Dusty roads....

It’s Thursday, so this must be Boudnib…

We’re keeping notes, you see, otherwise we’d completely lose track (ha!) of where we are with all this blogging stuff. It does actually take a fair amount of effort to keep up, and the lack of time to do all the essential chores doesn’t help with the flow of narrative juice. Anyway, enough boring excuses, on with the show!

We’re esconced in the lemon grove at Camping Rekkam – a fine spot with great showers, which is the reason we’re here. “Wimps!” I hear you cry. But…the only water we passed over the last 2 days – pardon the double-entendre- looked a little less than enticing where bathing was concerned,  and we have a rule not to shower with our drinking water…you never know…. 

  and to give you some idea of how Daphne's crew might look by now, this is her rear end -

So to catch up on the last 2 days, we need to rewind to yesterday, and I wrote this as we relaxed after quite a long day:

Wed 30 Mar – Figuig to Korima pass

A beer, a shady spot to camp, no noisy neighbours, cordon bleu cookery going on in the kitchen…who could want more? This is us tonight:

Looks idyllic, and it is. There are moments in your life when you really wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, and for us, this is one of those. It feels even better for having crossed over 200 kms of piste to get here. In fact, it wasn’t really testing driving like some previous days, but hot – 38C at 1300 – and blowing a gale most of the day. Still, we’ve had 2 days to rest and sort ourselves out, so not a major drama.

The site in Figuig – the only campsite, as it turned out – was superb. Despite being the “only game in town” we had the place to ourselves. Even though it was on the edge of town it was quiet – no dogs or muezzin. This was possibly due to the hotel, in whose grounds we camped, being almost the last building in town before the border with Algeria, whose lights we could see from the terrace:

 

We took a stroll  through town yesterday and did some shopping for basic food, more to practice speaking “local” than anything. Sue’s very pleased with herself for doing the whole thing in Arabic, including the negotiations for a chicken. The subject of the debate was still alive, but not for long.

I won’t say we got spattered with its blood, but as good as. No arguments about whether it’s fresh. Tasted marvellous, too.

While we waited for the de-feathering process to complete, the locals came and went, we had a glass of mint tea and exchanged the time of day. All very satisfying that the months of effort with the language were paying off. We’re both still dropping into French sometimes, but then so do the locals; it seems to be interchangeable, but they definitely appreciate the effort not to. It works magic in other areas, too. While we waited in the butcher’s I felt a gentle tug at the back of my shirt. I knew it was the guy who’d been loitering at the door as we came in, making signs for money by rubbing his fingers together. We did the Standard English thing and ignored him, but I knew it wasn’t going to work for long. Since the distance from the shop doorway to the counter was about 2 feet, he hadn’t had to pursue me very far. Now, when we were getting our tour in Fes, we were approached by a woman who said something to Mohammed, and he dismissed her, very curtly we thought, with a phrase which basically says “May God give you help”. I got him to repeat it slowly and he explained that she was begging for money but clearly wasn’t ill nor impoverished. Apart from registering that even the locals get fed up with the behaviour of their neighbours, the phrase he used was different from that which we’d picked up at home. I turned to our shadow and used the same expression, quietly, that Mohammed had used. The effect was magical. The locals stopped talking, the beggar nodded and walked away, and I felt satisfied….and a bit mean at the same time….but “when in Rome..”

We really enjoyed our “days off”, catching up with this blog, playing with some of Daphne’s toys and fine tuning some of our gear in the light of the last week’s experience. It’s time to move on, though. 

Looking into Algeria through a gap in the berm.

We want to get from the “furthest east” point across to where we can turn south without tripping over a border fence. The first leg of this will be from Figuig to Beni Tajjite by way of Mengoub, and piste (track) all the way apart from the first 60Kms west from F.

We used R602 for the first 60 kms or so then joined the piste that features in Chris Scott’s book – ME4, in reverse as before. This is a fast track with a firm surface but with a few areas where the oueds have washed out. Some are easily crossed but...

...others need a little more thought to get over:

Sue did a couple of hours in the driving seat. 

She was hesitant to start with – not wanting to break anything - and with me providing “appropriate advice” from the navigator’s compartment. Take that how you like, but we didn’t come to blows and Daphne survived the experience undamaged. This is the point where I’d “insert Smiley” if I could. ..:-). 

The driving was interesting and the scenery spectacular.

We passed the disused railway station at Mengoub, with its ancient tracks twisted by time:

Since we were on a constant heading of west and the wind was southerly, the left side window and vent had to be kept shut, and the driver’s window could only be opened a crack, so we were slowly boiling up inside with a temperature on the cab thermometer of 40C at one stage. We don’t have aircon, so nothing for it but to sweat – sorry, perspire! Despite this, the blowing dust got in and we soon had gritty teeth and a pink coating to everything else. One of my pet hates is sand in my sandwiches, and today ….the remains of the chicken we cooked last night was eaten in the poor shelter of what would be a bothy at home, and we debated the wisdom of continuing in the face of the dust storm. We decided, rightly as it’s turned out, to press on. We had an escape route – ME5 – after a couple of hours, but I thought that as the daytime temperature dropped, so too would the wind strength and a wild camp wouldn’t be too unpleasant.

The aft passenger door catch gave up again so I lashed it closed with a ratchet strap. It would appear that it isn’t the load shifting against the door that’s the problem, but something mechanical that will probably have to wait until we get home to fix properly. In the meantime, the lash-up will do.

Thursday dawned cloudy but despite a few noisy blasts during the night, the winds had abated leaving a hazy day with all the dust suspended in the air. We completed the route down to Ben Tajjite, stopped to buy some groceries and picked up ME7 down to Boudnib. 

B-T was busy with people but there didn’t seem to be a lot going on. It was just after lunchtime and the kids were on their way back to school. We got the usual requests – nay, demands – for “stilo/bonbon” and the usual abuse when we refused. Eventually Sue got fed up with being called a “bitch” an a "bastard" and gave them some gutter French of her own. At this point an adult came along and gave the kid who was making most noise a cuffing and we left town pissed off. Such a contrast to the other exchanges and meetings we’ve had on the trail and in other towns…This second leg was interesting. The piste track is being upgraded and a new tarmac surface runs alongside it for half it’s length, but hasn’t been opened for use yet and thus there’s a track that runs roughly alongside it. Because this track is relatively new and unconsolidated, it’s very sandy and quite a challenge to drive. I suppose, with hindsight, we should have let some air out of the tyres to help with traction, but we weren’t expecting the sand patches to extend for quite so long. The sandy piste stopped about halfway, at the same time as the tarmac on the new road. After that, it was back to what we expected, a firm surface with lots of dips and gullies to keep the speed down and the attention up. We actually only managed an average of about 12-15mph all day, but any faster than that and you’re continually braking and changing gear to allow for the dips and drops in the surface. I could just blast over them, but we don’t have any rescue backup like the guys who we’ve seen do just that, and a breakdown due to simply going too fast and busting something underneath just isn’t worth the risk as a solo vehicle. We stayed in low box a lot of the time, just because it’s less effort and gives a lot more control over the trickier bits; the trade off is a lower average speed, but it’s more comfortable, and we ain’t in no hurry.

Lots of oued crossings today. These watercourses vary in width from a metre or so to several hundred. Some are straight forward, others require a little more thought. The rain that creates the flash floods that create these obstacles originates high in the jebel, so if you happen to choose a nice, flat, shady, dry, river bed for a camping spot, you might have a very rude interruption to your sleep. If you saw the TV news 2 years ago, you’ll remember the huge amount of damage that was done by these freak conditions, and the terrible destructive power of the water/rubble/ boulder soup that smashed along them.

 “More people die of drowning in the desert than of thirst” I read somewhere. Looking at the damage to most of the bridges, you can see why that might be.

 We met a few people along the way but considering the distance we've travelled, remarkably few. Apart from the kids in B-T, they've all been friendly, smiling and waving as we passed.

We asked permission to take this picture and wanted more but got the impression that wouldn't be well received. The 2 guys in the background were extremely friendly otherwise. Sue caught the eye of a shepherd at one point: "Hey, he's blowing kisses at me!" Sometimes I dunno what planet my wife's from..."I think that putting two fingers to his lips means he wants a cigarette, my love."

There's a lot more I'd like to add to this post, but there are limitations to battery power and I'm about to see the last of my spare. Standby for more pictures later as edits to this, but the site wi-fi while widespread moves at the speed of a striking sloth. Bye!

Furthest East - welcome to Figuig.

Chris Scott has produced what many consider to be the best guide to off-road travel in Morocco, in English, anyway. This tome is packed with useful information and we made good use of it on the previous trip. There's a route - ME6 - that goes from Figuig to Bouarfa and we decided to follow that, but in reverse. This makes deciphering the waypoint notes a bit tricky as all the "lefts" become "rights" and the "befores" are now "afters". Quite a challenge to make sense of them as some of what look like obvious features aren't mentioned, and others that are can only be seen in the rear view mirrors.

Anyway, a well plotted trail that gave us an easy -compared to the previous day - transit.

The shot above shows the "shady tree" at the oued at Km53 if you're southbound. Chris has included lots of interesting little asides in the route descriptions, and we were intrigued to find out what he meant by "you pass some weathered granite boulders that have their uses" at Km70. We stopped to check around in case we'd missed them...

Our estimate of where we were was about 150 metres out based on our odometer. Just around the rocks visible on the left of the picture are these:

Don't look much from this viewpoint. Just big rocks...

...but if you've got clean mirrors, you'll see these as you go by. Hobbit Houses. As we explored, we disturbed a jackal (Desert fox?) who promptly legged it before I could get a picture.

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If you've been paying attention, you'll see that we're now pointing the wrong way. This shot is towards the south-east. We've had to turn around at a large lake that's formed following the construction of a dam. We explored the shoreline but eventually it was clear that we'd have to backtrack and find another way around the lake. This wasn't difficult using the compass and the binoculars to spot the new piste on the far bank. We just followed the west bank until we could cross the oued easily. As we drew level with our previous high point, we could see the dust trails of a number of 4x4s that'd followed the same trail as us and found the same problem. I counted 4  of them milling about. There were actually a lot more, as we were later to find out.

On the far side of the dam we came very close to the Morocco-Algeria border, and no doubt our progress was being monitored from somewhere on the peaks around us. Sue suggested that "if we were to just sort of reach over the berm for just a few feet, we could claim our Algerian sticker. I'm sure no-one would see...". Yep.

The border berm is difficult to miss, so no excuses for just "getting lost while out for a stroll". Would've been a good idea to do this in Northern Ireland. Might've saved some former colleagues some embarrassment. Maybe.








The final run into Figuig was easy apart from the arrival in our 6 o'clock of the aforementioned 4x4 gang. From the dam we'd seen 4 before we got bored watching. After 3 of them had roared past doing warp speed and covering us in a dust cloud so thick we couldn't see a thing for several seconds....a glance in the mirrors showed the headlights of at least another 6 inbound. We'd been considerate and moved well over to the right of the piste to let them pass, but this put us downwind of the dust and it was literally choking us, not to mention flying blind for a dangerous length of time. I moved across to the left - upwind- side. Now they were approaching us in our dust. Made no difference to the breakneck speed, though. Now, I think I have what's been called "mechanical empathy"; I don't floor the gas pedal on a cold engine, gang-bar switches with a swipe of the side of my hand, hit spanners with hammers, use screwdrivers as prybars...that kinda thing. So when I see a bloke come flying out of a dustcloud at 60+ mph and I know - coz I can see what he can't - that theres a half metre deep gully ahead and he ain't got no wings....I wince. Not for him, for his car. I reckon you could hear the crunch in Marrakesh as his dampers bottomed out and if he's got any teeth left they haven't got fillings in 'em.

We caught up with them at a police checkpoint outside town. We handed over our fiches - all our details preprinted (Thank you, Tim Cullis) which put a big smile on the face of the Feds - the Fast Frenchies in a line ahead of us were still licking pencil stubs and filling out forms as we passed on. By 6 we were nicely settled into the campsite next to the hotel. Miller time!

This is really pleasant. Quiet, we're the only guests, good wi-fi - which is why you're reading this - and hot showers. We think this might be a couple of days R&R coming up.

                                    This is the view of Algeria from the pub. All it lacks is beer......

                                                                        Unlike us! Salut!

Round'n Round'n Rock'n Roll

Our overnight camp near the N19 was made more enjoyable by the lack of any noises - like barking hounds - that have disturbed us up to now. It's still pretty chilly once the sun's gone down, but worth it for the clear view of the stars you can enjoy.

Sue has perfected the use of our gas stove to produce really first-class meals. Tonight we ate chicken thighs wrapped in turkey 'ham' with edam cheese in the centre, secured with cooking string and gently fried, served with mixed salad and accompanied with chapattis made from scratch. This was followed by oranges soaked in rum served with dark chocolate....the ability to make bread in the van without an oven gives us longer range for wild camping as we are not reliant on having to touch base with shops.

As we packed up on Saturday, a couple of shepherds turned up and we spent some time chatting. They touched their mouths and wagged a finger as they approached, which I guess was their way of saying "It's OK, we're not begging for food". Very pleasant, both of them, and clearly very interested in Daphne and our tent. They moved off and sat on the walls of a ruined shelter a few yards away. A few minutes later another arrived. This was a different situation completely. While the first visitors were middle aged and talkative, this later visitor was a teenager, dressed in Adidas kit and equipped with an Android phone. Not equipped with good manners, though. He didn't understand French nor my basic Dharija, asked for a cigarette using sign language, and looked annoyed when we said we didn't smoke. Then he wanted my shirt. No? How about the shoes, then? All this with sign language. I was busy at the same time with stowing the tent and busting for the loo. Not to put too fine a point on it, I needed to squat. There wasn't any cover for hundreds of yards so I was going to have to move away some distance, and I wasn't happy to leave Sue on her own with this character. We lost no time in slinging everything into the back, and I made to say goodbye to our friend, shake his hand and wish him luck. He shied away with a look of disgust and wouldn't touch me.

We cleared off and I found a nice little gully not far away. A close call! Today's plan is to reach Tendrara by way of Borj de Bel-Frissate. The N19 - which we suppose is the road running southeast that we're on, should take us to a crossroads where we'll turn right for 25kms or so to reach Metarka and hopefully some sandy tracks. The N19 was marked as such on one of our maps but has been tarmac'ed recently which was a little disappointing but increasingly common across the country. Anyway, the navigation still wasn't leaving me with a "warm and fuzzy feeling" that all was as it should be. Distant hills seemed to be too far left when they should've been to the right of the nose. The roadside markers showing "N19" and the distance to Matarka didn't make sense either, indicating that we were closer to it than we should be. Well, we concluded once we drove into Matarka that the N19 wasn't where it's marked on both the maps we're using. If it had been, we'd have had to make a 90 degree right turn off it 25 kms back to get where we are now. No matter, we have a fix and can now make some sense of what we're looking at - at least they can't move the mountains. Reaching B de B-F we got off the road and set a heading from the compass that's take us across country and eventually to Tendrara. About 25kms of driving, and it looked as if we 'd have some tracks to follow. Things went well until lunchtime and a short break for food.

The afternoon's drive was a little more "interesting", you could say. With the masts of Tendrara visible on the horizon to confirm our compass, the nav should've been staightforward. The tracks that we'd been occasionally picking up now went in the wrong direction so we tried to force a way through off-piste. This became a real struggle. The ground was almost completely covered with broken rocks about the size of half bricks and large clumps of scrubby grass that had nutty centres. A really rough ride, and of necessity done at a crawling pace in low range and occasional difflock. Steep slopes scrabbled up and carefully inched down and dry stream beds - not really oueds - that were too deep to drive down into and too wide to straddle. Short of getting the bridge mats or shovel out, we did our best to find places to cross these without the risk of getting stuck. Obviously it's impossible to keep any constant direction and after several dozen retreats from blind alleys we had worked so far into this maze that getting out by a simple reversal wasn't going to be easy, if even possible. The shaking and banging around Daph was getting was worrying me too, and eventually she protested - the rear side door on Sue's side burst open when one of our Wolf boxes slammed into it. These had all been lashed down but had worked loose enough to burst the lock when hurled against the inside. The door refused to latch shut so we had to tie it off with a strap across the cab to stop it opening too far.
The battering continued as we decided to adopt Plan B and head back west to find a track - any track - that'd relieve the stress and give us a breather. We'd reached the "point of no further progress" at a wide oued that had so many side-shoots and steep crumbly banks that there was no way to cross it safely and it completely blocked any more eastbound travel. This might have been the reason that the tracks we'd used previously all went north-south...nobody goes east from here.....doh!

We found our way out, of course, even though we were both thinking at one point that we'd be spending the night out there. Tendrara was a bit of a One-Horse Town. We stopped at the Ziz (service station) where there were a number of guys sitting around the fuel pumps. The sign was broken and no-one made any attempt to get up and operate the pumps. A question revealed that there wasn't any fuel and their rather surprised reaction at it suggests that there hasn't been any for a very long time It's mentioned in Chris Scott's guide book, and that was reprinted in 2013. I was told that there might be some "cent cinquante metres" along the road, but as this was basically a stone's throw away it didn't take long to find that this wasn't an option either. Trying to replace our gaz bottle was a similar story, so we gave up and went back into the boondocks to find somewhere to camp - hopefully far enough away that we'd be undisturbed.

Sunday morning. Good night's sleep. We were "investigated" shortly after we stopped by a guy in Toyota 4x4 who presumably was making sure we were OK as he didn't stop, just drove back to the piste and disappeared. The only other activity we saw was this guy - the local equivalent of the milkman:

He went past a couple of times, and the object on the cart is, I think, a water tank. We assumed he was doing the rounds of the Berber camps we'd seen when we drove in.









It's always a concern that our presence might encourage unwanted attention, and we try as best we can to stay out of sight. With a Landrover this colour, that ain't so easy, so I'm always happy when Daph has got a good layer of crud attached.

  The military use cam nets to disguise their vehicles. We do it "different"....

OK, so it resembles a Pikey's boot sale, but you have to admit it addresses a lot of those Principles of Camouflage they go on about in Rambo movies...Shape, shine, silhouette.. blah.. blah.. yawn. Time for some different kinds of maintenance, too:

and with water being a precious commodity, one can't afford to waste it....

We did the laundry yesterday too. Our bit of plumbing pipe did a really good job, especially since it had a really good shake. I was actually surprised to find that we still had it, and everything else, still on board after that experience.











A stop in Bouarfa was now necessary to resupply the food locker, get the gaz bottle replaced and get more diesel. All this was achieved for a lot less, in terms of cost, than back home. Two loaves of bread, two 5 litre bottles of water and a refill of the 907 gaz would rush you about £35. The bill in Bouarfa was 65Dh, about £4.30. OK, so the gaz bottle has seen better days, but hey - gas is gas.

OK. Next stop Figuig. We've been calling it "Fig-wig" but this has caused some confusion locally, particularly with the Gendarmerie, so for the benefit of future travellers as ignorant as us, it's "Fig-eeg".

Rockin' across the Rekkam

In 2014, Sue and I went to the Overland Adventure show at Stratford. We went primarily to look at the trade stands, tour operators and chat to/lust over the trips others had done and vehicles they'd prepped. Fishing for ideas, basically. We took the time to listen to a presentation by a guy called James Davis. He's a Canadian (I think - forgive me if I've got details wrong here) who, for some reason connected, I think, with the military ended up buying a Defender without a roof, painting it pink and taking a trek across the seldom-visited area to the east of the normal tourist trail - the Rekkam Plateau. This appealed to us so, as part of the plan this year we intend to cover some of this territory ourselves.

The culture "tick" in Fes now complete, we left early on Friday (25th March) to make a start on this. First things first, though, and we needed a resupply of essentials. There's a Marjane supermarche - the equivalent of Tesco - not far from the campsite which we'd attempted to recce the previous afternoon after returning from the medina. One of the problems of having a rooftent is that once it's up and sorted, your transport becomes a static caravan. Not good for shopping trips, so we'd decided to walk. After 40 minutes we decided that, even if we found it soon it was too far to carry anything heavier than a bag of oranges back to the camp. As we retraced our steps a car pulled up, 2 blokes inside, who had obviously recognised that 1. we were tourists, 2. that we looked scruffy enough to be campers and 3. the only campsite within walking range was 3kms up the road. Would we like a lift? We accepted with some enthusiasm. An educated chap at the wheel, he was pleased to find that we spoke English, which he wanted to practice. He then rooted about in his glovebox and proudly showed us a copy of of the equivalent of Bert Weedon's Play In A Day - English Language. The cover design was straight out of the 1950's and the first chapter was guidance in how to commiserate with people who'd had a bereavement...He was very kind, dropped us off at the site gates and looked pleased that we could thank him in Dharija even though we'd spoken French up to then. In fact even though we were in a French language dominant area, making the effort to speak Arabic was clearly appreciated, even if it was only a few words.

The night was interesting...prior to going to bed there'd been a proper dogfight going on in the near vicinity of the tent -within a hundred metres or so, I reckon. One participant got rather closer and was making a real nuisance of himself, so before climbing the ladder to bed I lobbed a rock -well, a large stone - into the darkness and the dog's general direction. As we were the only one of three occupants of the site I had no worries about whacking someone who might complain. A yelp followed by rapidly retreating barking suggested that I'd scored a hit. Didn't stop the buggers carrying on for several hours more, though. Once they'd finished, one of the 272 mosques in Fes started the early call, a cry rapidly taken up by the other 271. We'd forgotten it was Friday....As dawn broke, so was the silence broken by gunfire. I've heard enough of that to recognise a shotgun from a rifle, and these cracks were from something high-powered and close. I suppose we should've been alarmed, but only if you believe that you'd really be in danger in one of the largest towns in Morocco at 6-30 in the morning. We went back to sleep for an hour, when more shots woke us. Enquiries of the guardien later revealed that it was a hunting party, raised to take care of a pack of noisy feral dogs that'd been annoying the neighbourhood. Oh, really? Somebody'd reported that some of them were injured and hence the cull. We did wonder whether.....nah, I'm no good at ball games so the chances of me hitting anything with a thrown rock....couldn't hit a barn from the inside.....wasn't me, guv!

Anyway, I digress once again. We stocked up on some "fresh" for the days ahead and invested in a Maroc Telecom dongle to get us some internet while off-grid. We've found that these work well but only within about 5 to 10 miles of a mast. Plenty of those around, but where there's a mast there's people..and dogs...which together add up to a disturbed nights sleep. We'll do our best though, even if it means parking up on the outskirts of towns for an hour or two to upload our stuff. We're sending tracking messages out using the satphone, so it's really only the blog which needs regular attention.

Next stop - the Rekkam Plateau. It's quite a trek from Fes to Guercif where our route began so we took the peage autoroute to speed things up a bit. Guercif is on about the same latitude as Fes, so our aim of going from the top of Morocco to the bottom "off road" we could argue wouldn't be compromised by heading east on tarmac for a while....right? The toll was 60 Dh - about £4.50 - for 160kms. Sue has difficulty with numbers in French, though, and the toll booth chap got quite patronising - just like a Brit in the same position, I thought. Personally I don't find it difficult remembering the difference between "soixante" and "neuf"....perhaps its because of the company I've been forced to keep over the years.

Stopped for fuel in Guercif and did the chat in Arabic with only one glitch, as far as I could tell. The Arabic for 5 is khamsah, and the "kh" sound comes from the back of the throat and top of the chest - not a sound we English make except when hawking up a throat full of phlegm, so I've become lazy and just pronounced it from the back of my mouth, lie the "C" in "car". Needless to say that "kamsa" means something quite different than "five".
Picking up the pink line on the map was straightforward but, once again, we found sealed road where we'd hoped for piste, but the original rough track still existed alongside the new road. Dilemma - do we drive the piste out of bloody-minded determination, or be sensible and use the tarmac? The idea was to use the pistes because they'd take us off the beaten track and into wilder and more remote areas. If the new road went to the same places, what was the point in ignoring it? We didn't, but took the first opportunity to kick up dust at Mahirija and the Plaine de Tafrata. This took us to Rchida and a long climb out of the valley to the plateau. From a distance this looks impossibly steep but as the distance decreases, the obvious weak lines and possible tracklines start to show. As we passed slowly through the village I noticed a young guy make a T-sign with fingers of his left hand and the flat palm of his right, tapping them together. I hoped this wasn't a way of saying "this is a dead end, mate". We started up, once again on brand new tarmac. Boring but easy.

Pretty soon though, we were back on dirt again. Big grins. The cedar forest was pretty dense in places but the track was dry and firm, no rockfalls or fallen trees to cope with, and every indication that this was a well used track but to where, we couldn't tell. It's possible that it led to the comms masts and buildings we could see high above us. If so, it might well be a "route barree" with a military purpose. What the hell, we've got time..let's just poke our noses in and see.

We soon reached a fork in the road, flipped a mental coin and took the right fork, upwards. After about another 500 metres of climb we met a couple of locals coming down. Where were we going?
"Tendrara"
"The piste is closed. You cannot go this way. You must go back" was the giste of the conversation, in French.
Assuming that our earlier guess was correct - the army would stop further progress - we turned around and headed back down, following them at a distance and replanning. As we reached the aforementioned fork in the road, they were waiting, we assumed to make sure that we didn't take a wrong turn. "Can we use this other track to get to the top?" we asked. "Yes, but you cannot go that way to Tendrara. There's no water, no food, no hotels, no fuel". Ah! We now see the problem they thought we'd have...Once we'd convinced them that we weren't mad or fugitives from the law, they seemed accept that yes, it could be done...but why would you want to? Nice blokes, and helpful. We thanked them and said goodbye. They drove off shaking their heads and laughing. "N'est pas possible..."

Au contraire...here we are nearly at the top, and still smiling. Note that we've been collecting a little firewood along the way. I did tell you about my acquisitive habits earlier, didn't I? On a related note, you won't have noticed the lack of a bulge under the green cover at the front of the rack. That's where, amongst other things, the side curtains to the tent were stored. Note the past tense. I took them out when we stopped for lunch so I could get at the boxes underneath and change my leather boots for suede "dessies". Put them behind me on top of the tent while I got changed. Forgot they were there when we drove off. Someone on the outskirts of Guercif is now wondering what they are and perhaps they'll be in the souk tomorrow being recycled into underwear...b*llocks! The knowledge of what I'd done came to me at about 3 o'clock the following morning for no reason that I could fathom - I just woke up and slapped my forehead in disbelief....Anyway, we hardly ever use them....
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Here we are then, "topped out" as a mountaineer might say, and making our way towards El-Ateuf. We always travel quite slowly over this type of terrain. Quite apart from the strain that it takes off the truck, it can be difficult to spot big dips or rocks in time to avoid them except by really harsh steering or braking, and that's very tiring for both of us but particularly Sue, who can't brace quickly enough to stop being thrown about. I fitted 4-point harnesses for this reason but they aren't really practical as we're constantly jumping in and out, checking the ground and suchlike, or taking photos. Added to that, I know every inch of Daph's underbelly and drivetrain, and every bang and crunch makes me wince - I can imagine exactly which bit is getting whacked and what it will cost us if it breaks...Being solo on this kind of activity induces a little more caution than many would find fun, but we get a kick out of being self-sufficient and, more importantly, out of someone else's dustcloud. The risks are calculated and accepted.

The day has become a lot more enjoyable now that we're off the paved surfaces. While the concentration level has now quadrupled, the fun has gone up accordingly and we seem to be the only people up here. A few hours of thinking that we're the only people on the planet and then reality reappears. In the distance is what looks like a fast moving missile with a billowing smoke trail, and it's heading straight for us. As it gets close we recognise a Toyota 4x4 going like a racing camel. We move off the track to let him pass and he flies by without so much as a wave of thanks, a "Maroc Challenge" sticker and race number taking up most of his driver's door. It takes a good 30 seconds for the dust to clear, then we see another one heading our way...This went on for the next 90 minutes. Obviously, we knew of this race, but didn't expect to get caught in the middle of it and going the wrong way. Sometimes I just got fed up with moving out of the way of this lot of highspeed Euros and let them go around us, which was definitely like playing "chicken" with a drugged-up Banger Racer - they'd assume they had Right of Way, obviously, because they had testosterone on their side. And race numbers. We had our afternoon enlivened - as if we needed it - and gained a truckful of their dust just to make us feel at home sooner. Merci,..;-).

Enough is enough for one day. We eventually hit the N15 crossroads unexpectedly, and Sue made some masterful navigation decisions which kept us right, but the picture was confusing: there was a metalled road where it shouldn't be, and all the angles were wrong. Eventually Sue sorted out a partial solution to the confusion and we set off in the right direction, but with the wrong picture. This road shouldn't be on this bearing......When it's an hour 'til sunset and you're still mobile, the plan is coming apart. We hadn't found a decent spot of cover for a while so just took a "90 left" off the road, got a klik or so away from it and stopped for the night. Knackered but happy. ...and you have to see these sunsets to believe them!

                                                                    Goodnight, Friday

Fes - not the hat

...that's a Fez, and we haven't seen one of those yet, not even in Fes.

Well, what a place! We'd read so much about it, but nothing can do justice to the Real Thing. The sounds, smells, all the sensory stuff can't be got any other way than to be here and rub shoulders against it.

We'd decided to hire a guide for this. Several reasons: it puts some money into the local economy, it makes it easier to find the must-see highlights and it keeps unwanted attention away, by which I mean the constant hassle we experienced elsewhere from folk wanting to be "helpful". This always involves an unspoken contract: "I'll show you something you don't want / take you somewhere you don't wanna go, then you pay me for my expert guidance." This is a major problem here apparently, and while we're not keen on accepting comments like that without our own experience to confirm them, on this subject we do have some "previous".

So, enter Mohammed. Nice chap, mid-forties I'd guess. Arranged through the site receptionist and waiting for us at the appointed hour. Earlier actually, and the taxi meter was running already...no matter, let's enjoy this. A minute to agree the fee - 300Dh plus the cab each way- and we're off. It's quite a way to the medina, not the 3kms mentioned in our site guidebook, so we're glad to have the taxi.

I'm not going to try to describe Fes medina here. Plenty of other, better qualified and articulate writers have been there before me and the information available could fill a large library. Our experience of it, though, was unique to us and I'm sure others would experience it differently and see different things. It's also difficult to compare it to anywhere else people from our culture might've been. I was put in mind of Mary King's Close in Edinburgh - that semi-subterranean warren of rooms and corridors that used to be streets and alleys open to the sky but have now been overwhelmed by later developements. There are, apparently, 11,000 alleyways in Fes and we saw quite a few of them which are barely shoulder width but are, nevertheless, main thoroughfares. They say a picture says a thousand words, so here's a few thousand from our cameras:

I asked Mohammed if he could explain the story of "Fatima's Hand". I'll not cover it here, but he used this door hinge as an example of how the image of the "5 Fingers" crops up all over the place in Moroccan decoration.

 It'd be very easy to get lost here. Mohammed obviously had a well-rehearsed script but was quite happy to chat about any subject and had a level of knowledge of facts and particularly figures that'd keep even American tourists happy. Without wanting to sound rude, our cousins from the USA seem obsessed with the "numbers" that attach to any topic. I remember getting a bus tour of the Kennedy Space Center that told me as much about the bus I was on as the rockets I was looking at. Whether I really needed to know how many bolts were in the transmission is open to debate...Anywaaay, back to the point of this:

 Car boot-type alley sales are everywhere, and you have to be careful not to accidentally step on something that looks like, to our eyes, just junk.

Every alley has a slightly different "feel" to it but unlike other souks we've been in, they don't seem to be specific to any particular commodity. Everything is mixed up together and in tiny shops that are more like cupboards. Certainly, Sue's got a walk-in wardrobe at home that'd make a good shop here. In fact, thinking about it, we could've brought the contents along and made a bit of cash.......

Some alleys are more residential in feel, but all have an air of graceful decay about them. If there's no-one around in modern dress, then the scene you glimpse is timeless. The medina is  - if I recall the fact correctly - 1200 years old, and you can feel every day of that in the air.

Wide enough for 2 people to pass - just. Add a little something else to the mix, and it all gets quite up-close-and-personal......

These guys are known, if they're mules, as "Medina Mercedes". The donkeys are "Dinkies". There's no other way to move cargo around as there's no room for anything more mechanical than a wheelbarrow. We saw quite a lot of these chaps, some loaded to the point that you had to marvel at their ability to stand up, let alone move.

This chap's making decorative combs from some form of shell or I guess it could've been plastic. I've no idea how long each one takes, but here's a craftsman at work and the fruits of his labours were for sale at 5 dirham each. If you're from the UK, that's 30p....

One noticeable thing is how cool the place is. This is the interior of a mosque glimpsed from the "street". The temperature was almost chilly, in fact, enhanced by the lack of any breeze - like opening a fridge door.
We were encouraged to take photos of whatever we liked, but we couldn't cross the threshold.

Each of these buildings we looked into had the most amazing mosaics, plasterwork and cedarwood carving, all going back centuries. Since it all looked pristine, I asked Mohammed when the last restoration had been, and he pointed out the date carved above a door - 1324. I was amazed and said so. What I didn't appreciate until later was that this date is of the Muslim calendar. Our equivalent would be 1906....

Pretty much the top slot on everyone's sightseeing list must be the tanneries. We'd seen so many pictures of these and read so many descriptions that the only thing we hadn't experienced was the well-known stink that you can't get without SmelloVision. Pictures of the vats of coloured vegetable dyes appear in every guide book and this is what we expected to see -

The camera never lies, right? Well, what you see here is a photo that Sue took of a video screen. We'd been led to the tannery entrance by Mohammed and had it not been for him we'd have walked right past it. Nothing but a tiny door amongst others equally nondescript, there was, if you were alert enough to see it, a small hand-painted sign on the wall. Nothing else, not even the notorious smell gave a hint of what lay at the top of a narrow - less than a broad shoulder width wide - staircase and I wondered about that as we climbed. It's supposed to be an overpowering odour. Makes your eyes water, apparently. Obviously whoever wrote that is a lot more sensitive than us - I can't really smell anything that bad... Mohammed handed us over to the tannery guide who gestured towards a wide balcony and invited us to view the vats. As we moved from the darkness out into the bright sunlight, Sue said excitedly "I've been waiting so long to see this...."

We both gasped in disappointment. Everything below us, vats, storehouses, doors, metalwork, woodwork, paintwork, all brand spanking new. Clean, unsullied and almost monochrome. I haven't mentioned that the medina is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the tanneries have been "restored" as part of that status. The project has just been completed and they're waiting for the king to come and officially open it. Until that happens, if you want a whiff of the pigeon shit they use to cure the skins, go to Trafalgar Square......

To make up for it, we took the opportunity to photograph the rooftops:

Sue liked this view of contrasts - an aerial farm on the roof of a building that could be nearly a thousand years old.

 

 

 

Back inside, there was plenty see and buy, but no "hard sell". This was a pleasant surprise and gave us the chance to examine the craftsmanship and variety without having the proprietor or one of the staff hassling us. This was, unfortunately, in marked contrast to the other emporiums that Mohammed introduced us to....

This carpet shop was in an ancient building, the purpose of visiting it supposedly to admire the architecture. Definitely not to buy carpets. That was Mohammed's line, and we made it clear that we were only interested in the culture, not the commerce. Now, I don't mind a bit of a joke and the real reason for our visit was blindingly obvious from the start. However, we played along and the description of the building and it's features was fascinating, as was the explanation that it was now used as a showroom and sales outlet for a co-operative that supports single women. Unlike our society, an unmarried, divorced or widowed woman in Morocco is in for a hard life unless she can find some means of support. These co-ops give that opportunity. We're all for supporting it...but not as part of a subterfuge. We made it clear from the outset that we weren't in a carpet-buying mood but the escort/architecture expert/carpet salesman wasn't having any of it. He tried every trick he could and, not wishing to appear rude while drinking his tea, we tried again to explain that desert driving and expensive carpets didn't mix well. OK, he could wrap it so well it wouldn't get dusty, or he could ship it home DHL for a mere £150 - which gives you an idea of how much a carpet might cost you. While we now know a huge amount of really interesting stuff about carpets and how they're made and decorated, we've also had our prejudices about Moroccan "guides" reinforced. We were eventually dismissed - and that's the only word for it, really - and as we left I asked Mohammed if we could leave a donation for this worthy cause. His reaction was odd: "No. Not welcome. This is not a charity". As it happened, we'd had, earlier, a demonstration of the weaving technique by a young woman working alone in an attic room. Sue had slipped back unnoticed and given her a 20Dh note "for your baby". A pittance by our standards but a gesture anyway. I still don't really know whether we did the right thing, how it was received by her or how to translate what we experienced overall into something other than a blatant and actually downright rude attempt to get Mohammed some commission on a sale. Without banging on about it too much, the same thing would've happened at the next "craft exhibition" we were encouraged to view had Sue not taken a liking to a silk scarf. The supposed deal with these co-ops is that they're sales outlets and everything is a fixed price "because you kind people are uncomfortable with bargaining, so we make it easy for you and take away the strain of shopping." Believe that if you like, but the scarf would've been part of a larger sale if the jellaba that Sue tried on had fitted. It didn't, but that didn't matter to the salesman - she could have it at 200dh discount if she bought the scarf as well...No? 300dh then. No? How much you want to pay? Make your own mind up about how that works in a Fixed Price Co-Operative...

So like a said at the beginning of this, our experience of the Fes medina and our guided tour was unique and "others would experience it differently and see different things". Now that I've distilled some of my thoughts and feelings about it, I'm actually not sure that statement is true. I believe that if you employ an official guide - and they're all supposedly licensed - you'll see what we saw, go to the same or similar places and possibly feel at the end of it a bit like we did. A head full of interesting facts and memories, and a bit more cynical than when you woke up this morning.....