Author: Simon

Lars, Inge and the nimble Land Rover left to explore the beach tracks while we headed inland following a river. After meeting some nice camels, we followed another river and ended up back on the beach. This is a desert area or at least semi-desert so it does not rain much. However, today it was lashing down. We wandered out onto the beach. Nice golden sand. Looked firm. Several vehicle tracks. We sank into the soft, wet sand. Fortunately, this was not too much of a problem. We were above the high tide mark so not in any danger although the rain was a bit unpleasant. Once the tyres were deflated, Baloo just popped straight out. We headed for higher ground and parked up for the night.

Next day we forded a river and attempted to head back inland but once again ended up close to the beach. We were on a boggy looking area between the beach and the cliffs following the only track we could see. It seemed reasonably firm but was going in the wrong direction. Just as I spotted a possible place to turn, the right hand side of Baloo sank. The whole track looked muddy and wet in the rain. We’d found the bit that was soft as well.

Getting out of this was much more of a problem and deflating the tyres was not enough. We also spent a couple of hours digging. Making a space in front of the wheels for the truck to move into. All our spare firewood then went in front of the wheels so they would have something to grip. While this was going on two locals arrived. They watched us and smoked cigarettes. They explained how what we were doing was not going to work and then offered to fetch a gang of people to dig us out. We declined and they wandered off.

With all five diffs locked Baloo hauled itself out of the mud. We were very relieved. We were also wet and very muddy so we only moved a short way, onto some firmer ground and parked up. Later we met a passing military officer who was patrolling the area. We discovered that if we had gone with the local’s offer that it would probably cost us around €500. Next day we headed directly back to the tarmac road. I resolved, for the umpteenth time in my life, to never, never go driving on beaches.

When we are travelling, it is easy to start treating every day a little the same. However, we like the notion of weekends being a bit different, a bit special. Often this means doing a bit more work in the kitchen, cocktails at sunset or possibly a bottle of chilled wine. Some mornings, such as this one, merit a full cooked breakfast. I baked a loaf of sourdough and fried up a mixed vegetable omelette. Fruit juice, coffee, sunshine and the big table outside completed the setting.   

Setting off late, we visited the Ksar campsite and hotel. A remarkable looking and quite isolated place plonked in the desert north of Tan Tan.  I imagine the place is quite popular with tourists during the season. You can lie on sunbeds looking out across a sandy desert scene, swim in the pool and probably get chilled drinks brought to you. Today we were the only visitors. The coffee was pleasant but strong enough to make me jumpy for hours afterwards.

We headed out to the coast past a few tents of camel herders. Their animals just seemed to wandering freely. The nomads waved at us cheerfully. Late afternoon we arrived at the Atlantic shoreline. Steep cliffs overlooking a thin, tidal beach. A few widely scattered and very basic looking huts belonging to the fishermen. Mostly they are collecting shellfish. They clamber down the cliffs at low tide then sit around in small groups at high tide shelling their catch.

That evening we camped on top of the cliffs. There was a particularly good sunset. So good that, weekend notwithstanding, we felt compelled to mark the event with gin and orange sundowners.

We found Lars & Inge outside a surprisingly large supermarket near Guelmim. Obviously, we all went shopping after which, fully restocked, we set off into the desert again. We were aiming for the town of Tan Tan on the coast. We could have taken the main road but we didn’t and before long were bouncing along tracks again.

Along the way, we discovered some prickly pear farms. Prickly pears we introduced to Morocco from Mexico in 1770 and are now widespread. They are truly evil plants being covered in tiny sharp prickles that break off in your skin and irritate for days. A line of prickly pear plants makes a very effective fence and deterrent. Nevertheless, prickly pears are also a super food. They taste great and they are very good for you. Extreme care and thick gloves are needed for preparation. You need to carefully shave all the spikes off. Then they are good to eat.

From a farming perspective, their real value is in the seeds. The prickly pear is used to create pharmaceutical products and remedies. The oil derived from its seeds helps with high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is antiviral, antibacterial, antioxidant, eases ulcers and reduces cholesterol and obesity. One tonne of pears are required to make just one litre of oil. So it is pretty expensive stuff.

Our arrival at Tan Tan was marked by two immense camels on a roundabout. Shortly after that, we arrived at the beach where the Vikings got very excited. They ran into the sea and then ran out again even faster having discovered how cold the water was. Despite being a long way south and at the edge of the desert the Atlantic Ocean is still really cold here.  

First job the next morning was a reconnaissance. Lars and I took the Land Rover further up the valley. The track got narrower and more precipitous. We came across an overhanging tree that would need felling to get Baloo past. Then we turned right into a very rough track, a streambed really, threading its way through some close packed buildings before it went steeply up the hillside above. Passable by donkey and, with care, a Land Rover. No good for a 20t 6×6 at all. We returned to the others and set about reversing all the tricky bits that we had brought Baloo up the day before.

It all went quite well. For a start, we knew that it was possible. Secondly, our road building efforts were still in place. Lars was in charge. I was driver and had to do exactly what I was told. Inge and Diane were navvies and also looked after the cameras. The morning was not without some delicate moments.  Watching the rear wheels through the mirrors, I occasionally saw rocks falling out of the side of the track. The last but one squeeze, past a concrete wall on a narrow track, seemed to have become smaller. Took a couple of shunts and some very delicate manoeuvring.

At last, we could relax. We got back to the main track just in time for a late lunch. Nothing damaged, nothing broken, no big dramas. We all felt pleased with ourselves. Lars and Inge were keen to find out just where the track went and decided to go back in the Land Rover. We waved them goodbye and set off for the wide, open and mostly empty desert hills to the south of Tata.

A day later, we came across a well. It was actually marked on my map so we figured there was a good chance of clean water. We have a small electric pump that we can lower down wells. The water was five or six metres down. Getting the pump into position takes a bit of care. It hangs on a rope but also has a hosepipe and power cable attached. Need to make sure the rope takes all the weight and also that we do not lower the pump too far and risk disturbing the mud or whatever is right at the bottom of the well. Once everything is in place and the rope securely tied off I can plug the pump in.  There is quite a good flow rate. We can fill a tank in less than ten minutes. The hose connects to a large particle filter. This is mostly just to stop fish or frogs that might be having a swim. One day I hope to add a filter to purify the water but for now, we just have to hope that it is clean enough.

We did not camp by the well but went off down a track for a few hundred metres. There is virtually no traffic on the road but we still prefer to get well away from it. While I had been messing with the well and the pump, Diane had been getting on with the washing. By which I mean she had been running the washing machine. I rigged up a line and twenty minutes after we hung them out, the sheets were dry.

We did eventually make it to Tata albeit along the road rather than a track. Tata is a modest sized town. We filled up Baloo with diesel and water. Took a while to get the water. The hose was only slow and we had to repair it first. Nobody seemed very rushed and the fact that we were parked on the station forecourt for the best part of half an hour was fine. Then we wandered off into town for some tea and shopping. Tea was Moroccan style mint tea with a lump of sugar the size of a small brick. Shopping was picking out the best vegetables while trying to ignore some poor chickens in a small and very smelly cage.

We camped a little way out of town and the next day set off for Timkit following a route that Lars had found lying around somewhere on the Internet. The start of this seemed very promising. Fantastic valley with dramatic anticlines (folds of rock). Palms, a few houses, some water and a bit of agriculture. Problems began in the village of Timkit. We had to squeeze Baloo along the narrow track between a house and steep drop to the river. A local appeared to tell us that we should not take the truck any further so Lars and I did a short recon trip in the Land Rover. It all looked fine. A couple of tricky sections and then the track appeared to be opening up. Off we went.

The tricky sections were actually properly tricky. The track was too narrow in places and we had to drive up the riverbed. Further on, we needed to rebuild a bit of track. We squeezed round a couple of tight corners and balanced on some rocks. By later afternoon, we had only covered a few kilometres so we made camp. The valley was cool, high and deserted. We sat round a fire, cooked on our tagines, gazed at the bright stars and hoped that tomorrow would go a little easier.

We never made it to Tata.  After several days of travelling quite close to the Algerian border and numerous checkpoints we were stopped by two soldiers. They drove a 4×4 pickup with no roof, windscreen, door tops or seatbelts. The perfect desert vehicle.

Up to that point, we had been in the desert several days. We’d found some more sand to play on and managed to get Baloo stuck on a small dune for about 20 minutes. In Lars’ version of this story, he heroically pulls the 20t truck out with his 3t Land Rover. Possibly, it was also a bit of digging that helped.

There were camels. Many camels. Often wandering around in scattered herds. Some were hobbled but many just seemed free to roam. A small herd appeared by our campsite one morning. There was a man looking after them but he stayed well away from us. The herd included several calves so perhaps he was being a bit protective of them. Still happy to give us a big wave when we left. Most of the people we have passed on the road all through Morocco smile and wave at us. It is very endearing.

We also crossed several lakebeds. Dried up lakebeds that were flat and smooth and fast to drive on. Great fun but also kicked up an awful lot of dust. The dust gets everywhere. There is a constant little crunch in your mouth from the dust between your teeth. Every surface has a fine coating and even the bed got a layer of dust on the sheets.

Half a day short of Tata we were escorted north onto the track to Taimzour. There was a military exercise going on. This was explained to us in mime – which I really enjoyed but needed to concentrate to keep a straight face. After a very graphic depiction of guns and shooting, we were pointed at a tall angular peak in the far distance. More happy waving and the soldiers left us to find our own way. We drove north along an interesting track, over some small hills and eventually, the next day, to the road right next to the angular peak.

Liz and Andy left to return the UK for a general election, brexit, bad weather and xmas. With Lars and Inge in their Landrover, we set off out into the desert again. This time for a slightly longer and more involved trip.

Mhamid used to be a bit of a tricky place to visit because of its proximity (24km) to the Algerian border. These days, things are a bit more relaxed although the border is still closed and there is a strong military presence. The town has always been a starting point for traveling nomads and caravans. Today it is tourist camel treks and 4×4 excursions. We had already stocked up at Tagounite, a very nice town further up the road. Along with fruit and vegetables, we also invested in a tagine and some charcoal. A tagine is a traditional Moroccan cooking pot made of terracotta. We breezed straight through Mhamid and headed for the dunes of Erg Chigaga.

For the first few hours, we saw quite a few vehicles carrying tourists from Mhamid. Also herds of camels grazing on some fertile areas of what looked like wild rocket (arugula). By evening, we had moved beyond the range of the day-trippers. We settled down for a peaceful night of vegetable stew on the tagine. Next day we arrived at the dunes of Erg Chigaga. This is the largest of the Saharan ergs in Morocco and relatively untouched. The northern edge is fringed with tourist camps. The southern part is, for the most part, deserted. Time for some full fat, no nonsense desert driving.

First job was to deflate the tyres. The spreads the weight out so the wheels do not sink in so far. Baloo has a neat tyres inflation system that allows us to change the pressure of all six tyres at the same time. At sand pressure the tyres bulge at the bottom and almost look flat. We also needed the full off-road capability of Baloo. Diff-locks to prevent the wheels spinning. Transfer box engage to gear down the engine and give us plenty of power.

It all worked beautifully. Route finding was the biggest problem. We needed to ensure we did not drop off the steep side of a dune or end up leaning dangerously sideways. Lars was a great help scouting ahead in the Landrover. There was also a lot of walking, looking and thinking. Progress was slow but we managed to keep it safe and steady. As evening fell, we emerged from the dunes happy and triumphant. We settled in a cosy spot between two dunes, basked in the evening sun and fired up the tagines. Now, in all honestly, we could have driven round and it would have only taken an hour or so. That was not the point. As Lars said, repeatedly, “Why did we do it? Because we can”.

This was our first trip out into the desert proper with the cars. Real desert is not like the sand dunes of film sets. It is much more desolate. Rocks, dust, sand, barren hills. Technically, we are not quite in the Sahara desert but an area of semi-arid Pre-Saharan Steppes. However, any local will definitively assert that this is genuinely the Sahara and they can sell you a very modestly priced souvenir to prove it.

Our route followed some well-travelled pistes. Dotted along the way were several “auberge”, desert hotels where you can sleep and eat. We mostly passed these by, but late afternoon were waved down at one and told some horror stories of bad roads ahead. Next to impassable by all accounts but fortunately there was a guide on hand. For a modest fee, he could show us the way round. We chose to go look for ourselves. An hour or so later were looking at a steep climb out of a river bed. Fortunately, we had the right vehicles for the job so this turned out to be a bit of fun rather than a serious challenge.

Next day we crossed a vast dusty plain and camped right in the middle of nowhere. I mean really nowhere. No lights, houses, fields, piles of rocks, nothing. Just some very spikey bushes. In the evening a woman and child appeared and watched us quietly for a while. She left a set of tracks up a small dune and vanished. In the morning, we checked to see where she had gone. There was no village or settlement of any kind in the direction of her tracks.  

Last day to Zagora took us over a small mountain range with some interesting tracks and down into a very empty valley. Here we delighted in finding a well and pumping water out of it. Lars and Inge (directly descended from Vikings) both had a shower in the cold well water. A small boy turned up on a bike. We had no idea where he had come from either.

Finally, we arrived at Zagora and checked into a nice campsite. Nestled in the lush palms of the Draa Valley, Zagora is traditionally a gateway to the Sahara. An important stopping place for the great camel trains plying their trade. A sign at the edge of town declares that it is 52 days (by camel) to Timbouctou. My father used to threaten to send me to Timbouctou when I was naughty. These days the way is blocked by closed borders, minefield, bandits and terrorists. Does this make it a more or less effective as a deterrent for small children?

Merzouga is a busy centre for travellers seeking the desert experience in Erg Chebbi. This is one of several ergs in Morocco – large seas of dunes formed by wind-blown sand. From their nice hotel, tourists are herded, possibly on a camel, across the sand dunes west to a permanent campsite in the desert. Camps are carefully placed to be out of site of the hotels while maintaining such basics as hot water and wifi.  After a night of glamping and good food, the desert hardened adventurers are brought back to their hotel for a much needed shower and glass of chilled chardonnay. It is the grown up equivalent of camping in the garden.

We headed east of the dunes in an attempt to sneak round the back of tourist land and see some proper desert. Diane and I arrived well ahead of the others and set up camp. The cars didn’t turn up until nightfall. Evening takes about half an hour here. Just after you first notice the sun is going down, it sets and goes dark. We had a few problems with cars getting stuck in the sand. The trick is to deflate the tyres. Also, Liz announced the onset of Ammophobia – a fear of sand. This is a tricky and potentially serious medical condition to manage in the middle of an erg. We did the best we could mostly by patting her on the head.

Next morning the group consensus was that we should leave the dunes and head further south. This was achieved with only a modicum of getting stuck. By lunchtime we were on the tarmac road to Rissani.

Gara Medour is another film location but a much more natural one. Also called as Jebel Mudawwar (round mountain), it is a horseshoe-shaped geological formation technically known as an erosion cirque. It looks like some sort of volcanic caldera but is actually a water worn formation. Although looking at it sticking up in the middle of a desert it is not at all obvious to me how this can have happened. Naturally it is pretty much a complete fortress and in the 11th century the structure was completed with the addition of a 12m wall. From here the city of Sijilmasa (gold coins) could be protected along with various trade routes.

We had to drive way off the tarmac road to find it. This was considerably more satisfying than finding some of the previous classic tourist traps. There were a couple of people trying to sell trinkets but for the most part, we had the place to ourselves.

In the evening we drove a bit further out into the desert to a couple of palms and a dried up well. Made for a lovely campsite where we met up with Liz, Andy, Lars and Inge again.

South of Ouarzazate is the Finnt Oasis. The route took us through what looked like it was going to be a large industrial estate. The roads are laid. Street lamps are in place along with services and electricity. But that is all. There are no actual buildings. The site is massive. Several kilometres square. All prepared for building but looking now as if it had been deserted. We have seen several sites like this in Morocco and they are a bit of a mystery.

Leaving the wide roads of partially built estate, we took to a dirt track across a barren rocky area before descending into a narrow valley. Here we found the oasis. Very green and wet and generally picture book oasis like. The dog played in the water and we all had a picnic on a rock.

A couple of days later we were at the Dades Gorge. This is one of two dramatic clefts on the southern side of the High Atlas. The road is thin but passable and spectacular. Eventually, a few kilometres past the little village of Tilmi, we reached the start of a steep mountain section. This was too narrow for Baloo to manage safely. Evening was falling so we camped in a random field and later two men and a donkey wandered past in the darkness. Next day the two cars went over the mountains leaving us to back track our way down the gorge.

Getting around Marrakech in a truck is problematic. Every road seems to have a ‘no trucks’ sign on it. We tried several routes and eventually just took a direct path. Fortunately, the local police did not seem too concerned and just waved at us. However, these diversions separated us from our travelling companions. Liz and Andy had flown out from the UK and hired a Land Cruiser. Lars and Inge had driven fast and hard all the way from Denmark in their Land Rover. Eventually, several days out of Marrakech, we caught up with them and headed for Aït Benhaddou.

Ksar Aït Benhaddou is an ighrem (fortified village) on the former caravan route between the Sahara and Marrakech. It is built using an earthen clay architecture and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987. Inside the walls of the ksar are several kasbahs (merchants’ houses). The location has been used for dozens of films including Game of Thrones.

Frankly, it is all a bit too commercialised for my tastes. There are many flocks of visitors being herded around, a persistent background noise of intrusive sales people and the constant demands of children pestering for money and sweets. Despite this, it was quite interesting and I found that Cent, our beautiful German Shepherd, was very a very effective child repellent.