Morocco trip Jan-Feb 2007
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Picking Carol up from Work...
(And yes, I know it's all pictures of the car...)
Carol had some work meetings in Cassablanca (as you do...) so it seemed like a good idea to test out the new Land Rover and drive down to meet her, then have a couple of weeks in Morocco on holiday so, mid January 2007 it was time to drive to the sun!
Tony had to set off from London where he'd been finishing getting the car
ready - at 0600 it was snowing when he left for the ferry to France - and the
snow didn't stop until Spain...
Tony went via Andorra in the Pyrénées since he'd never been there before, crossing over in the snow the police were being diverting cars off to the tunnel but when they saw the Landy they waved it through... It's not a very exciting place though, unless of course you are there for the skiing...
On Southwards into Spain, where I had to stop and photograph this 'Whiskeria'
The ferry to Ceuta - a Spanish enclave on the North African coast takes 30mins, and then, after another night sleeping by the roadside in the car I was in Morocco!
Crossing out of Europe means buying insurance for Morocco, and filling in paperwork to promise not to sell the car etc, but it was all over in half an hour and cost about €90 for everything, including the month's insurance.
Then, down to Casablanca, collect Carol (and have my first shower since leaving London 3 nights before!) and we were off to find the pistes (the unsurfaced 'back-roads' which run through the fringes of the Sahara and over the Atlas mountains)
The first piste we drove was from south of Zagora up along the Algerian border - 3 days of mixed terrain; rough tracks, low mountain crossings, dried lake beds and dunes.
The first night was spent in a vast bowl of mountains, we were the only people there with the ridges of the surrounding mountains encircling us in all directions. We camped near a well and experimented with putting up the roof-tent for the first time, then in the morning we checked our e-mail on the RBGAN satellite modem and set off again.
stony
piste
parked
by the well
the
roof-tent
checking
the mail in the morning - a better connection than we get in Ireland!
The second day on the piste took us over a dried up lake bed and through a village where they tried to charge an extortionate price for bread - luckily we had enough supplies with us; while people living in remote villages may complain that they get no benefit from tourists passing through, if they try to rip them off with prices 10 times higher than they should be then they can't expect anyone to pay!
The second night was spent camping in amongst the dunes at the edge of a dry oued (you are not supposed to risk camping in river beds because of the risk that rains in the mountains could create a sudden flood, but since the mountains feedig this river bed were only a few km away and we were sleeping in the tent we would have heard any rain.)
on
the sandy piste
tyres
are used as 'balise' markers to show the route of the road in the featureless
terrain - we relied on the GPS to make sure we didn't cross into Algeria by
accident!
hills
and dunes
Rocky
escarpment
and
onto the lakebed - the ancient salt gives the white colour here
Then into the dunes to camp for the night
And in the morning, out of the dunes following our tracks in, but having to climb out up the sandy bank now, and then following the piste through several kilometres of sandy river bed - the toughest driving of the trip with a drop down which looked extreme, but which the car handled without any bother...
Dropping down to the river bed
it
was a lot steeper than it looks!
After finishing the piste we had a bit of time in Erfoud where the Moroccan fossils come from. We visited a workshop where they cut the slabs of stone and polish up the slices where they find fossils - mainly Ammonites and Trilobites
this slab of rock had Trilobites 30cm (1 foot) across all over it, you can just see two through the hole in the cardboard:
And then on to the sand dunes of the Erg Chebbi where we got a little over enthusiastic & managed to nearly roll the car - but luckily we were able to get it backed down the slope without rolling - phew!
hmm,
that taught us a lesson!
So, after that excitement we thought a trip to the mountains was in order:
The Dades Gorge is a great climb up through a valley which gets tighter as it gets higher, and eventually reaches a split in the cliff-face with the Dades river running through it - before the track continues to the very top of the Atlas mountains in the snow.
shepherds
bringing flocks along the gorge side 
Through the Gorge we were on top of the Atlas mountains:
but this is where we got a puncture which slowed us down too much to get over the mountains before dark
So, we decided to try again to cross the mountains, taking a route over the Anti Atlas further South
another
tight squeeze!
over the summit and the view to the South was superb
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