The ferry arrived early, slipping quietly into Tangier’s Med Port before sunset. The lowering of the vehicle ramp signalled a mad dash for the exit.

A taste of things to come. Though it was light as we drove off, by the time customs had put Arnie through their giant x-ray machine and we’d found the port-side office to buy insurance, night had descended. The road to Tangier was lonely and quiet but it got much busier as we reached the city and worked out the rules for the roundabouts (who dares, wins) and pedestrians (I’ll cross where I like).

Arnie’s bulk did win us a few face-offs but I think “less is more” will be my motto while driving in Morocco. That said, we mistakenly pulled off into a patch of waste ground just before the turning we needed to the one place in Tangier that allows camper parking, and a driver stopped to point us in the right direction. He escorted us to the junction with much waving when we made the turn.

So a cosy couple of nights in the lush grounds of the Miramonte Hotel with electrical hookup and fresh water, to ease us into the whole roughing-it thing. A convoy of Land-Rovers was parked with us, apparently on some sort of desert expedition. We’ll get there too eventually.

The hotel is a twenty minute walk from old town Tangier.

As is traditional in a city as ancient as Tangier, we stopped at a Marok Telecom shop on the way to get eSIMs assisted by a young woman with film-star looks and perfect English. Tangier today is a modern city of course – which is both something of a relief and also slightly disappointing. But it is lovely to see children still playing with tops and doing the kid-things of my childhood.

The Medina is still a fabulous warren, but it’s been freshly painted.

You are no longer half-expecting to meet Peter Lorre in a fez beckoning you into a seedy hash bar to be fleeced and spat out into an alley.

My impression of Tangier is formed from black and white movies, and it’s all in colour now. But the sense of a great and important history is everywhere.

We found a little taste of the old days in the iconic Cafe Baba. Photos lined the walls of various sixties icons sampling its heady delights in the good old days. Among them, a stoned-looking Stone (Keith Richards). We had mint tea and the place was almost empty.

To get a better sense of what Tangier was like in its black and white heyday we went to the American Legation building.

Morocco was the first nation to recognise American independence and the US opened its first overseas diplomatic residence there in 1821.

Today it is a museum, gallery and centre for Moroccan studies. During WWII it was the HQ for US intelligence agents and the exhibits really bring to life the period in which the movie “Casablanca” was set – with the Great Powers vying for influence in Morocco. I particularly liked the secret cable room hidden in a cupboard.

It is also a remarkable gallery of work by Morocco-based artists like James McBey whose portrait of Zohra, a servant girl is known as Morocco’s Mona Lisa.

There was a great tribute to the American-born dancer and singer Josephine Baker who lived in Morocco for much of the war and gathered intel about Germany and Spain to send to England. Some she hid in her clothes and some she wrote in invisible ink on her sheet music. She was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1961.

An hour further south, the medina in Tatouan, offered more of a sense of what old Tangier might have been like.

Un-spruced and busy with locals rather than tourists, the 16th century walled Medina was a vital part of everyday life, selling everything and anything.

People spotted that we weren’t local and greeted us warmly – “Merhaba!” Bon Vacance!” When we peered into a packed coffee shop the owner bid his assistant show us the medieval tannery around the back.

We returned to the cafe and they set up a couple of chairs outside for some mint tea.

He wouldn’t take any money for the tea, but we pressed some on him. It’s hard to know the etiquette in a new place. Should we have accepted the free tea, or was the refusal and our insistence part of the expected ritual? Over the coming weeks we’ll get better at this I guess.

We returned to our free parking spot in the corner of a park to find a mini carnival in full swing.

The next morning all was calm and quiet and we headed south once again.