally killing the atmosphere of Tangier. It became hard to get a petit taxi in the centre of Tangier because all of the taxi drivers were too eager to get passengers from the port - at 50 dirhams a pop. Which taxi driver wants 5 or 10 dirhams for a single taxi ride when they can get 50?
I know all of this because I lived in Tangier from 2000 to 2009 when I moved down to the Berber south-west of Morocco. The aspirations of new arrivals in Tangier may last for a few years, until the visitor or resident hits reality and realises that Tangier is a predominantly Moroccan city and has no current "Beat" activity or reasonable and satisfactory daily "hip" reason for living there.
Even Essaouira has become passé. All the people I know who owned property there in the medina (many Brits and Germans, for more than 20 years) have sold up out and moved down and bought property in Merleft and Sidi Ifni (before the Big Rush happens) because they couldn't stand the sight of seeing hundreds of tourists in their street every day coming down from Marrakesh carrying GPS kit.
Come down south and enjoy the REAL Morocco.
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www.talborjt.com]
where Africa comes to you..
