Documents needed to enter Morocco:
Driver's license and car documents
Local insurance or Green card given from your insurance
Document for car import (normally made by the border officials)
For many people crossing the border goes quickly and easily. With your documents you go to the border, and the officials there create an import document for your car. If you have a Green Card, which you normally obtain from your insurance, you are ready to go. If not you must buy local insurance, sold right at the border (CAT-office).
It is very important to not lose the Document of import.
For our van, the local insurance for two months costed us 1540 MAD (154 euro)
1 EUR = 10 MAD (at the insurance company)
Green Card Document of import
Unfortunately, our experience was way too stressful…
As-Salaam Alaykum or Peace be upon you in Moroccan.
Our journey in Morocco started very stressful. As our car insurance doesn’t cover other continents, only Europe, we had to buy a local one. I spent hours reading how and where to get one. I thought I was already an expert on the topic, so you can imagine my face when the Spanish border police sent us back to Ceuta to buy insurance from Spain, explaining that at the frontier we can’t obtain one.
Ceuta is a small Spanish city, bordering Morocco. Even though it is on the African continent, it is still under the Spanish government. Coming by boat, we had two possible options to enter through Ceuta, Spain, or Tangier Med, Morocco. As Ceuta offered the cheaper ticket, we chose it without a doubt.
Back to the insurance problem, apparently in Ceuta no insurance company could insure us because we have Norwegian number plates.
Panic, panic, panic. What do we do now?
The Spanish border police advised us that driving without insurance in Morocco was extremely dangerous (could even lead to prison) and explained another time that we have to buy it from Spain. That was definitely not the case in all the forums I have read, prior to arriving in Africa.
Okay, so what are our options?
Option one: Buy online insurance from the USA, which will cost us 560 dollars per 30
days.
Option two: Cross the border on foot and walk 4km to the closest city where we can buy local insurance.
As we cannot afford the first option, we decided to walk.
Sometimes in emotional moments full of panic and despair as if our brain stops and limits our ideas and alternatives. Isn’t there another way out of this situation? At this critical moment, the light bulb in my head turned on “Bling”! Wait a minute, what if I ask my Moroccan friend for help?
A few minutes later and after a quick call we had a solution. Apparently, we can pass the border without insurance because 200m into Morocco there is an insurance office!
I KNEW IT!
I am not sure if the police misguided us because he simply didn’t know or he desperately wanted to make our day horrible.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter.
All that matters is that we are already in Morocco, excited about the next two months we are going to spend roaming around the North African country.
Right after we fixed everything needed for the car, we drove to the closest village Fnideq, where we bought a local sim. Check out which Moroccan sim card to choose.
Exchanging Moroccan Dirham outside of Morocco is illegal so we had to do it at the border or in the country itself. Euro to Dirham goes around 1 to 10,60. It is advisable to keep the ticket from the exchange bureau in case you want to exchange money back.
This is all for now. We will keep you updated on everything that happens on the road during our trip.
XXX
Maggie and Vince
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