She Says - Thwarted adventures

17-20 September
I just cannot seem to be bothered to write my blog in the last week! It’s not been an easy week, and everything seems an effort, so I guess writing is just one more effort I don’t want to deal with. We’re currently in a campground just outside Ouarzazate (here once again! Xander says it’s like Hotel California for us – ‘you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave’), cooking up a very simple meal of dhal (spicy lentil stew) accompanied by yummy Berber pizzas (basically a stuffed bread with minced meat, spring onions, coriander, herbs and spices - very yummy). We realised we weren’t going to get any further than Ouarzazate today and knew there was camping here (Camping Tissa) from Ronald and Nicoline, and when we couldn’t get any vegies or other things to eat, this was it! We can’t even be bothered to make rice, especially seeing as we already had plenty of breads for dinner and tomorrow’s breakfast. I’ve just refreshed after a nice cold shower, which, so long as temperatures stay like this, I think I can get used to! The temperature in town at 4pm was reading 30 degrees still, though it feels cooler at camp in the shade with a very stiff breeze.

OK, had to pause for a while there because we decided to get some much needed laundry done and hung up before sunset, and because dinner didn’t need too much watching over - partly because it is dhal and partly because the £$%&&$% stove has blocked up again. We are having constant problems with the stove getting blocked and either burning too hot or too cold, but either way it is creating a lot of soot that makes it very difficult to wash up, particularly as the soot becomes really greasy. While we were washing and hanging clothes, sunset and the final call to end Ramadan for this year took place, and we watched a nice sunset before eating dinner. While we were eating, the campground manager came over and shared some mint tea and pancake-like bread with us. We weren’t able to talk much, enough to say it was good that Ramadan is over and now they can celebrate and be happy, and to note how the wind was not so bad as when we arrived (you can talk about the weather in any language to get through small talk!). This was a delightfully unexpected moment, and next to one other moment today, has restored a little of my faith in Moroccan people, some of which has been taken away in the last few days.

To backtrack, we took an easy last morning in Rabat, nicked more bread/cheese/ham-substance for our lunch, did some more internet work to get better GPS maps for Morocco (should have done it ages ago!), then headed off just after 11am to the Mauritanian embassy. The main reason we moved was that Xander wanted to check what he could on bike, but not in front of the hotel as they might get annoyed. When everything was pulled apart on the footpath, we were a bit concerned someone might think were trying to blow up an embassy though! Xander thought the problem might be anything from a headlight issue (headlight power draw was making the red light appear on the rectifier voltmeter) to the heated handlebar grips (he thought he got electric shocks while driving to Rabat, turns out it was just cramps from driving too long, as the wires were disconnected and he had them again later!). He first swapped the rectifiers, but the voltmeter still indicated we had a problem. By chance, though I know he would have found it eventually, he looked a little further along the wiring to the rectifier, and found that a connecting piece had completely fried! This was the cause of the burning smell, and after removing it and joining the wires directly together instead, the red light was gone. What a relief!!! So that left us waiting for 2 hours outside the embassy, which then opened half an hour late with quite a few people waiting. We chatted with 3 Polish students travelling in two 4x4s that are heading straight to Mali after only a week in Morocco. They had the problem we avoided – no passport, no hotel! They were stuck in their cars last night, after they too couldn’t find the Sale campground. They were very frustrated and have had enough of Morocco already, and have about a month left to go in Mauritania and Mali then back home. Thankfully, all went fine with our visas and we even got the timing we wanted – visa started that day but expiry is 31 October. Not that we want that long in Mauritania, but at least we can choose when to arrive, plus take our time if we have problems or want to stay in Morocco longer. While sorting out this visa has been a complete faff and frustration, we are very glad we did it now; if we had applied any earlier, we wouldn’t have had Ronald’s advice and would have to cut short our stay in Morocco to make the most of the Mauritanian visa.

So we banged back down to Marrakech and it was a fine trip; tiring and not too warm, no more rain, and we felt good about everything. The campground we chose was really good, nice condition, clean, and full of campervans. We got chatting with a lovely French couple travelling in a crazy little Citroen truck-thing that is fully kitted out with bed, shelves, portaloo, and an esky full of liquor! They invited us over for a drink, and between her French, his bad English and our terrible French, we had a great chat! We had a lovely meal of tuna pasta, with the vegies and supplies we bought several days before in Marrakech, but they were still fine. All was good, and we paid only 50 dirham (less than 5 euros) after the last two nights at nearly 100 euros per night!

The next morning, we drove straight down to Zagora, going through the magnificent mountain passes once again to Ouarzazate, which were freezing cold last time but cool and very bright this time. We stopped for lunch in Ouarzazate, then on to Zagora through some spectacular mountain and desert scenery, then into the palmeries and broken kasbahs (walled cities/forts) and ksars (smaller forts) of the Draa Valley. Wow! The mountains looked like someone took a contour map and plonked it down on the ground – the hills literally had contour lines! The geology is such that the ground is made up of horizontal layers, and the hills have weathered into points, leaving rings looking like contours or fingerprints going up all the way up. I know I can’t describe it properly, I only hope my snapshots capture it! Imagine a big, layered pastry and the layers are separated by cream. Cut the pastry into slices and let them sit in the sun so the cream melts away. This leaves the pastry jutting out between each layer. That’s the best I can describe it! The palmeries, full of ripening dates, were interspersed with towns and buildings, and the ruins were fantastic, although it is hard to tell what is old or new, what are really the historic parts and not just buildings washed away in the rain! We reached Zagora late enough to be very tired, so didn’t stop to see much along the way, and started looking for a camp. Only camps here are really rooms! Berber-tent style rooms, with a material roof but solid walls and a simple bed. We only checked out two places, but after first place was very welcoming and second was not (he was really rude when we wanted to check out other places!) and more expensive, we went back to Prend Ton Temps (‘Take Your Time’ in French). 80 dirham for a room and 60 dirham each for a lovely three course meal. On top of that, when they broke fast for Ramadan, they invited all guests to join the staff and family for food and tea. They also us as much water as we wanted! It was a very social, brilliant place. Dinner, while served very late, was very good, but too much after ‘breakfast’ so we couldn’t finish all the couscous! We spent time chatting with a Spanish guy heading off on a 6 day camel trek to big sand dunes of Erg Chigaga, organised by the camp. We can’t afford to take a trip like that, either by time or money, but would have loved to. We asked about shorter tours, but decided to head off the next day to see the nearby small dunes and go to the small town M’hamid at the head of the big dunes to see if we could organise a better short trip there.

The day was a hassle from start. There were a lot of annoying kids in the area, begging and hassling us. We reached Tinfou Dunes, which were really good but small and finite. There were a couple of nice guys there, offering camel rides and tents to stay in. They chatted with us and gave very little hassle, even sat by while we ate our breakfast, and took a picture of us in front of the dunes and didn’t ask for money! “It’s OK here, this is not Marrakech!” We take the opportunity to fill with sand the bottle we bought for Alison and Andy, our hosts in Spain. As we reached M’Hamid, the real trouble began. We got flagged down by a tour guide on the road – we should never have stopped for him but didn’t realise he was a tour guide at the start. We decided to go see what he had on offer, but still couldn’t (wouldn’t) afford the trips, even a two-day one. This might sound odd, but we’ve already done a Sahara desert trip in Tunisia and we have a lot of other trips to do in later stages of our travels! So we headed to the edge of town to see if we could actually see any dunes. A guy comes up on a scooter, and tells about his family’s pace to stay, but very low hassle. The original tour guide turns up twice! He was very insistent about trying to find a trip for us to do, kept asking how much we wanted to pay. Eventually we gave our price, and he offered a room and meals in his semi-hotel for our price, with the opportunity to walk in the nearby dunes. We decided to go for it; well, it was probably more due to me than Xander to be honest – I felt we should do something to see the desert dunes! We stopped to get some lunch supplies, then we tried to follow the guy, but he took off down a rocky and sandy track along the dry riverbed that we just could not handle. We said to forget the hotel, but the guy told us he had already bought supplies for dinner so we would need to pay him back. We pushed on. He led us on a longer track, but it wasn’t much better! I ended up jumping in the car to make life easier for Xander. He kept falling behind as he struggled with the sand and rough road, and I had to keep making the tour guide stop and wait for the bike to catch up. Things were obviously going wrong but I couldn’t tell what had happened – turned out Xander had dropped the bike! I found him struggling to hold it up after he had lifted it from horizontal. We pushed on, but then came big bumps. Xander fell behind again and when he caught up, he stopped at a distance. I ran back to find out what was going on and he said he’d had enough, even though we were close it was time to end it. I was really angry by this stage, as I had to keep forcing the guy to wait for Xander to catch up. I start yelling at the tour guide, asking what he thought he was doing taking us on a track we couldn’t handle, after having already told us we would not be able to handle the track out to the big dunes! He tried to bribe us again by saying he had already paid for food and had spent money on us, also trying to blame us for damage to his car!! We left him our lunch supplies and got the hell out of there. We should never have dealt with such an insistent guide! Just to note, this guy is actually mentioned in the Lonely Planet guidebook – Zbar Travel. I’m sure his tours are good, but the level of insistence and the danger he put us and our bike in is enough to bad mouth him!!! We’re quite sure he didn’t even know what track he was taking us on, as we seemed to double back on ourselves on the return trip! We took the track very slow and two-up and we made it through somehow. Xander burned through one last part of sand and rock on own (the original dry river bed area). We had more kids hassle us, though they mostly wanted to help, trying to say the piste was no good. Didn’t stop them from trying to get something from us though!

We decided to head straight back to Zagora and stay at Prends Ton Temps again, as it was such a good place. Along the way, we stopped to admire the small dunes beside the road, getting as many photos we can to say ‘hey, we’ve been in desert!’ We were feeling very confident about Xander’s ability to ride through these conditions now, but it’s going to get worse, I just know it! We had very late lunch in Zagora as couldn’t find food along the way. We picked up bread for breakfast and lunch for the final day of Ramadan, but not without both of us individually having people try to scam us into going to a shop instead of the market! Xander even had women in the market telling him to buy stuff for them! He was getting really pissed off with people and kids now. We went back tot the camp, were welcomed in, ordered dinner, and had ‘breakfast’ again with the staff and family. We spent a lot of time chatting to the French-speaking owner about his hopes for the place and a bit of politics, also maybe how we could come back someday and bring others and get a free 6-day camel trip! With his French and the occasional drop of English, we somehow managed to understand…we think! I can actually understand some words now, I’m getting there with numbers to start with and hope the rest will come later! We had another lovely but late meal, ordering brochettes to keep it small this time, and it was almost 10pm when we ate! We had the most delicious salad, and fed pieces of tomato to the cute kitten who kept playing with us. Don’t ask us why, he seemed to like it! We spent both nights in camp watching small bats (s’halit in Arabic) fly over us while lying on the comfy couches outside, and the toilets and showers often have cute, spotty, little toads in them. Other Moroccan wildlife we’ve seen has included a small number of geckos, some very green-tailed lizards in Volubilis, the monkeys we saw further north, a few birds but not a lot, more pigeons than we’ve seen in a while, and lots of cats! Wildlife spotting has been pretty poor.

Today we tried to take the dirt track to Tata. I wanted to go this way to see more kasbahs, but also there’s a lot of ancient rock paintings in the western area. We had been told it was good piste by several people, but it had severely degraded and eventually just ended - they had ripped up the road and made a dirt wall! We got 1.5 hours in and had to turn back. There were some 4WD tracks leading over the wall, but there was no way we could risk getting stuck or damaged out there – there was hardly any traffic to help and we were in the desert after all! We got back in Zagora for lunch at nearly 12pm, very tired and sore from the bad road, and had to head back to Ouarzazate for hopefully the last time! We have no choice now but to skip what I wanted to see and head on highways to Agadir over on the coast then head south. We have little time left to get through Western Sahara - over 1700 km to get to the Mauritanian border in 10 days. As we headed back through the Draa Valley, we stopped to take photos of the kasbahs and palmeries. Every time we stopped, kids hassled us, always wanting money or sweets, and we’re very tired of it all. They suddenly appear out of nowhere whenever you think a place is safe to stop! Then there was a glimmer of hope – we stopped for lunch on the edge of a palmerie, it was peaceful, there were birds and an irrigation stream, it was nice and quiet and there were no kids around. Suddenly a boy appears on a bicycle and unloads his bag of pomegranates. He comes down bank, we say no thank you as nicely as possible, and he just drops 3 fruit next to me and leaves! Unbelievable. No asking for money or anything, just plain, pure generosity. We were stunned. People hassled us at another photo stop after that, one guy was just selling dates but the kid was a pain in the neck and the other adult either wanted to change money or was asking for loose change, I don’t know. Then tonight here in camp we have been shown such kindness and generosity again. I don’t know what to make of the Moroccan people but as I noted at the start of this post, my faith has been a little restored today.