The first camp was at Assilah, and I would certainly commend the campsite to the subset 'basic'. There was water for washing, magic electricity trees that sprung from the ground and executed your electrical goods and, for added excitement, two types of toilet. The first was the kind that we are used to, the second a toilet from the darkside, a bizarre invention of both brilliance and cruelty. for the remainder of the blog, these shall be referred to as Btoilets. To describe to those unused to such horrors, imagine a hole large enough to take your waste with two raised footrests in front and either side of the hole. Now squat. you get the picture. Then you throw half a bucket of water down to flush and throw your paper into a waste paper bin. Genius.
Having thoroughly exhausted my interest in the Btoilet, I set up my tent for the first night. I had invested in a pop up tent, so it was easy to get myself sorted (see further on for the inverse difficulty of decamping). The organisation (who whilst they may sound like a James Bond villain group are really not) had arrived with the support vehicles - catering truck, Mankat, 4x4s and the like, and were able to get dinner sorted out for not too late in the evening, so after a couple of beers in the surprisingly cold Moroccan darkness I retired for the night. Nights didnt really get warm until Southern Mauritania, the clear skies really do lead to some dramatic temperature diurnal ranges.
OK, decamping for the first full day of African fun and games! Pop up tents are magnificent on the way up, they are literally a 2 second job. However, reading the instructions for taking them down was not very helpful. It might as well have read 'take the obverse side of the front end and retreat whilst folding paralell to the inverted doorway with both sides clear of the tents equator'. I am not proud, I'm smart, I asked a girl for help! Specifically Kell who has experience of these things. It would take a week and a half for me to master taking my own tent down.
The first day took us from Assilah to camp at Boujad Forest, a fairly hefty 403km. Erik was content to do most of the African driving which left me free to enjoy the views and ask pointless questions to which I probably already knew the answer. The first part of the journey was more tarmac as we ploughed through some 'numbers' (got some mileage under our belts). The highlight was stopping at a fairly large town (the name of which regrettably escapes me at the moment) where we shopped for lunch. Handily enough a chap cycled past with a baguette in his basket, so we enquired as to where they were on sale, baguettes being lighter than the rather doughy/cakey Moroccan loaves. He pointed us off to the opposite side of the street. Before that though there was time for looking round the town. I caught, from the corner of my beady eye, a shop selling some electrical goods and the like and, proudly on display in a cabinet, some Beats by Dr Dre headphones (rrp in the UK £150 -£250). I was informed they were on sale for 80 dirhams (7 and a half euro, £6). They were, on that basis, obviously the genuine article! OK, maybe not, but at £6 who's arguing? I snapped them up and am happy to report they are not at all bad for the money invested. Beats by Dr Dre they ain't however!
Anyway, back to lunch! We couldn't find the bakers. Then, as if by magic, the same guy on a bicycle came past. Now, he's either a magician, or a very cunning mobile advertisement, as he agreed to take us directly to the bakers where baguettes were on sale. We were actually treated to a tour of the bakery where we saw them preparing Moroccan loaves before exscaping with many a farewell and a bag of baguettes. Lunch was taken under a shady tree by the roadside (most days we had bread and tuna or cream cheese or sardines etc for our lunch)
The second half of the day was a little more frenetic as we took our first off road route, a slaloming piste of not too difficult driving. However we did encounter, shortly before reaching camp, a very rickety and dangerous bridge which was full of holes. It involved me having to guide Erik across to miss the holes and stick to solid bridge. A task that proved beyond me, so I coopted some further assistance who, unlike me apparantly, were not happy to let the 2CV disappear down a hole (I still maintain you could have taken a bus over it no problems). I'll put some pictures below, but, suffice to say, the 2CVs and Vespas managed to get over the bridge, the motorbikes took a 1KM detour around it (which earned them opprobrium that lasted to the end of the jaunt, not that we dared tell them, to their BMW faces ;-))
Camp was a bivouac - where there are no camping facilities, just a village made up of the vehicles, support vehicles and our tents etc. It did feature a very beautiful sunset however.
Day 2 took us to the Gorges De Todra. The first part of the drive was very scenic and took us for the first time into the Middle Atlas mountains. We climbed up to approximately 9000 feet for some stunning views, although the 2CVs were finding the mix a little rich at that altitude and struggled a little without entrirely giving up the ghost. The descent was an interesting test for the brakes (pump those buggers!) and took us to the spectacular Gorges De Todra, a beautiful canyon which we drove through, and again I link to in pictures below, although they fail to do it justice. Camp was at Le Soeil campsite where WiFi allowed me to dose up on Facebook and the like. I was also extremely tired, and took the opportunity to rent a room for the night rather than my tent. At 30 Euros I think he probably diddled me out of some cash, but I needed a good nights sleep and I got one. Good job too, as day three saw us enter the Sahara for the first time.....
Day three was the first day of split journeys. The Vespas were not able to take on the desert route and so went their separate ways and we would meet them again at the end of day 4. For the 2CVs and big bikes, we got away early and convered 220km of mainly tarmac by 11.30. That left us 'merely' 110km to reach camp. Unfortuantely (or fortunately given the spectacular views and location), this 110km was the famous Merzouga - Zagora trail across the Sahara. Obviously entirely off road, the route took us through sand, a salt lake, mud and the like. Let's be gentle and call it 'stop, start'. The cars got stuck very easily in patches of softer sand, and once beached need pushing or pulling out, and the use of sand ladders. I quickly worked out you are better off being the car that gets stuck, as if one of the cars in your group (from today onwards, Erik and me, Kell and Mal and the other English pair, Stan and Fitz) gets stuck you have to help them, but you can't also stop in soft sand so you have to drive on and find hard sand to park on, then walk back through the desert to the stuck car to dig and push it out. Whilst the organisation had their 4x4s etc around, the idea of this is that the 2CVs sort their own mess out, so a tow out by a big beast was never on the table.
Fitz and Stan were the most often to be beached, and on one occasion we had to drive on about a mile to park and walk it back to help them out. Whilst we were at it, we also helped Francine and Erik who had beached and so as a 'reward' got a lift back to our parked cars from the photographer Dominique in his trusty 4x4 truck. I was hanging off the side hoping we didn't go over anything too 'chuck Dave off'ish. That we didn't was little consolation as the latter stages of the desert track saw the second 'Dave' moment of the adventure. Erik had said that if we were starting to crawl to a halt (in soft sand you hit high revs and maintain down the gears whilst slaloming), the idea is for me to jump out just as we approach a stop and push to keep us going. Anyway, at a certain point we started to slow and Erik said 'get ready to get out'. However, all I heard was 'get out', so I opened the door and tried to get out. Even on soft sand, this is not the best idea whilst travelling at a reasonable speed. I knew I had made a mistake as soon as my foot touched sand. I honestly expected to hear my leg snap (and on a hard surface it would have done), but my leg acted as a pole vault and sent me (luckily) flying clear of the car and landing awkwardly in the sand. There was one of those moments of 'what is broken/missing?' before I realised I had completely gotten away with a ludicrous act of pure Dave, and suffered merely bruised pride and a grazed arm. You are permitted to laugh. I did. So did everyone that saw it!
Camping was a bivouac within a traditional Kasbah (defensive building/fortification) in the desert. GPS says the camp is within Algeria, although it is niominally Moroccan. However, I am claiming Algeria on 'countries I have been to) as a result! And there, friends, we shall leave it for now, and I will update the next part of my adventure over the weekend when we relive the splendour of Marrakech.
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