Well, here we were again, at the Hotel in Algeciras, waiting for our travel companions to arrive on this new adventure through Morocco. Beer and wait… The truth is that they have about five hundred kilometers more coming from Barcelona, than we do, coming from Madrid. Take.
At last they are arriving. Greetings to the new companions and hugs to those who have already been comrades of adventures and misadventures (almost always adventures) on many other occasions. The first bad news: Josep’s car comes in third and fourth from Murcia. He plans to take him to Meknès where Gordito’s mechanics will be waiting for him with a new gearbox… We started well.
Dinner, a few hours of sleep and getting up early to catch the ferry. Procedures in Tarifa and crossing the strait with the sea somewhat rougher than other times. In any case, the Ferry barely moves between two-metre waves and an easterly wind. Swell.
Tangier. The usual. Procedures and more procedures. We go through the customs of the first, but I don’t know if it is more boring to go first and have to wait for everyone to pass, or to go last and wait for the procedures. In any case, a boredom that is nuanced a little by chatting with new acquaintances from past adventures and adventures to come. Then we find out that some of them have had problems with the papers (Do you remember, Naomi?). It doesn’t matter. Even if everything is in order, there is always something new that entertains you more than necessary in that customs. Once they made me go to several windows on the top floor just to show my passport at each of them. I remember that I would arrive at the window, show my passport to the official and send me to another window where I would show it again and they would send me back to another and so on. No matter how much I asked if there was a problem, I couldn’t get them to tell me. Finally, at one of the windows I visited, they told me that everything was fine and that I could leave. Anyway…
Then, the traffic of Tangier. The truth is that the first time you cross Tangier you think that everyone has gone crazy and that what have you missed among a tangle of cars that each one goes their own way regardless of whether another car is coming or a truck or a cyclist or all at the same time. It’s okay. You learn to put your nose in the roundabouts and at the end you pass. More or less scared at first, but you pass. At least, this time we have not encountered any accidents. Another time I passed by here, a car and a truck had hit each other. About fifty people must have gathered, all screaming a lot, but none of them thought of removing the crashed vehicles from the middle of the road, so the traffic jam was huge. I imagine it’s part of their culture: Haste kills. Patience.
Highway and first stops. We are getting to know each other. Overwhelming majority of Toyotas. A Hummer H2 and a fantastic Discovery break the Japanese hegemony. The rest, a showcase of the brand: Toyotas short, long, my 200, more prepared, less prepared (Isn’t Toni?). Older and more modern. In short, a little bit of everything.
Kilometers and more kilometers of asphalt, a few tolls and at the end Meknés. The question is: Will the gearbox be for Josep? And if it is… Will they be able to change it?
Affirmative. Arrival at the hotel car park. They were waiting and immediately get to work on Josep’s car. The rest of us go to take a shower and make time for dinner. Some go to see the Medina and others go to see the Roman ruins of Volibilis. I go out to see Josep and his car. If they told me a few days before that they were going to change a gearbox in a parking lot on the street, lying on the ground in any way and that then the car would work properly, my laughter would have reached the Sahara, five hundred kilometers further south. The time has come. We’re going to dinner.
Dinner is not bad. Maybe too vegetable. Vegetables and more vegetables. I finish dinner and go out again to see how the repair of Josep’s Toyota is going. More bad news: The replacement gearbox housing does not match the car’s. No problem. They disassemble the shafts and gears from the new box and mount them in the old housing. At this hour, my hopes of getting that car running again were well below zero. Hours pass and they begin to ride. Two in the morning and they finish. Josep is going to try it on. Incredible. The car runs like silk. If I don’t see it, I don’t believe it. Here many mechanics in white coats and computers in their pockets could do a master’s degree. Impressive work by these Moroccans who, with minimal means, in the middle of the street and in just over seven hours, have dismantled a gearbox, fixed it with parts from another and reassembled it. They have only stopped for dinner what we have prepared for them on the go at one of our camping tables. If we don’t insist on it, they don’t stop even for that. These people are really amazing. In addition, now, after all the work, they have ten hours by car waiting for them to return to Zagora. My greatest admiration and respect for them. That same breakdown, in Spain, could have taken weeks to be resolved. It is unimaginable to think that there is a workshop in Spain that solves it on the fly as these people have learned to do. I am sure that very few workshop managers would have been able to carry out this same repair, with these means and in this time. I am still perplexed. We go to sleep.
The alarm clock rings and upstairs again. Stage Meknes – Erfoud – Sand River – Merzouga. I don’t know why, but something tells me that the day is going to be long. It must be some kind of magic spell: Every time I cross the river of sand of the Chebbi (and I have already gone through a few), I end up going to bed at dawn. I don’t know how I manage to do it, but it’s always like that. I tell Josep about it and he laughs… “We’ll see,” he tells me, very optimistic.
The route, as beautiful as ever. Ifrane and his monkeys. Forests. Viewpoints. Oasis. Palm Groves. Asphalt and more asphalt. Finally, Erfoud. Petrol station and refuelling. The endless pilgrimage of kids begins offering us everything. I observe amused that the colleagues who come for the first time end up buying something from them. Certainly, it is not easy to get used to saying no to these guys, but there is no other choice. They are so tireless that if we bought everything they offer, we would have to stay and live in Morocco, without money to return and without a six-axle trailer to store what we bought.
To the west of here, in the desert, in the middle of nowhere, there are three strange constructions collectively called the Houses of Voth. They are the Celestial Staircase, The Golden Spiral and The City of Orion, distant from each other a few kilometers. I look forward to visiting them again. It is a
Pleasant excursion of about a hundred kilometers round trip and highly recommended to do it in an unoccupied morning or afternoon.
Finally we leave the petrol station and arrive at the river crossing at the exit of Erfoud. Surprise: There is a new bridge. You can still see the old one, a few meters upstream. In reality, more than bridges, they are fords made of cement in which water passes under and over it. Road, a bit of track and the sand begins. We are just north of the Erg Chebbi. First hooked. A couple of cars remain. A little help, a little time and everyone gets out of the traps. It’s very windy and brings sand. We still did not know that this kind of sandstorm was going to accompany us practically throughout our stay in southern Morocco.
The dunes. Almost always. First one stays, then another, then another… We all take the cars out while the night, kindly, wraps us in its arms, kindly, yes, but the thing is that we are completely in the dark. Finally, between the stations, the slings, the winches, the shovels, a few walks with the flashlights and a little imagination, they all manage to get out. Great work by Josep, our guide, who has been going up and down dunes non-stop until all the cars are out of the quagmire and we help him as much as we can. There is a Toyota rented in Morocco, practically on the street, which is the one that has the worst time on the sands but in the end we are all out of the dunes and a Moroccan in a jeep takes us along an easier road (supposedly) than the rest of the river of sand. Indeed the path is easier, but if you are careless we end up in Zagora. The detour that makes us take is immense. Days later Josep tells me that after the good man had been waiting for us to take all the cars out of the dunes, it was not a question of telling him that we were passing him and that we were leaving on our own. I totally agree with him, but the thing is that in the end we arrived at our Kasbah – refuge – home at one in the morning, for a change. Dinner (!! Thank goodness, at this time!…), shower and sleep.
Monday dawns. Today we are in less of a hurry when we wake up and we have breakfast with a certain calmness. Dune day at the Erg Chebbi. Flat wheels and go for it. Everything is going better than yesterday. We travel along the river of sand in the opposite direction to the one we were supposed to have followed last night and enter the dunes. Some slight hooking, help from the guides (Greetings to Omar) and arrival at the Hidden Oasis. We meet friends. On the one hand, people from Territori4x4, on the other, some friends from Madrid and Bilbao who did the Sin Fronteras Challenge with me in 2009. Nice time catching up on the adventures we’ve had since we parted ways at the end of the Challenge. As in other groups, Morocco has its own particular world and in the end you end up meeting a lot of people who you then meet again, trip after trip, more or less in the same places. Coca Cola, a chat and the baptism of the people with Josep as the supposed officiating chaplain. Heads and shirts
soaked wets, lots of photos and lots of laughter. In the afternoon, Mai and I decided that we had enough dunes and stayed in the kasbah. I’m quite satisfied because it seems that I’ve finally managed to learn how to drive the Land Cruiser 200 with its automatic transmission in the dunes. The truth is that it has been difficult for me, because you have to learn to dose the gas so that it changes the speed more or less when you want it and not when the car decides to do so. Little by little and by making mistakes, you learn, as in all things. We spend the afternoon off checking my car and Toni’s while the others leave. We cleaned the air filters and checked that we had half a Sahara in them. We return the earth and dust to their natural place and we also take the opportunity to buy some souvenirs of this kasbah in which I feel more and more comfortable. Then those who have left will tell me that they have had a wonderful time making thousands of dunes, but that for this time, they have not climbed the Great Dune. It will be again. The Great Dune is not going to leave here. Dinner and a drink afterwards sitting on the sun loungers next to the kasbah pool. Every day has fun times, tense times and boring times, but the little time with a drink and the night chat is starting to become an almost essential tradition.
The next day, a long drive to M’hamid. Forbidden track. Some dust and a lot of mud in some sectors. Some get caught in the mud and have to be removed. In the end, we all passed without any major problem. Ouzina and Ramlia. I was here in December 2009 and the dust was so thick that you couldn’t see a Unimog at two meters. Literally. I almost crashed into his rear. We had no choice but to stop and wait for the air to clear up a little. Now it’s windy and there isn’t so much dust, although the sandstorm becomes so intense that we stop seeing each other, it makes us lose track and we divide into three groups. Search for references and fifteen minutes later we are all together again. Lunch in a small hostel and then stone tracks that make us go slowly. Guard posts. We are very close to the Algerian border. According to the plans I use, the line of the border is not officially very defined, so we do not know very well if the border will be crossed at some point or not. The point is that we passed the position without problems. A little further on we pass another military post and walk along the bed and walls of a canyon based on many curves, a lot of stone, and many ups and downs. Finally, a few hours later we reached the asphalt, near M’hamid.
More bad news, although fortunately, it is not serious. David’s car has lost the pin of one of the rear bridge stays and the radiator of Joan’s car has a small leak. Emergency arrangement with the pin and travel of the two injured cars to Zagora so that Mohamed the Fat, once again, can remedy the situation. No wonder. With so many stones, the strange thing is that the cars do not end up in small pieces, and we have gone very slowly. Palm grove, more road, Tagounite, diesel and air filter cleaning. I think sand and dust have come out of mine to make a medium-sized dune. Arrival in M’hamid. Great hotel. Large and very good rooms. The owners are very nice people who tell us funny and less funny anecdotes about what it means to run a hotel in Morocco. Beer and dinner. Drink and chat on the terrace. To sleep.
Again early morning and stage to enjoy it. M’hamid – Sacred Oasis – Erg Chebbi – Iriqui – Zagora. Refreshment in the Oasis, photos of the cars, photos of the oasis, photos of friends and photos of the thousands of frogs in the stream. Walk to Cheggaga and Iriqui. Once again, we enjoyed ourselves in the sandy river of Iriqui. Photos. Josep takes us to a fossil site. There are thousands of them. It will never cease to amaze the fact that a few million years ago, this now desolate area was a sea teeming with life. From what I see on the GPS, we are relatively close to Foum Zgiz. We passed through here last year when we were returning from Playa Blanca. Wonderful trip, that of 2.010. Lunch and return without news. Road and sandstorm (again) to Zagora. We meet Mohamed the Fatty and his green Land Rover at the entrance to Zagora. Hugs and greetings. Arrival at the hotel, dinner and of course, a drink. Meeting with Jordi’s group, who comes from Playa Blanca and who tells us about their adventures and misadventures. In our group, some anger about Madrid’s victory over Barcelona in the Copa del Rey (Isn’t it Enrique?…). Otherwise, there are few football fans in this group, so there is no room for too many post-match controversies. Another drink, more laughter and to sleep. Some angry and others happy. That’s life.
Maundy Thursday arrives. Zagora – Palmeral – Ait Ben Haddou – Ouarzazate. In the end, we left the Palmeral track (which is quite boring, by the way) and decided to go by road to Ouarzazate and by track to Ait Benhaddou. Since we never plan where we will eat, it is always possible to find some new and exotic place to satisfy hunger. This time, it turns out that we end up eating in some old abandoned movie sets, near Ouarzazate. We make several groups and each one chooses the house where they will install their equipment. We get into a huge room with the ceiling supported by beams that do not inspire too much confidence. It would be the last straw if the roof decided to fall precisely today that we are eating underneath. Surprisingly, the roof has resisted a few more hours without sinking and has allowed us to eat without any surprises. We finished eating and going to the cars. The track is fast and fun. We crossed the river a few times and got fed up with taking pictures. Visit Ait Benhaddou, some shopping and Ouarzazate.
We return to the hotel where we were two years ago and where I always get lost looking for our room. It’s not that I’m particularly clumsy, it’s that the layout of the hotel is curious. For starters, you have the front desk on the first floor. That is, you arrive, go up the stairs loaded like a mule with your suitcases to check in and then you have to go down them again with all your luggage because it turns out that your room is in the furthest pavilion, past the pool. There are things that are not very easy to understand, but anyway… Dinner and go to sleep.
This is coming to an end. Ouarzazate – Marrakech via the Trail of a Thousand Kasbahs and Talouet. Not really. It turns out that the Trail of a Thousand Kasbahs is no longer the Track of a Thousand Kasbahs, but the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs. They have asphalted it. A disaster for us, but a big one advantage for the inhabitants of the valley. I’m happy for them. We will have to look for new paths outside the asphalt. Visit to Talouet (which I don’t describe to avoid spoiling future surprises, is that okay, Josep?, heh, heh), Port of Tizin Tichka and Marrakech. The hotel is great, although with some small initial parking problems that we skillfully solve by parking in the parking lot of another hotel. We leave the car park with a dissimulated face and after lunch, we regularize our situation as illegals in the parking lot of the neighboring hotel and park in the one that corresponds to us. Anger of the guards, as is natural. An inevitable afternoon visit to Jamar El Fna, the inevitable purchase of a souvenir and the inevitable dinner of pinchos in the beach bars of the Plaza. Fewer people than other times, I seem to observe. Crisis, prevention with recent events in North Africa or both? In Morocco everything is perfectly quiet, as always. Ride after dinner, rental of a buggy and return to the hotel. Today, as each group has gone their own way, we don’t see each other at the hotel and there is no after-dinner drink. Straight to bed.
Last African stage: Marrakech – Casablanca – Tangier. Visit to the Mosque of Casablanca. Instead of going to the Mosque, we dedicate ourselves to washing the car and putting it in good condition. Once washed and without all the mud and dust that it had on it, it should weigh about a hundred kilos less, like this, by eye. Good job by the operators and fifty dirhams, plus the tip, of course. We have already seen the Mosque a couple of times on previous trips and we prefer to go all the way to Temara. Walk along the beach and rocks while waiting for our friends to arrive from Casablanca. The best of the day: The meal all together (We have joined Jordi’s group who comes from Playa Blanca). We are told that the Hidden Canyon track is not the Hidden Canyon Track either, but the Hidden Canyon Road… Ah, progress!!! … This year, they have made a very similar journey to the one we did last year. Atlantic Coast to Playa Blanca and Tan-Tan, turn east to reach Erg Cheggaga and Iriqui and exit north through Foum Zgiz. Last year, we arrived at Playa Blanca and Tan-Tan, then we went to Foum Zgiz and from there, we entered Iriqui and Cheggaga, leaving through the river of sand and M’hamid towards Ouarzazate. The most boring part of the day: The many kilometres of asphalt ahead of us. We finally arrived in Tangier. Arrival at the hotel and saturated car parks, for a change. Dinner, shower and sleep for a few hours. Today we are all in a hurry to sleep, knowing the early morning and the many kilometers of road that await us.
The end is coming. Early morning, ferry and to Tarifa. Some of us have 722 kilometers left…. Others have 1,200 left. And on top of that, the traffic jams typical of the end of Holy Week. Patience and driving. We find the characteristic traffic jam in Despeñaperros and some stops near Madrid. I say that one day the works on the highway that avoids Despeñaperros will be completed. I seem to remember that it took twenty-five years to build the Monastery of El Escorial, from 1561 to 1586. I am sure that at this rate, the works of this future highway will surpass in duration those of the famous Monastery. I hope that it will be my son and not my future grandchildren who will finally see the culmination of the work, although I don’t know if I am being optimistic. Finally, Radial 4, arrival in Madrid, M-40, M-30 and home. The “Morocco and Sahara” of 2011 has just ended and I am already thinking of returning as soon as possible to look for new routes or repeat routes already done. Never mind. What really matters to me is to come back.
It was a pleasure to have shared one more trip to Morocco with these colleagues. Our affection and our memories for Josep, Issa and Laura (Thank you for everything, Josep). David and Dulcis. Carles, Virtu, Andrés and Marc. Joan and Montse. Enrique and Mercedes. Fernando and Kani. Toni and Naomi. Joan, María Jesús and Alba. Toni, Irene and Monica. You know that, in the end, it turned out that we were all the companions of young Marc on this trip. Young, but we all get tired of laughing at his jokes and comments. (Are you no longer on pause, Marc?)
Thanks also to Territori4x4. The organization, as always, impeccable. From Madrid we send you all our strongest hug. Mai and Fernando Madrid, May 03, 2.011
