Morocco 2012

Morocco 5^th January 2012

After a month in Spain it was time for the usual visit to Carlos for the ferry ticket to Tanger med port in Morocco.

This year was the same price E180 return and the usual gift of a cake & bottle of cider. Stocked up at Lidl & Carrefour then spent the night in their car park ready for the 10am sailing. It was very foggy in the morning and the ferry left about 45 minutes late. It was a larger ferry with four loading ramps,but only about 20 motorhomes, no other British. This time there were 2 immigration officials working doing the passport checks, so much easier than the land border at Ceuta.

After getting through Customs last year in 10 minutes this year was slower, they seemed to want to process all the Camping Cars together and we had to get out to show all the documents to the officials. At last after about 45mins we were free to go after the usual query as to whether we had any pistoles to declare! Straight on to the motorway which despite being so new has a few dubious bumps and ramps and slipped road surfaces to look out for as well as the usual pedestrians either crossing or trying to get a lift. Further on there were even people selling what looked like potatoes out of sacks.

After leaving Algeciras the crossing was clear with blue sunny skies and this continued until around Asilah where we started to get into cold fog and the visibility was very reduced. We were heading for Camping Ocean Bleu at Mohammedia and got there just before dark in the fog. We tried to by our 3g internet prepaye card as before at Maroc Telecom in Rabat but were told the didn't have any and to try at a Mega Mall. The guy seemed quite vague about whether we would find one, they just seemed interested in their smart phone sales. This was scuppering our plans as we would now have to go in search of the card if it was still available in either Casablanca or Marrakesh, neither easy places to negotiate in a vehicle.

The approach road to Ocean Bleu last year was all dug up with big pipes being laid, this year was easier but still rough at the seafront where the road is an uneven sandy track. A warm welcome in English and we quickly settled into a pitch after using the Grey & Black waste. About 20 vans here some looked as though they were there for a while but also a lot like us on a one night stop. Price has gone up from 60Dh to 80Dh per night for less than a weeks stay but probably includes electric hookup which we don't need.

Still very hazy in the morning, we decided to get on the search for the 3g card. Took the motorway to Casablanca and quickly spotted a Marjane store which luckily had a Maroc Telecom shop that was just opening. Completely different helpful service here and we were offered a free dongle with the 3g pack. Our old unlocked 3 network dongle is probably a bit dated so the new one should hopefully be a faster connection and more up to date software. Tried it out in Marjane car park at coffee time but couldn't connect. It sometimes takes a while to initialise so we thought we would get on with the driving. It was getting gloomier and more polluted in the smog and the drive out to find the motorway to Marrakesh was complete madness with traffic squeezing into position at the numerous traffic lights, then switching lanes around buses and trucks and crossing vehicles. With patience we somehow came out unscathed on to the calm (Toll) motorway.

Class 1 or 2?

Unlike French Motorway tolls which at least on smaller vehicles are based on height, in Morocco it seems to be what your vehicle looks like. There are only 2 classes and usually we are charged as class 1 but occasionally the toll booth operator comes up with a class 2 ticket. We have previously waved our class 1 ticket and they have changed it to class 1. On the stretch from Casablanca they have number plate recognition cameras which are printed on your toll ticket as you enter the motorway, these seem to show us as class2 (which costs 50% more) We had to pay 70Dh instead of about 45Dh, it becomes a bit of a game in the end, trying to challenge the charge as the amount is not that much and the travelling is much more restful.

Coming off the Motorway brought us back to more normal Moroccan roads. On the map a dead straight road for about 50kms, which it was except the first 20km were very degraded then suddenly a nice new flattish surface. It shows you can never quite plan your route just on distance.

We were aiming to get to Cascades de Ouzoud and knew that the final section was extremely mountainous, unlit and with sheer drops off the sides with little barrier safety. We just made it in dusk light, it's not safe driving in the dark as there are often unlit vehicles, bikes, donkeys and carts. Fortunately there was little traffic on the road and the surface was still in good condition.

Zebra Camping Cascades de Ouzoud 6^th to 15^th January 2012

When we arrived Paul & Renata where there to greet us, the rest of the staff had finished for the day, probably a shorter working day as it was Friday. They were just about to eat so we made a quick meal and joined them for coffee and caught up with all their latest news. They were very pleased as after numerous battles with corrupt officialdom they now have their permit, over 5 years after starting their project. They have managed to do this without paying a backsheesh to anyone which is the usual way things progress on Morocco. Paul said my old bicycle was still being used and I saw it one day with a new saddle. It was quiet, only 2 other campers and we got on to our favoured position where there are great views but you can still see all the goings on in the camping. Unlike most campsites in Morocco when you return a year later everything was in as good or better standard, though the price has risen from 60 to 75Dh partly they now have to charge tax.

We have been here nearly a week, good to be stationary for a bit and get a few things sorted in the van. Everything always gets a bit chaotic after a week or two constantly on the move and when you have a small “house” its nice to have a sort out and put everything back in the proper places! I finally got my cross stitch embroidery out and found it had gone a bit mouldy as I haven't looked at it for 9 months since we were last in Morocco. Fortunately a bit of a rinse and a blast of mid day sun has sorted that out! We have stayed here longer than we planned as the weather has been dry and bright, still cold at night as we are at about 1500metres up. We were surprised to find that nearly all the Almond blossoms are out already which looks lovely.

16th Jan
Crossed the Atlas yesterday via a small pass not one of the 3 main ones. It was a bit of an adventure as we knew the road was narrow and the surface not in good condition. The weather forecast was ok so we went for it, it was certainly a beautiful and dramatic drive and although a few narrow hairy bits where the road was crumbling away, there was very little local traffic, so you could take your time over the dodgy bits. I drove for the first stretch as I suspect Mark thought that would be the easiest bit but actually it was the bit with the biggest drops as the road followed mountainsides and only dropped down to follow a river after a couple of hours. It was amazing to still come across little villages with patches of cultivation on the bits of flat land next to the river. A very quiet life, no wonder all the children get excited and wave when we drive past! .

19^{th Jan}

Ouarzazate for a night, all the usual things, dropped a load of washing with the cheery girl in the launderette, although when we arrived at 5pm she was slightly harassed as she had “beaucoup de travail” and only one machine working. Nevertheless she had it all washed, dried and neatly folded for us by 12noon next day. We spent the morning stocking up on Moroccan buns from our 2^nd favourite cake shop(no 1 is in Essouaria on the coast) , vegetable shopping and relaxing in the square at a nice cafe we usually visit, which also happens to have nice buns...there's a surprise! Then we were off to Agdz for a night in the grounds of a Kasbah. We were warmly greeted by one of the brothers who own it and his French wife. We have taken one of her very interesting tours for the last 3 years and seen the progress of their restoration of the traditional mud block built Kasbah. We said we were only stopping one night this time so unfortunately no time for the tour. She laughed and said we had done it in English, German, and French already so she was running out of languages! Good memory as the 2^nd & 3^rd times we went to look as much as hear the talk so just went on the next tour available whatever language.

We then had a stop over night in a new place for us, Tazzarine on the way East to the dessert places. The camp site we planned to stay at looked closed when we arrived but Mark went in a small side door in the wall and found the Guardian who opened the vehicle gates into a pleasant parking area next to a bit of a Palmerie/garden with some sheltered seating areas under nomad tents. We were happy to get inside the walls and get a bit of shelter from the strong winds that had started up the night before. We had the place to ourselves and spent a pleasant sunny couple of hours having our afternoon coffee (and new buns!) and reading in the shelter, which also acted as a great “bird hide” to watch all the bird life in their garden. I was especially surprised to see Blackbirds which I only remember from the greener north of the Atlas before and indeed our bird book only shows them in the top half of Morocco. They seem to be ignoring the bird book! I could see the Palmeries with small gardens and vegetable cultivation would be ok for them but these places are quite small and spread out in large arid semi desert areas where they wouldn't be able to survive so I wonder how they got here.

21^st January

We are now parked outside a hotel on the edge of the sand dunes at Erg Chebbi, bottom right of Morocco! . We came here 2 years ago and found the owner a very amenable chappy who also speaks good English, so easy for us. Yesterday we did a 4x4 trip out in and around the dunes and he came as our guide so we got the most out of it. We did a similar trip 4 years ago which was good but the driver only spoke French (apart from Berber and Arabic of course!) so we only understood half the information and couldn't ask many questions. The trip also included a visit to the “Gnaua” musicians association in the next village. Many of the people in this village are Black Africans whose ancestors came from Mali and Senegal and were involved with the camel train trading routes across the Sahara. When modern borders came into being they stayed in Morocco but have kept some of their musical heritage. We were also taken to several areas of stony dessert where you could just wander about and find fossils (Like Derbyshire limestone in our house!!) and all sorts of interesting rocks. Finally we ended up with the obligatory tourist gimmick “tea with the Nomads” for which they are paid of course. We weren't too bothered about this as we know these “Nomads”are semi settled , else how could they find them for tea so easily?! As it turned out it was actually interesting to see how these particular people do live in such difficult terrain. They now seem to have a small mud built house next to their traditional woven camel hair tent in a dessert area at the back of the Erg Chebbi range of dunes. Apart from occasionally providing tourists with mint tea, I think they live mainly from goats which are still nomadic to some extent as the “grazing” is so poor they have to move them around a lot . They also keep a few chickens and of course a camel or three, these days mostly for use by tourists rather than beasts of burden to move camps. The people we visited also had an ingenious system of keeping rabbits (Sorry not for pets!) They had made a hole about 3 ft deep with an old tyre round the top which obviously stopped the rabbits getting out but I think they were quite happy anyway as running off from the hole they had several burrows and food just dropped from the sky as any suitable vegetable peelings were dropped down the hole (good recycling) and the rabbits ate those.

Nomad's young camel enjoying a friendly neck rub before it tried to bite me!

Never trust a smiling camel!

We are on our 4th night now but will be going tomorrow as we are hoping to rendezvous with Kev and Barbara who we met last year. Also the weather is a bit disappointing. Although its been 15/ 16 degrees in the day and sunny there has been a strong wind so it feels colder so you certainly can't sit outside and even going out for a walk is not that pleasant (sand in teeth!)  I have to say I'm a bit tired of it and am hoping we will escape it as we head back to the edge of the Atlas mountains. It will still be chilly but if we can get away from the wind it will make a big difference.

31^st Jan

Revisited Todra Gorge which we saw on our first van trip to Morocco, as dramatic as ever and now the road has been repaired we could drive the 25Km up to a Berber village. Even though it was a bright sunny day it was freezing up there, literally! We saw a sign and stopped and brought bread from what almost looked like someone's house but had a wonderful smell of fresh bread. I stepped inside while one of the ladies in attendance got my change from a side room where I could see the

floor was covered in grain set out on sheets to dry, so I assume they made their own flour. It was certainly good bread and a spectacular drive to get it!

After that we met up with Kev and Barbara and their friends Peter and Mary who we also met last year and spent a few days with them at Boumalne. Nice to catch up, although we'd stopped the night with Kev and Barb in France on the way down. Also drove up Dades Gorge in company with them in Peters landrover. More spectacular scenery and snow! We showed them the benefits of a small van to get up narrow roads when all 6 of us squeezed into our Van (just) for a warming coffee and bun on the way down.

Now we have headed west to Tafraout which is a bit lower at 1000m (3000ft) and so warmer. Finally warm enough for just T.shirts in day time. Now a few days of exercise. We need to do some walking and cycling and wear off a few of the Moroccan buns we keep eating, not to mention the yummy bread we keep finding. We always like the flat Moroccan loaves as they are still made in individual bakeries, taste of bread and you feel like you've eaten something but this year we seem to be finding even better bakeries! And it still only costs 20p.

5^th February

Interesting day yesterday when we visited a mud built 3 story Traditional Berber House in a village near where we stay at Tafraoute. It was originally the home of a blind man who started giving tours to earn a living. It's obviously been a success as now the house is left as a “museum” and I suspect he lives in the new Guest House next door as he was keen to point out how good it was!

The house was constructed around a central internal kitchen to take advantage of heat in winter with outer rooms and a roof terrace that are cooler for summer. I liked the convenient waste disposal system of a hole in the corner of the kitchen to drop waste food from kitchen to cows in the stable below. On the 3^rd floor as well as the terrace was the “best parlour” as it were, a room with lavish decoration and furniture compared to the plain walls and functional items in the rest of the rooms. This room could also be reached by outside stairs leading to a separate door so guests did not have to pass through the working parts of the house, or I suspect in the old days, see the women if they weren't family! Mr Blind man took an old banjo type instrument off the wall (amazing how he found everything...as long as it was put back in the right place) and accompanied himself singing a traditional Berber song. Then, as his piece de resistance, he suggested that “Madam would like to try the local costume?” In this area when outside the ladies wear 5 yards of black material with a decorated border swathed around them and covering their indoor clothes and usually pulled up over their hair. I thought this will be interesting, he was blind, about 5ft 6 and I bet he's never had to do this demonstration on a 6ft 1” woman before! Well credit where its due, he did an amazing job, even managing to get the decorated border of the material to fall in the “correct” zig-zag patten at the back. There was one dodgy moment when the belt that holds it all together at the end was produced and I said “that's never going to fit round my waist!”. We laughed when he just pulled it to show it was elastic so would even fit me.

The next day when leaving Tafraoute we noticed the back tyre on the drivers side had gone down again after Mark pumped it up a few days before. We realised we had a slow puncture and as our next camp site was quite remote and 9km down a dirt road we thought we'd better do something about it! I thought people here won't be able to afford to just get a new tyre they must get tyres repaired somewhere in town. Sure enough as soon as we drove into town we noticed a load of used tyres outside a little shop. My French doesn't run to technical talk, and not sure how much French the man in workshop spoke anyway, but we managed to convey that we didn't just want it pumped up but repaired. He took the tyre off and I (only being familiar with bicycle punctures) said hows he going to find the puncture “put the tyre in a giant bowl of water..Ha Ha”, but that's just what he did except it was a cleverly constructed ,tyre wide, trough of water on legs. It turned out to be a small screw that had penetrated the tyre and then broken off so we hadn't seen it. It was soon fixed with some tyre sealant, we paid 30Dh (less than £3) and we were on our way.

Our destination was a site called Fort Bou Jerif in a desert area close to the coast and, not surprisingly. next to a ruined Foreign Legion fort. About 30km from the last village we turned off the sealed road and went 9km down a rough track through a very dry and bare landscape except for various varieties of small Euphorbia bushes that surprisingly grow in this area. Suddenly in the middle of nowhere is a nice looking hotel complex with the camp site next to it. We enjoyed a lovely sunset sitting in the van with the side door open and playing music (We had parked as far away from the few other vans as possible!) We quickly acquired a little flock of Crested Larks who were very tame and came looking for crumbs on our doormat. This reminded Mark of some King Crimson music from his youth entitled “Larks Tongue in Aspic” which he had on his music player. How cruel!!

There are some interesting desert birds as it was the only place with water and a few trees for shelter but the second day after we'd done a bike ride, further along the track, it became too windy to enjoy walking.

By the next day we decided to leave as it was so windy you could hardly even walk to the shower block without getting totally sand blasted. We spent a night in a sheltered site about 50Km inland then having checked the forecast for wind, we ventured to the coast at Sidi-Ifni. There we caught up on a few chores and did some washing. (One of the important places marked WM on my map) Only 10Dh per Kg. For some reason the nice young lady in charge of operating THE MACHINE (only one on a site of about 100 vans so the idiot campers are not allowed to touch it) only charged me 30Dhr for a 4Kg load. Maybe she felt sorry for me having seen all my tatty knickers!

Mark likes to be by the sea but I am just as happy in the countryside but my opinion of the town went up several points when we found an excellent “petit fours” bun shop. I was so impressed that I gave it a grade 2 rating and they were only 60Dh per Kg (only Essouiria and Ouazazate qualify for grade one in “Gills survey of bun shops”and they cost 130dh Kg!) We tested them, then before leaving went back and stocked up for the next few weeks!!!

Even better, down the road they had a cafe with a man doing fresh hot doughnuts.

After a couple of days we moved on to another coastal village with a camp site for a few days. Weather getting warmer now but still a bit too breezy in the afternoons at the coast.

Then we spent 2 weeks at one of our favourite sites on the organic farm run by a French man. Here we had also arranged to meet up with our English friends again, Mary and Peter and Kev and Barbara. We originally met them at the farm last year and have kept in touch. The bun stocks came in handy too as most days we had “a brew” at someone's van and obviously you have to have something with your coffee! Mary and Peter have definitely got the bun bug from me and when out in their Landrover (they have a caravan but we still speak to them as they are fun!) hunted down their own bun shop in the local town to augment supplies. We had a relaxing time walking round the farm and the hills behind where we go tortoise spotting. Unfortunately the lack of rain and especially the colder than normal weather in January/Feb had wiped out their courgette and aubergine crops, although the new maize crop and the orange trees were doing ok. The owner said the local people will have a hard time this year as there will be less field work for them weeding and harvesting crops and then less work for those in the packing places. Also anyone with livestock is finding it very hard as there is so little grazing for the animals. We have hardly seen any wild flowers compared to previous years.

Mar 2^nd

Our last campsite was next to a small fishing village and port surrounded by some very dry , bare hills. On the first day as we set out for a walk we saw a flock of a dozen or so strange large black birds pecking their way across the ground right outside the site. I can't imagine what they found to eat there. On closer inspection they were not totally black but had a nice iridescent sheen to them which was just as well as they weren't the prettiest things. We confirmed, later, in our bird book that they were the rare Bald Ibis which only exist in a few places in Morocco and maybe a few individuals in Turkey. It was quite ironic to see them so easily as 2 years ago we went to a special protected National Park about 100Km down the coast and paid to have a guide to help us see them. We only saw one flying off into the distance!

Now we are back at the coast and gradually working our way north. As usual we suddenly seem to be running out of time, only 2 weeks left in Morocco, before our final few weeks in Portugal.

What a country, as I sit here typing and thinking it must be time for afternoon coffee, a man has appeared at the van door selling cakes!! Well that's all for now, I have to check the merchandise.

Through the Rif

We had a really full day today. Started out North of Fes in a small town in the foothills of the Rif called Rhafsai, beautiful scenery all around. We were about to camp in a small forest nearby but the local police turned up saying it wasn’t safe so we moved on to a square in the centre of the town outside the hospital & post office. Very peaceful night and very surprisingly a 3g signal, I couldn’t even see a mast anywhere. We then did the drive through the Rif, had a couple of cars follow us trying to get us to stop but we just carried on. Around Ketama was chaotic mainly because it was souk day and plenty of folk trying to wave us down but no worse than honey sellers. Then took the N2 towards Al Hoceima for about 12k, then North to the Med coast. The road was good for about half way then just started falling apart but was just about passable with care in our van. We were relieved to hit the coast road near El Jebha but then it went downhill rapidly as we headed West  along the former coast road. They are completely rebuilding it whilst still enabling traffic to use it. It's like driving along a construction site but without any safety precautions. Most of the 4 hours we rarely got out of 3rd gear and we were mostly accompanied by heavy duty trucks with enormous loads of rocks or gravel. They attempted to dampen down the dust which just made it seem to stick to the van & windscreen all the better. It & us are completely covered. There was nowhere to stop and we have ended up in Oued Laou at the only camping before Martil. Its facilities are a real dump, no water, no toilets, possible hookup (we havent tried) for 44Dh but at least we are parked up and we get good 3g.
We were interested to see what the Med coast was like but wont try until they may have finished it in hopefully about 3 years. The scenery looked good from what we could see through the dust.
Will have to move from here tomorrow so probably 2 nights at Martil and a visit to Tetouan